"The message of the new music is that life gets more and more exciting as there is less and less time." -- Donald Barthelme We spend a lot of our time here knocking around the question of the direction our development should go, and our ultimate goal I for one feel very confident about the general direction. but while I cannot say what the object is, I know that there is something very important for wargames to become. Perhaps as an epitaph to the spins of renaissance overcome and smothered out since Sarajevo. Or as a snapshot of a kind of violent clash of national policies which, either by replacement with a more definitive kind of warfare' or by a transcendence of that kind of thinking, will sooner or later be foreign to the experience of anyone alive. Either way, it seems there must be a lesson for somebody in this age of wars of which we seem to be near an end If this lesson is for us, it better come soon: if it's to be discovered after us, we better get it down right. If it's not the history, perhaps it's the tool itself: any hope is that the methods of modelling which we are developing will someday find their way into the hands of someone who needs them for something real, new and important. We also spend a lot of time struggling with the business. As a group of designers with a need for independence we have learned a lot, and have a lot more to learn about keeping viable our independent position here. Running OSG is certainly challenging small though it is. It's still too large for any one individual to grasp or control And it's several orders of magnitude more complicated than the most complex wargame. THE GAME OF OSG Suppose an Admin point to be $1500. The marketing Game provides for the resolution of Advertising Strategies. A Modest Direct Mail Strategy would cost 1/2 AP per month. The Development Game begins with the planning of a product line, with titles OT a known profitability margin For instance, to net one AP in sales of a single title (after deducting Fulfillment and Manufacturing Costs) might require 50 units DM and 250 units Wholesale (WH). Development requires a staff at 1/2 AP per month each, capable of producing two games per man-years [Fulfillment also requires one additional staff member and Overhead to house the staff amounts to one AP per month]. At the beginning of the game as a single title in print The time is June 1978 The player begins with zero APs, but he can get 1/2 AP in WH with which to execute a single Marketing Strategy--Origins! There, depending on the die roll, he makes 1 AP (again, after deducting cost of goods sold). With this AP he establishes Overhead, but this action has the tangental effect of allowing him to get limited terms from his suppliers and allows the beginning of the further development of games. From here on the game requires that income be diverted from the suppliers forcing them to wait up to five months until the APs washed through new game development return in the form of new game income. The game becomes really complicated with the addition of the Manufacturing System There. the Player has to dispose of actual production costs To print a single game in a press run of 2000 units costs 3APs A smaller game in a press run of 5000 units costs 4APs Die-cutting Box rnaking (on a minimurn of 2000 units) Shrink-wrapping & assernbling and binding for which credit terms are shorter together cost 1 AP. If all goes well, monthly income stabilizes by December at 4APs. However the Staff at this time becomes subject to an Attrition Die Roll. This is modified for Overwork (90 hours per week) and Winter Result is one staff member out for a month with Epstein-Bar virus, another suffers from mental exhaustion and takes an extended leave of absence. Our development strategy, after setting up shop in August, was to increase the line by three additional lines. To support the effort required considerable pre-sales. Thus our marketing strategy was to exhaust the remaining marketing option, S&T in two increments (at a cost of 2 and 1/2 APs on the books) The first smaller increment helped pay for the first of three titles, but opveroptimistic planning (a danger) resulted in 2-4 month delays for successive titles. S&T inserts brought us 7APs over 4 months, not countinginquiries which ressulted in further sales. Fulfillment and manufacturing plus the cost of brochures, cost us 2 and 1/2 APs. When the few wholesale and retail outlets specializing in wargames saw our first boxed game, they responded with a healthy, largely unsolicited orders, to the point where 80% of our units sold and 55% of our income came from retail. Total sales to date: 1650 PzK, 1300 NAB, 1100R&T, and 900 NAL. SOME SPECIFICS OF THE GAME The big problem is determining how many APs we're losing each month, and how many we can afford to lose. For the period Dec-Feb, we think is was 1AP per month. Based on this estimate, we decided to increase our staff, and our loss, via a new Marketing Director AP, on the theory that we'd make it up in two months. The central activity as I see it, is t come to grips with the question of finding a viable level of debt. There are two varieties and five categories of expenses: Extraordinary one-time costs include Fulfillment (F), and printing and manufacturing (P) Fixed costs are Overhead. Salaries, and Marketing (OSM ) The trick is to keep the new games coming out regularly because OSM must be paid whether you bring out four new games a year or twelve Following Bertoldt Brecht's dictum that 'the ideal amount of time tor rehearsal is always one week more, we have delayed the release of games until the staff is dining on deferred steak and the rent is two weeks late. At present, M is 1/2 AP, O is 1AP, and S is 2APs That means, as recited at the top, each of our four titles must sell 50 DM and 250 WH per month, yielding about 3APs tor OSM (plus 1 AP each for F&P). Thus, Brent's work is cut out for him. Reader Survey Notice that with this issue we have instituted a Reader Survey We will not be tied to the results of the Survey in determining our publication schedule, but if certain questions receive overwhelming responses we will ot course be forced to draw the necessary conclusions We believe a better game will result if designers are allowed to follow their own personal inclinationsmnstead of forcing them to work on the most popular titles. We can do this because we are selling games to a smaller more discerning audience who do not buy games on the basis of title but of quality. Nonetheless, it s very important that everyone be sure to send in at least one survey card per year. The Question of Content The purpose of Wargame Design is to be a forum of Game Designers. It is intended to be written mostly by Designers with games now or soon to be in print though our hobby. It's fortunate to have a select group of commentators who seem to have an insight into Design as good or better than many veteran designers. The problem is that most designers are so pressed to turn all their efforts toward delivering a game design and make very unreliable contributing editors. Back to Wargame Design Vol. 1 Nr. 2 Table of Contents Back to Wargame Design List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1979 by Operational Studies Group. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com