so, my opinion about Dark Age was that Wizkids did a poor job of introducing their game and transitioning players into it. I felt that the Dark Age story line and flavor wasn't so bad, but the timing couldn't have been worse if they tried. For example, Dark Age should have been an expansion... an advancement of the story line rather than the launch set.
One of the things easily missed in this discussion, was that WizKids did not actually intend MW:DA to take over the BT playing audience. It was a very deliberate attempt to combine mecha and the Clix mechanic, and launch this to a whole new audience.
Why? Face it. The BT player base is small and niche. It's been wild-ass guessed that there are around 10,000 BT "fans" worldwide. This number is made up of people who
- play the game(s) - board, alpha strike, aerospace, BattleTroops, BattleForce, etc etc etc
- collect & paint minis
- play the RPG
- nostalgically collect books
- came in from the PC games & stuck around
- etc etc.
The number of that 10,000 who actually buy stuff is some fraction - 10%, 25%, 50%, whatever. That's the BT purchaser pool.
WizKids - and Loren Wiseman, who was one of the parents of the game - wanted to access an entirely new, much larger audience. They had to, to make the game profitable & sustainable. So they made a number of decisions to target a new audience. Love these decisions or hate them, they included:
- pre-painted miniatures
- faster-playing, simpler game system
- a new period in history so people wouldnt' feel daunted by the 30 years of BT history - a common comment by new BT fans.
- collectable miniature game with random boosters.
Did their decisions work? Clearly, and for several years, yes. Put it this way. Another wild-ass guess, there are probably about 100,000 BT metal minis out there
in total, globally. From Ral Partha, IWM, RPE, etc. At the time WK published their "Technologies of Destruction" coffee-table book, WK had produced
over seven million DA figures. That's two orders of magnitude more,
and they weren't finished.
Ultimately WK got bought up by Topps, and ultimately DA died as a production game. It now is another niche game, with probably an equal number of fans, but a lot more plastic minis out there (just check my bitz drawers! ;) ).
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The assumption that WK botched a transition for BT fans into their game is unfortunately inaccurate. WK as a company was enormously supportive of Randall and first FanPro, and then CGL. I know, I was on some of the inside for that. WK gave concessions and more or less creative freedom, and did a lot to help BT stay alive. If that deosn't indicate they weren't trying to absorb the BT base, I don't know what will.
Alas, there seems to have been an expectation 15 years ago that "MW:DA is the new BT!" It was never meant to be. It was a new
form of expressing the fictional universe we all love. it was never meant to
replace our game of armoured, stompy giant robot combat.
Cheers,
W.