Greetings all,

In our never ending quest to break into the tangible market, we are in the process of gearing up for a series of gaming mat releases on the heels of our starship combat game 'Wormhole'. The first series of mats will be focused on sci-fi gaming but I have plans to have this eventually spill over into ALL genres We are looking for some active feedback before we commit to anything.


MAT INFO:

The mats themselves are an extremely thick high grade vinyl, mat finish, spill proof, scratch resistant inks, with excellent "lay flat" properties. To keep the costs as low as possible we are aiming for a 3X4ft format. The mats are expertly textured by WorldWorks crew with a 300dpi stellar landscape. To our knowledge, no one is doing anything with this level of quality at the moment and we really feel strongly that this is something just dying to be realized. There is outstanding potential here for growth into other genres and we would love to carry this through to a whole host of gaming environments. Here's a little internal preview of something in development. Please note that this is just one of a few designs being worked on and in fact it is likely that this will not be the first release in the series:




A QUESTION OF PRICEPOINT:

Researching what is currently available out there for gaming mats, the pricepoints really run the gambit but are typically quite high. For the most part we see a lot of fabric or felt mats that have either been airbrushed, silkscreened or stenciled and the end results are in most cases less than "stellar". The question I put to you beyond the above poll is this; What pricepoint do you feel would be fair to you as the consumer?

I'm not going to launch into how much they are potentially costing us to produce but I will say it's a little difficult to balance production cost with a meager profit margin. What I don't want to do is offer something that is outside of the average gamers budget. If it cascades off into that zone I would rather pull the project all together. We do have some wiggle room so if we can reduce our profit margin a bit to hit a sweet spot for all involved then we're golden I guess I'm just asking for your kneejerk reactions to this type of product. Armed with that info we can hopefully determine a pricepoint that makes everyone happy or...it might tell us to dump the concept entirely

Thanks in advance for your thoughtful and considered comments.

well, using the same size grid that wormhole uses would be a good thing, but if your thinking along the lines of making it usable for more games i'd ask a larger community of specific gamers

i know of but i'm sure there will be others out there

i'd buy one, if it was gridless or if the grid wasn't too garish(a mid gray, like the WWG logo in the pics)

good luck with this GS denny

I WANT ONE!!!

I voted gridless because it would be the most useful for other games, but I would actually prefer to see it for whatever scale wormhole is played on (what scale is wormhole played on anyway?).

I would sugest a wormhole specific one first using whatever grid/hex size is used for the game then make a second one which is gridless and with a different space theme for use with other games, also I agree with rougetrada about the grid being somewhat subduded.

I had to think a while before actually voting and thus replying.

The map type depends on the game I'm playing.

A gridless Map with the planets and cool whirly thing would work well with a lot of space games out there (thus a great bonus to any space game). The first two that come to mind are Full Thrust and A Call to Arms.

A Hex map would be great for Battletech, but at the moment, WWG does not offer anything that would use that type of mat, so (and unfortunately a lot of people think that one must go with another) having something that does not go with one of the WWG games would probably hurt sales. I know I look at things differently, but there are a lot of consumers that don't.

Gridless would be great to start out since it would support not only Wormhole but other popular space games as well.

As far as price point, I purchased by first Vinyl mat in 1980 for $20 bucks. It is just a normal 1" grid that I use when I don't have terrain for my D&D games. It has lasted all these years, through moves with the Navy, etc. So I am jazzed that WWG will be offering something like this. I'm sure with the printing of the great graphics, the price is going to be much higher. But if the graphics are stunning and it is durable and last 20+ years, then it would be worth paying a higher price. What is that higher price? I'd pay up to $40 for a 3x4 mat, because over 20 years (hoping it's that high a quality) that would make using it $2.00 per year (talking USD here folks).

Hope this helps.

Regards,

CCotD'

Edit: And Denny, don't feel bad about putting forth these types of questions. All companies do market research, etc before bringing products to market. This is WWG's way of doing it, which I think is great. Instead of some small sampling, you can actually hear from ALL the people who frequent the forums, which to me, is much, much better.

(Everyone Remember "new coke", it was based on a 45% approval rating from participantes in a taste test. If I'd voted, I'd thrown the stuff on the coke dude ... )

You may want to try doing 'dotted' hexes, either by having only the corners and/or only the centers, of each hex marked with a small grey or white dot. These can be passed off as stars in the event that hexes are not being used.

The last space games that I have played that used hexes were both GDW games - Star Cruiser (three inch hexes, I believe) and Brilliant Lances (either 1 inch or 1.5 inch, if I recall correctly).

Full Thrust does not use hexes at all, and is the most recent space battle game that I have played (using the B5 mod).

The Auld Grump

[quote="terryocarroll"...my favourite space game (Federation Commander)..[/quote]

Terry welcome to the forum. If you can run a new thread in the Wargaming section of Federation Commander and give us all a run down, if you don't mind.

Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

For most vehicular based space games, I usually use a hex grid or no grid at all. For person to person combat, I've used square, hex and gridless, with the square and hex being 1 inch across.

Skunk

You wanna be alright you gotta walk tall
Long Beach Dub Allstars & Black Eyed Peas





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