Ode to Success
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D., President, Avalanche Press
June 2011

I have the coolest job on this planet. I’m finally realizing this after some pretty serious shocks to people around me. A while back, I came to the decision that Avalanche Press had to change radically if I wanted the coolness to continue. Despite my efforts to delegate over the years the company remains an expression of my own personality, so changing the company would require personal changes as well, some of them fairly profound.

Chief among those is overcoming a fear of success and a related dislike of money (and of those who have money). My career path has followed professions in which one’s never in much danger of an excess of pay. Wargame publishing definitely fits that mold, but at Avalanche Press some of the games I’ve designed have taken that to extremes. The quirkiest of them cross series and periods but have one unavoidable trait in common: some connection to Austria, where as a child our poverty wasn’t mocked by nasty little rich bastards. That fixation may be a comforting security blanket but it doesn’t pay the bills. Now that we’ve finally reached a position to resume regular production of boxed games, game themes are going to have to be selected with far more attention to the bottom line.

Gamers like to think that the quality and/or topic of the games themselves determines the success or failure of game companies. That’s not necessarily so; it’s a factor, but not a major factor. We’ve long proven that we can make a success out of a quirky topic. But I’m pretty sure we can make a better success out of a better-known topic.

There are still some quirky projects on the promised list, and those will be completed. But new ones are going to have to hew closer to commercially-viable themes. We’ll be drawing on the Gold Club’s advice for new topics in a series of polls, looking to identify the projects with the greatest sales potential. I know that some fans truly value the unusual approach, and like discovering relatively little-known conflicts. I’m sad to abandon that type of game, but would be sadder to lose all I’ve built. So here’s a look back at the quirkiest of the games and supplements, at least those that are still in print:

Great War at Sea: Mediterranean
Some naval games sell better than others, and none have done as well as this one despite its unusual theme. The game isn’t perfect: it lacks the rules refinements made in later games, and the scenarios are not nearly as balanced for play as those we did later. Even so, it set the pattern for just about every game that followed: many scenarios, lots of unusual pieces, and a thorough exploration of the historical topic in game terms. This is the game that built Avalanche Press, and it’s the one that still gives me a little thrill every time I pull a copy off the shelf to ship it somewhere.

I like Mediterranean one a lot. Its huge array of scenarios cover just about every conceivable naval conflict between 1911 and 1923, which lets me show off a little archival research and the delving into other obscure sources (I’m sure the 10-year-old bullies would be humbled by my multi-lingualism and hard work). It’s got all sorts of odd pieces; where else are you going to get the Romanian Navy of 1914? It’s stuck with those mega-ugly “alternate back” counters (a long story) but otherwise is a very fine game.

In retrospect, the series should have started with a Jutland game. By bringing that one out later we did manage to incorporate lessons from the earlier game in the main event, and that has some value. But that’s not the strategy to maximize sales.

You could argue, of course, that the entire series flouts the “sales maximization” rule and there’s a lot to that. “World War One Naval” was not considered a marketable theme until we made it into one. That took a lot of hard work and sheer dumb luck, and the latter especially is not a sound foundation for a marketing strategy. Even so, this game will also make the “most successful” list I’ll do later, and spawned more sequels than I can count.

Battles of 1866: Frontier Battles
Since this one’s in production I’ll count it, and it is the quirkiest of all of them on the list. It’s certainly hotly-anticipated by those who’ve ordered it, but I do have some doubts it would be so deeply desired if it wasn’t so late in appearing. We introduced this game (as part of a larger package) as part of our Classic Wargames line, and I justified its inclusion at the time and for long afterwards as a feature of that program: games that would not sell well through retail would be offered only directly to customers.

Like the others on the list, I expect Frontier Battles to be a very good product. I’ve been accused of lavishing extra attention, expense and marketing on “(my) own games,” and while it’s not an expression of Rampant Ego (I leave that to others), the results are the same. Since the game’s already burdened with its topic, it’s not likely to be a runaway best-seller so that fear of success doesn’t kick in.

I’m a little concerned that the battles in this game play out differently than the game’s Civil War near-sisters (Gettysburg and Chickamauga): there are fewer units in play, but they have much more staying power. So the Austrian and Prussian players at Trautenau are each playing with just four brigades (the European equivalent to the infantry divisions of the American Civil War) instead of the dozen or so you might expect in an American battle – but each of those brigades has many more steps (strength levels) than most any American division. And each brigade has an array of supporting arms: there are many more light infantry battalions, cavalry regiments and artillery batteries present than in an American army of similar size.

Pieces and maps are lovely, and the rules are pretty solid: as the third (I think) iteration, plus benefitting from the re-writes of their Napoleonic and Roman sister series, they should be. The scenarios are varied; most all of the four battles have multiple variations, chiefly concerning random reinforcements.

Even so, it’s a game covering four battles most of our customers can’t even pronounce, let alone identify. The last of the set of three 1866 games is likely to be the last War of the Empires game.

Infantry Attacks: Fall of Empires
If War of the Empires is a fading series, Infantry Attacks is on the rise. We’re saddled with Fall of Empires as part of that same Classic Wargames legacy, and if I had the magic wand my staff seems to believe I wield, I’d change this into one featuring American doughboys in the Argonne or the Lawrence of Arabia game we already have in-house instead of Austrians and Russians brawling in 1914.

Again, the game (now racing into production, with boxes due Monday) looks to be an exceptionally good one; I seem to be at my best when I expect sales failure. As the second in the series (not counting supplements) it benefits from experience gained with August 1914. August 1914 has sold surprisingly well and been very well-received. As a game, I expect Fall of Empires to be even better. The scenarios are more varied, and they include a number of very large cavalry battles.

Marketing it will be a little more difficult; August 1914 was obscure enough despite having Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Barbara Tuchmann on our side. The campaign for Galicia in 1914 is even less of the household name. We’ll push it with lots of Daily Content and a companion book, but it will be a while before Infantry Attacks returns to the Eastern Front.

Panzer Grenadier: Hopeless But Not Serious
This one first appeared as a download, and in that form wasn’t particularly dangerous to the company’s health. It actually sold pretty well in that format and more than justified the effort. Then the fans started demanding die-cut-and-mounted counters for the downloads, and I believed we had a source for them. Of course, I wanted to believe this, but the sample did look good as did the price and promised turnaround.

That source turned out to be unable to provide the goods, and so we were stuck making the counters using older and much more expensive technology. And the fans demanding “real” counters did not materialize as actual buyers; some instead demanded it for free, since they’d “already paid for the download.”
 
If I was determined to move forward with this project, I should have at least turned it into a book with articles and some more scenarios – but I was aiming for quick turnaround using that first printer. Apart from the topic, Hopeless But Not Serious (the title should have told me something) is actually very good. It has an array of forces unequaled anywhere in wargaming: the Austrian Federal Army, Austrian socialist militia, Brownshirts, Austrian right-wing militia, and a few Germans. I like the mix of scenarios myself, but the awesome Panzer Grenadier Headquarters (an independent fan-run site) appears to have fewer ratings for this supplement than any other I can find.

At some point we’ll probably issue a companion book anyway (it’s pretty easy for me to write) in hopes of shoring up its sales. It paid for itself, but only because Panzer Grenadier is a powerful brand, and it needs to serve as a lesson in fear of success. It’s a fine piece of work, a very fine one, but it was designed to dodge success and it succeeded. I suppose if you subconsciously aim for failure long enough, eventually you’ll hit the target.

Second World War at Sea: Imperial & Royal Navy
Like Hopeless, Imperial & Royal Navy started life as a download and went to “real” counters because we stupidly promised them. That by itself was not a recipe for failure: Spice Islands, produced alongside it and released either just before or just after has been a very successful product (though I dearly wish we’d done a boxed game in their stead).

I enjoyed working on this one, because I drew the ships as well as writing the scenarios. It’s missing some key aspects; like its sequel The Kaiser’s Navy, it should have been a book including a fleshed-out alternative history. Instead it’s a printed version of the download, but our naval fans are of a different breed than those of Panzer Grenadier. They scooped it up without complaint, even if they’d bought the download edition. Seen by itself, Imperial & Royal Navy is a successful product.

But I know better: it’s successful because of its brand. As our former developer Doug McNair lectured me, “SWWAS is wargaming’s equivalent of a license to print money.” We would sell twice as many copies of a Plan Orange boxed game produced instead of this supplement and Spice Islands. Accepting success at a lesser level is still, by my reckoning, a fear of success and so this product makes the list.

Like the others on the list, it’s beautiful. The scenarios are solid, and even without the full background it’s a work in which I can take pride.

Downloads
The download line is supposed to be quirky, and cover themes that would never see actual print with die-cut counters. In large part that’s to protect their sales, so customers don’t “wait for the real version” – there will never be a real version. So all of them get the “quirky” tag, and they’re designed that way. I enjoyed working on War on the Equator and Indian Unity, and they did provide new product without incurring very high production costs. In the future, though, I don’t see myself working on many downloads unless I hit upon an idea that can be executed very quickly. We’ll still do downloads with do-it-yourself pieces, but most of them will come from outside designers.

I’m really not sure how to classify these. When we did many downloads, we needed to release products that did not require a great deal of working capital. Now that we’re getting the boxed games moving, there’s less of a need for them from a business standpoint. And I think for my own development, I need to avoid working on under-the-radar projects and stick to the projects that have the best chance for the greatest success. The downloads have built a following, so the line will continue, but it will continue under the hands of other designers.

The Future?
I think we’ll still do unusual and quirky products, but those will come in from outside designers and we won’t be asking for them. I’ll certainly be concentrating on the major series and the topics within them with the greatest potential for success. If they fail anyway, it won’t be because I tried to make that happen.