What’s The Public Face of Your Company? – #TuesdayNewsday 11/15/22

Each week, #TuesdayNewsday gives you a quick whiparound of the strategy gaming headlines

Wargame publishers – what’s the public face that your website presents to the gaming world?  Are you laser-focused on “here’s our new game” or are you more expansive with the games your show the public?  Do you have articles and news releases alongside games on the front page of your site, or just one or the other?  Are you popping up interstitial windows as soon as someone hits your site (newsletter or sale or some other announcement or action they need to dismiss)?  In short, what are you telling the user is important to you as a publisher based on what you prioritized to present to them when they hit your page?

No, not everyone is going to have a new release every week, or a new pre-order to announce each month.  There might not be ‘news’ about your company – upcoming products, convention appearances, errata, media links, etc – every week, or even every month (although you can create some of these yourself).  But what is on your site?  How current is it?  How relevant and meaningful is it?  Does it tell the audience that you care about your site?

We hit over 80 publisher sites every week, and sometimes more frequently, on top of the news we pick up through social media links, our forums, friends referrals, and other traffic sources.
There are some publishers with a reasonably predictable cycle of content: GMT’s monthly updates, with regular GMT Insider articles throughout the month; Compass Games’ live broadcasts each week; Avalanche Press pushing out daily bite-sized content that often focuses on historical stories behind the games all come to mind.

There are other publishers whose websites, quite frankly, scream “we don’t care” as loud as possible.
If you have news release for a crowdfunding campaign “coming soon” that actually finished over a year ago, the message you’re sending is “we’re not really in business”.
Are you still advertising “Summer sale bundles” in November?
When the same five games, with the same five statuses (in development or pre-order) haven’t moved in 18 months, the audience is left wondering how much development that game actually needed that you felt compelled to push it into the public eye that early in the process.
If two years have come & gone and your website still specifies something is “coming in (month)” and there are legitimately 3 different years as options for when that month might’ve applied, it’s reasonable for a potential new customer who does not frequent your site like we do to wonder “huh, is anyone even home?”
If your site says “Kickstarter coming soon” and the campaign is already underway and hours from (not) meeting its funding goal, why would we think you have the ability to deliver on a product when you can’t be bothered to update the front page of your site telling us about it.  It literally takes 3 minutes to do.

Folks, we all love this hobby, and we’d all love for it to expand.  But when a brand new budding wargamer starts poking around online, are you showing that potential customer a thriving, happening house with activity inside, or an abandoned shell of a shack with 3-year-old faded magazines the front porch?

What’s the message you’re sending to a brand new person who just hit your site for the first time?  Is it the message you intended to send?

 

• High Flying Dice have dropped Battle’s Orphan at the top of their site, giving you  Bay of Pigs invasion game
• MMP started shipping the ASL core module Hakka Päälle to pre-order customers, so it should be available for general ordering soon
• Last week GMT started shipping Charioteer and Skies Above Britain and they’re available to order on the site
• S&T #338 got mailed to subscribers last week, and can be ordered through their site
• Worthington Games released another bookgame: Bismarck Solitaire Midnight Edition available on Amazon
• CounterFact Magazine back issues (w/ games!) are now available on Wargame Vault
• Ares Games release The Shadow Planet last week, with a retro sci-fi feel to it
• The latest BattleTech recognition guide (IlClan vol 26) is now out
• A bunch of new toys just dropped for the Bulge British line for Flames of War
  • Chaffee Recce Patrol
  • Sexton (Kangaroo) Field Troop
  • Land Mattress Rocket Troop
  • Archer Anti-Tank Troop

 

• Finally, someone gets it!  LNLP launched Glory & Empire: First Victories – Wellington Versus Napoleon thru Gamefound on a Tuesday, in enough time for us to get it into Tuesday Newsday!  We’re not saying we have a new favorite game company here at the newsdesk, but we’re not not saying it, either 😆
• Warlord Games has their upcoming Hail Caesar rulebook and starter boxes (Gallic Wars / Celts) on pre-order
• We might’ve mentioned it before, but just in case: NUTS! Publishing has Stalingrad Roads on pre-order, and that includes the English language version
• The upcoming Team Yankee Red Dawn products are on pre-order for 12/3 release, including the master hardcover book; there’s plenty more coming throughout December and January, including the militia figures that’ll drop after the new year and don’t look anything like Lea Thompson & Jennifer Grey
• These neoprene skirmish minis battle mats are pretty cool-looking, over on Kickstarter
• Lombardy Studios has pre-orders open on their Eastern Front books; you can check out a bunch of other books here, too

 

• In anticipation of the launch of Southern Storm later this week, Matrix has the original Flashpoint Campaigns games at 70% off
• Matrix Games also has Starship Troopers: Terran Command at 20% off right now, and they’re pushing the “Chemical Reaction” update to everyone for free, too, with some add’l scenarios and scoring updates
• Compass Games has both Triumph of the Will and Ostkrieg on sale at $25 right now
• Project Wunderwaffe is on sale on Steam for 25% off
• Some cool OOP used stuff at Noble Knight, like Dover Patrol, and Warship.  If you place an order there, add the #WeRollTogether hashtag in your order notes.
• Stronghold Crusader is $2 over at GOG
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is World at War #72, with Paratrooper as the included game

 

• Saturday Night Fights ~ Operation: NEPTUNE (part 3) for “Rommel”
• Conventions & Events 2023 Livestream
• My Own Worst Enemy ~ C.S.A. America’s Civil War – Turn 2 Part 1
• Mentioned in Dispatches Season 9 Ep 10 ~ Solo Wargaming, with David Thompson
• This week in our forums
  • Eckenfels is working on his upcoming B-52 Leader game and sharing his thoughts in our forum
  • Best combo of songs with the same title
  • An extremely large sand castle, in a war zone
  • Playing, enjoying, and discussing Table Battles
• Upcoming Dragoons Events (and don’t forget to check the event calendar for everything else)
  • Wargame Days at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC ~ 4 December, and 8 January
  • Next #UnboxingDay is this week!
  • Next Virtual Convention is The ACDC on 13-15 January, and look for volunteer & registration info to go live soon
  • Next Real-World Convention is going to be Buckeye Game Fest, in Columbus OH, 28-30 April (with the War Room opening up on 24 April for extended wargaming)

 

• A Second Probe at Bas de Mouen for “Chain of Command”
• “Attack This!” (part 2) for “Spearhead”
• Here’s a report on the games played at BottosCon

 

Don’t forget to check our consolidated event & convention calendar for more!
You can also submit your own events for our calendar here.

With the holidays coming up, the conventions we’re tracking are mostly after the new year, so you’ve got some time to plan!

• 3 different conventions on 13-15 January!
  • The ACDC (virtual) (more details coming soon)
  • MarsCon (Norfolk, VA)
  • MMP’s Winter Offensive (Baltimore, MD)
• 8-12 February GameON! (Seattle, WA)
• 17-26 February Winterfest (Sandusky, OH)
• 17-20 February DunDraCon 46 (Santa Clara, CA)
• 20-26 February Prezcon (Charlottesville, VA)

 

• Rocky talks about War Chest and more
• Moe & Ardwulf were live for over 2-1/2 hours at Compass Games Expo
• Justegarde gives you a look at day 1 and days 2 & 3 of SDHISTCON
• Ardwulf’s took the week off, so we filled in for him in the counter clipping time slot

 

We’ve also got a 4X-specific area in the forums to discuss any of these, too.

• Publisher Sega and developer Amplitude Studios have released Together We Rule, the first major expansion pack for Humankind, their Civilization-style 4x.  (Watch the trailer here.)  Together We Rule focuses on the diplomatic side of the game, along with adding new playable cultures, wonders, and events.
• Mohawk Games has put out their Update #100 for Old World, their Bronze/Classical-era 4x.  (You can check out the patch notes here.)  While we don’t wish to attach undue importance to milestones associated with large round numbers, it’s still pretty impressive how long and how well the folks at Mohawk have continued to support this game after release.
• The other ancient-era 4x currently out there, Imperiums: Greek Wars, also received an update this past week.  (Read the patch notes here.)  Notable features include an improved birth rate support mechanism, Mandatory Objectives were implemented in the main game plus the other DLC — it’s no longer exclusive to just Rome vs. Carthage — and numerous improvements (including the optional implementation of terrain color schemes) were made to the map’s visuals making it much easier on the eyes.

 

• This week, Avalanche Press has a fun article about Brazilian battle cruisers for their alt-history Second Great War line
• Osprey Games has jacked up their website layout, making it near-impossible to pick out the latest releases or upcoming pre-orders, even after drilling down into all the categories they didn’t used to use
• Clint Davey takes a spin thru different wargame combat systems over on Twitter

 

Don’t forget we’ve got a dedicated area of our forums for the professional wargamers.

• One billion bucks per boat
• Ukrainian rockets, meet Russian supply hub
• Some US naval perspective on history and the future, and you can tie it into your own wargaming
• The next GUWS webinar is 11/22 and it talking about The Complexity of Simplicity: Wargames’ Footprint and Historical Model and make sure you note that this one is at noon
• US Naval War College has a wargaming faculty posting that we can’t seem to find anywhere by LinkedIn
• PaxSims shows you how gaming disinformation can be fun

 

That’s all for this week!
Be sure to drop by our forums and join the fun, and next Tuesday we’ll drop some more news on you.

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We appreciate you visiting the Armchair Dragoons and hope that you enjoy our weekly news dumps!
Please leave us your feedback in our discussion forum, or in the comment area below.
You can also find the regiment on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and occasionally at a convention near you.

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