My question is this....is it worth trying to start a new miniatures wargame?
It would be in 15mm, with a background of such depth it took 3 years to write and piece together. I did my creative writing dissertation basedf on it.
The game would have units of, for foot troops, 36 minis on 9 bases, and we would sell for £10-12.
I have the artists and sculptors poised. The artwork and quality would be very similar to GW, but the game and figure design definitely isn't.
Would it sell? What could I do to make it sell? Just give an honest opinion.
Nic
Isn't 15mm the scale used on Warmaster by GW? I still try to do Warmaster (an elegant system GW did as one of their short-shelf-life games a few years ago).
I think that any miniatures game will have a terrible problem breaking GW's strangehold on the market. Heroclix have done so by being less time-consuming (they've read-painted) and collectible (so, perhaps more addictive, and definitely easier to get stocked by game shops) and requiring less investment to be able to play a simple game (compared to a 1000 point army in any GW wargame).
A problem in using anything but GW's standard scale is that people will be probably be more reluctant to sink money into your game. At least with ?35mm? figures, they can use yours (or their existing GW ones), so the psycological deterrent against buying into the game is less.
As other people have said, however, we'd need more detail on genre etc. to give you an accurate answer, but I'd be very sceptical about the potential for breaking into the market. With a truly superb set of rules (the strength of the background flavour is probably not particularly significant, IMHO) you may find a niche in the hobby market, but GW only achieves the popularity it does through a massive retail offensive that provides exlusive shops everywhere and creates "the Games Workshop hobby" (as they call it) as a culture into which children can buy.
So, I'd say GW is the Mircosoft of the wargames hobby: it is hard to beat it even by being better, as it enjoys such a hegemonic position. However, I may be too pessimistic.
Richard.