We asked, and you told us!

This blog has been created as a follow up to our recent survey. Before going on, the first thing I would like to do is thank you all for your input.  Thousands of you responded and it has been fantastic going through the feedback, crunching the data (I never thought I would have ever enjoyed making charts!) and understanding your wants and needs from Spartan Games. Our ability to target game development has never been stronger.  Lots of you asked us to tell you about the results, so here goes.

First up, I’d like to talk about which game will be enhanced first because of the survey. The answer is Dystopian Wars (DW), and as we had already been working on exciting extensions to the Dystopian World, it was good news for us when it marginally drew in more respondents than Firestorm Armada (FA), although the polling was close.

For our diehard fans of FA, we’d ask you to wait a little longer to hear about our exciting plans for your Galaxy. Just like with DW, we have been working on many new ideas for some time now (version 3.0 rulebook, new models such as Leviathans and modular hulls, scenery and much more) and now these plans will be adjusted to be just as targeted as our plans for DW. We promise we won’t keep you waiting long and we’ll follow up with a blog like this one.

The Dystopian World Expansion

One of the key questions we asked you in our survey was ‘what would you like Spartan Games to release?’. We asked this generally and then for each of our game systems. The top responses in the General Category were:

1) New upgrades for existing factions
2) New forces for existing games
3) New printed materials (Campaign Books, Faction Books, Rulebooks)
4) New games
5) Organised play materials

Now let’s drill into DW and see what answers that question delivered in terms of top answers:

1) New upgrades for existing factions (huge response!)
2) New printed materials (Campaign Books, Faction Books)
3) New factions
4) Scenery
5) New 2-player box
6) New Rulebook

As you can see answers 1-3 correlate to the General Category answers, emphasising their importance to you. When evaluating the additional comments many of you made, the need to expand the Core Seven Nation fleets with new models which extended your options on the gaming table was clear. Alliance nations were also cited as needing more expansion through new models – which is most cool because we have already been working this year on a host of cool ideas for our Alliance Nations, and knowing you want them makes our development effort even more valid!

So, a big tick against your need/want for more highly-detailed, super cool DW models. We’ve got that one underlined! We have a long list of new models for DW, along with digital concepts, and your excitement for new models make us even more happy that we can accelerate the process of bringing you these awesome new upgrades for your DW fleets.

Result 2 (printed material, rulebooks, campaign guides etc.) was wonderful to see. We have already started with our plan of more blog-based campaign materials, you can see those on our website, but to understand that you clearly want to see Campaigns made available as printed books is exciting. Faction books that draw together information on a specific country, embrace tactics guides, imagery and model statistics also ranked very well. We have discussed such books internally, even started their design process, but now we know you want them opens some exciting options.

New Factions was fun to see, giving us room to deliver new blood to your gaming table inside the framework of a game system you already know and love. I’ll come back to this later.

The fourth ranking is held by Scenery and for me personally, this made me very happy. I have been banging on about Scenery for a while now, you may have already seen our DW islands and fantastic Sturginium Drilling Rig. Knowing that you want more Scenery makes us very confident to make even more exciting DW tabletop scenery for you!

A new 2-player box is a great addition to DW. These boxes are a fabulous way for new gamers to dive into the DW world and perfect for shops to engage with new customers. We have been considering our options for a new two-player box for some time, and had considered rolling this in with the idea of exciting new factions. We can’t wait to share our cool plans with you for new factions and a new 2-player box.

We believe DW version 2.0 is a solid, established and tested rulebook. Clearly there is interest in a new version, but we want to ensure that the proper time and resources are applied to make it everything you want it to be. Whilst coming in at the sixth position makes it important for you, it also implied you will be happy to wait until we can give it the right amount of time to truly tick all the boxes.

Before I move on, I’d like to mention the question of support. We asked you EXACTLY what support meant to you. Here are your top answers:

1) Release of new models
2) Scenarios and Battle Reports
3) Release of new Rules
4) Campaign Blogs
5) Painting Guides
6) Organised play materials

I am going to discuss this set of results in a separate blog article because I feel they need more time and space to discuss how we deliver on your needs. It is most helpful to clearly see what you want in terms of support, so thanks for the data. I’ll be back soon with answers to your answers.

A Dystopian World Expansion Campaign

Analysing the survey results has given us a wonderful insight into what you would like to see happen with DW, and armed with that information we busy adjusting our plan for a Dystopian World Kickstarter and aligning it to fully match hat you have told us you want to see. Our Campaign will therefore run from early in November, built to deliver the upgrade models for existing nations, printed campaign and nation books, stunning scenery sets, 2-player box and new factions that you want to see. What is most cool is this list alone puts a tick against your top five survey answers.

We are hugely excited by this major expansion of the Dystopian World, to delivering new models to expand your fleets, printed books packed with exciting imagery and information and much more. And best of all, it will be tailored with your needs at its core. Thank you all for your feedback and help.

All the best,
Spartan Neil