Full Transcript for Modiphius Founder Chris Birch on XCOM, Fallout and the Business of Miniatures

opened in Birmingham. 05:12.645 --> 05:22.070 [SPEAKER_01]: There was another great shot called Dungeons and Starships and Birmingham that you'd find what everyone called it, found the games back then in the, and this is like in the early ages. 05:22.530 --> 05:28.833 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was, you know, we were buying loads of stuff and gaming, society and running loads of big D&D groups. 05:29.233 --> 05:34.416 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was into war games and RPGs and also board games, had another 05:35.156 --> 05:56.071 [SPEAKER_01]: the GM who ran our D&D group, he had all these old, you know, traveler, board games and task force games and meta games, so things like I discovered Oga, the Steve Jackson game that was like £3 in a knitting shop, that's a little hex war game where, you know, you've got one big cyber tank and loads a little hover tanks and infantry trying to take it down. 05:56.771 --> 06:15.118 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was a great solo game because the big giant cyber-tain just wants to move towards your base and blow it up and, you know, the, to the infantry could swarm around and do you stay up close trying to take it out or do you duck in and out, you know, but it's guns are just like, in a G-take out of guns so it can't shoot you. 06:15.758 --> 06:24.006 [SPEAKER_01]: But then it might get close enough to just drive over your HQ or D. Focus on its tracks and then try and stop it. 06:24.026 --> 06:26.489 [SPEAKER_01]: But then it's like meanwhile it's just whittling you down. 06:26.529 --> 06:28.551 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's all these interesting strategies. 06:28.591 --> 06:30.953 [SPEAKER_01]: And there's quite a lot of solar games at the time. 06:31.874 --> 06:34.236 [SPEAKER_01]: There's one great one called Barbarian Prince. 06:34.617 --> 06:37.800 [SPEAKER_01]: That is almost like a little solo RPG. 06:37.840 --> 06:39.441 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a hex cruel game in a box. 06:40.622 --> 07:06.467 [SPEAKER_01]: by a company called Dwarf Star Games, it's long gone, and that was a beautiful color map of this country side with little castles and towns, and you had this miniature little tiny, they're kind of 20 mil scale, miniature of this kind of Conan character with a cloak, and you have to move hex hex, and there was like a random role to see if you could you leave the hex if you get lost, how much food have you got, could you go hunting, what would you do 07:11.509 --> 07:27.495 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think all those early games really invented the whole idea of solo games, you know, being able to have a really fun solo game experience, not just something crap, you know, like I'll just play against myself again, you know, where you always know what your self is going to do. 07:30.188 --> 07:41.872 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's where I got started really and then I kept London, got the music business and then I made it by and was just going to be ended up writing the Star Blows for Adventures RPG together and we would every weekend. 07:42.292 --> 07:54.217 [SPEAKER_01]: I'd get home from a club working in this night club at nine in the morning and sleep for all five hours and then getting the car on drive to his place and we'd play massive epic whammy epic battles. 07:55.297 --> 08:09.182 [SPEAKER_01]: or Star Wars Miniatures game, the original Metal Miniatures game that we wrote around worlds for, so we could play with all the miniatures, Cryometh, and other old school British kind of basically aliens war game that was pretty fun. 08:10.243 --> 08:19.586 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, 40k, we'd play a lot of stuff, so, and then we'd sit and lay into the night drinking Coke and eating pizza and 08:22.347 --> 08:30.433 [SPEAKER_00]: Must have been quite a cathartic young and young that the like club night thing mixed with this, you know, the quiet game. 08:30.453 --> 08:31.013 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 08:31.354 --> 08:31.634 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 08:31.654 --> 08:33.235 [SPEAKER_01]: It was really cool to make each other. 08:34.036 --> 08:39.439 [SPEAKER_01]: It was it was it was weird in a sense, because I was, you know, doing all these big nights and festivals. 08:41.061 --> 08:42.062 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's intense. 08:42.122 --> 08:43.783 [SPEAKER_01]: It's that full-on, blows people. 08:43.823 --> 08:45.204 [SPEAKER_01]: You're talking people all the time. 08:45.224 --> 08:49.028 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, just intense visuals and music and everything. 08:49.148 --> 08:54.032 [SPEAKER_01]: And then just going and chilling and playing with some beautiful toy soldiers for the days. 08:54.072 --> 08:57.395 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, quite a good, you know, chill, come down to it. 08:58.832 --> 09:11.054 [SPEAKER_00]: And a bit, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but throughout university and that your experiences of all these games, was there ever a hint that this could be a career for me or did you always just see it as a sort of playtime? 09:11.634 --> 09:25.277 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a means, yeah, we always used to drink like one day while in the games company and we'll you know, the thing, you know, all the desks will look like like seven and, you know, have all those little flashing lights on them and we'll have like, you know, electric doors and that we kind of... 09:25.677 --> 09:30.965 [SPEAKER_01]: I think we kind of daydream the one day we could do all that, you know, but now that never thought much about our course. 09:31.285 --> 09:33.308 [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I was in, I was in music businesses. 09:33.788 --> 09:35.451 [SPEAKER_01]: Never, I wasn't going to change. 09:35.791 --> 09:38.295 [SPEAKER_01]: And, um, but we kept writing game ideas. 09:38.315 --> 09:39.977 [SPEAKER_01]: We wrote a game called Blaster Ray. 09:41.097 --> 09:55.206 [SPEAKER_01]: That was a little bit savage world, but with minute cheers and it was an RPG and it was our own world and it was set in an Artificial Star System called Medifius, but with an F, which became the name of the company, I don't know

enough. 09:55.226 --> 10:02.231 [SPEAKER_01]: So when I came out with an aim, I was like, well, also you want to find a good dot com address and when you make up a name, it's easy. 10:03.112 --> 10:03.232 [SPEAKER_01]: And 10:05.020 --> 10:18.090 [SPEAKER_01]: I always thought, you know what, that was a great name and I spelled that I spelled it P-H, Modifus, M-O-D-R-P-H, and it was just, you know, felt right, you know, it's kind of hooking bats, those early, those early. 10:18.799 --> 10:46.109 [SPEAKER_01]: years of writing, get games and stuff, but I'd never, I mean even when we started doing acting themes our first our first RPG it was just like well this will maybe this will pay for a weekend away once a year like if I do these RPGs and it will something I wanted to do for fun and I had a t-shirt company at the time and I never dreamed that it would start company but the kickstart did so well that we were like oh we better take this seriously and 10:47.841 --> 10:52.685 [SPEAKER_00]: Sounds like you've always been quite sort of on entrepreneurial then with the video. 10:52.765 --> 10:57.568 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if I go back, I've been back school a few times and done some like careers talk. 10:58.269 --> 11:00.391 [SPEAKER_01]: Kids will be like, is it normal to have so many jobs? 11:01.852 --> 11:04.834 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, no, not really, but like, this is how I did it. 11:04.874 --> 11:13.621 [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, because I did the music business then worked for TV company and we developed some sci-fi stuff for a while, never saw like days as it does. 11:14.301 --> 11:23.943 [SPEAKER_01]: then we're back into the race and then doing like these big, you know, big technical clubs and then had a PR company working for video games companies. 11:24.183 --> 11:32.045 [SPEAKER_01]: I was always something around a marketing or events or gaming and then so I was working for lots of the video games companies doing PR and marketing. 11:32.605 --> 11:35.506 [SPEAKER_01]: And then it started with T-shirt company about video games. 11:35.526 --> 11:37.286 [SPEAKER_01]: So I love video games. 11:37.326 --> 11:39.127 [SPEAKER_01]: I've grown up on Atari and, you know, 11:45.448 --> 11:51.230 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, we did the T-shirt, the T-shirts and that was fun, but, you know, I never really loved clothing. 11:52.270 --> 12:03.133 [SPEAKER_01]: So when, you know, met my wife retail and, you know, she knew also really happy, so we thought, well, let's, I'm going to try this RPG project in Kickstarter come along. 12:04.147 --> 12:08.809 [SPEAKER_01]: And before that, there wasn't really any money in gaming, like a table top gaming, unless you'd already been established. 12:10.089 --> 12:11.450 [SPEAKER_01]: For, you know, donkeys years. 12:11.770 --> 12:15.651 [SPEAKER_01]: And we thought we'd get 10 grand and we got 200 grand. 12:16.111 --> 12:17.732 [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it's transformational. 12:17.772 --> 12:21.713 [SPEAKER_01]: But everything I've been doing up until that point, I taught me everything I need to know. 12:21.773 --> 12:26.515 [SPEAKER_01]: So, like doing a clothing, I was used to making t-shirts and bags and... 12:28.256 --> 12:29.957 [SPEAKER_01]: like, just production in China. 12:30.097 --> 12:33.960 [SPEAKER_01]: So we were doing lots of merch for our first Kickstarter from people like, why are you doing all that? 12:33.980 --> 12:34.941 [SPEAKER_01]: It's really complicated. 12:35.021 --> 12:36.462 [SPEAKER_01]: So well, this is actually the easy bit. 12:36.862 --> 12:45.809 [SPEAKER_01]: The hard bits making a role play game, like all the accessories and stuff around it, it's like, I can do that once on my eyes a show. 12:46.730 --> 12:54.796 [SPEAKER_01]: And so like all that's, you know, the marketing, you know, doing the PR, like, I didn't, we mean re-titted all the PR for the first game. 12:54.816 --> 12:55.337 [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, we, 12:56.162 --> 13:21.897 [SPEAKER_01]: got contacts for like everyone in the industry just by researching like it was hours and hours and hours and hours of you know crawling websites and making adding them to an Excel sheet and then and then email every single person directly yeah not we didn't do a blank email that and it really paid off with lots of lots of fit trust and that was just really when Kickstarter was taking off in Europe and and and in the US we were like one of the first 13:25.748 --> 13:31.172 [SPEAKER_00]: was it that kickstart a moment that you realized like this, this could really go somewhere? 13:32.713 --> 13:38.317 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not sure we really, because it was to felt too good to be true. 13:38.597 --> 13:41.539 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, let's show all you can't get all this money. 13:41.579 --> 13:45.582 [SPEAKER_01]: They see, I mean, it wasn't this easily, I was gonna say that, but it was a lot of work. 13:45.822 --> 13:48.464 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, ours, we were working long days to get there. 13:48.484 --> 13:49.285 [SPEAKER_01]: It was just me and her. 13:51.426 --> 13:52.968 [SPEAKER_01]: So it felt like, 13:54.155 --> 13:55.095 [SPEAKER_01]: this won't last. 13:55.495 --> 13:59.656 [SPEAKER_01]: And of course it has done, but we never took it as granted. 13:59.716 --> 14:01.277 [SPEAKER_01]: It was like, this isn't our money. 14:02.557 --> 14:04.918 [SPEAKER_01]: You suddenly get 200 grand into a person of bank account. 14:04.938 --> 14:07.218 [SPEAKER_01]: It was like, we need to set up a business account quickly. 14:08.258 --> 14:13.359 [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, some people might have gone crazy at point bought Ferrari or something stupid. 14:13.380 --> 14:20.501 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, well, the money will keep coming, but, you know, we just, we were really careful, you know, didn't take any money out of sales, 14:24.222 --> 14:27.363 [SPEAKER_01]: pay the rent, pay the food, let's just be careful. 14:28.183 --> 14:36.065 [SPEAKER_01]: And,

you know, and of course it always takes longer than anything, I think it was about two to three years to finally do this rule. 14:36.105 --> 14:37.705 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we have a lot like 11 books. 14:39.026 --> 14:44.667 [SPEAKER_01]: We were in a bit crazy in the first few kick starters, kind of doing too many books, but then we ended up with lots of books to sell, so that was quite good. 14:46.908 --> 14:47.488 [SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, 14:48.288 --> 14:59.299 [SPEAKER_01]: kind of just figured it out when you know, then we picked up the rights to relaunch the music chronicles IP as an RPG that was the big wall-same war game before. 15:00.100 --> 15:04.284 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we kind of just fell forward into it. 15:04.324 --> 15:08.368 [SPEAKER_01]: Like at no, there was never a point where we were, oh, all right, let's start a business plan. 15:08.428 --> 15:09.228 [SPEAKER_01]: What are we doing? 15:10.029 --> 15:12.632 [SPEAKER_01]: It was just like, what will do this game next? 15:13.886 --> 15:16.108 [SPEAKER_01]: And then it was like, and then we'll do this going next. 15:16.388 --> 15:21.753 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, when you were gradually recruiting people to help. 15:22.133 --> 15:27.478 [SPEAKER_01]: But there was no point where we're like, okay, we've got our vision, we're gonna start this big company, and we're gonna do this, you know. 15:29.039 --> 15:37.407 [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, sometimes that's actually quite a fun place to be because you're just, you know, you're just working your way through your ideas. 15:39.337 --> 16:05.811 [SPEAKER_01]: And it obviously ideas always changed, like we did two, three RPGs, and then we decided to do a Thunderbird's board game, and I'm at Matt Lee Coch, and be, you know, co-op games designer, and go to him on board, and then, you know, that was the next biggest project we did, I think it took a quarter of a minute, quarter of a million pounds, and, you know, a lot of work, though, that was a lot of work, to get it, you know, was the first big board game we made. 16:09.199 --> 16:10.980 [SPEAKER_00]: pretty well-known license on board. 16:11.200 --> 16:19.725 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying that ever gets easy, but do you kind of break through some where you're like, okay, we've got this IP and now when you're speaking to others, you keep kind of use that. 16:19.785 --> 16:20.665 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, this point. 16:20.845 --> 16:21.966 [SPEAKER_01]: So we definitely tried it up. 16:22.286 --> 16:27.088 [SPEAKER_01]: So Thunderbirds was, I mean, in fact, the ITV, we're like surprised it. 16:27.108 --> 16:29.650 [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't want the new Thunderbirds that they were developing at the time. 16:29.710 --> 16:30.870 [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, we're on the old one. 16:30.890 --> 16:31.511 [SPEAKER_01]: That's what's cool. 16:32.031 --> 16:33.432 [SPEAKER_01]: For our own audience, anyway. 16:34.177 --> 16:40.140 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, once I had, and then we'd

already been doing Conan, because it was same people as music chronicles. 16:40.941 --> 16:46.104 [SPEAKER_01]: And then we went to, we started pitching Star Trek. 16:46.364 --> 16:54.389 [SPEAKER_01]: And we were like, well, we're already doing Thunderbirds and we've done Conan, look at how good and that took about two, three years before we convinced them. 16:55.029 --> 17:08.643 [SPEAKER_01]: and then we did infinity is an RPG and then we got Star Trek and then suddenly and then once you got Star Trek you then we went to Bethesda and go hey we didn't Star Trek could we do something we'd fall out. 17:10.072 --> 17:14.115 [SPEAKER_01]: And I want you to do an RPG and they're like, it's not gonna happen, then it's too much work. 17:15.296 --> 17:16.617 [SPEAKER_01]: So I said, we're about board games. 17:16.657 --> 17:20.519 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, no, we're gonna deal with fancy-flight games for board games. 17:20.960 --> 17:28.845 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I don't know, well, I have about Warhammer fallout, no like, yeah, sure. 17:28.985 --> 17:30.727 [SPEAKER_01]: And then that conversation happened. 17:31.467 --> 17:39.571 [SPEAKER_01]: And then it was probably three years before we got the common track, you know, three years of talking to people and actually pitching properly for what it was going to be. 17:40.591 --> 17:44.013 [SPEAKER_00]: Was that a email exchange, so you literally, that was a fail call. 17:44.233 --> 17:45.954 [SPEAKER_01]: I was, you know, got the guy on a call. 17:45.974 --> 17:47.054 [SPEAKER_01]: I was walking through the park. 17:47.094 --> 17:47.935 [SPEAKER_01]: I think at the time. 17:48.055 --> 17:48.255 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 17:49.455 --> 17:50.656 [SPEAKER_01]: pitching in quick leagues. 17:50.676 --> 17:51.836 [SPEAKER_01]: There's like, okay, I don't have long. 17:52.877 --> 17:56.619 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I had to go off and do the full, you know, proper business pitch. 17:57.259 --> 17:58.520 [SPEAKER_01]: And then that guy changed. 17:58.560 --> 17:59.681 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a new guy came in. 18:00.481 --> 18:03.943 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, like, you know, you're like, oh, yeah, so this is what we were talking about. 18:03.963 --> 18:05.263 [SPEAKER_01]: They're like, yeah, okay, sounds good. 18:05.303 --> 18:06.664 [SPEAKER_01]: We're at, we're fine for that. 18:06.964 --> 18:08.305 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, did you say anything? 18:09.065 --> 18:12.947 [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, it took three years before we got a contract signed. 18:13.448 --> 18:13.688 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 18:14.806 --> 18:27.539 [SPEAKER_01]: And I take it the guy was a decision maker that on the phone, he had the authority to say, right, yes, oh, yeah, he did and he starts get buying from the management, but you know, he was like, yeah, yeah, this sounds like a good idea. 18:27.559 --> 18:29.721 [SPEAKER_01]: I think we can do that news and what he thought it. 18:30.401 --> 18:39.307 [SPEAKER_01]: was a good and really had to pitch

and offer lots of money and you know because you basically offer a percentage of what you're going to get. 18:39.408 --> 18:43.510 [SPEAKER_01]: So if every pound I get, how much am I giving you for the rights to fall out? 18:44.151 --> 18:48.334 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, and of some of that, you have to get in some money out front, there's proof that you're serious. 18:49.566 --> 18:57.891 [SPEAKER_01]: because we've been very careful with our money, you know, we had some money in the bank, if you'd like, all right, let's do this, you know, everything, and it paid off, it was a big hit. 18:58.032 --> 19:06.917 [SPEAKER_01]: And then that, but of course, you know, we were an RPG company that did the occasional board game, but mostly were used to making books, so we needed sculptures. 19:08.418 --> 19:11.939 [SPEAKER_01]: and Spartan games had just been going down. 19:12.119 --> 19:16.361 [SPEAKER_01]: So we managed to recruit some sculptures from there, a couple of guys. 19:17.621 --> 19:20.362 [SPEAKER_01]: We picked up, and we needed to do some production. 19:20.942 --> 19:25.644 [SPEAKER_01]: So we decided we were going to do it in resin and then a big starter box out in China. 19:26.044 --> 19:30.426 [SPEAKER_01]: So we recruited the head of production from Span. 19:31.366 --> 19:35.447 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we set up a little resin facility to start doing these did some John Carter 19:37.408 --> 20:03.026 [SPEAKER_01]: the test and then something you then any painters you need you know you need people might terrain you need play testers you know testers for the organ that to be in the same room whereas with RPGs you can do remote testing it's a lot easier so it forced just to kind of double the size in the company pretty much um over the course you're about a year 20:04.002 --> 20:11.943 [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, it's a huge amount of extra results you made to make her, again, like that. 20:12.043 --> 20:14.984 [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, ped off, you know, also selling a lot of boxes. 20:15.024 --> 20:16.744 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's pretty good. 20:18.465 --> 20:23.685 [SPEAKER_00]: When like I'm not saying you think of the first because obviously you think of it very different. 20:23.725 --> 20:28.546 [SPEAKER_00]: But you know, to the average gamer, obviously we think like the IP's first, but I mean 20:33.130 --> 20:33.490 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah. 20:33.610 --> 20:42.457 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've got our own IPs like Acton Kathulu, Kohors Kathulu that's like Romans in Kathulu, and we've done a war game for that Kohors Tactics. 20:42.957 --> 20:44.198 [SPEAKER_01]: Then we've got dreams of machines. 20:44.218 --> 20:45.819 [SPEAKER_01]: So we do develop our own IPs. 20:46.180 --> 20:56.307 [SPEAKER_01]: We bought one called Hardwall, which is a, you know, Max and Tanks and 6 mills scale, like really fast playing off these Polish guys, that 20:56.847 --> 21:03.534 [SPEAKER_01]: kind of got it to where they could and going to come really great through and then we've just remastered everything we did to kick some of that. 21:04.435 --> 21:14.265 [SPEAKER_01]: I found, you know, and we also helped distribute other people's products so we we found five past six from home by Ivan Souram Souram Souram and, you know, it was a word document saved as a PDF. 21:14.806 --> 21:18.750 [SPEAKER_01]: But it was a really good game and it's why I keep telling people if you've got an idea for a game. 21:19.857 --> 21:23.718 [SPEAKER_01]: don't tell me that you haven't got money for art because you don't need it. 21:23.738 --> 21:27.699 [SPEAKER_01]: If a game is good, you build up community, people will, they don't care. 21:28.400 --> 21:38.683 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, obviously it's nice if you can have a beautiful art, but like, if you're starting off, anyone who says, ah, but I can't afford the art, I can't afford the editing, it's like, well look, you must know someone who's an English teacher who can edit. 21:39.598 --> 21:50.165 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, or just use grammar like, you know, honestly, like, is it's there's no excuse these days to get you right again, put it, save it as a PDF. 21:51.216 --> 21:58.940 [SPEAKER_01]: And you can format it nicely, doesn't have to look like a book, but you can, you know, it doesn't have to be a stream of consciousness. 21:59.180 --> 22:01.682 [SPEAKER_01]: And then you can put that up on drive-throughs, pay what you want. 22:02.282 --> 22:07.505 [SPEAKER_01]: And then do it again, and do it again, and if you write good games, you'll get noticed, and then you'll start sell. 22:07.705 --> 22:10.506 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, I mean, that's what we did right in the beginning. 22:10.566 --> 22:16.490 [SPEAKER_01]: We put some PDFs out for, call it clearly, call it clearly rules, compatible with that. 22:21.920 --> 22:23.740 [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have a big pile of money when we started. 22:24.681 --> 22:29.822 [SPEAKER_01]: And it let took a year of work and then building it up until we got back a thousand people on the mailing list. 22:30.602 --> 22:32.162 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's doable, anyway. 22:32.182 --> 22:35.043 [SPEAKER_01]: So five past six, I found that and it was a really good game. 22:35.763 --> 22:42.365 [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, hey, you found this doing a retail edition and we'll post on the art and then give you obviously a royalty on sales. 22:43.545 --> 22:45.646 [SPEAKER_01]: So we did that and it was really well. 22:46.226 --> 22:47.586 [SPEAKER_01]: And then cut long story short. 22:48.206 --> 22:50.707 [SPEAKER_01]: We launched five leagues in the board lands as well. 22:51.427 --> 22:57.792 [SPEAKER_01]: and then I said, look, I think we can do a lot more with this and he, I think he was open to selling. 22:57.812 --> 23:14.566 [SPEAKER_01]: So he, we bought the IP five leagues, five past sex, the kind of five ex-brands, and then I think, you know, has a regular gig writing when you're games for us, so we've been able to invest a lot more money

and build it up, do lots of bar art where a lot of small books. 23:15.647 --> 23:22.833 [SPEAKER_01]: and it's now like a really good selling range and you know we've been able to explore sorts of new ideas of that. 23:23.514 --> 23:25.015 [SPEAKER_01]: So we've got our own stuff up. 23:25.235 --> 23:27.096 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a difference between something you own. 23:28.377 --> 23:43.730 [SPEAKER_01]: Well like dreams and machines are a good example, beautiful setting, big investment in our, didn't do kickstart, we launched that jam con and it's really hard and it's you know it's just just ticks along on life support really, it's a beautiful setting anyone who discovers it. 23:44.568 --> 24:10.269 [SPEAKER_01]: It really likes it, but you launch Star Trek and immediately you've got a fan base, you've got sales, you've got marketing, it's really easy to get press reviews and coverage, but you're paying for that, you're paying a share of the sales, whereas with dreams of machines you're asked to put a lot more money into marketing, so taking a license game is a much easier way to make money and get sales, which is why we do that a lot, and then some of the money we 24:13.271 --> 24:23.515 [SPEAKER_01]: on the basis that hopefully one of those will become more successful in time and, you know, and the great thing that you're on IP, like, I approve the stuff we make. 24:23.575 --> 24:25.155 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's, you know, it's in our control. 24:25.195 --> 24:26.836 [SPEAKER_01]: We've got to wait for someone else to approve it. 24:27.536 --> 24:31.478 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a good, you know, it's a good way. 24:31.878 --> 24:40.581 [SPEAKER_01]: But we're trying to, you know, do a bit of a split, you know, because if you only work on other people's stuff, you know, at some point you want to create your own and 24:43.235 --> 24:57.447 [SPEAKER_00]: Have you found many kind of elegant ways to, like you're saying, you know, mention Star Trek, you get this audience coming in, but await a gently encourage at least some of these people over to something like Parsex where they can buy an adat. 24:58.213 --> 25:11.124 [SPEAKER_01]: Good example is XCOM that we just launched right because XCOM is effectively five power stacks under the hood uses a D10 system instead, but it uses a lot of the kind of core mechanics and the kind of concepts. 25:11.945 --> 25:15.348 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, but we added the XCOM license on top. 25:15.368 --> 25:19.751 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's the interesting way where we've merged the two ideas and thought, 25:20.592 --> 25:25.134 [SPEAKER_01]: that game system is perfect for XCOM and we can attach the license. 25:25.215 --> 25:38.822 [SPEAKER_01]: So we do that sometimes where we develop our BG system at 2020 that we use for a lot of our big RPGs and also in house games and then we develop to new one with the disk world RPG, get needed something much 25:45.145 --> 26:13.208 [SPEAKER_01]: 2020 is an IP in its own right is that

we've created a game system that we can bolt on licensees to we don't need to pay for someone else for their a game system you know we can do what we like with it we don't need to get approval we don't we don't need to use an OGL license to gain like DMD where you're going to do certain things um whereas we have complete control of that so um it's a mix really you know you need to do a bit both I think 26:15.260 --> 26:21.042 [SPEAKER_00]: How has your own game and life looked like, you know, running a defy as late? 26:21.082 --> 26:23.803 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you still get the chance to just kick back and rule some days? 26:24.403 --> 26:24.963 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I do. 26:24.983 --> 26:36.607 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was playing a company of heroes, the board game will make the other day, which is a, you know, a big world or two video game that's been translated by Bad Crow games into a big board game. 26:37.027 --> 26:39.728 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's got a big pile of plastic tanks inside. 26:40.567 --> 26:45.868 [SPEAKER_01]: And I love my world all two games and so it's perfect, perfect game. 26:46.428 --> 26:58.271 [SPEAKER_01]: We have a gaming group and play a lot of things that defend the realm which is kind of pandemic, but fantasy is on beside the fancies, on beside Black playing, playing a lot of and then RPGs too. 26:58.651 --> 27:06.533 [SPEAKER_01]: When I'm on my own testing solo games a lot, though I'm currently playing game 27:08.193 --> 27:08.794 [SPEAKER_01]: It's really fun. 27:08.994 --> 27:28.528 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a French guy who's done this solo co-op miniatures game in 10-milk scale with three print models of diesel punk airships and little crews of gangs of characters and there's like different factions and you're you're floating around between like floating cities. 27:29.670 --> 27:37.562 [SPEAKER_01]: and you're on little raids and you, you raid an enemy ship, you know, trying to get into this port and steal some goods and get out again. 27:38.697 --> 27:45.982 [SPEAKER_01]: And I've actually been building, because I love Lego as well, and I've literally mini Lego building, so I've been building all the ships in micro-lego. 27:46.002 --> 27:54.207 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you know the old Lego board games, that these little one-stick characters with little faces, and I had to pile a nose from the northern rings one. 27:54.947 --> 28:02.012 [SPEAKER_01]: So I built these ships in a micro-lego scale where one guy is one, one stud. 28:03.230 --> 28:05.791 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's that sometimes that's that creative challenge. 28:05.831 --> 28:10.513 [SPEAKER_01]: Can I translate that really beautiful looking through the print model into a Lego model? 28:10.674 --> 28:14.255 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's been quite fun and then I've been playing testing the game with that. 28:14.675 --> 28:26.061 [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, trying some ideas and also working on another five past, well actually two five past six games at the moment for next year. 28:26.981 --> 28:35.285 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, another sci-fi one and not sci-fi one without giving away too much, and it's not, it's kind of not fancy either. 28:36.086 --> 28:37.026 [SPEAKER_01]: Bit more historical. 28:37.586 --> 28:39.367 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so I'm, I'm doing a lot. 28:39.387 --> 28:44.290 [SPEAKER_01]: I love that procedural as, as you can probably tell from what I can say. 28:44.370 --> 28:52.034 [SPEAKER_01]: I love that procedural war game star where you have a story that unfolds, but you don't know what the story is going to be. 28:52.054 --> 28:54.155 [SPEAKER_01]: There's no script in the book that you can read ahead. 28:55.115 --> 29:01.438 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the interaction of all the events, the random tables, just kind of does that a story unfold. 29:01.498 --> 29:18.845 [SPEAKER_01]: And I've said a few times, you know, I tried to do with the new cohorts, cathedoo tactics, more game, which starts you as a Roman Centurion with a couple of troops just running for their lives from these creatures, is can we make a game that would actually be more fun to lose? 29:20.212 --> 29:38.939 [SPEAKER_01]: like a miniature's game, where, okay, we've got to hold that bridge against the creatures, but actually if I go into the woods and I can find the burial site of my grandfather, I might find out what the secret to our families and that will unlock cool power. 29:39.639 --> 29:45.121 [SPEAKER_01]: So, don't want the battlefield success, all the personal success, and that's 29:48.152 --> 30:16.177 [SPEAKER_01]: As a Roman, you know, you'll grow, you start off with like, it's a skirmish game, you know, you've got a few soldiers, you've got a hero, and you've got a couple of little, you know, you've got I think you unit of like three legion rays and and two archers and you know, you, you get denari from killing monsters, but if you follow the story objectives in each mission, which is kind of a procedural random, you get story points and the story points you can spend on your heroes journey. 30:16.988 --> 30:18.689 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where you have a choice. 30:18.729 --> 30:23.230 [SPEAKER_01]: You can unlock different tracks of your hero's journey, like a bit like tech trees, right? 30:23.650 --> 30:29.232 [SPEAKER_01]: So do you want to unlock your blood, the story of your blood? 30:29.712 --> 30:31.393 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to unlock why you fight? 30:31.673 --> 30:34.834 [SPEAKER_01]: Like do you fight for honor, glory, power, wealth? 30:35.872 --> 30:54.195 [SPEAKER_01]: And each of those has a three stage progression, so if you're fighting for love, okay, well, if you can, if you get out of this battle unscathed, you will get this reward, but there is this danger too, you know, and then same thing is like, if I unlock the story of my blood, 30:55.598 --> 30:59.179 [SPEAKER_01]: that will lead potentially to me discovering that I'm an Atlantean. 30:59.239 --> 31:12.085 [SPEAKER_01]: I've got a

Atlantean, but I can use really powerful Atlantean artefacts, but it makes me a target, you know, I become a priority target for any nearby creatures, but I gain an extra wound for now. 31:12.125 --> 31:17.987 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the next level, and I've spent the story points to unlock, the next level will be, I gain, you know, 31:18.667 --> 31:27.134 [SPEAKER_01]: I might gain an ability to use magical artifacts, but I am the cost is that enemies might get a reroll against me. 31:27.154 --> 31:32.819 [SPEAKER_01]: So, you're kind of quite simple risk reward stuff, but it starts one folder story. 31:32.919 --> 31:39.664 [SPEAKER_01]: I've discovered that my legacy, my family is that we've got Atlantean blood. 31:40.653 --> 31:42.435 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm fighting for love. 31:43.015 --> 31:50.002 [SPEAKER_01]: And then there's all the, there's quite a lot of these you can unlock and decide your own kind of fate and story. 31:50.883 --> 31:57.550 [SPEAKER_01]: And then at the same time, the catholic forces are evolving in the background as you fight the battles. 31:58.591 --> 32:00.433 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're gaining powers and abilities too. 32:01.408 --> 32:09.717 [SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like an incredible story while it was aware of the game, but I definitely loved that Lovecraft day inverses through all my empire. 32:09.857 --> 32:21.229 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, I mean, it's kind of, it's been done as an RPG, but like even did I kind of, uh, Raymond's against monsters, uh, again for us, Brian. 32:22.431 --> 32:46.350 [SPEAKER_01]: But because I did the RPG and we had all the artwork and the models, I really wanted diving to this experimental idea of how far can I push it that you might think twice about winning the military objective for the game because the call of luck unlocking these cool powers or this cool story like the character was so much more and 32:47.217 --> 32:50.258 [SPEAKER_01]: It's an evolving thing, like, you know, it doesn't do it perfectly. 32:50.298 --> 32:59.902 [SPEAKER_01]: It's really good, it's a good stab at it, but I love this challenge, just how much can I distract you for the minute trip jet to the game? 33:00.422 --> 33:02.983 [SPEAKER_01]: And I keep pushing that in some of the projects we're doing. 33:04.807 --> 33:08.868 [SPEAKER_00]: How would young Chris feel if he saw what you were doing now? 33:08.908 --> 33:17.450 [SPEAKER_00]: Because he talked about these procedural solo games you were playing and your younger days, and maybe the fact that you're immersed in this stuff. 33:17.470 --> 33:23.931 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I've no doubt that there may be periods where you take it for granted, and you just realize, like, I'm doing this as a job now. 33:23.971 --> 33:26.112 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, how would he feel if he knew about it? 33:26.912 --> 33:33.417 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, probably loses much, especially so my office will look cabinets of minutes, because I was an awful painter as a kid. 33:33.457 --> 33:35.499 [SPEAKER_01]: I've never been in a good miniature painter. 33:36.340 --> 33:49.511 [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, when I was testing coals tactics, I bought a load of like, you know, painted bromance of eBay, like some guy was selling arme in, like just, but I would just buy interesting characters. 33:49.531 --> 33:51.192 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't, again, I don't, I don't go. 33:51.212 --> 33:52.353 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I need that for the point. 33:52.393 --> 33:52.753 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just like 33:53.974 --> 34:06.486 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to buy here and he's some badass German chiefs in here, I want it interesting on the usual characters, you know, like an unusual female horse archer or whatever. 34:07.487 --> 34:14.714 [SPEAKER_01]: And now often we'll buy that stuff and then you know, test it and then we whilst being while we're actually making the real miniatures. 34:16.855 --> 34:28.027 [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I've got a lot of painted Star Wars Legion miniatures because I could afford to get it and just started to collect those because it's not work, you know, sometimes, you know, the collection is about not not working. 34:28.047 --> 34:33.733 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just was in our factory yesterday and there are thousands of boxes of miniatures. 34:35.054 --> 34:35.615 [SPEAKER_01]: So, um, 34:36.813 --> 34:47.796 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's easy to build a collection up, but sometimes I want the stuff that, you know, I, that is not work, you know, so that's why I built up style. 34:47.816 --> 35:02.761 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, actually, I've got a big 10-mill fantasy collection, because I like really big in the strategic battles, so I'll sometimes play that and I've got all the hard or miniatures that we bought the studio miniatures from this company. 35:02.781 --> 35:04.922 [SPEAKER_01]: So I've got those for like, you know, test games, 35:06.459 --> 35:19.432 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like, yeah, little me would probably lose his mind if he walked into the office because now, you never had all the nicely painted militias, and yeah, I think it's a difficult thing. 35:19.512 --> 35:23.296 [SPEAKER_01]: You can't keep something like that in the fall, and you've got to kind of be thankful. 35:24.296 --> 35:48.409 [SPEAKER_01]: every summer off and go, oh my god, like, you know, but then half the day you're working on contracts and sorting out business deals and, you know, the stuff that's very boring and normal, you know, day to day running a business and having meetings and talking about sales numbers and stuff, which you could be talking about sales numbers and washing machines, like, I mean, you're lucky that it's toy soldiers, right? 35:48.961 --> 35:50.442 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not all champagne in D20, is it? 35:50.462 --> 36:08.218 [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no 36:12.622 --> 36:26.212 [SPEAKER_01]: it's something that's trying to build out and it is really tough to get over that hunt and we we were lucky to be one of the first kind of like English kick starters and also I've done always PR marketing before so I knew how to launch a sped out. 36:28.073 --> 36:46.068 [SPEAKER_01]: and then really the hard work starts because you've got to build a company now we've got 70 people on the payroll so you can imagine the payroll every month is crazy and you've got to earn that money you know and it doesn't just fall into your lap you know it's some so you know once you've got all that responsibility for 36:46.768 --> 36:48.509 [SPEAKER_01]: bunch of people's lives. 36:49.150 --> 36:55.054 [SPEAKER_01]: There's quite a lot of pressure to make sure the company is going from month to month. 36:55.094 --> 36:57.776 [SPEAKER_01]: You can't just go off and spend a load of money because it will be fun. 36:58.476 --> 37:03.900 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like we're wearing it like, you know, we've got a budget at the business and be careful. 37:05.661 --> 37:08.924 [SPEAKER_00]: Sounds like you're obviously excited about XCOM coming out as well. 37:09.940 --> 37:11.740 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, yeah, I've been working on that. 37:11.760 --> 37:13.921 [SPEAKER_01]: I've had first started talking to them about seven years ago. 37:14.461 --> 37:22.102 [SPEAKER_01]: And then it's just because we more recently, because they had bought, well, yeah, two-cated board gear box. 37:22.442 --> 37:25.963 [SPEAKER_01]: And we had done the homeworld RPG and board game with gear box. 37:25.983 --> 37:32.684 [SPEAKER_01]: So, and then some of the licensing team version, we were like, hey, we've been talking to these guys about XCOM for a while, can we do? 37:33.524 --> 37:37.565 [SPEAKER_01]: And we want to start with XCOM one, and then we fall into there. 37:38.653 --> 37:40.113 [SPEAKER_01]: And they said, yes, finally. 37:40.994 --> 37:45.675 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, we obviously only announced it about three months ago. 37:45.755 --> 37:49.916 [SPEAKER_01]: And we'd been planning a big resin range like we're doing the fallout. 37:51.196 --> 37:59.718 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the sheer amount of interest, like massive amount of press you got, share them out of bars. 37:59.858 --> 38:01.319 [SPEAKER_01]: Then we like, hold it crap. 38:01.439 --> 38:05.400 [SPEAKER_01]: Like we, this is enough to justify doing plastics 38:06.980 --> 38:12.666 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you need to be selling, you know, really 10,000 units to justify tool. 38:12.726 --> 38:13.707 [SPEAKER_01]: It's been investment. 38:13.807 --> 38:16.090 [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of work goes into it a lot of time. 38:16.850 --> 38:22.656 [SPEAKER_01]: So

we were able to pivot quite quickly, working with Archon, who's just been doing start, start craft. 38:23.237 --> 38:28.242 [SPEAKER_01]: They had some capacity, and they were able to convert the miniatures over for the first set quite quickly. 38:29.143 --> 38:37.427 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why we were able to go, okay, we're going to have resin sets before Christmas or if you don't am I'm wasting and it's cheaper, you've got a hard plastic set after Christmas. 38:38.127 --> 38:43.890 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, of course we went with the... it's an older, you know, it's a more traditional 38:44.190 --> 38:52.080 [SPEAKER_01]: War Games model rather than big starter box, which would need more time to develop, so we'll probably look at doing something like that for next year when it hits retail. 38:52.861 --> 39:02.453 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's a traditional big rule book, hits the sets of miniatures that you need to get started, rather than more modern style. 39:03.133 --> 39:04.674 [SPEAKER_01]: But also we went with the rule book. 39:05.014 --> 39:05.834 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the whole rule book. 39:06.134 --> 39:16.317 [SPEAKER_01]: This isn't like a rule but you know most starts at, you know, you get a what's 50, 50, 60 page rule but you know with scenarios and rules and like getting started with the forces you've got. 39:16.377 --> 39:17.058 [SPEAKER_01]: This is everything. 39:17.078 --> 39:20.339 [SPEAKER_01]: This is all the rules for X, come one. 39:20.479 --> 39:21.339 [SPEAKER_01]: All the way through to the 39:29.111 --> 39:38.213 [SPEAKER_01]: everything he could possibly need to finish the campaign, all the enemy stats, like, and because we're people of seeing, you know, we got two sets of aliens, like sectory, etc. 39:38.233 --> 39:47.976 [SPEAKER_01]: commander, thin man, outsider, seekers, criss-lids, and floaters, but, you know, beyond that, we've got sets coming, all the veteran armors. 39:48.256 --> 39:52.737 [SPEAKER_01]: So we've got another whole set of veteran troopers in Titan Armor, Archangel Armor, etc. 39:53.817 --> 40:05.700 [SPEAKER_01]: We've got, you know, mutons, mutons, mutons, mutons, biserkers, side discs, mactoids, and someone like all the way through to the ethereal. 40:06.441 --> 40:12.542 [SPEAKER_01]: So we've got a whole range of sets, all planned as kind of encounter sets, one a month starting from 40:15.564 --> 40:16.646 [SPEAKER_01]: April next year. 40:16.706 --> 40:21.393 [SPEAKER_01]: So like the these first releases that are on pre or now come out February March and retail. 40:23.516 --> 40:29.525 [SPEAKER_01]: Next year and then we keep going to all the rest of the range of the scenery coming like infection pods. 40:30.345 --> 40:35.729 [SPEAKER_01]: and UFO consoles and equipment so you can do little crash sites. 40:36.270 --> 40:42.354 [SPEAKER_01]: We're looking at a whole new FOM, but the UFOs in the game are massive, but if you remember the levels, right? 40:42.375 --> 40:45.037 [SPEAKER_01]: They're like literally giant buildings in the sense. 40:45.777 --> 41:02.350 [SPEAKER_01]: So we're looking at how we can do a UFO segment that is affordable with a good plastic and you know, actually looks good on the table and it's for our challenge and then we're looking at, you know, can we do a sky range during FDN maybe? 41:03.291 --> 41:22.152 [SPEAKER_01]: So people could print a home or we can print them and then you know other terrain The good thing though is it's basically modern day world, it's you know some an old farmhouse and some trees is a great location or you know few modern day buildings and there's a lot of people doing great one day buildings online 41:23.867 --> 41:26.848 [SPEAKER_00]: I also have a very exciting stuff coming down the pipeline. 41:26.868 --> 41:30.890 [SPEAKER_00]: Where is the best place for the less not to go to, keep up to date with us? 41:31.090 --> 41:34.611 [SPEAKER_01]: So, uh, well, obviously it's the medifias.net site. 41:34.831 --> 41:41.314 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to go, um, specifically for XCOM, it's XCOM miniatures game.com. 41:42.614 --> 41:52.078 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's like the landing page and you, you can either go to the North American web store if you're in the, in the US, or Canada or Mexico or Canada to ship. 41:52.865 --> 42:03.595 [SPEAKER_01]: or come to the the kind of UK rest of the world side, which shipped to like Europe, shipped within Europe, there's no duties or around the rest of the world. 42:05.035 --> 42:26.616 [SPEAKER_01]: And then that's got various bundles, really getting started bundles that's like the rule book, which, and the rule book actually comes shrink wrapped with two sheets of die cut tokens, so you don't need to print off any tokens, it's, it's, it's all you need, and you can use any dice, it's like D10s and D6s, you don't need our official dice, but of course we did a little nice dice set with the alien head on it. 42:27.497 --> 42:36.504 [SPEAKER_01]: and then there's any way there's two sets and miniatures that come and we're getting start a bundle that's the operatives and the first set of aliens with the like sectoids and thin men. 42:37.765 --> 42:41.248 [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a big all in bundled that includes all the optional stuff. 42:41.528 --> 42:43.730 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's, you know, we're doing an acrylic token set. 42:44.570 --> 42:58.099 [SPEAKER_01]: It is 132 acrylic tokens because we just don't like to stand these for aliens and so on and sorry zombies and civilians that you might need and obviously they're all really nice deluxe acrylic tokens. 42:58.760 --> 43:08.547 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's a big pack and then there's a big deck of reference cards with that is a card for every alien type with all their special rules on there's cards for all game weapons. 43:09.327 --> 43:14.269 [SPEAKER_01]: which you don't need, because it's all in the hands of chapter in the back of the book, but it's you know, it's a kind of nice to have. 43:15.009 --> 43:15.849 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll end the dice there. 43:15.909 --> 43:16.830 [SPEAKER_01]: So we did like just that. 43:17.090 --> 43:19.731 [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes people just want, I just, I want one and everything. 43:20.351 --> 43:21.271 [SPEAKER_01]: Just give me one button. 43:21.551 --> 43:23.752 [SPEAKER_01]: And obviously that's the bigger, the more expensive bundle. 43:24.640 --> 43:28.862 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks very much for listening to this episode of the table top miniature hobby podcast. 43:29.422 --> 43:33.523 [SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoy the show then please do share it with someone else you think might enjoy it too. 43:34.264 --> 43:42.187 [SPEAKER_00]: And be sure to check out our Discord community of like-minded hobbyists which you could find a bedroom battlefield.com forward slash discord. 43:42.647 --> 43:43.867 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd be great to see you in there.