Gaming Styles: Open v. Closed

Some quick thoughts on how tabletop miniatures games are designed and marketed.

Tabletop miniatures games can be divided into two different models, which for the sake of this post I'll call Closed and Open.

A Closed game is one where the maker produces both the rules and the figures, and often associated other paraphernalia, and the rules can only technically be used with the figures produced by the manufacturer. These games tend to be more successful, commercially speaking, than Open games, and examples include Warmachine/Hordes, Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Fantasy Battle Age of Sigmar, Malifaux, X-Wing, and so on. Pretty much any game where you can walk into your local game store and they have a big shelf of models and associated rulebooks is a Closed game.

Closed games have several advantages from a manufacturing, retail, and player perspective:

• They're usually quite successful, so you can often count on finding other players without having to cultivate them from friends and other interested folks. In my opinion, this is the biggest point in their favor.
• The manufacturer can use the rules to sell the models, with varying degrees of success and/or skill.
• The retailer gets a complete package to sell; they don't have to cobble together rules and appropriate miniatures from various manufacturers.
• Likewise, the player has a one-stop-shop; also, a single package on the shelf will usually correspond to a single unit on the table. No odds and ends left over on the painting table after assembling a platoon...
• As the manufacturer wants to keep selling figures, new stuff comes out on a regular basis for the game, keeping things fresh and exciting.

Of course, there are also disadvantages, especially for players:

• You're tied to a single miniatures line. This can get expensive, especially if...
• A poorly designed (from the player's POV) game can be "pay to win". If you want to be a competitive player, you need to either make a huge initial investment to get enough models for the base game, or you need to keep buying models to keep up with new releases - either to get those releases or to counter them. Worst case scenario, you need to do both.
• The manufacturer's desire to keep selling models can lead to poor game design decisions. GW has a reputation for this, deserved or not. Age of Sigmar seems to be a textbook example of this.
• Since new things keep coming out for the game, there's always something new to buy. You'll never have a complete collection unless the game line ends.
• If you decide to drop a game, you're stuck with a bunch of models that are purpose-built for that game. (Mitigated somewhat because you can easily sell these models at knock-down prices if the meta remains healthy in your area.)

(Yes, of course you're free to use whatever figures you like with any rules set, but in a Closed game that's not part of the design.)

An Open game is one where they can be used with any appropriate miniatures, regardless of who made them. All historicals fall into this basket, since you can't copyright or trademark history; a Panther tank is a Panther tank regardless of who made the model. Mind, many makers of Open games also produce miniatures lines that match their games; frequently this happens in the other direction, as a miniatures manufacturer will later produce a rules set that goes with the figures they sell.

In terms of numbers, Open games outnumber closed games by a wide margin, simply because it's a lot cheaper and easier to produce a rules set without an associated miniatures line. And this might be why it's harder to find players; if everyone can find a rules set that fits their requirements to a T, you get a pretty fragmented marketplace. Instead of forty-odd players buying into Warhammer 40,000, you get little clusters of four or five apiece splitting up among Napoleon at War, Bolt Action, Five Parsecs From Home, Flames of War, Song of Blades and Heroes, De Bellis Antiquitatis, and so on. Fairly often there will be one enthusiastic proponent of a particular game and no other players...

Advantages, then:

• Not tied to any miniatures line - or, indeed, particular scale, as you can find appropriate miniatures in scales from 54mm to 2mm, depending on the period/genre.
• Can be easier on the wallet
• Easier to find just the rules you like, since you're not tied to a miniatures line.
• Can feel less constricted on the rules front.
• You can build your own game experience just exactly how you want it, and fie on anyone who says differently.

Disadvantages, though:

• It's harder to find players, since any one Open game is unlikely to be as popular as the big Closed games.
• Support for your favorite period/genre may be quite thin on the ground. World War II is easy; finding figures and rules for more obscure conflicts might be quite a bit more difficult. (e.g., most conflicts outside of Europe and the Mediterranean before the 20th century. This tends to be a pretty Eurocentric hobby on the historical side.)
• It can be quite difficult for a retailer - at least a brick and mortar one - to support an Open game. Without a large player base, and with such a potentially fragmented market, it's quite easy to get stuck with a bunch of stagnant inventory.
• While with Closed games you usually just build one force, with Open games it's better to build two or more, so you can provide both sides of a conflict. This can offset savings quite a bit...

In the final analysis, Open vs. Closed systems boils down to, mostly, convenience vs. freedom of action. There are some nuances there, of course. If you buy into Warhammer 40k, your freedom of choice in fellow players is rather higher than if you go all in on, say, 15mm Napoleonics - unless your local gaming scene is much different from mine, in which case I'm rather jealous.