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Jeffro's Space Gaming Blog
Microgames, Monster Games, and Role Playing Games
Kickstarter CAR WARS May Be a Refinement of Compendium 2.5
Posted by on May 7, 2012
This image came from the survey in Ogre Kickstarter Update #27,
When the Ogre Kickstarter first began, there was a surprising amount of people clamoring for CAR WARS to get the same treatment. It looked to me like when it was indicated that the project would develop from the ill-fated 5th edition of the game that the talk of CAR WARS rapidly tapered off in the Kickstarter comments and on Board Game Geek. A few ardent fans of the old game argued a different point of view and it appears that the folks at Steve Jackson Games are considering all of their options as can be seen in the CAR WARS stretch goal on the Kickstarter front page:
$700,000 – Drive Offensively! We will launch a Kickstarter project for Car Wars! We *think* this will turn out to be a refinement of Car Wars Compendium 2.5, but you’ll tell us. Our supporters at the [new] $23 level and higher will be invited to join an exclusive Car Wars forum, where we’ll build the new edition from the ground up – issues like “which classic cover do we use?,” “10 phase, 5 phase, or 3 phase movement?,” and “do we include boats?” Once the project launches, surveys will be open to the public, but only supporters of the current project will get in on the preliminary planning. And we’ll take everything we have learned from our Ogre Kickstarter project to make the Car Wars project even better. If we make this goal, the private Car Wars forum and surveys will launch before the end of 2012. The game will be published in late 2013.
(PS #1 – And we will add staff as necessary to make sure that the Car Wars and Ogre projects don’t compete for attention!)
(PS #2 – To make sure this is clear: Supporters of Ogre are not receiving a copy of the new Car Wars. You’re just making us DO it. Thank you . . . we think!)
Realize that this process of developing Ogre on the fly with Kickstarter and SurveyMonkey is unprecedented. It’s insane. Vocal minorities have demanded everything from flat 2D Ogres to classic counters and they are getting them one way or another.
When you go buy a CAR WARS t-shirt, you will get access to the forums and surveys that set the course for the future of this classic game. This is not just a marketing gimmick. (Though to be sure, without something like Kickstarter, it is unlikely [in my opinion] that CAR WARS would have been seriously developed again for the usual distribution channels.) And note that… if you’d rather have lotsa Ogre stuff, you do not have to buy the shirt to get in on this– you’re already on board!
So please… if you love classic microgames, please join the Ogre Kickstarter today. There’s only a few days left for you to be a part of gaming history. Do your part to preserve our rights to vehicular arms!
Jeffro's Space Gaming Blog 
Okay. You are paying way more attention to this than I am, so enlighten me. Why have a 23 dollar support option just so you can get in an talk about maybe redoing Car Wars? Why not do like you did for OGRE? You put the necessary price tag on it and start the Kickstarter project. Is any of that money for the OGRE project going towards a Car Wars project? If its going to cost lets say 800k to do car wars then you start the Kickstarter and only raise 500k then obviously you don’t need to make Car Wars because its not profitable. Lastly, why not just have a few smaller kickstarters and redo each of the most popular versions of Car Wars? so if the pocket version is only gonna take say 50k to get it done then you start that one, and so on for the other ones. I would like to hear your opinion.
In short… Kickstarter is a game changer. The specifications of a game and its print run are no longer determined by what a very small number of brick and mortar stores are willing to take a chance on. The price point and components can now be influenced more by a property’s most rabid fans.
The Ogre Kickstarter was wildly successful… but it was a crazy chaotic mess that could have been managed better– and no one foresaw what was going to happen. Given that… planning for next year’s CAR WARS Kickstarter started last week. Doing it right will take a lot of work before anyone drops the first pledge on it. But that planning costs time and money. So… voila… SJG drops a t-shirt on the Ogre Kickstarter, goes ahead and begins setting up an exclusive CAR WARS Kickstarter planning forum, and everyone gets ready for the rebirth of the classic game of vehicular combat!
Yeah, it’s crazy. But we are all figuring out the implications of Kickstarter on the fly here. Hope that helps!
I won’t be supporting them if this is just another rehash of previous editions. Car Wars needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era. I don’t want another edition of a 30 year old design.
I see your point, but I’d hate to see a clunky, watered down version of the game that apes Wings of War and/or Wreckage. I’d like to see some quality game components that would work with previous editions of Car Wars, and I wouldn’t object if there were streamlined, fast playing optional rules that addressed your concerns… but I still think something like the revised small box game (that was a subset of Compendium 2.0) would be the best way to go. (Ogre did just fine with a “rehash” and I think Car Wars would benefit from that same sort of care.)
Don’t be a hater. Give them a chance to make some magic.
What if they keep the best & drop the worst?
I will be a backer and have been a fan for years on Car Wars/Autoduel.
Not certain why there was never a strategic car combat video-game w/emphasis on car design & maps…? I’d be a player!
Haters gotta hate. But yeah, it’s always been easier to tear down than to build up.
Stratagy and personal interaction v’s Dune style mouse speed capacity are impossible to gell. Dune is played one off in real time. Car Wars at best is played with a group of people without a mouse or computor. How to find a way for a group of people to play cars wars on a computor and in the same way as without a computor is the quest. The next senario we are planing for about ten persons will be in Easter. Even if we could commence immediately (say do an hour a day) with the use of computors where is the profit in that activity for a Games Business?
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