January 15 2012
Throughout history, the never ending march of technology has always been successful at one thing: The complete annihilation and subsequent rebuilding of business models. Today the Internet is causing the music, TV, and film industry to undergo a major reconstruction. Unfortunately, instead of trying to adapt their business models, the major players are looking to bad legislation, like SOPA and Protect IP, to save them.
Anyone who followed the coverage of CES 2012 on the tech networks, have probably seen the journalists getting all excited over 3D printers. 3D printing technology has been around for quite sometime, and many companies, including Kalidasia Media Productions LLC, have used it in the production of miniatures. 3D printers take a digital file generated by a 3D animation/CAD program and create a physical copy out of several types of plastic. Here is a video by the company Shapeways which shows how one of these machines work:
Currently, 3D printers that can produce detail levels that rival the elites of the miniature world cost over $10,000 and if someone were to make an exact duplicate of a miniature using 3D printing technology through a 3rd party service, it would still be cheaper to just buy the mini from the original company in the first place. However, time is not on the side of the miniature companies. I would imagine within a few years, it will be cheaper to manufacture your own 3D printed miniature then to purchase them through the traditional retail stores. A few years after that, everyone will either own a 3D Printer, or will know someone who does.
The difficulty that the media industry is facing is that all of their products are now digital files. Once something has become a digital file, it becomes infinitely copyable for free. Software called digital rights management, or DRM, can be used to try and limit the copying. This software however, rarely works as expected. Those who want to copy the content for free will always find a way around the DRM and in the end the DRM usually only hurts legitimate customers. Once 3D printing becomes cheap enough, the tabletop game industry will face the same battle. Regardless of rather it is our 3D files that gets leaked, or someone takes the time to create an exact digital duplicate from a miniature they have in hand, the reality is that our business model will be infinitely copyable for free.
Our only real choice against against this challenge is to adjust our business models. I have can envision several ways to adjust business models, but for now, I am only going to experiment with one. As of today, all of the source 3D model files for the entire Legends of Kalidasia Figure Line, including the never released Surakari Interceptor, are available under a Creative Commons License. While you are not required to pay any money for these files, I would appreciate it if you would consider using the ‘name your own price’ feature as payment for my work in creating these files.
Welcome to the future of tabletop gaming, and if you create some awesome warships from these files, then please share them with me.
