Juggernaught was based on a simple nugget of an idea – “Fantasy Meks.” I’d love to say that I thought of that nugget on my own, but I didn’t. That idea got into my head courtesy Bob Watts. I wasn’t the first person he shared that nugget with either. Both the product War Machine and DragonMek were created by folks who had at one time worked with Bob and had heard the nugget. Someday, I believe Bob will make the product he wants based on the nugget, but right now Bob is a very busy guy running Cerberus, a miniatures company that handles all the War Machine done in Europe.
Bob is one of the most honest and wise people you would ever want to work with. He is also one of the few real COO-types in the gaming industry, someone who knows that every company needs at least one guy like him who thinks “inside the box” because that’s where the money is. At the same time, Bob has solid instincts for products and all around just “gets it.” I would happily invest in any company he ever starts and if I ever had a shot, I’d happily hand him a large portion of any product focused company that I might ever start to get him on board. Bob’s focus is on hobby miniatures, and If the shareholders of Games Workshop ever want to turn that company around, they should hire Bob as their CEO (sorry Tom).
After talking to Bob briefly about his concept, which he gave me permission to riff on, I let it brew in my brain for awhile. As a person who generally thinks in graphs and trends, the value of the nugget continued to rise. There was so much good there. Eventually, I found myself with a free few hours a day to risk on a “big return” project. It was then that I began real work on Juggernaught. My early research brought me to the conclusion that I should design the world to be a computer game first and formost. If it happens to work as a “real world” game with miniatures or cards, that would be fine, but I didn’t want to make any sacrifices to a great computer game in order to benefit a real world game. The computer game would be where all the money was, so I thought that it would be best to focus there.
For all my professional hobby gaming experience, I had exactly zero experience in computer games. That said, I felt I knew the consumers in that market well and was a good judge of how a well executed Intellectual Property (IP) would be received by them. Eventually a plan formed in my head that went something like this…
1)Create a good amount of solid IP materials
2)Pitch to everyone I could get a meeting with in hopes of getting a slot for one of their upcoming projects
3)If a pitch was successful, work with that company to ensure that the things that I know about the IP and the market are kept solid while letting my partner handle the detail game decisions (I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on computer game level design…)
With that game plan, I spent 6-9 months getting IP work done when I had time. I worked with freelance artists and did the writing by myself, full well knowing that I’m no writer but hoping that I could overcome my lack of writing talent with time. I spent a good bit of time working on how the world worked, what it was “all about”, and how a player would interact with this world. I tried to stay focused on key values, and must have started over and re-concepted the entire thing from scratch 4 or 5 times as I just wasn’t happy with the way things were turning out. Often I liked an initial idea a lot, but when I took it to it’s logical conclusion, I would realize that while the idea had merit, the logical conclusion forced me to stretch the world too far away from the nugget for me to include it.
Finally, I got a pitch doc together and had 3 or 4 meetings with various computer publishers in the Seattle area. All the pitches went well, but it was clear to me that I was on an even longer shot than I initially thought. Normally, these folks get pitches from development houses that do the programming, etc… I don’t think any of the publishers had ever got an “IP only” pitch before from an outside source. The developers I showed it too saw the value right away, but those developers are generally in business to make games from licenses or make their own games – not games from someone else’s untested IP. I didn’t get morose about the project, after all, this was only a part time project for me and from the very beginning I knew it was a “3% shot.” I really enjoyed the responses from the industry pros as the IP was well accepted with a heavy dose of “I totally get it.” One of the folks I pitched to pretty much offered me a job, not for Juggernaught, but because they liked the thought process I put behind it. Another, much more interesting offer, was to create 2-3 IP’s a year of similar quality and to bring them back to the publisher to see if any of them would stick. I don’t think that last offer was serious; I think it was just his way of making it clear that I wasn’t wasting anyone’s time. All-in-all, I was very happy with, and proud of, the time I spent on the project. I learned a lot and got to stretch my mind in ways I normally don’t get to.
After my 3rd or 4th pitch, I moved to the bustling megalopolis if Lebanon PA. Lebanon is neatly tucked in the middle of absolutely nothing. The move brought me closer to my in-laws, which is a great thing as they are excellent people. It also allowed my kids to get to know their grand parents and my wife to reconnect with old acquaintances. The move was made possible by a big check that I received when Sabertooth Games was sold to Games Workshop (GAW on the London index). For Juggernaught though, it took me out of a tech-game corridor, so setting up meetings was harder to do and as I travel a lot for my day job, the time to travel long distances for long shot pitches was also hard to justify.
Upon getting to PA, my consulting firm, The Core Market, took off. My free time to work on Juggernaught went from 5-10 hours a week to zero. Juggernaught was kept in an old file on my laptop for a couple of years. Eventually, I had to replace my laptop as it got crushed in a brutal car wreck I was in (without side airbags, I’d certainly be dead instead of typing right now). I managed to save some of the files from my hard drive, and while moving those files around, I took a trip down memory lane and went through the Juggernaught materials. It is strange how when you read through work from a long time ago, it’s almost like reading it as a consumer. I had forgot how much I liked Juggernaught. I still don’t have the time to get back into full pitch mode as TCM is still going gangbusters, but figured I could share it with the world on the web (widely?). I’m very curious what folks will think of it. I’ve got a minis game designed for it which I’ll probably put up here as some sort of open beta. I’ll probably even put up some of my presentations to the computer game companies so that you can see what they looked like.
Who knows, maybe someday, Juggernaught will be part of a Monkey Bomb…
All Juggernaught materials are (c) Luke Peterschmidt
