Studio Sparta

Spartan Games has started a new design studio within their larger organization.  This production house is called Studio Sparta.  The plan is for Studio Sparta to be the means to release some boutique lines or one off models that don't really fit the mass production model.

I'll let them tell it in their own words:

Welcome To Studio Sparta
Studio Sparta comes from Spartan Games where we create, manufacture and distribute exciting and fast-paced games including Uncharted Seas, Firestorm Armada and Dystopian Wars.

Spartan Games has a very creative and imaginative team of designers and manufacturers who produce award-winning products for various game systems. However, the creativity of our designers does not stop with our core game systems. Indeed, they often go places we have never even dreamt of going and we end up with models and figures that, until now, had no place in the Spartan Games product portfolio.

We can’t suppress this creativity and we think you will agree that the models are just too good to be locked away in the designers' imaginations.

That’s why Studio Sparta is here.

What is Studio Sparta?
Studio Sparta is a mail order company that will offer a diverse range of figures, vehicles and scenery that do not have any of the constraints of being locked to our core games, and are not limited to models that can be mass-produced for stores to stock. This allows us to make more complex models, to dabble in areas that we find exciting, and we think you will also find exciting.

Studio Sparta is where we let our designers loose, allowing their imaginations to run wild and produce some of our most unusual models. Just like all our other products, they are high quality, highly detailed and great value for money. Some will cross over to existing game systems, but many will have nothing at all to do with fantasy naval, giant spacecraft or Victorian super science fiction.

Many products offered by Studio Sparta will be standalone as the core of the company is not to necessarily supply complete games, but to instead provide models for gamers to collect, our Invaders models being a good example of this. Other products, such as Firestorm Invasion for example, will be supported games that develop on a rolling basis.

One of the major benefits of digital sculpting is the ability to create models once that span multiple scales, with a model made at the largest scale and then ported downwards.

Venture into our design team's sand box and see what they have created.

 So what does this mean?  For one thing it seems to mean that they can explore options that might not be all that profitable in large quantities.  It also seems to mean that they will be starting things here, and if they make money, moving them up to the main Spartan Games lines.  That's just speculation on my part though.

Either way, I'm pretty excited about this.  More creativity and more options are always welcome.  Spartan has two hot properties, Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada.  Their Uncharted Seas game, their first, does not seem to be as popular, though that could just be how it is in my area.  The first releases from the Studio fall into all three games.  Expanding on these universes can only help in the long run.

The biggest news is that there are significant expansions coming up for the Firestorm Armada universe, but more on that tomorrow.