| Stole this from the interwebs. I didn't even Get WWPD's permission to use it. Cause I'm HAXXOR. |
For those of you who pay no attention to the online Flames community you’ve probably never heard of Steve McLauchlan, this also means you likely don’t exist. Steve is one of the founders of WWPD.net and its News From the Front Podcast. Now, he’s moving on to greener hobbit filled pastures, taking a position with Battlefront Miniatures, makers of our beloved Flames of War. Recently, I had a chance to digitally sit down with Steve and grill him on WWPD, his future with Battlefront and all sorts of other good things.
Throck: For those folks who are new to the site it seems like WWPD has always had a special relationship with Battlefront. Jointly hosting the Overlord campaign, free stuff for product reviews and regularly cross posting your podcast are just a few of the examples of that relationship. But, it wasn’t always so. How did WWPD’s relationship with Battlefront begin? How did it grow?
Steve: A fair question! Honestly, it grew as WWPD grew. Our industry is small. It’s a total niche community, and the Battlefront employees work at Battlefront because they’re keenly interested in the product. So our community grew with them along for the ride, because at the end of the day they want to go home and play with their toys too. It soon became evident that it made sense for them to expand the relationship with WWPD!
It really started when me, Sean, and Joe posted our first podcast. It was novel, and the guys liked it. Over time, the relationship really grew as a result of Joe Krone. Smart guy, Joe. He knew that it’d cost Battlefront peanuts to send us some models for review, but that our enthusiasm was about as good of advertising as one could get. Smart investment. We were happy with the arrangement because it generated content for our site that was worth looking at!
| He looks nothing like that any more. Way less hipster now. |
T. Were there any bumps along the road?
S. Definitely! But most of them resulted in Battlefront not really having a point of contact for us. It was (and to a point still is- this will be part of my new job!) difficult to just establish a steady stream of review material- especially with enough lead time to not totally miss the boat. None of their guys’ really had a dedicated mandate to do this, so it was whoever we could catch free at the moment. In recent months, a much better system was worked out. Kudos to the US warehouse guys who bore the brunt of the work there, and probably dreading getting emails from us!
More after the break!