As the title suggests, would it ever be a possibility of BeamNG making scale models of the vehicles in game? Possibly starting with a small quantity made to see how sales would go, then produce more if there were a lot of demand. It's a good possibility to assist the company financially, and I wouldn't mind having a miniature Bolide on a shelf here (or even a whole collection).
I'd buy them... aaand... I would also need to keep them out of my kid's way if I want them to survive for more than a couple of hours...
Yep, I had already suggested a thing like this in the past, a cooler thing would have been "crashed" scale cars.
Aw, I searched for topics about this but didn't find any. Yeah though, selling damaged variants of the models would be cool, or models with interchangeable parts as to have damaged parts to attach to them. Unlikely, but still, it's bringing out my inner child xD
they should team with hotwheels or matchbox to make them because I would buy them and other people would be intrested in Beamng
I doubt Mattel would partner with a small company like the Beam Team for a small run of cars. What they could do is potentially run a group buy on the models, then send the order to some manufacturer.
Or, they could opt for a modernized reissue of the incredibly successful ( ? ) Crash Test Dummies toys by Tyco...
Why don't we as a community make papercrafts? They would be rather simple, and people would be able to download, print, assemble, and display them!
1/10 scale BeamNG RC vehicles. Constructed of aluminum with correspondingly scaled jbeam values. Free packs of replacement body panels and one extra frame with purchase of the Grand Marshal Luxe. Conversely, If you happen to wrap your Grand Marshall around a kitchen table leg you could send it back for 50% off a new frame.
Now to be serious, who's with me on the papercraft idea? What's even better is that when you assemble it, you can crush it, and watch the world's amazing soft body physics at work!
Yeah but paper cars don't have enought weight to crash them and details would be a lil' bit to hard to do for beginners or wouldn't be great at all...
Well, if things like these are possible, I don't see where it'd be impossible for some BeamNG merchandise to exist. Even if every BeamNG car got a 1/64 scale model (the size of a Hot Wheels car for those who don't know what it means), I'd still get them. I'd get every 1/64 scale car and hang them on the wall like I'm already doing with some of the ones I have now.
I don't think BeamNG has the cash or cache to fund such a venture. Minecraft has pretty widespread appeal, even if it came from the same indie roots, and more specifically it appeals to young people who are more likely to purchase such merchandise. Your typical Star Wars action figure costs somewhere in the avenue of $10,000-$15,000 to tool a mold for, to say nothing of mastering the original sculpt, 3D scanning, packaging, marketing, licensing, etc., and sells at high enough volume that Hasbro hasn't killed off the line yet. A single programmer's salary would cover the production costs for a single Star Wars figure. In the modeling world, it's hard enough as it is to find a decent model of a current car. You'd think hobby stores would be flush with models of the current Jeep Wrangler, popular as it is, but the only model kit that exists of it is based on the late 90s vehicle. Sure, supercars and muscle cars get decent attention, but the majority of model cars on the shelves will be of older vehicles. Diecast could be the way to go, but you would have to have to guarantee the sales that would justify the mass-production. I can go to Target right now and find a Matchbox car that corresponds to a current production vehicle (in fact I have my eyes set on a 2016 Tacoma). Lacking mass appeal and funding, I think the only feasible route is 3D printing, which is great because you can just alter the existing game models and it costs not much more than the time you're willing to put in; the end user pays the costs of production and storage. What's great is that, depending on how much work needs to be done to make the cars printable (and there is quite a lot of work in that regard), you could conceivably order a model to spec, down to the wheels and accessories. It gets pretty expensive the bigger it gets, so you would still be likely working with a Matchbox-sized vehicle, which limits the amount of detail that can be included. One could also go the garage kit route - 3D print a master, send it to a caster, let them work their magic, and have a limited number of resin kits that diehards can put together on their own. This allows for bigger models, though again detail could be limited due to the constraints of the process.
