FFG Done With AT Classics?

Said it before, and I'll say it again, the impact of KS seems to be overstated.

The other day I was in a game shop and saw a box from the factory that contained Downwood Tales, the new expansion for Mice and Mystics. It had the _ per case, ___ case of ___ on the side, I don't remember the exact number but the math put it at 10,000 copies of an expansion.

A KS is considered highly, highly successful if a print run of 10,000 is ordered. And let's not overlook that this is an expansion which always has diminishing numbers for a game released a few years ago now. And as expansions are always a fraction of base units sold we can reasonably assume that M&M has moved 20k+ units.

Consider a game like Robinson Crusoe that is likely in the 10k per printing magnitude. That game is on it's what...5th? 6th printing? 12k list it as owned on BGG. So there's what 50-60k copies floating around? How many copies of Voyage of the Beagle have they gone through and on order currently?

A KS game is good to go through its first print run and have demand for a second. There's what, perhaps a dozen success stories on KS? Otherwise it's one run and done.

Even looking at a game like Arcadia Quest which had $750k and just shy of 5k backers, so what a print run of 10k? Maybe? And that game's already hit the daily sale at Miniature Market and CoolStuff.

So still, the successful KS games are small potatoes to successful non KS games. Has it had an impact? Of course, but it drives the hobby as much as BGG does which is some, but not as much as some here would have you believe.

wadenels wrote: I lament the disappearance of the great one-off clean designs like Nexus Ops, Chaos Marauders, Battle Beyond Space, and stuff like that. They're still around I suspect, but I'm facing increasing difficulty finding them.

Sometimes I feel out of sync with what's going on in board gaming. I'm not particularly interested in serial purchases. I'm becoming less interested in 20lb games with 40 page rulebooks. But I love me a great thematic game.

I would love an AT Classics line featuring one-off AT games. Especially in small boxes at a small price.

They are getting tough to find. Titles like Chaos Marauders will always be around because they're not a big risk to make. I think more great cards games come out per year than board games, though I'm a big card game fan.

Single purchase AT board games though are dwindling. It definitely has to do with the demand for high quality plastic pieces, which is in most cases, stupid. Aside from 80's GW games, most classic AT titles had junk for pieces. Look at A&A, Thunder Road, junk. Wiz-War and Titan didn't even have plastics. Even those GW games would come with about a half dozen models usually.

It seems now AT is thought of as "tons of high quality models" as opposed to being about gameplay. Could you imagine Bruce Glassco putting Betrayal at House on the Hill on Kickstarter? It would have dozens more minis and none of the Hasbro development team's polish (which included Rob Daviu and Mike Selinker). It would be a giant fucking mess with a ton of minis you would only need for 2% of the scenarios that you couldn't even play because it's a giant fucking mess. Instead it's a legitimate classic (with 6 minis).

Gamers that think they want AT games are asking for boxes full of unique, high quality models and the market is delivering in spades.

hmm..Don't get me wrong, I love games with nice models too, but it's got to be the game that wins me, not the models.

VonTush wrote: A KS game is good to go through its first print run and have demand for a second. There's what, perhaps a dozen success stories on KS? Otherwise it's one run and done.

Even looking at a game like Arcadia Quest which had $750k and just shy of 5k backers, so what a print run of 10k? Maybe? And that game's already hit the daily sale at Miniature Market and CoolStuff.

So still, the successful KS games are small potatoes to successful non KS games. Has it had an impact? Of course, but it drives the hobby as much as BGG does which is some, but not as much as some here would have you believe.

That pretty much dovetails with what I'm implying. Kickstarter games aren't big print runs, they're big games. It's ideal for bigger games for more dollars per copy. One print run and done, get your money and get gone. If you have a hit that's great, print more. But Kickstarter indemnifies that first print run. There's no downside to asking big dollars for big game.

Add to that getting more revenue per copy on preorders, perhaps as much as 300% more per copy, due to direct sales and you have a lot of incentive for building a bigger game. Straight up, I think Dan and Al aren't disappointed with the direction Buonocore chose for this one.

S.

wadenels wrote: I would love an AT Classics line featuring one-off AT games. Especially in small boxes at a small price.

Ideally, they'd be in boxes about the size of the 'large' Silverline games. The box size of Infiltration, DeadWood, Kingdoms (remake), etc. I know they could fit a great edition of Cosmic in there. They could even do FoD and some others. Cut out all the wasted insert space, and I'm sure it can be done. I'd wager the GW FoD could fit in one of those boxes. As could base Talisman (2nd ed size). Wiz War is another...the original game that we played for years was in a box smaller than those Silverline boxes.

This would be fantastic. I doubt it would happen, but fantastic nonetheless. Well...if FFG is willing to put out a 'Euro Classics' line, maybe it's not so far fetched. What would they call it though? Silverline is sort of dead and I wonder if some felt Silverline = budget title.

Still, I don't know if there's a market for this. Ha! This reminds me of a quote I read from Neil Marshall recently. I was curious why he hasn't done any flicks in a while (since his are all great) and he made a comment along the lines of "there's no green lighting of my type of modest movies anymore. It's either small budget or blockbuster". Maybe there's the same thing going on in boardgames. Either micro games or go big?

Edit: here's the quote

The stuff that I want to do falls at a weird budgetary level where it isn’t super low and it isn’t mega budget, and there are a lot less of those films being made these days. Will audiences even want to see something like that in the cinema or will they want to watch it at home or download it?

www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/08/...of-thrones-interview

Sagrilarus wrote: Add to that getting more revenue per copy on preorders, perhaps as much as 300% more per copy, due to direct sales and you have a lot of incentive for building a bigger game. Straight up, I think Dan and Al aren't disappointed with the direction Buonocore chose for this one.

S.

Yeah, the direct sales thing is key.

Hex Sinister wrote: FFG actually does have a new title coming out that everybody has already forgotten about (which is a not a great sign), X-COM. Since GenCon it's gotten less hype than a pimple on Taylor Swift's asscheek but I'll take it as a sign that there's still life in FFG. For now..

I was thinking the same thing while reading this thread. The game is late, and FFG stopped talking about it, even not completing their preview articles, I believe. However, X-COM is expected in stores sometime next week, so the hype train should be building up steam again.

They posted a preview article today, actually.

Disgustipater wrote: They posted a preview article today, actually.

Hah! Makes sense, they've been sitting on it for a month with the delay.

Judging from my Facebook feed it seems like X-Com gets quite a lot of buzz from PC gamers and non-hardcore board gamers.