Descent definitely totally not 3.0

Msample wrote: Sounds like JOURNEYS IN MIDDLE EARTH, the app supported LotR dungeon crawler. App supported as well. You’d think given the IP they would have had a steady stream of expansions lined up behind the core box but in the four years since it came out, only one expansion. Then again I was rather disappointed in the game play so no big loss .

My son and I are around the midpoint of our second campaign of Journeys, and we're loving it. The core box campaign had 15 scenarios and it looks like the Shadowed Paths expansion (the one we're playing currently) has 13 or so. There are also DLC campaigns available for the core box as well as Shadowed Paths available for $7 each. In addition to these, there's another big box expansion with its own campaign available as well as another DLC campaign that goes along with it. This is a TON of content.

It's also the first FFG app assisted game that was built that way from the ground up, unlike Descent, Imperial Assault, or Mansions of Madnes, whose apps were developed later, and it's waaaaay better than those games. The fact that my 14 yo is still engaged and wanting to continue playing speaks volumes.

I really don't understand the move with the 159.99 $ expansion for a 2 year old game that got no support.
If it was a standalone game that could let you carry over characters from the base game, it could have made new players want to try it, and for an expansion, maybe they should have made efforts to reuse more of the original material to keep the price lower, but here, it feels even more niche than it should.

Yeah, they absolutely just left this thing to die in an extremely weird way.

FFG under Asmodee is hard to even comprehend with regard to product strategy.

Wait, they have a strategy ?

At their zenith, like say 15 years ago in the peak coffin box pre crowdfunding era, FFG was hot shit. Now its a shadow of its former self. I went to the FFG homepage to get a sense of what they were doing other than pumping out Arkham and LotR LCG packs. I got a chuckle when I saw an entry "celebrating 25 years of Terrinotth" .

Their Upcoming page hasn't been updated in six months. WTF. Star Wars Unlimited doesn't appear on the main FFG site, it looks like it has a separate standalone site.

Now I find the Asmodee store, it looks like maybe the FFG site is just gonna fade and they are gonna group it all on the Asmodee site?

Whatever.

I'm still trying to figure out Asmodee's overall strategy. I thought the idea was that they bought up a lot of the hot board game properties and then we're going to package them all to some ven cap firm and make a huge killing. Instead, they're letting a lot of them wither on the vine while selling some of the better parts of said companies back to their original owners, like the Gamezenter that went back to Christian Petersen and Plaid Hat that went back to Colby Dauch. Granted, the Gamezenter probably isn't a huge moneymaker and Plaid Hat returned without two of its biggest IPs (Dead of Winter and Mice & Mystics), but it's still weird to see them cut loose a successful retail outlet that promotes their games in the former and a collectible IP that still has a devoted audience (Summoner Wars) in the latter.

Keep in mind that Asmodee has been flipped a few times since they bought FFG. In 2014 they bought FFG and Days of Wonder, which is when they really got on gamers radars. Four years later they ( Asmodee ) were sold to some private equity firm. Then three years later they were sold again.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmodee

So they are on their third leadership group in ten years. So the lack of long term strategy is not really surprising in some ways.

JFC. That was 10 years ago...? That really feels like it was just a couple years back. I know there was some time dilation from the pandemic lockdown, but...