Fantasy Flight and Asmodee merge

FFG's image and success is strongly due to many games by famed designers that they distributed or licensed in the years. First names that comes to mind, all over Europe: Bruno Faidutti, Reiner Knizia, Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi, Francesco Nepitello, Derek Carver, Dan Glimne, Spartaco Albertarelli, Walter Obert, Dominique Ehrhard, Duccio Vitale, Paolo Parente, Gabriele Mari, Gianluca Santopietro, Andrea Chiarvesio, Luca Iennaco, Richard Hamblen... I personally do not see FFG as a particularly creative design studio, if compared to the amount of ideas that they just got from outside. From designers, by the way, that can also have, or already have, direct relationships with Asmodée.

What do you guys think about this?

Most people do not care about who designed the games, much less about most of the poeple on that list which I don't even recognize. FFG games sell because they have cool themes a geek audience beyond hobby gaming likes and they are good games with a solid distribution not because the box has "Dan Glimne" on it, whoever that is.

It seems like the kind of thing a certain kind of hobby boardgamer would say. You know, the kind that thinks Agricola is more popular than Arkham Horror and thinks every boardgame has played Age of Steam.

Sevej wrote:

FFG's image and success is strongly due to many games by famed designers that they distributed or licensed in the years. First names that comes to mind, all over Europe: Bruno Faidutti, Reiner Knizia, Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi, Francesco Nepitello, Derek Carver, Dan Glimne, Spartaco Albertarelli, Walter Obert, Dominique Ehrhard, Duccio Vitale, Paolo Parente, Gabriele Mari, Gianluca Santopietro, Andrea Chiarvesio, Luca Iennaco, Richard Hamblen... I personally do not see FFG as a particularly creative design studio, if compared to the amount of ideas that they just got from outside. From designers, by the way, that can also have, or already have, direct relationships with Asmodée.

What do you guys think about this?

Games like citadels and lord of the rings absolutely helped ffg in their formative years, but then 2005 happened and descent and arkham horror and ti3 hit and that's their foundation.

Bull Nakano wrote: ...but then 2005 happened and descent and arkham horror and ti3 hit and that's their foundation.

Foundation? Eh. More like "early adulthood" to my mind. The euros and early TI games were their infancy->adolescence. The start of the next phase, "prime earning years," was heralded when they started landing the hot [Galactica, Starcraft, Doom--shame the game wasn't a bit better]/enormous [Star Wars] licenses and converting them into generally very good games that had some legs on their own, unlike almost every other licensed-IP-type game on the planet...

Now? Following that model, I believe this is the signal that the next phase has begun: "graceful degradation into retirement" [a phrase I've loved ever since I heard a former colleague state it as his primary "future performance goal" in his annual performance review a decade ago].

That said, it sounds like FFG's stable will continue to produce "FFG-type" games and their "scouts", if you will, will continue to look for new games that appeal to FFG's core audience for the foreseeable future. That's encouraging, but it will be interesting to see what "CTP having a boss" actually translates into in practice.

I'm far more curious what will happen both now and a few years down the road on the Asmodee side as their US support has, generally speaking, utterly sucked [as any US Dungeon Twister fan will readily attest]. Will Asmodee be using FFG as the foundation for reworking "Asmodee North America" into something beyond an afterthought?

Then, of course, a couple of years down the line, I suspect the question we kick around will be one of which of the primary "Hasbro acquisition models" "FFG, an Asmodee imprint" ended up following: the "dies-on-the-vine like Avalon Hill" or "we-still-let-them-produce-actually-new-product like Wizards of the Coast."

Sounds like someone shooting from the hip. FFG produces a great product regardless of source, and sells at a fair price. Very professional packages. That's why they've succeeded.

S.

Well, it was anglioliglogol something. The designer of Wings of War. I know he's got beef with FFG, but it still pissed me off.

He looks at this from a very different perspective.

I'll be honest, I don't think this merger is good for gamers. Good for business sure, but the market seems to be bigger publishers now and homemade onesies. I seem to like games from smaller companies.

S.

Sagrilarus wrote: He looks at this from a very different perspective.

I'll be honest, I don't think this merger is good for gamers. Good for business sure, but the market seems to be bigger publishers now and homemade onesies. I seem to like games from smaller companies.

S.

I'm the same. But I'm almost at the end of my buying run.

Eh...Good games are good games and I feel there is no correlation between quality and company size. Everyone has hits and everyone has misses.


A few things I haven't seen talked about yet:
-What does this mean for FFG Supply? I don't know how big the sleeve market is world wide and specifically how much of a share FFG controls. So would this allow their hobby products to grow in worldwide presence?

-Edge, Hobby Japan, The company whose logo is a bear tossing a die in the air (whose games - A La Carte, Dungeon Fighters and Sewer Pirats who were being distributed by FFG are now performing a disappearing act)...All of the partners who do the translation, localization and distribution into other languages will remain for the "foreseeable future" unchanged, but I believe Asmodee does most of that in house, so I think these companies are going to get pushed out sooner rather than later.

-What about the RPG arm of FFG? Are they already translated to other languages? Will they be?


EDIT: One more to add...FFG's Print on Demand stuff. I'm sure there are games in Asmodee's library that could benefit from small little expansions possible through the PoD format.

VonTush wrote: Eh...Good games are good games and I feel there is no correlation between quality and company size.

I looked at my shelf as I was typing that and saw a distinct correlation between the games I like most and the company size. To be fair FFG was a pretty big company to begin with, but certainly not Asmodee size. Most of the stuff I'm interested in keeping has come from games with a dozen or so titles in print, printing two or three new games a year. Didn't plan it that way.

S.