by Dormammu
Poor Dick wrote:
Why wouldn't we have gotten all the stuff from seasons 1-6 at retail if they used a different production model?
Obviously we are speculating, but it's worth noting that miniature games don't follow all the same rules as other games. Card games are at the far opposite end of the spectrum. Essentially, miniature games are the most expensive and take the most shelf space, whereas card expansions are smaller and cheaper. A game store can have a single rack with most of the content for 2-3 of FFG's LCGs and have a customer-friendly selection that also sells well for the store. Having six large boxes of CDMD is prohibitive for shelf space and also probably doesn't sell well (most expansions don't, even for best-selling games). And if they actually tried to push all the KS content through to retail, it would be nine large boxes and five small boxes, or more likely six small boxes and something like 10+ small boxes as they'd split up KS content into smaller chunks like selling an Elder One on its own.
I'm sympathetic to many of your points, and mostly disagree with you in terms of intensity. I am not pro-corporation, but I also think CMON is a relatively small company and doesn't deserve the same raw ire and frustration as we might level toward Amazon,. pharmaceutical companies, etc. I really don't believe CMON is making anyone ultra-wealthy. Look at the people making these games (we see them in live streams): they're just a bunch of dorks.
CMON has had a rough schedule of two months between crowdfunding campaigns for a very long time now. It's how they service all their existing lines while also introducing new games. The idea they should have delayed this isn't realistic, and it seems obvious to me that Fear of the Unknown was very heavily delayed in ways they couldn't forecast. They probably put Forbidden Reaches on the schedule at a time when they thought backers would've had FotU for eight months or so. So judging them based on one of their most delayed games isn't entirely fair imo. When you say something like...
Should CMoN take on more projects and have a more rushed project schedule, producing content so quickly existing players aren't ready for - or haven't even received their last bit of content? If they do, should we be happy about it?
You imply things have been accelerating out of control, but actually they're on the same pace they've been for nearly a decade.
which includes more ethical sales and marketing
And maybe this is where we disagree most. I just don't think their crowdfunding campaigns are unethical or predatory or whatever. I believe they cannot produce games at this scale for retail lines (which is honestly common sense if you've ever known game store owners) and they use crowdfunding to service a "super-fan" style of game. Does anyone need 100+ investigators and 15 Elder Ones for CDMD? Probably not. But it is fun and a lot of people do like having a game this big.
I've been revisiting all my old content lately and just started with the Fear of the Unknown content and one of my friend's number one desire each game is to play an Investigator he's never seen before. It gives him literal joy. In my case, I don't like replaying episodes if I can clearly remember them as it becomes a bit repetitive, so having more of those makes it more fun for me. I could see an argument that it's excessive to have a game this big when I could just have a Go board, but I think that's a bit restrictive. Hobby board gaming is just not the worst consumerist thing out there. Humans are imperfect. Let them have this toy if they love it.
Why are you taking the companies' side?
I'd really love you to remove this type of phrase from your lexicon. I think it's cheap and in bad faith. If CMON disappears tomorrow, fine. I'm not disagreeing with you because I own CMON stock or have some kind of faux capitalist utopia political opinion. Just stick to the facts at hand and don't accuse others of people fanboys or whatever. It's not productive. And for what it's worth, if I ran the world, I would utterly demolish large corporations. I think they're one of the greatest evils to mankind, probably only second to organized religion. I just don't think CMON is in this category (which is only an opinion).
Are you telling me you couldn't wait for the same content to come up a season every year (or even every other year) at retail as opposed to having to "not-order" all at once via periodic Kickstarter campaigns?
Certainly. But to reiterate, I don't think it would ever come to retail. Only a curated subset would. I think they do actually need crowdfunding to produce this amount of content.
especially given they tied gameplay to a massive plastic statue that could also have been a cardboard tile.
I don't really care about completionism in my fellow gamers. Anyone stewing about some single scenario they don't have because they made the smart choice of not buying those stupid megatures is being unreasonable. No one will ever own everything; not even Elon Musk. Why should we worry about one or two things we don't have for this game?