by Dormammu
jelloburn wrote:
I made the comment that the core Marvel United game felt incomplete, and it does feel incomplete.
But again, this is 100% opinion. You can try to present it as fact, but it just isn’t. BGG user [user=peakhope][/user] famously played that core box a hundred times before using expansions. And I consider it relevant that it’s game you can buy for about $25. This makes expansions quite affordable. What’s wrong with offering a product that you can buy in $20-25 increments until you have enough for your personal tastes, rather than requiring the purchase of a $100 box just to get started?
Additionally, your point about Nemesis isn't relevant. Nemesis feels like a complete game.
Again, subjective. Seeing late comers to the game furious that they couldn’t get the Medic basically seemed exactly the same as late comers to a CMON game lamenting their exclusives.
There are plenty of games in retail that have a billion expansions.
It depends on the game. I don’t think any of them tried to drop a new product with a pre-existing game line all at once.
A question I’d propose is: if it is true that CMON could sell all that product at retail, why would they choose not to? Are you positing they choose to make less money so they can lay claim to the subjective title of “most thrilling and usurious crowdfunding creator?”
I’m suggesting that the only financially viable way to make those extra forty heroes and villains is to bundle them in a single box to minimize manufacturing demands and to presell them to eliminate risk of them not selling. I am further positing that they would make them available if they could justify the finances.
In fact, they held aside four expansions for that original game and SpinMaster (their much larger retail partner for Marvel games) elected not to put any of them on shelves. Much later, the game did well enough that they reversed course on that choice, but the evidence should be clear: SpinMaster didn’t want to risk expansions because board game expansions do not sell well. The idea that they should have packaged the stretch goals as an additional 5-10 expansions is ludicrous.
Again, I don’t understand why you (or anyone) believes CMON is intentionally hurting their finances by holding some elements exclusive. I don’t mind if you don’t like this style of crowdfunding campaign, but trying to justify your dislike by pretending it’s objectively bad is not rational.
It’s like politics: the person who gets elected is the one who is good at getting votes over the one who is good at making laws. Something can be frustrating and terrible but also be the only possible outcome. In this case, the better profit margins of selling directly allows production of many extras for crowdfunding, and that does suck for people who come along later. But it sucks because it’s a reality of economic scale, not because CMON is doing it wrong and could make all that stuff evergreen.
Consider that you can hate it and it can be the only option, all at the same time.