Armchair Dragoons Forums
Other Gaming => RPGs & Adventure Gaming => Topic started by: bayonetbrant on February 18, 2020, 01:59:13 PM
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http://www.d20radio.com/main/fantasy-flight-games-long-term-plan-will-discontinue-rpg-development/
It also remains unknown as to why Fantasy Flight Games has made the decision to end RPG Production in the long-term. To date, neither FFG or their parent company, Asmodee, have made any public statement or comment on the matter.
While it is unsubstantiated conjecture, industry pundits and internet commentators have expressed numerous opinions that Asmodee is prepping FFG for a sale, or that French private equity firm, Eurazeo (who purchased Asmodee in 2013) is perhaps prepping Asmodee for a sale. Still other commentators are of the opinion that parent company Asmodee is simply seeking to focus exclusively on the board-game market. All of which – again – is unsubstantiated conjecture, to this point.
Following the 2013 acquisition by Eurazeo, Asmodee became extremely active in mergers and acquisitions of other hobby companies, beginning with the 2014 merger of Asmodee with Days of Wonder, and then with Fantasy Flight Games. 2016 saw the Asmodee acquisition of Z-Man Games, Plaid Hat Games, and Filosophia; as well as the announcement of agreements for Asmodee to publish the English-language versions of Catan from Mayfair Games (creating a new company, Catan Studio, Inc.). In 2017, Asmodee merged with German board game publisher Heidelberger Spieleverlag, and acquired the Spanish editor, Edge Entertainment. In 2018, Asmodee announced the acquisitions of both the Polish game publisher, Rebel; and the European distributor, ACD Blackfire Entertainment. None of these endeavors focused on the publishing of RPG material.
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I am curious as to the "why?" behind this. Hopefully an explanation is forthcoming fairly soon.
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Probably boils down to costs, as with anything. No idea but maybe their RPG group had a much thinner margin than the rest of their endeavors.
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So I should be able to sell all of my funky Star Wars dice on ebay soon for megabucks? :D
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FFG is apparently laying off a bunch of people, and changing several of their policies, too
https://spikeybits.com/2020/02/gaming-giant-ffg-slashes-more-key-services-departments.html
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They've been acting wonky for the last few years, ever since they merged with Asmodee.
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Considering the popularity of their games and the prices they charge, there must be some serious mismanagement going on.
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They (FFG) had a huge selection of titles at one time, with some really big name games. I've not really looked at what they've been up to for a while. I know that 'Dust Tactics' was quite popular, and had some nice, albeit expensive, mini's.
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Their holiday sales are awesome.
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I was once very tempted by the Tannhäuser games.
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FFG is apparently laying off a bunch of people, and changing several of their policies, too
https://spikeybits.com/2020/02/gaming-giant-ffg-slashes-more-key-services-departments.html
Considering the popularity of their games and the prices they charge, there must be some serious mismanagement going on.
Am I the only one who sees some disturbing parallels between FFG's situation and the implosion of TSR back in the 90's? I realize it's not quite the same situation, but it is bothersome.
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FFG has been making a number of changes since Christian Petersen jumped ship. The new Star Wars RPG never got traction and the Genesys game never got past a core book. You look at the screwing over of the $$$ cow. -Wing by releasing a second edition and the discontinuing of Net Runner...trouble.
Plus Asmodee’s buying everything under the sun has got to strain their resources to try and keep every game development section running.
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They also shit the bed with Star Wars Destiny, Star Wars Legion, and Keyforge.
Pissed off the Star Wars Imperial Assault crowd by releasing a fun, app-driven co-op mode, cut off support to the already existing skirmish-mode player base, and then once the co-op thing took off, cancelling the whole series.
The last couple Mansions of Madness expansions were pretty lacklustre and they've resorted to copy-pasting characters, events, and whole plot lines between Mom< Arkham Horror, and Arkham Horror: LCG as well.
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Not sure how you kill the golden goose of Star Wars but FFG has done it not that Disney hasn’t been helping out with the process.
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Not sure how you kill the golden goose of Star Wars but FFG has done it not that Disney hasn’t been helping out with the process.
One way is to have three core rules books which are mostly cut and past from the first one.
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Welcome to what happens when a single game publisher becomes owned by an investment group and starts buying up every other game company they can get their hands on. Now we're at the 'strip out costs so we can sell this bitch to someone else' stage of Asmodee's existence.
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One way is to have three core rules books which are mostly cut and past from the first one.
True. My family and I were playing a campaign a couple years back and this was annoying. Plus the ridiculous number of splat books. They were clearly trying to milk as much as they could but made it totally unappealing from a customer perspective. And add in the narrative dice that were proprietary so they were a pain in the ass to get enough to, you know, actually play the game with more than one person rolling at a time...
I have enough stuff if I ever want to run another campaign but they really messed it up.
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Incidentally, Asmodee has also changed their parts replacement process. In effect, they no longer have one. Missing something from your game? Return the whole thing and get a new copy. Of course, that's dependent on the store's return policy. Have fun!
https://www.asmodeena.com/en/customer-service-faq/
Of course, this only applies to North American customers. Europeans have things like actual consumer protection laws that would make something like this verboten.