FFG putting the stake in Terrinoth, but still rolling with other stuff

Michael Barnes wrote: I couldn’t care less what FFG does at this point. They are the new Steve Jackson Games. Abandoning what made them great and sliding into a comfortable irrelevancy.

This (and some of the follow-up) is a real doozy, even by the standards of Barnes' hyperbolic, badwrongfun rants. It's a straight up ridiculous assertion.

FFG are making games for multiple billion-plus-dollar entertainment franchises, designs that could be phoned in and likely still be profitable. Yet what we see coming out of them are titles that not only adeptly express their setting and universe through design, but frequently manage to contend for best-in-class status in their class, even by the standards of gaming die-hards.

They have their supply chain and manufacturing sorted. You don't need to pony up $300 in advance in a gamble to snag a copy. Their titles are widely available online and in stores. Their games (generally) get robust post-launch support, especially if they sell, apparently to a fault given some of the "LCG mill" snipes.

Their titles and releases frequently top online/brick-n-mortar store best sellers lists for any given month. They are innovating with games like Keyforge, which manages to combine cryptographic mathematics and state-of-the-art printing technology, to make the game possible. It's a watershed design that no competitor has been able to touch yet.

FFG also has a broad, active competitive play scene, despite no single title being a monster hit like MtG.

Say what you will about whether you think their titles are any good, whether they've eliminated or fragmented certain game lines unnecessarily, or if associated IP fatigue is a turn-off. But if that's what irrelevancy looks like, the just what the fuck is relevant by chance?

Second, the comparison to SJG is absurd -- SGJ barely gets by, save for printing endless skews of a single game line (Muchkin), and their entire annual gross revenue is practically what a single, middling Silver Line game from FFG might be expected to gross in a single year. How do we know? They publish it all online. In 2010 they made 3.5 million in total, and 2018 gets that up to around 5 or so. By the looks of it, a few recent Kickstarter Hail-Marys are the tenuous threads that have staved off disaster
www.sjgames.com/general/stakeholders/

FFG has never had such a singular, reductionist focus on one thing. Least of all now. For a while now they seem to have fostered many legs to stand on. They republish quality designs. They have their in-house IP and titles. They have their licensed game work, which still requires original, in-house design work -- nobody seems to have a problem calling licensed designs original when discussing Ravensburger or GF9. That FFG have the confidence of large entertainment companies to successfully develop and launch titles speaks for itself. No, they're no longer a boutique developer/publisher, they've grown past that. They're different, and the entire industry is different now.

I also don't get the assertion that CMON is somehow out-FFGing FFG. FFG doesn't want to be a CMON, nor vice-versa. They do different things at different scales at this point in their evolution. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of some of CMON's lineup, but it's not like they don't have duds of their own, or that they are somehow wholesale rewriting the book on board game design.

Grownups may recognize that there is simply a place for both FFG and CMON (or GW for that matter, as that likely strikes closer to home) without some kind of zero-sum, schadenfreude about one falling into irrelevancy. If anything, capably helming the production of games for popular IP's is exactly the kind of strategy that is going to keep FFG profitable and relevant, as the industry continues to fragment and become more saturated.

Normally I wouldn't have taken the bait here, but the referenced post lays the bullshit on a little thick, particularly for these parts

FFG are still a massive player I agree and what they do will have influence on the hobby i.e. I am sure we will see other companies trying to use the tech behind Keyforge at some point. As to quality of games I think the Arkham Horror LCG is the finest coop game out there and certainly one of the best in terms of story being told through mechanics. Haven't played Outer Rim, but heard good things.

We can say what we like about innovation, but Keyforge, which I have played and enjoyed, was incredibly innovative product and seems to still be attracting a lot of players. Are they pushing the envelope design wise? Yes and no. It's kind of like criticising Hollywood for playing it safe when you know that is what they are going to do with noted exceptions (Inception springing straight to mind). FFG are going to play it safe for the most part but they don't shy away from risk entirely (see Discover:Lands Unknown).

These announcements are indicative of a trend in the hobby from the companies that can afford to do so, of limiting their lines to push fewer titles. I honestly think that is a good thing in the end. AEG have made similar noises recently and I wouldn't be surprised to find that others are having in-company conversations if not public.

In the end if you don't like FFG's output there are literally thousands of other games to buy and I would urge you to support the smaller publishers out there who are producing innovative games when you do.

Somehow this thread resulted in me owning all of BattleLore 2nd edition. Even the dice pack. I bought the base game and found a hell of a deal- all expansions new in clamshells for $115 shipped.

Fantasy Flight Games is a different company now. Petersen got bought out by Asmodee, and then the french venture capitalists who controlled Asmodee sold out to a different group of french venture capitalists. Ultimately, these games are designed by people, and some of the FFG designers left, including Kevin Wilson. Likewise, Gale Force Nine lost their best game designer years ago, and they lost some of their mojo. I'm as excited as anybody about the new Dune, but it's 99% identical to the original game aside from the Ilya graphics.

Also, designers change over time. Like most creatives types, their creativity ebbs and flows, and there is generally a peak period of quality that becomes clear with hindsight. For example, FFG got Kevin Wilson's best work, but I doubt that most people would say the same about Richard Garfield.

It's way too soon to count FFG/Asmodee out, but they do need to change up their product lines and licenses to stay competitive. Maybe the Star Wars deal will be a permanent and steady source of business, but Middle Earth and Game of Thrones are already fading. They will probably never again do anything as admirably experimental as Android, but Discover and Keyforge were respectable attempts, and Keyforge may even stick around for years as a successful game.

Michael Barnes wrote: Somehow this thread resulted in me owning all of BattleLore 2nd edition. Even the dice pack. I bought the base game and found a hell of a deal- all expansions new in clamshells for $115 shipped.

Awesome. I think you'll really enjoy it, especially if you have a regular 2-player partner.

I love it. Lots. It boggles my mind that it wasn’t better received and sold like crap. But it is really kind of FFG’s fault, they shit the bed by trying to port over the DOW game and then soured any goodwill and faith in support with Battles of Westeros. Then they went and made the 2nd Edition set in the almost universally reviled Terrinoth setting AND made it incompatible with folks’ existing BL collections. And then they thought they could take on Warhammer with Runewars...and that flopped because it was a garbage system with a garbage setting and garbage minis...and wasn’t a Star Wars cash cow.

So wow, they really fucked this poor game up. Which is a shame, because it is awesome, Kouba’s development is really great. It’s so nice to play a game that is so refined, so meticulously developed like this. And it was -different- there really isn’t anything else like it on the market even six years on from its release. I don’t know why FFG didn’t see that they had something unique.

But it also wasn’t part of their LCG mill machinery, so there’s that too.

Such a tragedy. Why the hell didn’t they at least reskin it as Star Wars? It’s a better fit for the setting than Descent.

sigh... You guys keep pushing this "universally reviled" image and it simply doesn't comport with reality. If Terrinoth was so awful, you wouldn't have seen the successes of:
Runebound, 2nd Ed. with its more than two dozen expansions
Runebound, 3rd Ed. with its 8 expansions
Descent with its 6 expansions
Descent, 2nd Ed. with its 10+ expansions
Runewars with an expansion
Rune Age with an expansion

All of them successful games. A couple of them were huge hits, Some of them were critically hailed. If Terrinoth was as much an abomination as so many around here like to claim, none of those games would have been as successful as they were. Battlelore, 2nd Ed. was supposed to be skirmish-level combat that mirrored Runewars' strategic-level combat. That's why they based it there and why the lack of a Latari army is so unfortunate. Trying to adapt Star Wars to this game would've been awful. Also, when it came out, X-Wing was only a year old, so there's no telling how expansive FFG's license with Lucasfilm was at that time.

I think the art style often used on Terrinoth products just got a bit stale and boring.

Terrinoth never stopped me from buying a game. I've just always found the setting to be generically bland. Similar to Magic's Dominaria setting back in the day. Still played Magic but didn't give a shit who the Llanowar Elves were. Dominaria was basically background noise for the card game though so it didn't really matter. Same with stuff like Descent and Rune Age where the setting isn't really the focus. Whereas Runebounds whole point was to adventure in Terrinoth so it stuck out like a sore thumb there. Thank Satan we have Dungeon Degenerates and other more interesting worlds to adventure in nowadays.

Jackwraith wrote: sigh... You guys keep pushing this "universally reviled" image and it simply doesn't comport with reality.

For most people, it's not that Terrinoth is "universally reviled" but rather it's "universally forgettable." People will seek out & buy a game because of IP/setting/characterization, and games set in the lands of LotR, and Fallout, and Star Wars, and Star Trek, and Walking Dead, and 40k, and Magic The Gathering, and Arkham Horror, and (god bless 'em) even WarmaHordes. I have never (anecdotally) encountered another living, breathing human being who has ever remarked, "Hey, have they made another game in that Terrinoth world? Because I totally love that stuff!"

If anything, the repeated attempts to utilize Terrinoth as a gaming world, and the fact that it still comes off as such unremarkable generic fantasy (not always a bad thing) is what leads people to say, "Wow, that must be a real loser of an IP there." I bet if you polled buyers of most Terrinoth setting games they probably couldn't even tell you there was an actual common IP setting across them all. They just see knights and elves and monsters and enjoy it from there.

So FFG's games succeed possibly in spite of, not because of, the generic Terrinoth fantasy setting.

For what it’s worth, I think I heard once that the Terrinoth and Twilight Imperium universes were Christian Petersen’s precious babies. I’m sure being able to reuse art assets was a plus for Fantasy Flight, but he wanted people to care about his settings too. I’ll be interested to see how much his departure affects those properties.

fightcitymayor wrote:

Jackwraith wrote: sigh... You guys keep pushing this "universally reviled" image and it simply doesn't comport with reality.

For most people, it's not that Terrinoth is "universally reviled" but rather it's "universally forgettable."

This. Of the dozens and dozens and dozens of people I've played games with in the last 15 years, I could probably count on one hand the number of people who ever heard the word Terrinoth. And I would further bet that none of them would have any emotional reaction to it. It's not really a draw and it's not really a revulsion any more than any number of other generic fantasy settings would be.

From a business perspective, I get it. Keeping art and graphic design costs down makes sense to me.

Either fuel to a fire or perspective on things...

But here's a great interview that dropped yesterday with Papa Petersen himself: spacecatspeaceturtles.podbean.com/

Though they talk about Twilight Imperium quite a bit, you do get some good historical insights into this thinking during the timeframe that's referenced so much in this thread.

Personally, I'm less interested in what any COMPANY is doing, so much as I'm interested in what individual PEOPLE are contributing and creating. According to CTP (and I'm no gaming historian) though, I'd say he led some trends that we very much see today like the prevalence of BG video content and IP adaptations.

Oh, and he talks about MIDNIGHT CHRONICLES (FFG's movie!) that he made and how it directly led to them making BG trailers.