CMON's Hate, "Exclusivity," FOMO, and Josh's post about combat systems

Msample wrote: Other publishers are already using GameFound. The Core Worlds KS is on there.

It's been used by publishers a while now, just looking at my account there I have backed eight games other than Awaken Realms games on it in the last two plus years. But they are aiming to make it boardgame publisher friendly with a lot of the project options those companies use to be present and easy to use.

Msample wrote: I gotta assume AR/GameFound take a smaller cut or else why bother ? That said , even if its only a few percentage points less than KS, that falls right down to the bottom line as far as profit goes .

Not sure which you are referring to - Gamefound will be charging nothing for the time being to designers, Marcin did say they may look to a small charge in the future but at the moment is is free, and just from ISS: Vanguard they saved nearly half a million dollars so that's not a bad start.

Ah, I had not realized that it was already hosting non-AR stuff, I thought ISS Vanguard was the debut of it.

I'm told there is a possibility that Phantom Division will use it. Who knows.

Ah_Pook wrote: Looking at the gamefound page, looks like 10000 pledges for base game and 8000 for base game+minis, and 8000 for the all in expansions+minis.

I wonder who will be the first to acknowledge that these mini heavy KSs are mostly selling to mini collectors who couldn't care less about the game attached to them and just offer the minis as a separate pledge.

Kinda like Reaper Bones.

I think there's some confusion. Gamefound has been around a pretty long while but it existed purely as a Pledge Manager system.

ISS Vanguard was the first game to use it as a crowdfunding platform to replace Kickstarter's function.

jason10mm wrote:

Ah_Pook wrote: Looking at the gamefound page, looks like 10000 pledges for base game and 8000 for base game+minis, and 8000 for the all in expansions+minis.

I wonder who will be the first to acknowledge that these mini heavy KSs are mostly selling to mini collectors who couldn't care less about the game attached to them and just offer the minis as a separate pledge.

Kinda like Reaper Bones.

Yep, that has become quite obvious as I've joined 'the family' in the last year or two - but they are as valid people to buy games as anyone, and there are a LOT of them. And companies don't hide it - Mythic Games were quite happy to state that they wouldn't be doing a standees option for the Darkest Dungeon game (even though the art theme would suit them) because they are a company that concentrates on minis.

southernman wrote:

Msample wrote: Other publishers are already using GameFound. The Core Worlds KS is on there.

It's been used by publishers a while now, just looking at my account there I have backed eight games other than Awaken Realms games on it in the last two plus years. But they are aiming to make it boardgame publisher friendly with a lot of the project options those companies use to be present and easy to use.

He's referring to GameFound being used as a funding platform, not just a pledge manager (which is what it was up until ISS Vanguard). I do believe they will be charging something for the KS-like part, while they let the pledge manager be used for free thus far. Clearly they've been playing the long game, and I quite like the platform. I think they will take a significant chunk out of Kickstarters' board game business in the next couple of years.

I will Lang some credit. While giving us mini foreword games he also generally makes great games out of them.

Can’t speak to all his titles but he has some really great designs. In this age of so many games that’s not to be under valued.

While not 100% comfortable going in on a giant Lang Kickstarter I am more comfortable doing it than for many other developers.

^agree, actually. CMON made some good games, it was just a wave and you couldn't tell which ones were good ahead of time which was the business model. So Very Wrong About Games was just talking about Dogs of War which looks very interesting but, like everything, just drown in a wave of plastic as a KS.

This is where I'm just not in the loop enough to be cognizant of the CMON criticism. Other than the reprint of Modern Art (which I continue to say is an improvement because the visuals are better than the original), my only experience with CMON is with Eric Lang games: The Others, Blood Rage, and Rising Sun; all of which are great games, even if they are a sea of plastic. The only reason I bought them is because they were his designs. It's kind of ridiculous how much leeway he earned from me solely off CitOW, which I will also continue to say is probably the best original game that Fantasy Flight ever produced.

So, yeah, I've never been personally affected by the downside of CMON. I can't remember who it was that mentioned that they stranded a bunch of customers with their old company and then transformed into CMON and I certainly recognize some of their seemingly questionable business practices (no one gets de-listed on an exchange with a "going concern" citation without some real issues), so I know they're not saints. I've just been fortunate enough to only have gotten good stuff from them, albeit all of it through retail or trades, which may have been what led to my good fortune.

Edit: Now I remember it was n815e who was one of the people that CMON screwed in their earlier incarnation.