Holiday Sales 2018

CMON games appearing at Marshall’s...wow. That means they sold overstock to liquidators. Wouldn’t be surprised to see more of their underperforming titles there. Like all of them except Zombicide, Blood Rage, and Rising Sun.

CMON's having a bad year.

http://www.tabletopwire.com/cmon-reports-losses-stock-continues-slide/

Do you think it’s the curse of crowdfunding and caused by an over reliance on Kickstarter by CMON?

Let’s face it- word is getting out that most of CMON’s games -suck-. The ones that don’t suck either fail to meet sales expectations (suck as Kaosball) or are utterly redundant with other titles in their catalog. And when a title is redundant in their catalog, it means an -entire product line- is redundant. I mean, there are how many Zombicide SKUs on top of Black Plague, the goblin one, and the space one? And each of those had MULTIPLE expansion skus attached to it.

Blood Rage is one of their top games and they not only made that entire line redundant with Rising Sun, they are desparately trying to relaunch it with a new Kickstarter campaign. I mean, WTF.

CMON is doomed. Most of their games are about as relevant as Battle Cattle or SPANC. In a lot of ways, they are the Steve Jackson Games of this generation.

At one time I wanted to trade for Rum and Bones. I have it on my BGG Trade list. About once a week, I get someone offering a massive pile of it for something worth about half its retail value. And I decline every time.

Most CMON games are garbage. Full stop. Best thing they ever did was Ethnos.

ChristopherMD wrote: CMON's having a bad year.

http://www.tabletopwire.com/cmon-reports-losses-stock-continues-slide/

They must be burning thru a ton of expenses to blame conventions for losing that much money. Sounds like Geek Chic all over again. Lose money despite getting cash up front before delivering product? That’s fucked up.

Stuff showing up in Marshall’s is not a good sign.

Most of CMONs games are far, far, far from garbage. They might be loaded with trite nerdbait subject matter that irritates this fucking elitist cabal, but they’re far from bad games. Ethnos is certainly the best, but when taken without the truckload of useless KS extras and redundant releases that puts sports video games to shame, Blood Rage, Arcadia Quest, The Godfather, and a few others are FUN games.

CMON is doomed, no question there, but not for quality or the “KS is dying” fucking wet dream bullshit that permeates this site, it’s simply that someone never learned the law of diminishing returns. Zombicide and Arcadia Quest in particular are guilty, there’s only so many times you can sell some one the same thing they already bought.

While I’m fired up and on a tirade, let this be the warning that I better not see ONE. SINGLE. KICKSTARTED. GAME. on anyone’s Best of 2018 lists. Noses will be getting stuck in their own piles of shit.

Zombicide was fantastic for what it was.

SuperflyTNT wrote: Zombicide was fantastic for what it was.

I wasn’t so keen on the base game, but after hearing the rules changes made in Black Plague, I picked up a cheap copy of Rue Morgue and played with the new rules. I might have been in the wrong place when I played the original, it might be that the new rules were that much better, but I’ve had a blast with the series since. It was never going to set the world on fire, that type of game can’t do that, but I’m still willing to say it’s the best at what it does.

Josh Look wrote: . . . but when taken without the truckload of useless KS extras and redundant releases that puts sports video games to shame, Blood Rage, Arcadia Quest, The Godfather, and a few others are FUN games.

Ah, but it's that truckload of useless KS extras that devalue the more spartan versions of the games. The hobbyist market isn't going to pony up MSRP for a "lesser" version of the game.

It may well be that Marshall's is a good place to be selling these games, as people that aren't informed that they're buying the "lesser" version will purchase and have fun with them, blissfully unaware of how awful the components they're playing with are!

Kickstarter is a two-edged sword. It isn't conducive to selling copies in traditional retail channels afterwards. One of my local game store owners won't buy kickstarted games ever, because they languish on the shelves for months even when he only buys one or two copies.

Think I only have three CMON games on my shelf right now: Modern Art, Seven Sins: The Others, and Blood Rage.

Modern Art is fine because, duh. I really like The Others, but I think I'm a minority opinion both here and among my gaming group, who can't really get campaign-lite games into their heads anymore. Blood Rage continues to be excellent. I have all three expansions for it, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the base game and we still play it that way whenever new people drop in and still have a great time with it.

But I think Sag's point is salient, in that Kickstarter presents a quandary for both completionists and regular gamers. For the former, it's the obvious "gotta have it all", but for the latter, the additional stuff is often presented in a way that makes it seem essential for the experience. I haven't gotten in to Rising Sun, despite enjoying the game, because I haven't wanted to fork over the sizable amount of cash for the Daimyo pledge. I've seen multiple reports suggesting that the Fox Clan basically completes the experience or otherwise feels essential to have in larger games. TMK, the only way to get the Fox Clan is via the Daimyo pledge from a reseller. That makes me less likely to just pick up the base game. Keep in mind that I'm labeling anyone that pays even mild attention to sites like ours or BGG as "regular gamers", since those are the people most likely to pick up games like Rising Sun to begin with (People at Marhsall's...? Probably not so much.)

30% loss in revenue is huge. They did cite lower returns on KS, so perhaps it's time to rejigger the business model.

Josh Look wrote: While I’m fired up and on a tirade, let this be the warning that I better not see ONE. SINGLE. KICKSTARTED. GAME. on anyone’s Best of 2018 lists. Noses will be getting stuck in their own piles of shit.

Ahem. Yellow & Yangtze was kickstarted.

The Estates was also kickstarted

Didn't cmon Kickstart two scifi versions of their popular franchises this year that broke compatibility with all the stuff their fans already bought? That seemed questionable to me at the time, but Im not the target audience for their stuff either way so I'm not the best judge.

Jackwraith wrote: 30% loss in revenue is huge. They did cite lower returns on KS, so perhaps it's time to rejigger the business model.

Time to realize that Kickstarter can't be depended upon to produce irrational exuberance forever. Ebay had a similar crazy-time when it first started out, now it's more or less a flea market. Kickstarter is maturing into a P500 storefront, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone in business.

Gregarius wrote:

Josh Look wrote: While I’m fired up and on a tirade, let this be the warning that I better not see ONE. SINGLE. KICKSTARTED. GAME. on anyone’s Best of 2018 lists. Noses will be getting stuck in their own piles of shit.

Ahem. Yellow & Yangtze was kickstarted.

I don't think Josh has a problem with people putting Kickstarter games on best of lists, I think this quoted text is mostly meant as a shot at people deriding Kickstarter and then putting Kickstarter games on their best of lists.

I'm excited for Josh to lose it when Barnes lists Root.

It's obvious that SEAL Team Flix will be at the top of everyone's list, and it wasn't Kickstarted, so both Josh and the hobby can win.