Fight Klub

www.decipher.com/fightklub/blog

Check this out. I'm curious to see what you folks think about all this.

I actually think the distribution/"invite only" concept is brilliant- like I kind of touched on in the MUTANT CHRONICLES article, collectible games live and die by the existence of a community. FIGHT KLUB is basically a way for Decipher to put the marketing of the game into the hands of the players, going so far as to offer a cash kickback to spread it. It's in the player's interest to build the community not only to have someone to play the game with but also to get rewarded. Of course, if the game sucks are people going to spread it just to get their 10% kickback?

The HUGE downside is that they are actively cutting out gamestores and distributors...but as far as Decipher is concerned, that's a smart move given the state of the industry and the decline of the FLGS. They're basically not counting on the stores and distributors that couldn't get any of their other CCGs off the ground to do anything. It's smart, but very distressing in terms of what it could mean for the industry if other companies do similar things.

But I also think that modeling it on FIGHT CLUB is completely fucking stupid. If I were Chuck Palahiniuk or anyone involved with the movie, I'd be looking at a lawsuit.

As someone who got burned by Decipher a couple of times, I pretty much have little interest in what they're doing these days.

The whole thing is a pyramid scheme, the theme is ridiculous, their little video is stupid, the name is idiotic...frankly, this looks like a horse shit sandwich to me.

Ha ha...I didn't think about it that way, but it IS a pyramid scheme! At least they're being upfront about it...

They're obviously going for a post-teen audience with it all, which usually engenders a lot of wretched marketing. Guess they're banking that the 18-25 year old set never heard of Amway.

I'm always interested to see what happens though, when game companies at least _try_ to be innovative...there's so much damn malfeasance in the business that these things almost always flop. Except for MAGIC's booster pack racket...that changed the industry.

A new company MIGHT could get away with this, but Big D has a lot of anomosity and a bad reputation with gamers. No way are teeming masses of people going to trust them to be the head of a pyramid scheme.

Well, that's a good point...and frankly Decipher's reputation with retailers and distributors is only slightly higher than that enjoyed by WizKids (aka "those stupid sons of bitches at WizKids"). Which may explain why they're staking out on their own.

It's the AVON of gaming companies!
And I don't mean AVON HILL!

Ken B. wrote:

A new company MIGHT could get away with this, but Big D has a lot of anomosity and a bad reputation with gamers. No way are teeming masses of people going to trust them to be the head of a pyramid scheme.

Yep. Seriously, fuck Decipher. They have screwed over too many gamers too many times. Let me list the ways:

1. Star Trek CCG. During all of the playtesting, nobody noticed the potential trouble of keeping track of who owns which cards? The rare cards unbalanced the game badly, and haphazardly added concepts that didn't work well together. They rapidly doubled the number of card types from 9 to 17 in just a couple of years.

2. Star Wars CCG. Booster boxes were big in those days, but if you bought a booster box of Star Wars CCG, you *might* get one card representing a popular character like Han Solo or R2-D2. Most of your cards would be very minor characters or otherwise non-central concepts from the movies. Around this time, I began to realize that Decipher considered the whole concept of "rare cards" to be license to rape and loot the players.

3. Lord of the Rings CCG. Wrestled the license away from a superior CCG on the same topic. As with Star Trek and Star Wars, they published abusively large base sets with too many rares, just to completely shake down collectors.

4. Fight Klub CCG. As Ken said, this is a blatant pyramid scheme, straight out of the Amway handbook. Might even be illegal in some states. Once again, Decipher assumes that gamers are stupid and plots to relieve them of their hard-earned dollars.

Hopefully most CCG players have learned at least one bitter lesson from Decipher, so that this Fight Klub nonsense will crash and burn immediately.

It looks like it will just exacerbate the problem of the player who spends the most has the best decks. The secretiveness and empowerment of the kids who act as dealers is not going to be popular with teachers and parents. Looks like a gimmick needed to sell a rubbish CCG.

Plus it's invitation only. So what, only the cool nerds can play?

Yeah, but creating that aura of exclusivity appeals to kids...it makes the game seem like something really special and "forbidden". Even the completely idiotic, lowest-common-denominator references to drug dealing (they're not boosters, they're "kilos").

What I think is interesting is that they're trying to essentially build a product line almost completely on "buzz" and street-level marketing. It's like the "Gabbo is coming" thing, almost. No one has seen or played the game and there is pretty much zero information about it other than this marketing scheme. And it looks like their forums are pretty hot. The funny thing is that 6,000 "exclusive" memberships are a pretty big number in terms of the hobby community- not in comparision to MAGIC sales, but to most other product lines a number like that is gigantic.

Decipher is definitely one of the worst names in the industry, they really should just hang it up or rename the business to trick people...they have zero reputation with venders and retailers, let alone their former fanbase. I remember when WARS came out they were basically trying to say that it was SWCCG but without the rare problem- you didn't have to worry about those "name" characters...because there weren't any! I had some of the Deciper street team people come into my store to try to drum up some interest in the game and they wound up being the biggest jerks I've ever met.

Wasn't there a company a couple of years ago that did the Avon thing with games? They got their people to host game parties and then recruit other hosts or something like that? I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a bunch of also-ran and 2nd tier companies experimenting with things like that in the future, alternate distribution methods to get around skittish distributors and failing FLGS.

I must admit I never heard of Decipher before, although I've seen the games in stores. But my Spidey Senses started tingling as soon as I saw the 10% back scheme. No good can come from that. I can see some harsh consequences for some kid who tries to scam his friends into something that is rubbish just to finance his own obsession.

I remember one friend in high school taking me to an Amway spiel. I could see it for what it was, and although just marginally friends at the time, our relationship cooled significantly after that.

BillN

I had the first couple sets of the Star Wars Collectible Card Game. I guess I didn't realize there were so many rares as I ended up paying a pretty penny for the Darth Vader and Obiwan. I guess I can understand why Luke and them would be rare but General Riekan? Bah. I never got any of the sets where they had Red Five with Luke cards or Luke with Lightsaber Cards (They combined the two cards from before). Ah well....

I'll admit I'm torn.

I appreciate any innovative efforts when it comes to finding new games to sell and new ways to sell them. I make no effort to predict whether such innovations will do well or not, since I have a long history of guessing wrong. ("A card game in which you don't get all the cards to play? So you keep buying packs and hope you get the cards you want? What a terrible idea! Do they think we're stupid?" )

But yeah, it just sounds like a bad idea born of desperation. And I think the Amway parallel is accurate. When a friend tries to sell you Amway (or some other MLM scheme), it's awkward at best, and friendship-killing at worst. Even if Decipher's pyramid scheme works, I can see it burning out very quickly: Players are forced to defend the company (and its product, which might suck) because they SOLD the product to their friends. If the friend has a bad experience (because the game sucks, or any number of other factors), who's he going to turn on? Decipher? Or the "friend" who suckered him into this in the first place? A couple bad turns like that, and you've got a network that doesn't just drift apart (like most) but actively implodes as anger and resentment flow back up the pyramid towards the corporate masters at the top.

Still... I have to give them credit for trying something new. But as someone else mentioned, they probably would have done better if they'd "spun off" a new company without a bad reputation.

Of course, I'm not the target market. I'm old, jaded, and lacking of spare time and cash to throw after the latest collectible fad. So Decipher doesn't want me in their pyramid anyway.

mikoyan wrote:

I had the first couple sets of the Star Wars Collectible Card Game. I guess I didn't realize there were so many rares as I ended up paying a pretty penny for the Darth Vader and Obiwan. I guess I can understand why Luke and them would be rare but General Riekan? Bah. I never got any of the sets where they had Red Five with Luke cards or Luke with Lightsaber Cards (They combined the two cards from before). Ah well....

They fixed this as time went on. Eventually "mains" were much easier to get, and as many collectors would angrily point out, the newer and easier to get versions were much more useful than the older, harder-to-get versions. The Luke with Lightsaber you're referring to was in a series of packs called "Enhanced Premiere" that had the card in the front of the pack through a see-through (so you knew what you were getting) along with four packs of Premiere, and it retailed for only a little more than those four packs would've cost you at MSRP. It was a sweet deal.

So eventually, Decipher did learn the error of their ways.


And promplty forgot it again when they did LOTR, which was the most insane, rare-hungry game ever. I played it tourney style for the first block and I remember just looking at my deck one day (a rainbow fellowship/Uruk deck) and it was 40/60 rare. That's simply ridiculous.

I guess it is an attempt at viral marketing. Like where Nike go to the skatepark and ask who is the coolest kid and secretly give him $1000 of free shoes and clothes so that his friends will buy Nike and their friends. Trouble is that the kid in question is selling therefore it will be plain for everyone to see that he has a vested interest. 10% discount is not enough of an enticement in my opinion. Look at Privateer Press, their press gangers get points which they can redeem as miniatures for each tournament and demo they run. This is a huge incentive to run events and to keep the scene for their games up and running. It looks to really work as well. My local press gangers put in a lot of effort. Miniatures I imagine are far more expensive to manufacture than CCG cards. I think a lot of CCG companies (eg. FFG) have similar schemes. These are more powerful incentives than 10% off. If they played another CCG that wasn't sold this way, they could get 40% off buying in bulk from online retailers.

>shrug< I liked LOTR a lot. One of the first CCGs or TCGs whatever it was I got into it. I came to the ccg party a bit late you see. I started off with the WOTC Star Wars, yea, yea, I know. Well, screw you, I think it is a damn fun game. I also enjoyed ST 2nd Edition. And Fight Klub has a Mr. Blonde card from Reservoir Dogs... I filled out their thing to be one of their first whatever you call its but I did make it abundantly clear in the form that I have no interest in selling the game as a pyramid scheme. I am curious to see the game and how it works but the whole selling model is just beyond stupid. If I ever hear back from them I'll let you know.