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Private equity doing what private equity does
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Jan 7, 2020 21:37
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canyoneer posted:Private equity doing what private equity does Yeah it's this. As far as I can tell, there's been no explanation given and knowing what I do about how Asmodee functions internally, there won't be, or there will be a generic "consolidating company strengths" kind of statement, but the fact that they axed the entirety of marketing and some of customer service would point to those departments getting outsourced (or at least handed off entirely to another branch) points to it being a revenue-driven decision
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Jan 7, 2020 21:42
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It isn't a huge shocker it wasn't doing well. It was always a niche thing, but I still loved it.
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Jan 7, 2020 22:01
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On the bright side, if anyone's got an 'L5R with the serial numbers filed off' game they want to sell, now's the time.
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Jan 7, 2020 22:08
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Mors Rattus posted:Losing the L5R rpg is gonna be a huge sadness. They were doing some truly amazing work with it. I'd say there's a pretty good chance that L5R will continue to exist as a product line developed almost entirely through contract/freelance work. So it'll be worse, but it'll exist.
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Jan 7, 2020 22:08
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canyoneer posted:Private equity doing what private equity does Precisely. It's over for anything that private equity acquires. The question is "how fast"?.
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Jan 7, 2020 22:23
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MockingQuantum posted:Yeah it's this. As far as I can tell, there's been no explanation given and knowing what I do about how Asmodee functions internally, there won't be, or there will be a generic "consolidating company strengths" kind of statement, but the fact that they axed the entirety of marketing and some of customer service would point to those departments getting outsourced (or at least handed off entirely to another branch) points to it being a revenue-driven decision That part I get. The Interactive I don't, what with a new Journeys of Middle Earth expansion coming, and how FFG has been branching out into it, but okay, that's all dead/outsourced to Asmodee (who I think have something, but not as much experience). Genesys was not well launched and needed more support, and Star Wars likewise (though SW pretty much instantly went out of stock every release) but L5R has been doing well, and selling through its print runs pretty quickly (albeit as ever with FFG, they underprint/produce everything). PST fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 22:42
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PST posted:That part I get. I admittedly don't know much about FFI since it was its own thing and isn't local, but I got the impression that it never really took off, financially speaking. I think Asmodee's digital arm is mostly just a publishing entity, I think most of the actual development gets outsourced, but I can't swear to that. The RPGs seemed like they never got the support they needed, there was a lot of interference from outside sources, and it's just hard to make money in RPGs since you need a constant churn of content or you hit a point where everybody that's going to buy a sourcebook already has and your revenue sources dry up. I think they never completely bounced back after losing the GW properties. edit: part of the issue with the RPGs is that FFG (at least used to) make a not-insignificant portion of its revenue from international sales, and it's prohibitively costly to translate and print RPGs in multiple languages, so the RPG wing never really had that going for them
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Jan 7, 2020 22:51
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Per the reddit thread, Fantasy Flight Interactive's only credit was the Lord of the Rings card game app adaptation https://www.fantasyflightinteractive.com/en/ Even though the card game is quite good it doesn't sound like that app (with different rules) ever quite took off.
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Jan 7, 2020 23:05
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MockingQuantum posted:edit: part of the issue with the RPGs is that FFG (at least used to) make a not-insignificant portion of its revenue from international sales, and it's prohibitively costly to translate and print RPGs in multiple languages, so the RPG wing never really had that going for them Have you got a source or something for this? I wasn’t aware of any major US companies apart from WotC translating their RPG products into multiple languages instead of just selling the original English version internationally as well. I known there’s specific exceptions like Shadowrun and GURPS apparently being huge in Germany and Japan respectively, but I wasn’t aware of international translations still being a really big deal.
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Jan 7, 2020 23:32
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Comrade Koba posted:Have you got a source or something for this? I wasn’t aware of any major US companies apart from WotC translating their RPG products into multiple languages instead of just selling the original English version internationally as well. Most of what I know about the RPG branch is secondhand, so it's mostly speculation. As far as I know, they didn't translate RPGs, at least my wife (who worked in international non-English sales) never handled any of the RPG properties, but I imagine they were part of the English language territory sales team, I don't know how much of a focus it was for them. I would assume the GW properties and SW rpgs were fairly widespread, but that's a guess.
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Jan 7, 2020 23:35
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Toss a coin to your Witcher... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_50m0Vm5VvQ
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Jan 8, 2020 03:26
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Counterpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLkuJvLgrIg
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Jan 8, 2020 03:32
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Slimnoid posted:Counterpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLkuJvLgrIg Counter-counterpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qso8zgO1Bo
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Jan 8, 2020 06:11
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Leraika posted:Carmen Miranda's Ghost is great and I will near nothing bad about it. I of all people will not throw stones about filk. The very first album I owned as a little kid was this magical thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9NPlbTyU40 Meguey Baker has mentioned talking to the creators of ElfQuest about doing a modern RPG for them, one that isn't using the Runequest engine of all things, but they haven't been able to make it happen yet. Talk about a game whose time has come, culturally. There was a time when "our elves are universally pansexual, frequently polyamorous / engaged in relationship anarchy, and have notable trans themes" would have been unpublishable; now, it's something you can put in bold on the Kickstarter.
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Jan 8, 2020 07:05
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admanb posted:I'd say there's a pretty good chance that L5R will continue to exist as a product line developed almost entirely through contract/freelance work. This is basically how it is already done, tbh. 95% of contributors for L5R 5th Ed RPG books are freelance writers. Just like it was back in the AEG days too.
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Jan 8, 2020 07:55
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Spookyelectric posted:This is basically how it is already done, tbh. Excuse me, but I remember the days when John Wick painstakingly translated the divine words of the Hentai Emperor directly to the page for the benefit of all.
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Jan 8, 2020 14:11
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Kestral posted:I of all people will not throw stones about filk. The very first album I owned as a little kid was this magical thing: I haven’t thought about ElfQuest since I was literally 7 and a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand then just clicked. Wow. Also, why was I reading ElfQuest at 7. Thanks, dad.
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Jan 8, 2020 15:39
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Xiahou Dun posted:I haven’t thought about ElfQuest since I was literally 7 and a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand then just clicked. Wow. For the same reason I was reading Xanth at that age. It's fantasy! It's for kids!!
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Jan 8, 2020 16:29
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Kestral posted:There was a time when "our elves are universally pansexual, frequently polyamorous / engaged in relationship anarchy, and have notable trans themes" would have been unpublishable; now, it's something you can put in bold on the Kickstarter. A friend tried to app a trans character on an Elfquest MUX (like a MUD, but more RP, less fighting) once, and the admin response was less than shiny. Personally, that whole Recognition business has creeped me the gently caress out forever.
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Jan 8, 2020 16:44
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Bieeanshee posted:A friend tried to app a trans character on an Elfquest MUX (like a MUD, but more RP, less fighting) once, and the admin response was less than shiny. - "Wow, this was entirely the wrong source material to use as a testbed for RuneQuest 3rd Edition's new extra-crunchy mechanics." - "WTF is with this Recognition poo poo?" I think it is an aspect of the text which has aged especially poorly, and would also submit that most decades-old takes on pansexuality/polyamory/trans themes have likely aged similarly poorly. The conversation on all of those issues has moved on substantially, even in the RPG space, and there's doubtless all sorts of poo poo in Elfquest which only flew because it was the 1980s and not enough people knew better at the time.
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Jan 8, 2020 17:26
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Bieeanshee posted:A friend tried to app a trans character on an Elfquest MUX (like a MUD, but more RP, less fighting) once, and the admin response was less than shiny. Given how absolutely creepy "be forced to have sex with this other person whether either of you like it or not" is, that's totally valid. Given how absolutely creepy the Pinis are in general, it's even more valid.
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Jan 8, 2020 17:27
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Comrade Koba posted:Have you got a source or something for this? I wasn’t aware of any major US companies apart from WotC translating their RPG products into multiple languages instead of just selling the original English version internationally as well. I don't know if anybody still cares, but what I got from someone in the company is that translating the RPGs was never really an option and wasn't ever really discussed, they did translate Baron Munchausen into German but that was more on the Asmodee side and it was something the Germany branch was confident would do well. She said it's possible some of the GW RPGs may have gotten translated into German but that would have been before her time. There was some sales overseas in territories that weren't primarily English-language sales Apparently the RPGs weren't actually produced by the Asmodee factory, which meant they had a much, much smaller margin than board games, so they were never particularly profitable.
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Jan 8, 2020 17:33
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I assume translation work, especially professionally done, is just so far beyond what RPG companies can afford.
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Jan 8, 2020 17:41
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Lord_Hambrose posted:I assume translation work, especially professionally done, is just so far beyond what RPG companies can afford. Well with Asmodee/FFG, as I understand it, translation is handled by whatever partner/branch is actually handling distribution for that territory, so the Czech partner translated games into Czech, Italian partner handles Italian, etc. so it's not really an all-or-none proposition, but yeah, the volume of text makes it prohibitively expensive, even when they've got a working relationship with translators. German and French were probably the only languages where it made sense for them to consider translating RPGs because they always had strong markets in those languages. I think the bigger impetus not to translate is just that in most non-English territories, all of their potential customers who would buy RPGs tended to be English speakers anyway. It was definitely true of bigger/more involved board games that a lot of regions didn't bother translating them, because they were expensive, and oftentimes in a lot of the territories, people who were affluent enough to spend disposable income on board games tended to be fluent (enough) in English as well, I guess
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Jan 8, 2020 17:47
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taichara posted:Given how absolutely creepy the Pinis are in general, it's even more valid. Oof. I always had my suspicions, but never heard much about them directly besides editorial bits in the comics.
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Jan 8, 2020 18:39
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Bieeanshee posted:Oof. I always had my suspicions, but never heard much about them directly besides editorial bits in the comics.
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Jan 8, 2020 18:41
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Another thing I I just though about, do you guys think that FFGs rpg sales were hurt by not releasing digitally on Drivethru the day the physical copy came out? I know I was annoyed having to wait an unknowable amount of time for the L5R pdfs to go up for sale. With the Star Wars license not letting them sell digitally is obviously not great situation, but for other stuff I feel they missed out on a lot of momentum.
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Jan 8, 2020 18:42
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Another thing I I just though about, do you guys think that FFGs rpg sales were hurt by not releasing digitally on Drivethru the day the physical copy came out? I know I was annoyed having to wait an unknowable amount of time for the L5R pdfs to go up for sale.
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Jan 8, 2020 18:46
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Warthur posted:Were they also lackadaisical about getting WFRP/40K RPG stuff on DriveThru? I seem to remember their PDF offerings on that front weren't very inspiring, and the fact that Cubicle 7 is selling PDFs of old and current WFRP editions and the FFG-era 40K RPGs suggests that GW aren't as uptight on the point as Disney are. FFG basically does the thing Atlas Games used to do, where the PDFs don't go up until the physical books have been out for four to six months, in theory to make piracy more annoying.
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Jan 8, 2020 18:52
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Mors Rattus posted:FFG basically does the thing Atlas Games used to do, where the PDFs don't go up until the physical books have been out for four to six months, in theory to make piracy more annoying. Pirates find a way though, there's nothing you can do to make piracy harder that doesn't just cost you legitimate sales as well.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:01
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Kwyndig posted:Pirates find a way though, there's nothing you can do to make piracy harder that doesn't just cost you legitimate sales as well. I do not disagree. Their idea seems to be that they can't stop piracy, but if they wait just long enough that someone tears their book apart to make a PDF, then release a better PDF, it will discourage it. I think this is silly. Atlas used to just want to sell out their physical books before they did PDFs, and their print runs were never super big. It was also silly.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:03
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Another thing I I just though about, do you guys think that FFGs rpg sales were hurt by not releasing digitally on Drivethru the day the physical copy came out? I know I was annoyed having to wait an unknowable amount of time for the L5R pdfs to go up for sale. It's still crazy that Star Wars book PDFs for the RPG fall under an electronic game license which is a completely different thing. And probably more expensive.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:23
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Mors Rattus posted:I do not disagree. Their idea seems to be that they can't stop piracy, but if they wait just long enough that someone tears their book apart to make a PDF, then release a better PDF, it will discourage it. I think this is silly.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:25
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Dawgstar posted:It's still crazy that Star Wars book PDFs for the RPG fall under an electronic game license which is a completely different thing. And probably more expensive. All of the licensing surrounding LFL properties is bonkers. Print RPGs is a different license than digital RPG releases, and board games are a different license than miniature games, which is apparently why FFG was adamant that Imperial Assault never be referred to as a miniatures game, since at the time Hasbro (I think) held the mini games license for SW stuff. Mors Rattus posted:Atlas used to just want to sell out their physical books before they did PDFs, and their print runs were never super big. It was also silly. FWIW Atlas is tiny compared to FFG (or most board game developers) so I think they've always had to dance around the line of printing enough physical copies to both satisfy anti-digital grognards and make printing not horrifically cost-prohibitive, and not lose their shirts if the physical books don't sell out.
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Jan 8, 2020 19:48
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taichara posted:Given how absolutely creepy "be forced to have sex with this other person whether either of you like it or not" is, that's totally valid. Given how absolutely creepy the Pinis are in general, it's even more valid. What do they do that's creepy?
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Jan 8, 2020 21:02
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I think Pelgrane Press still delays PDFs for a few months, though you get one if you order the physical book. When I asked about it they said it was to support brick and mortar stores.
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Jan 8, 2020 23:33
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LatwPIAT posted:What do they do that's creepy? For starters they have absolutely no question in pursuing the same "free love open sex" antics in Elfquest in real life, to the tune of Richard luring or attempting to lure young teenagers to his bed at conventions. The most well-known name attached to this lovely behaviour is Colleen Doran (who's been under a gag order from these two arseholes for decades now after the way they subsequently tried to screw her over with her own book), who relates how she spent an entire night holed up in a hotel lobby because as a fresh-faced new arrival to the comics field she attended an event with her publisher -- Richard Pini -- and look at that he only arranged one room and one bed. The Pinis can rot.
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Jan 9, 2020 01:46
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Jesus christ that's brazen.
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Jan 9, 2020 07:55
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MockingQuantum posted:FWIW Atlas is tiny compared to FFG (or most board game developers) so I think they've always had to dance around the line of printing enough physical copies to both satisfy anti-digital grognards and make printing not horrifically cost-prohibitive, and not lose their shirts if the physical books don't sell out. FFG's print runs were tiny as well though. So much of their stuff would go out of stock immediately on release/pre-orders, especially for the EU. And then you'd have a 4-6 month wait to get it, and sometimes that would also go immediately out of print.
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Jan 9, 2020 13:37
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