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The Moon Monster posted:This is such a weird take, I get not liking them but why is them dying a good thing? I got in on the ground floor when it came to being treated like poo poo by CMON. They didn't send me something I had paid for and blanked me multiple times when I filed an enquiry about it.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 01:22 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 00:06 |
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Jedit posted:I got in on the ground floor when it came to being treated like poo poo by CMON. They didn't send me something I had paid for and blanked me multiple times when I filed an enquiry about it. That and, as is, their business model of LITERALLY using kickstarters to stay afloat (aside from being publicly traded now) is just a dumpster fire. Their kickstarters have all become very cookiecutter in style, with an extremely low bar of entry/starting funding goal, then adding a million stretch goals to make backers feel fulfilled. In the end, it's just a facade rather than an honest campaign.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 06:17 |
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I seem to vaguely remember CMON managing kickstarters for smaller studios and not being too great about it. Is that still a thing they do? Was it ever? While i don't want to see any backers get shafted i think there's definitely an argument to be made that at the kickstarter segment of the boardgame industry is better off without CMON setting the expectations.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 10:50 |
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Bistromatic posted:I seem to vaguely remember CMON managing kickstarters for smaller studios and not being too great about it. Is that still a thing they do? Was it ever? They were working with Paolo Mori's Spaghetti Western Games at one point, they KSed Dogs of War and released Ethnos direct to retail IIRC. Of course Dogs of War had important gameplay components as KS exclusives, but it's still probably the best game they ever released.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 11:14 |
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And Ethnos is just begging for an expansion, and a map that isn't Slovakia. Interesting that they've supported The Grizzled as well as they have. Was it that much of a hit?
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 13:15 |
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The only CMON I started to back was Rivet Wars. I stopped backing them when they started doing all these KS exclusive addons and I didn't want to encourage that kind of activity.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 15:20 |
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The Moon Monster posted:This is such a weird take, I get not liking them but why is them dying a good thing?
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 16:40 |
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CMON did eventually respond to the audit news thing here: https://www.cmon.com/news/cmon-april-2020-update
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 16:53 |
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They've always done a bunch of Kickstarter exclusive stretch content and addons, from what I can tell. What really turned me off them was when they started doing entire games as Kickstarter exclusive addons on some other game's KS. Like when they did the sci-fi Zombicide, there was a separate $100 sci-fi Zombicide with a different premise that was an addon exclusive to that campaign. gently caress off. Edit: I mean, I'd mostly lost interest in their stuff from a design perspective by then anyway. But still. Ugh.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 16:54 |
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:The only CMON I started to back was Rivet Wars. I stopped backing them when they started doing all these KS exclusive addons and I didn't want to encourage that kind of activity. Honestly the CMON ethos of relying on FOMO just wears one out.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 17:10 |
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CMON's minis are great but their business practices are rear end. Seriously, consistently and intentionally shipping to retailers before the people who backed the game on Kickstarter? Sometimes months before? That's just being an rear end in a top hat for no loving good reason.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 17:42 |
Do CMON games even do well in retail? I feel like half the game is missing without the KS exclusives.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 18:11 |
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GrandpaPants posted:Do CMON games even do well in retail? I feel like half the game is missing without the KS exclusives. Zombicide sells well because the people who buy it and like it often don't even know about the exclusives. As for others, over here I rarely see a CMON game at retail at all.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 18:18 |
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Jedit posted:Zombicide sells well because the people who buy it and like it often don't even know about the exclusives. As for others, over here I rarely see a CMON game at retail at all. Ancedotal and all, but that mostly scans for my FLGS. Zombicide will move every now and then and the further we get from the zombie crazy the less that is, the other stuff generally warms shelves.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 18:28 |
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Jedit posted:Zombicide sells well because the people who buy it and like it often don't even know about the exclusives. As for others, over here I rarely see a CMON game at retail at all. The exclusives for Zombicide, at least in earlier projects where I was still buying in, were just survivors that either referenced famous movie characters or were sculpted by some presumably well known artist. Since Zombicide survivors only differ in like one special ability, and there are tons anyway, there's not that much to miss really.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 18:35 |
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Zombicide does well, Blood Rage did well, a few of their other non-KS centric titles that weren't stupid price have also sold okay, but for the most part not particularly ime. Although we also had KS versions of Rising Sun just sit on the shelf with no one interested in them.
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 04:20 |
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S.J. posted:Zombicide does well, Blood Rage did well, a few of their other non-KS centric titles that weren't stupid price have also sold okay, but for the most part not particularly ime. Although we also had KS versions of Rising Sun just sit on the shelf with no one interested in them. I feel that local interest on games at LGS is super loving weird - I've seen Zombicide sit on shelves for months, but Blood Rage and Rising Sun fly off the shelves. Regardless, people have seen how ridiculously well Blood Rage and Rising Sun go for on the secondary market due to just the sheer amount of value you get at the initial KS release. So that just ends up being a ton of people who buy (and fake a retail store, or similar) at large scale, and then flood facebook groups/EBay/other sales groups to scalp to everyone that missed out on the initial KS. Because of this, CMON also doubles down on the FOMO with promos, making it near impossible to get aside from their booths at cons, their own con, or at the initial KS release. With the rare promo from other boardgame review KS (like The Dice Tower) being the exception to the above, that's the only real way to get promos at a "reasonable" price. If CMON is doing the promos after the initial KS, you have to buy large amounts (at least in the low to mid 3 digit $ amount) to get "credits" that they can let you redeem towards promos. The point of my rambling, is that CMON knows whats going on with FOMO and almost always double down on it, which is really quite scummy of a business plan. They don't really have any other way of staying afloat aside from KS and being publically traded (which will probably tank them pretty easily). If they found a way to sell their other services like how they're able to churn out so much detailed models per project at a fast pace, then they'd be able to stay afloat; I've not heard them doing anything like that though.
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 05:53 |
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After the talk of CMON's business habits I took a look at Ankh which just launched and was a little surprised. You can only pledge $100, but that gets you everything, unless they add stuff later.
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# ? Apr 14, 2020 20:20 |
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Dawgstar posted:After the talk of CMON's business habits I took a look at Ankh which just launched and was a little surprised. You can only pledge $100, but that gets you everything, unless they add stuff later. It didn't arrive with most of the shrieking fanfare of CMON KS releases, so that was a pleasant surprise... But the rulebook really doesn't do much for me. Setting aside all of my anti-CMON bias at this point, it's hard for me to look at Ankh and find a strong reason to back it on its own basis. The graphic design feels... enh (Rising Sun, despite all its flaws, looked fantastic by comparison), the miniatures don't feel inspired, and the mechanics feel weirdly clunky (although I like the notion of area control shifting as you create new regions. Less a fan of the merging the two last place players later in the game to form a team, but whatever.) I don't know. I thought I'd be more tempted to back, but this feels like an easy pass. Especially with Kemet already doing this theme and this type of gameplay so well for me and anticipating Kemet 2.0 down the line. Anyone seeing something I'm not?
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# ? Apr 14, 2020 20:52 |
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Dawgstar posted:After the talk of CMON's business habits I took a look at Ankh which just launched and was a little surprised. You can only pledge $100, but that gets you everything, unless they add stuff later. I want you to search the deepest recesses of your heart. What are the odds that CMON, of all companies, doesn't add any addons during a Kickstarter campaign?
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# ? Apr 14, 2020 21:31 |
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Shinobigami is shipping.
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# ? Apr 14, 2020 21:39 |
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malkav11 posted:I want you to search the deepest recesses of your heart. What are the odds that CMON, of all companies, doesn't add any addons during a Kickstarter campaign? There will 100 percent be a "more gods" add-on.
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# ? Apr 14, 2020 21:53 |
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There's also the uncertainty of what the hell is going on inside CMON to worry about if you're looking at backing Ankh. Not exactly what I'd call a sure bet, despite CMON's track record of releases.
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# ? Apr 14, 2020 22:18 |
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malkav11 posted:I want you to search the deepest recesses of your heart. What are the odds that CMON, of all companies, doesn't add any addons during a Kickstarter campaign? Sure, but don't they normally sprint right out of the starting gate with them? It feels that way with the others. SilverMike posted:There's also the uncertainty of what the hell is going on inside CMON to worry about if you're looking at backing Ankh. Not exactly what I'd call a sure bet, despite CMON's track record of releases. According to one of their press releases they said that it's happened before and that it's fine, but now that just makes people think of the dog sitting in the fire.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 00:58 |
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Dawgstar posted:Sure, but don't they normally sprint right out of the starting gate with them? It feels that way with the others. With the Marvel game, they started with the base and one expansion so people would just go for the whole bundle. Then they added like 7 more expansions over the course of two weeks. Then they made a bundle tier for the whole thing. It’s designed to make you just say “I might as well get the base and expansion” so that when they add more expansions and a new tier you’re like “well it’s only a little more than that tier” and then a couple more expansions and repeat. There were probably 4 different “you get everything!” Tiers between the start of the Marvel campaign and the end.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 01:11 |
I scanned the Ankh Kickstarter and a few of the comments and it seems like nobody seems to be bringing up CMON's recent issues? It's not even mentioned in the "Risks" section. Just a lot of people stricken with FOMO.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 01:16 |
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GrandpaPants posted:I scanned the Ankh Kickstarter and a few of the comments and it seems like nobody seems to be bringing up CMON's recent issues? It's not even mentioned in the "Risks" section. Just a lot of people stricken with FOMO. If I weren't on this forum, I'd have no idea those issues existed.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 02:01 |
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Preview for the Nemesis stand alone expansion.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 02:26 |
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Memnaelar posted:It didn't arrive with most of the shrieking fanfare of CMON KS releases, so that was a pleasant surprise... But the rulebook really doesn't do much for me. Setting aside all of my anti-CMON bias at this point, it's hard for me to look at Ankh and find a strong reason to back it on its own basis. The graphic design feels... enh (Rising Sun, despite all its flaws, looked fantastic by comparison), the miniatures don't feel inspired, and the mechanics feel weirdly clunky (although I like the notion of area control shifting as you create new regions. Less a fan of the merging the two last place players later in the game to form a team, but whatever.) Unless it changed, you don't merge the last two players, but the first and last player and you play from the last player's position. When Lang pitched it to me it was one of the most interesting parts of the game to me. I'm a fan of this because Lang was very much "This game has player elimination in it. Some people won't like that and I'm okay with that" when he showed it to me. I wish more people who design games felt that way rather than "I must make every playtester like this game and remove all the feel bad moments until the game has no stakes" that seems to be pretty popular lately.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 02:59 |
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Spookyelectric posted:
The Tiny Taverns Kickstarter is live! Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them. Thank you goons! Edit: And we've funded! Wow, that feels good. Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Apr 15, 2020 |
# ? Apr 15, 2020 15:46 |
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Backed! Congrats buddy.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 19:55 |
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Spookyelectric posted:The Tiny Taverns Kickstarter is live! Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them. Thank you goons! Grats man!
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 21:13 |
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Spookyelectric posted:The Tiny Taverns Kickstarter is live! Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them. Thank you goons! Looks great. Backed and good luck!
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 00:36 |
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Looks great Spooky, backed.
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 01:13 |
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Anyone taken a look at "For Science!"? I was originally skeptical, but it being designed by the people who made Spirit Island made me curious. It kind feels like if you took the theme and unique player powers of Pandemic and mixed it with the tension-filled dexterity puzzling of Meeple Circus (with some Carcassonne mix&match thrown in). *definitely real edit* here's the right thread
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 03:26 |
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Spookyelectric posted:The Tiny Taverns Kickstarter is live! Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them. Thank you goons! I would like stretch goals. I know you said you aren't, but I like them anyway.
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 09:26 |
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Ooh. There's a sequel to Nemesis coming to Kickstarter. On the astronomically small chance there's a "no minis" level I'll be in on that
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 12:30 |
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Mojo Jojo posted:Ooh. There's a sequel to Nemesis coming to Kickstarter. On the astronomically small chance there's a "no minis" level I'll be in on that (10 posts above) I like how they’ve had to preemptively say this KS is just for the expansion, and won’t cover the original.
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 12:46 |
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The_Doctor posted:(10 posts above) I like how they’ve had to preemptively say this KS is just for the expansion, and won’t cover the original. I heard it was a standalone expansion anyway?
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 13:42 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 00:06 |
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Jedit posted:I heard it was a standalone expansion anyway? Indeed, no base game required.
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 13:43 |