Batman Kickstarter (w/discussion of FOMO sales method)

Circling back around to Batman...I think when we cut through all the discussion here, the problem is that this is an EXTREMELY high profile game with an EXTREMELY high profile and in demand licensed setting...that is being sold ONLY as an advance, pre-sold product line. As far as I can see, there is no option to wait and see, there is no option to conservatively invest other than to buy just the base game at $160 including shipping.

This should not be OK with people. Buyers should have the common sense to see that they are being led by the nose here. I think this is borderline unscrupulous, and over the line exploitative.

A Batman board game does not need Kickstarter to get published. If you think it does, the marketing is working. Now, with that said, for Monolith to publish basically an entire product line all at once with tons of redundant, excessive content...AT ZERO RISK...yeah, that needs the rubes.

I just think that the right questions are not being asked about this, and I think that this is setting a horrifying precedent. $100 Space Hulk set a bad one. This is much worse.

The exclusivity is the biggest lump of bullshit in this whole thing. I decided back with Kingdom Death- no matter how great it is- that if you are going to make it challenging to buy your game...fuck you, I’ll spend money with companies that want their product to be available and accessible. Same thing here. Fuck Monolith if they want to essentially threaten inaccessibility and unavailability...unless you back now.

I’ve made it 42 years without the ultimate Batman game, I’ll get by just fine without it. But it does suck, because I would love to be able to buy it.

My ideal Batman game would have long-term strategic planning, maybe some deduction, and a strong narrative among other things. Maybe have one player be Batman and everyone else be villains. Sort of a reverse Fury of Dracula where they're trying to avoid Batman instead of hunting him down. While he's trying to figure out what each of them are up to and stop them. Or perhaps something else that isn't just another tactical skirmish minis game.

Now, that is the better argument. I don't think I will back it because: (a) I have Conan and (b) if I want Batman miniatures, I will probably just go the Dark Knight minis route that someone brought up earlier (even though it is more expensive per mini.

I think that the reskinning Conan (for the most part) is lazy and, as Michael says, they are really using people's love of Batman to drive the KS. And, like Mad Dog, another tactical skirmish minis game isn't too exciting -- hell, the reverse Fury of Dracula game is 100x more interesting prima facie.

And, as Michael said, it is really hard to believe that Batman needs KS. It has been a popular character/setting for literally decades. It has never faded from the public's view. But, from a business point of view, they are going to bring in a couple million dollars (I have no idea how much of that is profit). Good for them -- but, like others, I'm not going to support this due to the footprint and the fact that I have enough minis from GW to deal with.

As for a precedent, I don't know if this sets it or not. Eventually the subset of people who can afford to go all in on games like this will eventually have reached saturation. It doesn't seem like a long term viable strategy

Motorik wrote: Let's not pretend that Kickstarter boasts a steady stream of weird, left-field outsider games. 95% of the games on Kickstarter are fucking generic as hell, with generic artwork and generic gameplay that wouldn't be at all out of place in the lineup of an Iello or Asmodee or another similar company that churns out stupid inoffensive chaff.

True, I don't think anyone believes otherwise. However, it does bring some unique stuff along with the 95% of games that are shitty. Since I don't feel compelled to back every board game project -- I am ok with that.

Circling back to Cthulhu Wars, it's a game I would love to buy and play, but there is no way I can justify its price and footprint as it now stands. Now that the game is successful, I don't see why a miniature-free version is such an impossibility for CP. At this point, minis are pretty much off limits for me.

It’s NOT a viable long term strategy. It’s a short sell, take the money and run strategy.

But then there is the “Season 2” Kickstarter...

I mean FFS, board games have “seasons” now?

A true Batman game would be like a cross between Consulting Detective and Gunslinger. Not skirmish minis.

Michael Barnes wrote: A true Batman game would be like a cross between Consulting Detective and Gunslinger. Not skirmish minis.

This keeps coming up a lot in this thread, and I think this must be true for the comic nerds. For me, my love/association with Batman comes from watching the Animated Series as a kid, the movies (Michael Keaton was the best), and all the Arkham computer games (the later being the most influential here). I've not read a single Batman comic in my life. So from my view of things, other than potentially a lack of a real stealth mechanic (it's in there, but more about spending resources to stay hidden, I believe) a skirmish game makes sense. Perhaps the greater number of backers is closer to my background...or everyone just wants a box of minis.

Also, I was intrigued by the Conan mechanics but neutral on the theme. But, there is no way in hell I was going to buy a game with such a terrible depiction of women in it (true to the source material or not). This allows me to get in on that system with an IP I can get behind.

Maybe I'm naive about the connections between gradual content/expansion releases, retail availability, publisher vetting, critical reaction, and the design adjustments that happen throughout the life cycle of a more traditionally produced game. Complete KS exclusivity shuts this feedback loop down. Any kind of vetting or criticism is nonsensical since the product either doesn't exist yet or has already been delivered to what is potentially the only population that will own the game. What happens to criticism, discernment, and publisher/developer/designer reactions to these? From what I've seen they become crowdsourced... with the people who are hyped about the campaign or hyped about the new Cadillac they received.

So we end up with v2.0/reprint campaigns that use crowdsourced feedback from the echo chamber of pre-invested owners, or worse, we end up with crowdsourced ideas in the initial print run (e.g. Massive Darkness's campaign clusterfuck).

This seems like a volatile recipe for poor decisions on both sides of the chain (design/production & consumption).

I think we've been lucky with titles like CW, but I think cases like CMON's less fantastic releases are more par for the course. They keep pumping out iterations of product that are barely changed because everyone ostensibly loves what they're doing. Any counter-signal is being lost in the massive bombast of money being made. Now imagine those being 100% exclusive $300-fests.

I'll admit I'm an elitist when it comes to a dynamic like this. I don't think the crowd knows what's best for it, particularly when its information source is primarily what the producer and paid unboxers/previewers provide, followed by forum discussions to either bask in the game or repair it.

Edit: I now realize that I'm sounding like a broken record and basically reiterating arguments I made before. I'm just honestly baffled at how trashy and devoid of reliable information this archipelago of the hobby is becoming with this constantly running firehose that everyone decided to leave running for the past few years because weeee, money & plastic!

Michael Barnes wrote: It’s NOT a viable long term strategy. It’s a short sell, take the money and run strategy.

But then there is the “Season 2” Kickstarter...

I mean FFS, board games have “seasons” now?

A true Batman game would be like a cross between Consulting Detective and Gunslinger. Not skirmish minis.

If it was themed as a retro homage to the *POW!* Adam West era, I'd be all over a skirmish Batman. THAT makes thematic sense, especially if it had a sense of humor, and some Julie Newmar. Rarrwwr!

charlest wrote: C'mon, now.

"These impressed me not just with their size, but also their detail and the implication that these were toys meant to be played with. In addition to these incredible pieces, the game is also packed with scads of great-looking monsters and cultists for each of the four included factions. Nightgaunts, Byahkees, Hunting Horrors, Deep Ones, Fungi from Yuggoth- if you know these names, you’ll be thrilled to hold these pieces in your hands."

"The miniatures, if you can call them that, do actually impart a sense of grandiose, cyclopean theater to the game and I would not want them to be reduced or replaced by less extravagant components."

" I appreciate the heart and soul of this game, I value that Mr. Petersen in some sense regards it as a culmination of his life’s work in games."

Sure, just reduce the minis. You can play Warhammer with tokens too.

God, I was just thinking this. I actually respect MB for admitting he changes his mind on things but sometimes it just pushes too far.

At the risk of sounding like Dad, I think there's a factor missing in the discussion, that Kickstarter brought to the picture. Where the money goes.

Kickstarter isn't a publishing platform. It's a store, one that only charges a few percentage points markup. That's the disruption they've brought to the market. Were traditional publishers, Asmodee and the like, willing to cut brick and mortar game stores loose and sell directly to consumers as their prime (i.e., only) delivery mechanism, games like Cthulhu Wars would become much more economically viable for them to produce. They would pick up about 100% of the revenue off of each copy. As it stands Asmodee is selling to a distributor who doubles their price, who sells to a retailer who doubles again (more or less), meaning that the publisher needs to get by on 25% revenue. That's why Petersen was turned down by the traditional publishers.

Alright, yeah. But screw traditional publishers that use Kickstarter! Money grab! Cheating! Hell yeah, why not? GMT is more or less doing it to sell very esoteric games (the Philippine insurgency of 1983 is a current feature on their web site) so why not everyone else? I think that's the question going forward. I think the market hasn't settled down on how it's going to sell games in the 2020s.

^agree, great post.

I go back and forth with Kickstarter because I think it produces good stuff and a tidal wave of garbage. Argent is all time great. Xia is a fun outsider-ish game. CW sounds like it's good. etc. But there's a lot of grifting going on out there. So the question is should I be concerned about others being grifted? On boardgames, probably no, though it's hard to watch what I consider the successful (re)rise of grifters in the US in general society impassively.

My beef is more where the discourse here is at right now. Specifically, the buy all at once thing is really pissing me off. I *really* wanted 7th Continent but I just couldn't afford it... and being told it'll never be printed again, like they also did, felt like a pretty annoying pressure. I ended up not backing it even though I could have gone in at base level. It would have annoyed the shit out of me to have the base game and then have to trawl secondary market for the rest of the game later if I wanted it. I get that that's irrational, but I recognize that as a human I am irrational. Batman is doing the same thing, luckily I'm less interested in tactical minis than what 7th continent was doing. In addition, 7th continent also had the big benefit to me of being a 2nd kickstarter on a more proven product with really good buzz from people whose tastes align with mine (e.g. Charlie).

Gary Sax wrote: ^agree, great post.

I go back and forth with Kickstarter because I think it produces good stuff and a tidal wave of garbage. Argent is all time great. Xia is a fun outsider-ish game. CW sounds like it's good. etc. But there's a lot of grifting going on out there. So the question is should I be concerned about others being grifted? On boardgames, probably no, though it's hard to watch what I consider the successful (re)rise of grifters in the US in general society impassively.

I think it's good to critique what's going on, raise questions, and so on, but I don't hold out any hope that it would do any good, even though a "bust" seems likely.

I’m just appalled that none of you have stopped to consider Black Barney in all of this. This must be like watching mommy and daddy argue over the bills for him.

MattDP wrote: Am I the only person who finds it alarming this is a "Kickstarter exclusive"? That a game based on Conan, which got a very mediocre reception, is pushing consumers toward a blind purchase on the basis of a great licence and nice figures?

As a retailer, it's pretty annoying, and as a consumer I've got no interest in something like this, so yes.