Fantasy Flight and Games Workshop

So as I insinuated in the buying thread, I've been hearing some speculation about the future of FFG and GW, and what it means for various properties. I should emphasize that this is only speculation, and a lot of these things, taken by themselves, are probably meaningless. Also, these are based off of dribs and drabs I've picked up on BGG and /r/boardgames, certainly nothing definitive. There's a very good chance it's only hearsay. But amidst all the smoke I do wonder if there's a bit of fire.

So here are the conspiracies I've heard:

1. The Asmodee-eats-everything mergers has put a lot of GW IP rights in the hands of a company that is getting pretty big. I don't have any way to see any relative ideas of scale, but my gut tells me that Asmodee is still not nearly as large-scale as GW. That said, I don't know anything about market share, profits, or anything like that.

2. GW is obviously getting back into the board game market, to the point that a lot of people are starting to wonder if they will want another company making board games with their IP.

3. A couple of FFG GW titles have been dormant for a bit. This one actually holds the least amount of water for me. The WHQ card game hasn't been out a year yet, but people were already panicking that there was no expansion news as early as the beginning of 2016. The arrivial of POD expansions has fanned that flame a little, since people are now worried it's the new Gears of War. Diskwars is anotehr that hasn't had any expansions in two years, although I've heard rumors that "sales are good." Still, I don't expect much more from that. The big one seems to be Forbidden Stars, which also has no expansion news. Again, this seems like a non-starter to me. FFG has a lot on their plate and much more lucrative paths to explore these days.

4. There seems to be some rumor that the GW license for FFG is renewed on a yearly basis. I don't know if this is accurate or not, or if that is for individual games or just all of the GW IP. Until I find some kind of citation for this, I definitely take it with a grain of salt.

None of these things by themselves really worry me, but it does feel like something might be coming to a head. I have no idea how it would affect games like Fury of Dracula or Talisman. What do you guys think?

*Edit* I should also add that I'm sorry for using stuff like "rumor has it " and "people are saying," which makes wild theories sound more legit than they are. It's more just little rumblings than anything else, and it's very likely overblown.

Yeah, regardless of if there are rumors, #2 strikes me as a reason to have the eyebrows up.

I need to look at my wishlist and see if there is extant GW stuff that might need hoovering up.

I'm not an expert on financial releases but GW released theirs a week or two ago: www.belloflostsouls.net/2016/07/games-wo...nual-financials.html

From what I gather it was Games Workshop's licensing deals that pushed them across the line into profitability. Without them results would have been in the red. Granted the includes a lot of video games, but also the FFG board games and RPGs.

It's a little strange maybe to have Warhammer Quest: The Silver Tower on sale alongside Warhammer Quest: The Card Game by a different publisher. I don't know what they have in place in terms of rights. I can't imagine FFG is the kind of company to sign a deal that could yank an IP from them in 12 months.

2. GW is obviously getting back into the board game market, to the point that a lot of people are starting to wonder if they [Games Workshop] will want another company making board games with their [Games Workshop's] IP.

So to paraphrase, Games Workshop is rumored to be thinking about pulling their Warhammer and related licenses from FFG at some point, which means FFG will have to retheme everything, which, in the case of Dune, didn't work that well because nobody cares about the bland FFG universe.

metalface13 wrote: I'm not an expert on financial releases but GW released theirs a week or two ago: www.belloflostsouls.net/2016/07/games-wo...nual-financials.html

From what I gather it was Games Workshop's licensing deals that pushed them across the line into profitability. Without them results would have been in the red. Granted the includes a lot of video games, but also the FFG board games and RPGs.

I would assume that the profit from selling the licensed games would be greater than the cost of the license (unless FFG is completely foolish) -- so, it might make sense for GW to sell it themselves, then they would be even more profitable.

Licenses are usually established on a contract basis. What that means is that they're not renewed at any set time except by what's dictated by the original contract. The license time is usually based on the licensee's determination of how long they'll need access to flesh out their plans for the products in question. Those contracts can also be renegotiated based on the success of the products in question if it makes sense for both sides because certain products (*cough* X-Wing *cough*) are selling like crazy and it makes sense for both sides to keep riding the money train as long as possible.

Space Ghost, that's not necessarily the case, especially when talking about GW. They've proven time and again that they don't know shit about marketing their products to a broader audience and, given their haphazard approach to distribution since the late 90s, there's no assurance that they can get product to customers in as efficient and profitable a manner as simply signing off the IP to someone else. That also relieves them of many of the problems associated with production (printing, shipping, customer service issues, expansions, marketing of said expansions, etc.) At this point, they're making money simply because they own the IP; nothing more. There's a possibility that they could make more money by doing it themselves, but there's a greater possibility that they could make less, given their past failures.

Right. I was just assuming that they may now have some of those issues rectified now that they are producing more board games.

Or, it could be that they are just cashing in on easy to make boardgames that have a lot of overlap with their minis lines and are going to leave the licensing alone.

Possible, but I put no faith in GW's ability to do anything correctly. They had the most popular minis game in the world, even if it was a niche market, and they buried themselves by alienating their entire distribution network (retail outlets have legendary stories about dealing with GW) and ignoring the Web as a phenomenon until the bitter end (cutting off Web retailers in favor of their own poorly managed site, insisting that direct customer feedback was given by a crowd of idiots (the direct quote being "Internet crazies".)) Once Privateer Press had stolen their thunder, it was the beginning of the end. They finally boxed themselves in by insisting on pricing their products as an extreme luxury item because their overreach in putting stores in every strip mall was read as an example of how their hobby wasn't accessible to a mass audience. There's always been this little knot of guys in management who insist "we're a modeling company that has some game rules", neglecting the fact that their biggest sales in the US were from people who played the games and organized big tournaments.

Thinking about that, you could be right in that perhaps they've decided to finally transition out of the minis sphere entirely and just do cardboard; thus, lowering their production costs hugely and being able to rely on their own network. Could be. But that sounds actually somewhat wise, so I doubt it.

I dunno. GW have been making mucho bank on their IP for a decade or so now.

I doubt they will pull the licenses, but I definitely can see this new trend of games being produced by them lasting longer than even I would believe. GW has a lot to make up for the past nearly two decades, but they are going in a better direction now. That direction not ignoring their customers begging them to give them money by actually producing games...in their workshop.

We also thought that Mansions of Madness was getting phased out and that Doom would never see the light of day again.

Josh Look wrote: We also thought that Mansions of Madness was getting phased out and that Doom would never see the light of day again.

That's very true! It's really easy for someone like me to go on a forum and spout conspiracy theories, but I really don't have any insight into how this stuff works.

Probably #4 is the most telling - if it's an annually renewed license agreement, GW is probably leveraging the success of Talisman, Relic, Forbidden Stars, WHACG, etc to get a bigger slice of the pie.

As an aside, if FFG has the ID Software license, they can make Quake and Rage as well, possibly. If they made a Rage game I'd be all over it. Totally loved that game.

Josh Look wrote: We also thought that Mansions of Madness was getting phased out and that Doom would never see the light of day again.

The reasonable success of Descent 2.0 and the surprise success of the app hybrid model are the likely drivers here. Both games owe something [alot of somethings I suspect] to the Descent reboot.

As for GW, the boardgames that they're printing these days are either reprints of their old games or games that are mighty similar in mechanics and approach to the stuff they put out 25 years ago. The FFG GW-related products are largely designs of a much more recent style. I see no reason why they'd WANT to get into FFG's side of the market as they have precisely zero experience designing games of that style. In addition, GW's own games are selling to both the minis gamer, who buys just to cannibalize the game for the [hugely] discounted figures, AND the boardgamer, who is buying for the game itself. I've yet to hear a 40k player saying "Man, I just gotta get my hands on Relic so I can have a giant head floating over my battlefield every weekend!!!!!" so why would GW want to even look askance at the golden egg-layer, no matter how much they might want goose for Xmas dinner?