So.. game dead ?

By gmcc, in Mansions of Madness

So.. nothing more after Serpent expansion ?
Kinda **** the way they ended it , so much potencial and cool game waisted.. typical from FFG i guess.

The game is dead. Long live the next one!

If games did not have a life then game publishers would end up going out of business.

Mansions had a good run but games can't and shouldn't just go on forever.

Maybe in many years time. FFG will one day release Mansions 3rd ed with VR and holographic projection.

In any case we can still enjoy the game and many scenarios they have released.

They haven't announced no new content so I wouldn't conclude that it's dead. It's also not brand new anymore so I wouldn't expect them to be throwing new content at it very frequently either.

It has not been that long since Serpant Expansion. I do not see any evidence to suggest that the game is dead. Why would it? As long as they can come up with new scenario expansions, I hope it would continue. No reason why it would not unless the sales for the newer expansions have been too low to warrant putting out new expansions. I do not think that has been the case.

Compared to something like the Arkham Horror board game, it's probably a lot easier to keep a game like MoM (and to a lesser extent the AHLCG) going on almost indefinitely. When FFG makes expansions for a game like AH and EH, they almost inevitably introduce new mechanics, and sometimes boards, in each expansion. Over time this can make the game feel bloated, and oftentimes the expansions don't end up meshing well with each other. That's not really the case with MoM, because most of its expansions don't really add much in terms of new mechanics. And the ones it does add can be integrated into older scenarios without issue.

While production on new physical expansions might be slowing down (and might even be done, which would be unfortunate), adding new scenarios into the game is something they could easily do long into the future. Hopefully they do, and hopefully they at least have plans to introduce new investigators into the game, if nothing else. (I enjoy using the minis for my AHLCG games in place of the mini investigator cards.)

You also have to consider the fact that unlike things like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, FFG owns the Arkham Horror IP. Provided the sales figures support it, it's much more cost effective to product content for their AH product line than many of their others. If we go another full year without any MoM news, then it's worth getting concerned about the game's fate. But for now, I'd try to remain optimistic.

They seem to be making a MoM video game. I've seen it getting promoted on Steam.

If the game is not dead, I think FFG will have something for Halloween - even if it is just an announcement about the possibility of releasing a DLC.

Quote

...adding new scenarios into the game is something they could easily do long into the future.

Statements like this cause me a rye smile.

Designing a Mansions scenario is much harder than folks think and very hit and miss.

Software development is hard and expensive and sometimes goes widely wrong.

Why would FFG spend a lot of time, money and energy on an old game for the peanuts they'd get back for a DLC?

Edited by Nicola Zealey
Fix quote
On 9/13/2020 at 4:06 AM, Nicola Zealey said:

Designing a Mansions scenario is much harder than folks think and very hit and miss.

Software development is hard and expensive and sometimes goes widely wrong.

It's not actually as hard as all that, a bunch of amateurs have done it and done a good job.

Edited by Bucho
11 hours ago, Bucho said:

It's not actually as hard as all that, a bunch of amateurs have done it and done a god job.

How many of these scenarios have you written or are you friends of any of these amateurs or in regular contact with any of them?

If it's not so hard, how about having a go yourself. I should warn you the last person I talked to who had a go convinced it was going to be straight-forward ended up with - in his own words - "a pile of hot ****".

One of the top rated scenarios 'A Strain on Reality' has a word count running into several tens of thousands of words. I believe it is now well over 70,000. Equivalent of a small book.

Mind you writing a highly successful book is not actually as hard as all that, amateurs do it all the time!

:)

On 9/13/2020 at 3:24 PM, Bucho said:

It's not actually as hard as all that, a bunch of amateurs have done it and done a god job.

Hahaha 😆 , and this is taking into account that newer iterations of Valkyrie exist. I alone spent close to 3.5 months working on mine. This doesn't include teaching myself how to structure it and how to code it. Then there's debugging, proofreading the text, and play-testing for balance. My scenario is really just average as far as there are some much better ones. I really would love to go back and polish mine a little more, but I'm so scared that I'm going to break it in the process that I've left it as is since the story telling element still functions well as it is.

Edited by LordPyrex
On 9/13/2020 at 4:06 AM, Nicola Zealey said:

Statements like this cause me a rye smile.

Designing a Mansions scenario is much harder than folks think and very hit and miss.

Software development is hard and expensive and sometimes goes widely wrong.

Why would FFG spend a lot of time, money and energy on an old game for the peanuts they'd get back for a DLC?

I meant more in the sense that it's something that can be done indefinitely without bloating the game or relying on convoluted new mechanics. Actually designing a scenario is hard, sure. But they've done it dozens of times before now, and while it doesn't make coming up with scenario ideas any easier, it does mean they have a lot of the necessary framework in place to code new scenarios more efficiently.

Each new expansion adds 2-3 new scenarios that need to be written and programmed as well. But those also include a lot of manufacturing costs as well. Now I don't know what the sales numbers are like on the DLC scenarios compared to the actual expansions, but I can basically guarantee you that development costs are lower because they don't have to actually manufacture any components on top of already having to develop scenarios anyway.

4 hours ago, Annette Soleil said:

I meant more in the sense that it's something that can be done indefinitely without bloating the game or relying on convoluted new mechanics. Actually designing a scenario is hard, sure. But they've done it dozens of times before now, and while it doesn't make coming up with scenario ideas any easier, it does mean they have a lot of the necessary framework in place to code new scenarios more efficiently.

Each new expansion adds 2-3 new scenarios that need to be written and programmed as well. But those also include a lot of manufacturing costs as well. Now I don't know what the sales numbers are like on the DLC scenarios compared to the actual expansions, but I can basically guarantee you that development costs are lower because they don't have to actually manufacture any components on top of already having to develop scenarios anyway.

These are well-thought out and well argued points.

But a key central premise is (I believe) flawed which is the costs of software development is cheap compared to making physical components.

It is a reasonable premise because with software there is nothing to see while with physical components there are lots of stuff to look at - figures, shiny cards, big artistic tiles, interesting counters and so on. Physical components sell - as so many over-hyped kick-starters demonstrate,

But the cost of software development is high - much higher than most folks not involved with it realize.

I don't know how much the DLC cost. At one stage I think they were on sale for five dollars? Maybe they are ten now or fifteen?

Let us take the estimate of Lord Pyrex for say three to four months work for a medium level complexity scenario.

In addition, then take into account translating all the reams and reams of text into multiple languages.

Then take into account updating the app - which (based on the number of times it has broken) probably lacks encapsulation.

Then take into account the nightmare of testing the scenario which (if it is any good) will have multiple pathways.

That's a lot of work for say ten or maybe fifteen dollars for something which may or may not be a success.

Then consider the following investigator packs for the card game:

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2020/3/24/your-investigation-begins/

It seems to me these five packs could be developed and tested without too much effort in a few months because they are (as far as I understand them) variations on a theme.

There is the extra cost of doing the art but FFG has a dedicated art department specializing in that.

Then there is the extra cost of printing the cards. China has that nailed but even locally the costs of card printing has gone way down. Printing 60 cards is not that expensive.

All five card packs has sold out at fifteen dollars each. Many more would be easy to churn out. If I was running FFG, I know where I'd focus my limited resources.

On 9/15/2020 at 3:28 AM, Nicola Zealey said:

All five card packs has sold out at fifteen dollars each. Many more would be easy to churn out. If I was running FFG, I know where I'd focus my limited resources.

And they do a lot of that, it's not random that much of what they were advertising at gencon was either a single mini or a deck of cards.

However, new content keeps a game line alive. They strung out Descent sales for years by releasing app content. Imperial Assault, same deal. You'll see the same thing here.

I don't think you're that likely to see new expansions because there's a diminishing return thing which happens where you should expect to see each new expansion to sell fewer copies. For instance, looking over at board game geek the MoM 2ed core is owned by 35.4K people but by the time you get to Path of the Serpent it's only owned by 2.6K. But you can also see that there's a price point thing, the cheaper expansions do sell better. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/205059/mansions-madness-second-edition/expansions

With that in mind putting out new digital content to keep the existing product line selling about the time everybody's starting to give up on the game IS what they've done with their similar product lines so expect to see the same thing here. I'm not saying a scenario doesn't take work, but it also clearly isn't as insurmountable a problem as some are making it sound and they will get a much bigger hotness bump off a new $5 DLC than the 1K copies of a new $50 expansion.

Another thing you have to consider is that software development costs and manufacturing costs are very different in more ways than one. It's true that we don't know exactly how much it costs FFG to produce a DLC scenario for MoM, but there is one thing we do now with almost absolute certainty. Developing DLC scenarios doesn't (or at least shouldn't) have many variable costs (aside from labor, which should be fairly consistent). Which means, depending on how much they sell the DLC for, it should take fewer sales for FFG to break even. Manufacturing new expansions does have variable costs (labor, shipping, materials, etc.) and the fixed costs of not only developing 2-3 new scenarios, but also overhead for their manufacturing facilities and shipping costs.

Yes, eventually people will gradually lose interest in MoM2E, as is the case with most board games. Each new DLC scenario will probably sell less than the one before it. But only FFG knows how much they need to sell to break even and the current sales figures. Maybe the costs are low enough, and demand high enough, that they could keep MoM running for several more years on DLC alone. Although if we aren't getting any more physical content, I wouldn't expect the game to last for more than five years tops before we get a 3rd Edition (or FFG just discontinues MoM altogether). But I'd wager we get at least 1-3 new DLC scenarios before that happens. At least enough for FFG to gauge how much continued interest there is for the game.

Also, yes. As a whole, AHLCG probably costs FFG much less to produce in general than most of the other Arkham games, because they only have to manufacture cards. No miniatures, no cardboard tiles, no software development, just cards and writing. FFG has been strangely slow to produce new content for AH3E, not just MoM. There's probably some weird behind-the-scenes shenanigans going on that we just don't know about, but I do get the feeling that FFG is shifting most of their AH focus toward the LCG right now.

Edited by Annette Soleil

I seem to recall someone from FFG stating a few months back (was it in the In-Flight report?) that they were going to shift their product development and marketing strategy to evergreen titles that retailers could count on seeing reprinted for many years, rather than churning out poorly supported flavour of the month titles (that invariably died quick deaths) to compete with the endless stream of Kickstarter games. A slower, more deliberate approach to product releases, if you will.

I noticed that Sid Meier's Civilization got its first expansion many years after the release of the original game... so maybe that's what the future has in stock for Mom 2e? More sporadic releases (say one every two years)? I can especially see this being the case if they don't want it to compete with Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth, which is the only other app driven game they are currently promoting (while physical Imperial Assault products still get reprinted occasionally, who knows when/if the next app expansion will be?).

But then, what do I know... I'm just speculating.

5 hours ago, TwiceBorn said:

I seem to recall someone from FFG stating a few months back (was it in the In-Flight report?) that they were going to shift their product development and marketing strategy to evergreen titles that retailers could count on seeing reprinted for many years, rather than churning out poorly supported flavour of the month titles (that invariably died quick deaths) to compete with the endless stream of Kickstarter games. A slower, more deliberate approach to product releases, if you will.

I noticed that Sid Meier's Civilization got its first expansion many years after the release of the original game... so maybe that's what the future has in stock for Mom 2e? More sporadic releases (say one every two years)? I can especially see this being the case if they don't want it to compete with Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth, which is the only other app driven game they are currently promoting (while physical Imperial Assault products still get reprinted occasionally, who knows when/if the next app expansion will be?).

But then, what do I know... I'm just speculating.

It is just speculation but it makes sense to me. Maybe a release every two years just to keep selling the base game and the more popular expansions.

What concerns me is the time to announce such a release would be in time for Halloween.

Maybe the epidemic threw a spanner in the works and an announcement will be made a few months later?

20 hours ago, Annette Soleil said:

Yes, eventually people will gradually lose interest in MoM2E, as is the case with most board games. Each new DLC scenario will probably sell less than the one before it. But only FFG knows how much they need to sell to break even and the current sales figures. Maybe the costs are low enough, and demand high enough, that they could keep MoM running for several more years on DLC alone. Although if we aren't getting any more physical content, I wouldn't expect the game to last for more than five years tops before we get a 3rd Edition (or FFG just discontinues MoM altogether). But I'd wager we get at least 1-3 new DLC scenarios before that happens.

No matter what they do, I don't see the game having more than a few more years. The plastic in it is already subpar and only getting more dated. The last two expansions already point to a big drop in sales.

Though I would point to at least some of that being a problem with releasing expansions for a haunted house game that don't actually take place in a haunted house.

With covid and all the people running from FFG and the department shakeups who knows exactly. But I expect a DLC down the road with no notice.

After that maybe just maybe they might give another small box a try. I'm not super hopeful but it could happen.

4 minutes ago, Bucho said:

No matter what they do, I don't see the game having more than a few more years. The plastic in it is already subpar and only getting more dated.

Honestly, this right here is one of the most concerning things to me in terms of the possibility of a 3rd Edition. The old 1E minis are terrible , aside from a small handful of the monsters, and a lot of the earlier 2E minis are pretty bad as well. They've gotten better over time, to the point where the most recent 2-3 expansions have some very nice looking investigators. Especially in comparison to the older ones. But unless FFG went all in on revamping the game with a 3rd Edition, they'd be forced to reuse a lot of those crappy early miniatures as well.

DLC scenarios seem like the best we could hope for in the near future. Maybe another expansion if FFG wants to try to milk the game for everything it's worth, but probably not any time soon, and even then, not especially likely. The more and more I think about it, the more it really does seem like they just want to focus on cheaper to produce games like the LCG and, to a lesser extent, AH3E. At least we've got a new expansion for that coming out this month, and Innsmouth in October for the LCG. So things aren't all bad.

7 hours ago, Nicola Zealey said:

What concerns me is the time to announce such a release would be in time for Halloween.

Ever since a digital trainwreck they had with descent the company has been extremely gun shy about advertising DLC.

They have gone so far as to put out DLC with zero publicity and waited until the internet noticed to say anything.

I'd expect that sort of soft open to happen again and with the games designer having left ffg and the issues they've had with their software people and covid on top of that.

So who knows exactly when, I wouldn't worry if you don't see anything this year, they just redid the models in the base game, they aren't planning to can the game right after that. They'll try to ride out the games momentum with an occasional nudge for a few more years.

3 hours ago, Annette Soleil said:

Honestly, this right here is one of the most concerning things to me in terms of the possibility of a 3rd Edition. The old 1E minis are terrible , aside from a small handful of the monsters, and a lot of the earlier 2E minis are pretty bad as well. They've gotten better over time, to the point where the most recent 2-3 expansions have some very nice looking investigators. Especially in comparison to the older ones. But unless FFG went all in on revamping the game with a 3rd Edition, they'd be forced to reuse a lot of those crappy early miniatures as well.

The 1e minis aren't even from 1e. They're from this old universal arkham line which is why they have bases where you can pull out one set of stats and put in another.

Thing is those are old enough I hear the molds have failed. Which is why we don't have recurring nightmares and suppressed memories any more.

So I wouldn't worry about seeing the old arkham line again.

Edited by Bucho

Yes, the release of the new models was kinda really weird.

There was no mention of anything and players had to chase up FFG to find out about what was going on.

Then FFG removed the 1st edition conversion kit without mentioning it anywhere. I believe FFG may have made public as a download the conversion kit but they kept fairly quiet about it.

It is like they believe the game cant be mentioned.

But as the saying goes...

"That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die ."

It's probably too late for this Halloween (with the issues you mentioned) but there's always next Halloween.

1 hour ago, Bucho said:

The 1e minis aren't even from 1e. They're from this old universal arkham line which is why they have bsses where you can pull out one set of stats and put in another.

Thing is those are old enough I hear the molds have failed. Which is why we don't have recurring nightmares and suppressed memories any more.

So I wouldn't worry about seeing the old arkham line again.

Yeah, I'm aware of those old line of figures. I've used a lot of them as reference images when trying to figure out what colors I want to use to paint my MoM minis. And oh boy some of those are so incredibly bad. The fact that FFG released new minis for the 2E investigators is such a relief. It's just incredible how bad some of those actually are.

If FFG really can't reproduce any of those old minis, it might honestly be kind of a relief to never see any of those again. It's just a shame it means that a MoM3E is even less likely because of it.

20 hours ago, Annette Soleil said:

If FFG really can't reproduce any of those old minis, it might honestly be kind of a relief to never see any of those again. It's just a shame it means that a MoM3E is even less likely because of it.

This is a game that was popular enough that even Target was selling it.

Honestly, if they can't figure out how to produce a game this popular in it's own right and have to rely on having the components already laying around, they should probably find a different line of work. (which several of them already have)

On 9/17/2020 at 11:05 AM, Bucho said:

The 1e minis aren't even from 1e. They're from this old universal arkham line which is why they have bases where you can pull out one set of stats and put in another.

Thing is those are old enough I hear the molds have failed. Which is why we don't have recurring nightmares and suppressed memories any more.

So I wouldn't worry about seeing the old arkham line again.

Funny thing about those old bases that came with the monsters, I cut off the pins and glued them to pennys CA. That way, they didn't cover up as much of the board/tiles. The gentleman who introduced me to MOM glued his to clear stands.

Hello:

I'm new to the forums but have been a big fan of Mansions since being introduced two years ago. I ended up buying every addition and fiction as well. A previous poster had mentioned it being a 'Haunted House' game and has exhausted it's possibilities. I have to disagree in that I see Mansions as not just a haunted house game but a new type of 'Call of Cthulhu' or Cthulhu Mythos game like the old 'Call of Cthulhu' role-playing-game that got me hooked on HP Lovecraft in college. The only difference is that the app replaced the gamemaster. I have to say that there are still areas untapped by the game. We have not yet journeyed to the Mountains of Madness or set foot on the Nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh. There are a number of possible adventures the the Dreamlands alone. I still want to go to Kingsport and visit "The Strange High House in the Mist" and have tea with "The One" and Nodens or investigate the ghost ship that rises from the harbor to take unsuspecting victims for some nefarious purpose.