Reply: Runewars:: General:: Re: did FFG make a mistake to publish the revised game w/o expansion ?

by sigmazero13

age of Gods wrote:

Are you kidding ?
Would all of you tomorrow not pay for a expansion which includes new races ? you would have opened up your wallets instantly.

Big difference, I think. Yes, I'd buy an expansion that has new races. I would probably NOT buy a product if I had to pay more money to get the same new races, plus a bunch of extra stuff that I don't need duplicates of.

For instance, let's say this hypothetical new edition had two new races, in addition to everything else. Game is priced at, say, $90-$100. Everything apart from the new races is exactly the same as the previous edition (with maybe the few minor tweaks that the revised edition made). Would I buy that? Almost certainly not. And it would really leave a bad taste in my mouth towards the way FFG does business.

If it was an entirely new edition from the ground up, with new rules and stuff (like Descent 2E or Twilight Imperium 3E), that would be different - it's a different game. But if it was essentially the SAME game with a new "expansion" built in, and there was no other way to get the new components other than to buy the new edition, that would be a good way to turn me from loyal customer to former customer.

and as for Publisher be good to their loyal first time buyers ??
you must be joking, this is business. 1st time buyer is just a one time
customer. But to have people keep returning to get more, thats good business.

In the board game business, making a new edition which is almost the same as the original but with a few extra components that are only available by buying the new edition (and not as a separate expansion) is, at least to me, a very bad business model. I would look for games from other companies.

Imagine if a publisher decided to make Game X. Then they decided to make Expansion Y, but said "hey, we can make more money if we package X and Y together), and so they make Game X: Y edition (which is Game X, plus expansion Y). That would be a good bundle for new players, but for existing players, it would not be a good purchase - the existing players just want Y. And take it further, let's say Expansion Z was released. So they make an edition that has X, Y and Z all packaged together. For people who just have X, it's not quite as bad as now they get two extra things, but for those that bought X, then bought X+Y, they would probably be furious, and rightly so, because now if they were to buy X+Y+Z, they would have 2 "extra" sets of X, and an extra set of "Y" that are useless.

What good are you if you just bought the game and in 5 or 10 years you kept the same game, what good is that to the publisher ?

Are you suggesting that the board game model should be set up where players have to keep rebuying the same game over and over and over? Remind me never to buy a game from that company.

I would have thrown the new races into the revise edition and say look you want new races, come and get it. You would have had to pay for the new races anyways ! if you do not want to because you can not afford it or you
are expecting a medal as a first time buyer , then suffer, go without.

And I would have said "OK, FFG, you not only lost a customer for this game, but if this is the crap you are going to pull now, I'm not going to buy ANY game from you again".

I guarantee they'd lose much more than they gain by that model.

This is not a business of consumables. People don't go into board games expecting to have to repurchase the same product over and over, and at the prices that these games command (due to the market being relatively niche), if a company were to attempt that model, it would go bankrupt pretty quickly.

Sure, sometimes a game will wear out due to a LOT of use, and a player gets a new copy to replace damaged components, but that is not the norm.