Mutant Chronicles - now NON-random

[Wren]

I seem to recall a bit of discussion about the Mutant Chronicles game. It's now been decided that it'll be released non-random, so I thought I'd pass that along.

http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamenews/comments/mutant_chronicles_wont_be_random/

[supervike]

I love the fact that they changed their philosophy on this. Maybe Monsterpocolypse will take the hint!

I can't stress how much I'm not in favor of 'random' packaging. I think it dupes the consumers into buying more than they want, in order to get that 'elusive' product.

I know some argue that is the 'fun' of it, but with so many products vying for my hard earned dollars, it's too easy to spend it on a sure thing, rather than a risk.

[demonherald]

yeah random sucks a lot of the time and I'm sure a lot of the "random" companies lose direct money through peopl picking up just the guys they need on ebay rather than buying packs...

[Wren]

It can go either way. The random packaging can act the same way as gambling on some people. (In that there's a bit of a thrill of the 'win' of getting something you really want and you keep chasing that.) When I worked at a game store, there was a guy into one of the CMGs. He drove delivery for a pizza place, and it was clear he didn't have a ton of money. He'd come in and pick up $X worth of his game, clearly having decided that was a reasonable amount of cash in advance. But if he didn't pull a 'good' rare he'd go back and buy a few more boxes, and I had to think he was dipping into rent or grocery money. Made me feel a little uncomfortable to sell to him, honestly, but I'm happy to say I think most of our other customers kept it more in perspective. (Or hid it better if they didn't.)

Also they can get you to buy a lot more than you might otherwise. Say if Wyrd were collectible. As it is now you might buy 5 figs for your favourite team, or maybe 10 or 15 if you wanted to have enough teams for your friends to play off your shelf. But in a collectible format, you might have to buy dozens of boxes before you get the 5, 10 or 15 figs you need to make the teams you want. Big bucks for Nathan! ;->

Except there's a whole lot of reasons not to buy into the formula, and to me it looks like more and more consumers are realizing that. I think the collectible format is pretty much dead. Magic works because it still has the critical mass of players to support it. D&D and Star Wars minis work because they draw on several markets (players of the mini games, RPGs and just collectors in the case of Star Wars.) WoW TCG does all right because even if only a fraction of 9 million people do something that's decent money in the hobby games market. Nothing much other than those has seemed to hit big in the past few years, whether from big or small companies.

What FFG's doing is very cool, and I hope it does well for them. They've evaluated the market and decided to try another approach. They're making a similar shift for their CCGs, both Cthulhu and Game of Thrones are shifting over to a 'Living Card Game' system (or something like that) where there will be releases of set card packs periodically rather than randomized booster sets.

[caffeinated]

I hope it works for them, but really the non random packaging is hard to sustain for profit. You have to sell a lot more units of the same figures to be able to earn the money put into it. Every non-random set Wizkids did failed to turn much of a profit and got canceled early on. Heroscape is the only game that comes to mind that lasted long with an open box formula & that I believe is largely due to the boardgame set-up and mass distribution that Hasbro already has.
If they keep their overhead small, they may be able to sustain it. Licensed properties have a much better chance in the market so maybe Mutant Chronicles following is big enough.
As for the secondary market, it really helps to fuel the collectible aspect. If someone sees profit in buying up boosters for single resale they will snatch up as much as they can get. This is particularly true of high value "rares". Speculators make it harder for fans to get what they want though.
These issues are not limited to the CMG or CCG markets. Action figures, statues, books, and other limited edition collectibles disappear fast into the jacked-up resale market. I'm still looking for the last Radiohead LP boxset & Sin City Library volume 1 but they've sold out and more than doubled in price.

[Morf]

I've never really made a thorough analysis of the difference of the two models but I would assume that what you loose on the ammount of blind packagings sold, you win on people who say "F%$& the blind packaging".
What happens to random games is that people buy retail volumes of them and sell individual pieces on Ebay.
So other than the thrill of "i might get lucky this time" if you really want a particular rare piece, I don't see much of a reason to buy them.
Though there is some scary pattern in what Caffeinated had mentioned.

Btw, isn't AT43 and Confrontation basically following this pattern?