Mantic has announced their next project which will probably be a kickstarter that has not launched yet. Now Mantic and I do not have what I would call a good relationship. I value things like communication, follow through, and honesty. Not sure for Mantic. If you are not sure what I am talking about you should take a look at my discussion for
all the missing stuff that was promised for the dungeon saga kickstarter. Another great place for information is the
Dungeon Saga Kickstarter page where plenty of people report very little response from mantic on missing pledges and parts more than 2 months after shipping started.
I have followed these comments closely and have made plenty myself. I will personally say that I have seen Mantic misinform backers about checkable things in the comments section and go silent when corrected. That fact itself speaks to my opinion of their values.
Now if you love the license Mantic's games are not bad and they do often give you a pile of stuff for your money but you are never going to be sure if the part they think is important and worth putting effort into is what you think it is. The main reason you pledged might turn up in a form that requires
pages of FAQ before you can even try to use it.
Given the volume of issues they have with Kickstarters and how it kills their games they really should stop the Kickstarter.
ReplyDeleteI pledged heavily for Deadzone, DBX & Dungeon Saga and in the end I play Deadzone with my brother (who also pledged), have run one DB league and never seen anyone locally playing Dungeon Saga.
I think that they forget that by allowing everyone interested to buy into the kickstarter you generally remove the demand in the FLGS, who are then reluctant to invest money in the stock.
All for a Kickstarter to get the rules up and running if they need to, but by selling their models at bulk discount prices, you end up where outside of backers no one else plays as no one seems to stock it.
If they do a Kickstarter for the Walking Dead they seriously risk killing it before it gets off the ground, although I suspect the impacts will be less given the franchise.
I wrote a post about kickstarting war games as not being a great plan for that reason probably about a year ago. I used deadzone as an example since it had a lot of backers but they were scattered all over the world so their might be 1 or 2 other players anywhere near me.
DeleteHave to agree with everything said here. My first involvement with Mantic did NOT leave me feeling satisfied. I vowed never again.
ReplyDeleteIt was over 3 years before my will broke. Partially thanks to GW changes I didn't appreciate but to be honest, I really liked the ruleset that Jake Thornton had built. Was the ONLY reason I bought into it. I still was pretty unhappy if you look at how I received my deadzone kickstarter.
Now they seem to be changing the game completely. I have not had a chance to look into it, but have my fears because many of the changes they put out were nothing like what Jake submitted to them. See Jake's comments here.
Overall they just aren't well run. It's like they don't have guys dedicated to making the business side run smoothly - everyone just plays games and then has some small responsibilities which due to volume of complaints are too much for them to handle.
I'm hoping deadzone redux isn't too far off the original. The lists seem dumb because it was so simple before, now it makes building your strike force more complicated (probably more in line with warpath?) but still not what I was looking for out of this game. All the cards and stuff are now wasted time/money/effort? Poor poor planning overall.
I was also drawn in by Jake's work and then disappointed. Reading your post reminds me very much of what I saw in this campaign so mantic is certainly a serial offender at this. Everytime they announce a new kickstarter should should reblog your experience since people do not really search deep in blog archives and kickstarter has no rating system and the comments are not held in a way to be useful.
ReplyDeleteI have zero Mantic experience, it would seem that's not something I'm rushing out to rectify however.
ReplyDeleteNot that you can be considered an unbiased person since Mantic's business model has been to get unhappy gw players. Not that I disagree with your statement. People think of Mantic as the Anti-GW and that is correct in many ways. There games are much less expensive but the minis are no where near as nice generally. GW has been know for customer service in the past. That is not mantics good side.
DeleteHey Eriochrome, been a fan of your blog since the whole Dungeon Saga kickstater debacle. I appreciated your dedication to pointing out the missing items and found your guide helpful to setting up new characters. Was hoping you'd have more information up about trying out the Invisible Overlord deck. Do you see yourself writing a FAQ up for that? Or did the Kickstarter leave such a bad taste in your mouth that you are pretty much over the game in general?
ReplyDeleteI can't blame you if that's the case. This was my 3rd Mantic kickstarter and also my last. The deadzone nonsense I chalked up to them being a fairly new company, looking back on it now though I can't believe they thought it was a good idea to just send boxes of plastic without any kinds of instruction on putting it together. Every kickstarter I've ever done with them has been at least 6 months late and communication has been pretty terrible, which is even more critical because there is always something missing when you receive your order. I'd advise folks to wait until it hits stores otherwise they will get a lesson in frustration.
The biggest issue I got into was that I did not get my pledge until mid december and then was out of the country for a like 2 weeks so it all got held until christmas. I am planning on reving my faq soon but am currently away on business again with more pressing concerns like no clothes or work gear due to airline fun.
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