The Bleeding Edge

At the moment I'm working on a new cyberpunk project, one that has no connection to either Cyberpunk 2020 or CyberGeneration. Other than the likelihood of it being released in printed format ready for the gaming conventions in summer, there isn't a lot I can say about it at the moment. It's different, that's for sure, but it will be a full-sized gaming environment, not just a sourcebook or a gaming supplement. While it is based on an existing game engine/license, there are significant changes being made to give it the dark future balance.

Some of the other projects I am working on seem to be up in the air at the moment. The Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebook on the aftermath of the 4th Corporate War, the long-awaited third book in the Firestorm trilogy has been on haiatus for a year now. The third draft was delivered to R.Talsorian Games in December 2008 but its actual publication date is unknown. I just hope we don't have to wait as long for this as we did for V3.

The Assassin's Cloak project has taken several turns in the last few months. It originally encompassed the story of Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby and the circle of people around him, his suspicious death and the possible links between his murder and that of several other contemporary people. Part of the evolution of the project included looking further at Guy Fawkes. Not that he has any connection to the Earl, but there are a decided lack of solid academic resources on one of histories most infamous individuals.

Many years ago I wrote an article on the slim possibility Fawkes married and his wife bore a son, just prior to his departure for Flanders. It still seems to get some commentary across the internet, and the online biography I wrote seems to be spreading further afield each year as well. So the idea of a detailed biography on Fawkes offers a strong appeal both to me as a researcher (and a recognized authority on the subject) and to a wider public who would certainly gain insight from such a book. It has also garnered a lot of encouragement from friends and associates who agree that a definitive work on Guy Fawkes is overdue.

I have thus consigned both SiG and 1601 to the archives, to be revived one day, but not for a while.

Denver - Mile High Dragon Released

Yes it's finally here, my first 'official' RPG supplement has finally hit the electronic shelves - Denver: Mile High Dragon. This is scheduled to be the first in a series of city specific source books for R.Talsorian's Cybergeneration role-playing system currently under license to Firestorm Ink.

If you want to purchase a copy, and all Cybergen gamers need to, then you can head over to DriveThruRPG and get one.

In the pipeline there are several projects including books on Sydney, Miami, Clarkers, and an update on Yogangs, all of which are well into their first drafts and beyond. So, lets see some encouragement and buy Mile High Dragon!

CCG's - The End of the Road?

A recent comment on a message board really got me thinking over the last few days. A booth holder at a fairly large gaming convention made the claim that the Collectable Card Game as a gaming vehicle was dead, and that apart from the 2-3 games that will inevitably survive (Magic, VS and L5R), the chances of a new game breaking into the industry are zero. Not only have most themes been covered in one shape or form, but the economic crisis that the industry has been collapsing under for a while now has finally taken its toll.

Now is not the time to be releasing a new card game, just ask Decipher. The two key magazines, Scrye and Inquest are sadly no more and recent news includes the demise of WizKids and the scaling back of Upper Deck - both significant players in the industry. On top of that, it seems that the playing community is tired of investing in yet another new game only to find it barely makes its first expansion and the support for it disappears long before there is any inclination that the game has died. I've lost count of the number of CCG's that I have bought into over the years that failed - Netrunner, Cyberpunk CCG, Shadowrun, X-Files, Call of Cthulhu, Spycraft, 7th Sea, Street Warriors. Many were excellent games and with the right company behind them could have been big sellers that could still be drawing crowds at GenCon and emptying shelves in gaming stores.

So, is this the end for card games, or is there something out there that could be the last gasp saviour? Firestorm Ink's DCG concept, despite it needing a lot of actual development still as far as marketing and sustainability goes could be an interesting proposition, and I say this not because I work for them, but because it's a concept that doesn't have PROFIT as it's driving force. It's a game design concept put together to generate great, affordable, and versatile entertainment. Wasn't that what the industry was all about before the big corporate entities changed the face of it?

It's no coincidence that apart from Fight Klub, 2008-2009 has not seen the release of any major Collectable Card Game. They've done their dash. People are too aware of how they quickly become black holes that suck your spare money into and so have become more discerning at what games offer beyond just the gameplay. A game needs to be an entertainment experience rather than just dueling across the table with a friend. It's become quality not quantity, and alas few games in the last few years can truly call themselves quality products. Flashy graphics, cool art, and jazzy packaging don't cut it, they never have, but gamers have finally woken up to the fact.

So yes, the CCG industry is at its lowest point in years. Most of the minor games have now bitten the dust and their players have returned to the big players - Magic the Gathering, VS, L5R, and Yu-Gi-Oh. There are holdouts, as there are with anything but unless someone truly can come up with the next big thing in Collectable Card Games, the End of the Road is just there, on the horizon...

Fight Klub - My Last Tirade

Well, OK, because I just wanted to, here is the very last post I will make regarding Fight Klub.

I’ve decided I don’t like the whole ‘culture’ that is growing up around Fight Klub, but then from my earlier posts how would you ever believe anything else. I await the typical fanboy responses to this post, if they are reading this which I know some are. Some players take delight in searching online for any Fight Klub threads and then spamming them with “If you join tell them xxxxx sent you”. This as you will see only helps to support my argument below.

I’ve noticed that the atmosphere on the forums is changing, and not in a good way. While there may have been some dissent while the game was still being promised, there is a lot of disappointment surfacing from many of those who were faithfully keeping the hype going for most of last year. Their disappointment stems from two things - the game’s lack of depth and the fact that the game is not growing as quick or as effectively as they expected, which impacts other things on the site being useful or available (such as Gangs, Alliances, Gang Blogs, you know, the stuff that would help promote the game).

The apparent lack of flexibility in deck design for the various character cards, and the fact that after what is now 3 years, Decipher is calling for playtesters for the first actual expansion of the game (set Three) is worrisome. That’s a lengthy process and with printing puts Three at least 5-6 months away. Will the game be dead by then as players looking for variety have none? It's also just a little disconcerting when the 'Everything Else' topic on the forums gets more posts than the actual game related ones. But there is worse. the whole Gang concept seems to have fallen flat on its face. In the last 6 weeks there have been about 50 new gang sign-ups. You would expect that number to be ten times that given the game has just been released and the motivation of players to promote the game is high, or is it.

As the game has been shipping now for over a month I thought I would check out the response to the game on RPGNet, perhaps the primary gaming community on the web. There seems to be only a single thread, spammed of course by a couple of fanboys. I’d rather listen to those who have been regular contributors to those forums and the industry in general than a couple of noobs with less than a dozen posts between them who only joined up to shill the game – it’s what Decipher’s viral marketing campaign is based on after all, shilling the game when and where you can, right?

Here is a sample:

The best part is how I'm now totally unwilling to believe any positive reviews or comments on this game because I'm suspicious that it's someone shilling for a kickback.

Invitation Only suggests cool exclusiveness, or at least quality control on membership. But any mystique is destroyed by every player scrabbling to recruit for the rewards available before diminishing returns set in.

Yes, an earlier post of mine conveyed one fallacy of the game’s apparent ‘exclusiveness’, regarding becoming a Founding Mentor.

I'm having a hard time taking this whole concept seriously. Someone seriously had, what, a board meeting with graphs and charts and everything, and somehow sold the idea that what game geeks really want is a CCG where you can pit the cast of Fargo against the cast of Jumanji?

There seems to be a set of common objections to the game – the ‘pyramid’ method of marketing, the sleaziness of elements such as money as a reward and Fight Klub Girls, and the B-movie nature of the licenses.

No matter which way you slice and dice it, promoting the game by giving players cash rewards based on the sales of those they recruit, is multi-level marketing. Whether its just one level or not, and the truth is it's failing miserably. Most people are being recruited to the game based on this strategy which defeats the whole purpose of this Mentor program – how is a person going to Mentor someone who lives on the other side of the world and only signed up because they saw your handle on a forum post? They’re not, so let’s stop calling it a Mentor Program and call it what it is – a Pyramid Program.

Fight Klub Girls? Seriously, come on Decipher, drag this game out of the gutter and stop trying to use cheap thrills and sleaze to attract pre-pubescent males. Are you aiming to narrow your market share right from the get go? Don’t you have the confidence in the quality and gameplay of this CCG without having to resort to the basest elements to sell it? That’s sad.

As one poster to RPGNet put it, and Rick Cummings elaborated on, there is something about all of the licenses that have been acquired. They are all B-Movie licenses and ones that would never sustain a game of their own. I have mentioned on the Decipher forums a few times that to expect Darth Vader or Spiderman is totally unrealistic because of the current licensing of those properties, and I found it almost dishonest by Decipher to use such comments. In a recent interview, Tim Ellington was still espousing it - "Well, there’s always been the theoretical question of “who would win?” between famous characters. Captain Kirk versus Darth Vader". The reality is the players will never find out, not in Fight Klub anyway. Decipher incidently lost both the Star Wars and Star Trek licenses years ago so the likelihood of them re-acquiring them is, well, zero.

So how does the game look a month down the line, when we should be hearing of tournaments at the summer conventions, noises being made about large playgroups and the first batch of rewards being sent out? Surprisingly quiet really. It’s almost as if Decipher are sitting back thinking their job is done and it’s now in the hands of their player community to market and sell the game for them. The player base is less than a thousand. Good grief, even Cyberpunk CCG the last game I was heavily involved in behind the scenes had more than a thousand players after the first month. One thing that just makes me laugh is the 4 top posters on the original forums, and probably still the top 4 posters on the new ones have exactly one sign-up between them (where a sign-up is a confirmed sale of the game). Like I said if Decipherwere relying on the players to sell their game - BIG MISTAKE.

As to other web sites covering the game, well it seems RPGNet isn’t alone. The same few fanboys have been banned from several of the more popular gaming sites, posts regarding the game are nothing but ads for it, and there are no serious web sites out there devoted to its play. Apart from Decipher's own site (and the forums are a mess for new players and are in serious need of a redesign) there are perhaps a couple of blogs and neither has been updated with anything of value in weeks. Yes I know that there are a lot of active blogs on the Decipher site itself, but be realistic it's a Catch-22 - who will read those blogs if non-Decipher blogs aren't out there bringing players in? Hmmm, sounds all very 'exclusive' to me, as the RPGNet poster indicated.

A game developer friend of mine gives the game a year. He reckons that by the summer con season Decipher will be shedding staff (a convention booth at Origins or GenCon, accommodation, etc is not cheap) and by Christmas Fight Klub will be yet another dead CCG. I would follow the Silverhand First Law of CCG's - wait for the first expansion to hit the stores. At least then you know it wasn't a one-shot. Oh wait, Decipher aren't using stores.....

Perhaps them releasing the game spiel originally on April 1, 2008 was ironically coincidental...

UPDATE: Last Monday it was announced that Rick Eddleman pled guilty to 12 charges relating to the embezzlement of $1.5 million from Decipher. At the same time it was announced that Decipher had written off losses totalling $8.9 million. Wow, just wow, and my friend gives the game a year?

A Cybergeneration Leap Forward

I elected not to write another article on Decipher's new CCG Fight Klub as my latest post, rather I'll point you to a 2-part post by Rick Cummings that outlines my thoughts almost point for point. Rick and I share the same concerns although I am probably a little more willing to throw around terms like batshit crazy for the marketing strategy of letting 15-year olds sell your game across the internet, and get banned from every gaming forum, message board and web site known in the process - which only further sullies the Decipher name. But as I said I wasn't going to write about Fight Klub.

What I am going to do is put in a plug for the next CyberGeneration offering I am working busily on. As mentioned in previous posts, Denver: Mile High Dragon is in art and Clarkers will soon follow it (once it's completed). The third project on the go is Sydney: Dreamtime Download, set, you guessed it in Sydney, Australia. The Manuscript is already bigger than both Denver and Clarkers and is only about 80% complete. When finished it will take CyberGeneration beyond the ISA for the first time and provide an alternative city/country in which to play the game. You will of course be able to rework most of it and turn it into almost any major metropolis you choose.

One interesting element though is I have taken 3 of the traditional Yogang types and given them an Australian spin as well as added a new one. Gogangers have become RevHeads, Neo-Pioneers have become Jacks, and Boardpunks have become Skegs. There's also a new Evolved type called Scrappers - characters who can ingest everything from rock to metal and derive nourishment from it. One of their specialist tricks is regurgitating a corrosive hexite bile that can eat away at most things, from flesh to metal. Anyone remember that scene in The Fly?

This is certainly the most detailed of the CyberGeneration material I have written to date and I'd like to see it as a launching pad for several additional city sourcebooks not based in the ISA. I already have ideas for a London Sourcebook....

Cybergeneration: Revolution 2.0+

In a couple of weeks the artwork for the new Firestorm Ink produced Cybergeneration book Denver: Mile High Dragon will be available for us to peruse. Once it is done, the next Firestorm Ink book, Enemies of the Revolution: Clarkers will follow it into art production. Both books should be available by the third quarter this year, with the first hopefully making an appearance at the Convention season openers in August.

Firestorm Ink have had something of a love/hate relationship with Cybergeneration, but it finally seems to be kicking back into production, with the prospect of more material, greater support, and an expansion of the playing world beyond the Incorporated States of America.

Excellent support at Dreamation recently showed that there is still enthusiasm out there for the game and with a slight Revolution 2.0+ makeover (expanded Yogang specializations, new Yogangs and new Evolved types) the game could easily grow its player base.

You can watch a couple of interviews Jon Lavallee of Firestorm Ink did at Dreamation regarding Cybergeneration [HERE] and [HERE].

Cybergeneration releases slated for 2009/2010 include a tentatively titled Children of the Revolution, an updated and in-depth look at Yogangs, creating localized gangs within each group and looking at their history; New York: The Chrome Apple, and Night City to follow the Denver City Sourcebook.

Fight Klub Goes Live

The CCG Fight Klub by Decipher has finally gone live. We shall have to wait to see its impact on the industry, what with its new marketing technique - the decision to forego traditional brick and mortar retailers and sell its product directly from its web site through its Mentor Program.

Truth be told if it works it will be a great new model, but its reliance on a small player base (significantly smaller than the original 6,000 Founder Mentors it originally wanted to recruit) may be what causes the game to stumble out of the gate. I'm buying some cards though, I think the artwork as well as the game's concept are particularly good (if you're a fan of film and television all of the proprietory characters in Fight Klub are drawn from popular culture) and even if it only ever gains cult rather than superstar status it will be fun to play a few games with people I know who are avid CCG fans (and I'm one of those who collects rule books too!).

So, if you are interested in seeing what the game has to offer then drop on by to decipher.com and to get through the front door, tell them Mysteron sent you.