First off, I wasn't sure if this was better here or in Open Talk. In the end it is a fantasy game, so I put it here, but mods you can move it as you see fit.
So there's
a kickstarter campaign up to bring back Mage Knight as we knew it, as a minis game.
The catch is, that like Heroclix Online, they want to bring it back as an online game. However, as part of the promotions for this, they will make and release a limited small set of real figures (supposedly with swappable dials to allow them to be played in Heroclix as well).
Now a number of Mage Knight old timers and I have serious misgivings about this.
First, NECA (and their video game subsidary) are doing great financially. The recent Mage Knight board game (which really doesn't have anything to do with Mage Knight other than a few names) was a big boardgame hit. Heroclix is also selling quite well. Some people feel that a large company in such solid financial shape has no business running a Kickstarter campaign. I don't mind too much, because I honestly can't blame them for wanting to size up demand before doing any real work. The old pre-NECA WizKids did such a thorough job of destroying and alienating the fanbase that the few who are left have been cast to the far winds. There simply may not be the demand to justify this.
Second, the rewards are really messed up. Most of the donation levels offer little to justify the price, and some of the few that do are unclear or costly (the big one is the $170 mark which is the level that gets you the real physical figures but it's not fully clear if the figures are random or not - for $170 I would sure hope not!).
Third, they sure have set a high goal. Sure, Studio McVey's Sedition Wars is at almost at a million dollars on Kickstarter, but this is vastly in excess of the original funding goals, which were relatively modest. Same goes for Steve Jackson Games' Ogre, which had an original goal of only $20,000. I don't think they're purposely looking to fail, but they may have deliberately set the bar very high. I.E. they're only looking to do anything if the demand is so high that there's no risk to them at all.
Finally, a lot of this feels like the real figures are just being dangled as bait by a bunch of programmers and video game designers hoping to make a new computer/console game, who just happen to be fans of Mage Knight. It's not quite a bait-and-switch, but it almost smells like one. Why not forget the video game and just have a modest Kickstarter to sell a small fixed boxed set that has the two sets of dials as planned?
Anyway, all that aside, I'm still sharing the link for those who might be interested.
February 10, 2010, 08:08:00 PM