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Mayfair Games Shuts Down After 36 Years of Board Games (polygon.com)
damnbunni writes: Longtime board game publisher Mayfair Games (English-language publisher for Settlers of Catan, Agricola, and many more) has shut down after 36 years. All of their games have been sold to Asmodee, who also owns Fantasy Flight Games, Z-Man Games, Rebel, Edge Entertainment, and a host of other board game companies they've picked up over the years. "As of today, the management team at Mayfair Games, Inc. announces we will wind down game publishing," the company said in a statement. "After 36 years, this was not an easy decision or one we took lightly, but it was necessary. Once we had come to this conclusion, we knew we had to find a good home for our games which is when we reached out to Asmodee."
A listing of games (sorted by rank) that BoardGameGeek shows as published by Mayfair Games
Yep. The various members of the gaming industry were just waiting for this.
Asmodee has been on a *Throw Money* kick for the last couple years now.
They "merged" with Fantasy Flight a while back (2014?), but the writing was pretty much on the wall. FF was only kept around until Asmodee had a handle on their properties. Then, *snip!* out goes the middleman.
Well, they don't own Hasbro, which is the biggest board game company in the world.
Oh hell no! Fantasy Flight was merely the biggest.
There are multiple publishers out there putting out board games. Maybe just not in the same way that FF did.
Iello's had a pretty decent track record with their churn & burn style. They make decent money and move on to their next title(s). They only really need one to "stick" the way Catan did and they're set.
Also, publishers of other types of games (RPGs, card games, etc) have the odd board games as well.
Catalyst Game Labs (Shadowrun & BattleTech) has done well with their "The Duke" and their Vikings themed "Jarl" tile game. They've also had offerings like Wrath of Dragons, a Vikings boardgame, Balance of Power, etc. They've also got the Crossfire-based deck-building games (Shadowrun Crossfire and Dragonfire).
And that's just two examples. Asmodee is just the 1600 lb French gorilla now.
We'll see if this attempt to buy market domination works in the long run or bites them. Hopefully it does. Because having Asmodee just up and fall over would be UGLY for the industry...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Basically the game itself IS free.
What you're paying for are just some cheaply produced pieces to play with.
Or you could make your own.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Monopoly, Guess Who, Operation, Game of Life, Risk, Clue, Trivial Pursuit...yes, they are a totally niche board game producer.
'Hasbro' includes 'Avalon Hill' as well. Quite a few older-player games in that portfolio. Betrayal at House on the Hill, for instance.
Niche player into shit-games it seem.
Asmodee have all the modern ones?
But there's also cool stuff Inc atleast
They aren't really competing with the likes of Asmodee, Hans im Glück, Pegasus, Ravensburger, Kosmos, etc.
Hasbro is the American publisher of the Ravensburger game Memory.
I mean the company which do a lot of massive box of plastic Kickstarter projects. Zombicide and such. I haven't really been into the game for ~three years or so so maybe I thought about the wrong name then.
Cool Mini or Not. Close enough .. :D
There are plenty of game publishers out there. Heck, there's a thriving indie scene as well (Kickstarter funded, but a lot of them make it to retail).
Asmodee is, however, one of the larger publishers now, but it appears like Hasbro and other companies to keep their holdings as separate identities. Z-Man, for example, still publishes under Z-Man - there aren't many games that publish directly under Asmodee.
And your FLGS will be happy to show you plenty of publishers that aren't part of the Asmodee empire. Rio Grande, Czech Games Edition, CMON (Cool Mini Or Not).
Then there's indies like Stonemeier Games, Renegade (who has a huge catalog as well), IDW, etc. And more popping up daily. Interestingly, if you've managed to break through the barriers (which aren't high), going from Kickstarter to retail isn't all that hard. My FLGS gets in a lot of games merely on recommendations, and the only big one is getting a distributorship so the store can order it in.
Mayfair sold Catan to Asmodee in January 2016.
If you read stories from other sources you might learn that the owner of Mayfair wanted to retire. Since he had already done a deal with Asmodee for Catan it makes sense that he approached them when he wanted to sell the rest of the company.
There's no need to speculate that Mayfair was poorly managed.
Oh, that makes sense.
I don't respond to AC's.
It must have been their marketing strategy. I have never heard of Mayfair Games, and have never played any of their games.
Monopoly, Guess Who, Operation, Game of Life, Risk, Clue, Trivial Pursuit...yes, they are a totally niche board game producer.
It's hard to say it without being a little dismissive, I suppose, but those games are largely considered antiquated and rarely appear in the modern board game community. They have a built in audience, certainly, of boomers buying games they remember from childhood; however, the market targeted by Asmodee, Mayfair, Fantasy Flight, etc. do not buy those games and are generally interested in fresher, newer designs, spurred on by hype from the big game conventions and sites like boardgamegeek.com.
Hasbro certainly doesn't attempt to set up a booth at Origins Game Fair or GenCon to sell Monopoly.
There's newer and more adult games from Hasbro. Besides, a lot of those pre-70's games are CLASSICS. And besides owning Milton Bradley AND Parker Brothers AND Kenner (IIRC they had a few board games), they also own Avalon Hill, AND Wizards of the Coast (which would also include TSR/SPI assets). Why they didn't pick up Pressman as well I'll never know.
They also act as publisher for some of those Eurogame companies in the US. It isn't Ravensburger that publishes Scotland Yard in the US, it is Hasbro.
So yes, Hasbro is the big kahuna of boardgames.
The story that I heard about Hasbro buying Avalon Hill was that some exec at Hasbro told a flunkie to buy "that Civilization company". Apparently he meant Civilization the Sid Meier computer game by Microprose, but the flunkie instead saw Civilization the board game by Avalon Hill. In fact, Microprose had licensed the use of the name from Avalon Hill. The amount he was told to offer (in expectation of buying a software company) was an offer so good for Avalon Hill that they would have been stupid to refuse it.
But checking Wikipedia, it seems that Hasbro did end up getting Microprose a few months later, which resolved some troubles between AH and MP.
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There is of course the big management hassle of digitising leading boardgames, to increase market share, even shifting them to the mobile market. Not as easy as it sounds, lots of usability and networking issues to solve and creating hard copy board games and digital board games at the same time is more complicated. Realistically they could even sell you a digital file which you with a printer and even a 3d printer with the right materials, make your copy. On the fly gaming network with mobile devices for playing digitised boardgames could be quite the thing with the right games. Board games are much better for casual gaming, against other players or against the device or mixes there of.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
So MANY clever and well done games too!
A sad time indeed.
Ferret
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