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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
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!!!
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.
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.
I'm taking your nerd card.
Didn't you ever play D&D and other tabletop RPG's? Didn't you read the various tabletop RPG magazines? Mayfair ads were common in them.
They did the DC Roleplaying game for goodness sake! They were even one of the many publishers of Cosmic Encounter. Their version supports 10 players.