Entering into the final 48-hour stretch, the Marvel United Kickstarter comes out swinging with a much-requested expansion, an all-in pledge, and stretch goals galore. Let’s get you caught up on everything you may have missed:
Updates for 2/29-3/2
First off, the Kickstarter-exclusive Kingpin unlocked, revealing his greatest foe, the indomitable Daredevil.
Hitting a milestone, the Marvel United campaign gained 15,000 backers. To celebrate, a free hero was added to the campaign, the Kickstarter exclusive America Chavez.
Soon after America made her debut, Daredevil unlocked, and the Kickstarter exclusive Spider-Man 2099 swung onto the scene as the next stretch goal.
And first thing this morning, the Marvel United campaign had a huge update, which really put things into high gear. With all of those Spider-Verse heroes showing up, they needed villains to fight…and got them in one of the biggest expansions to date, Return of the Sinister Six. But that’s not all…CMON also introduced the Ultimate Pledge, which included the core game plus all expansions, promos, and stretch goals at a discounted cost of $190.
With that news, both Spider-Man 2099 and the newly introduced (and personal favorite), Kickstarter exclusive Squirrel Girl swiftly unlocked.
With Squirrel Girl unlocked, the last stretch goal at the time of this writing made his appearance: the Sorcerer Supreme himself, Doctor Strange.
After a relatively slow weekend, CMON really turned up the heat with this latest expansion and the Ultimate Pledge. A lot can still happen over the next two days, so if you want to keep up with the excitement, you can keep following along here at GeekDad and head over to the Marvel United campaign page to find out more in-depth information and pledge for the campaign.
What are Kickstarter Quick Picks?
Kickstarter Quick Picks are short looks at projects currently on Kickstarter that are of interest to me, and by extension, many of our GeekDad readers. A Quick Pick is not an endorsement of the Kickstarter campaign, nor have I (as yet) received any product copies to review. If you like what you see here, go check out the campaign and decide for yourself if you’d like to back it, or wait until GeekDad has had a chance to go hands-on. As always, caveat emptor- let the buyer beware.
New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.
What Is Marvel United?
Marvel United is a game from CMON and Spin Master Games currently in a Kickstarter campaign. You can read more about it here.
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In the last few days of the Kickstarter CMON finally appeared to listen to the backers… after haemorrhaging so many in the days leading up to that. The totals are almost starting to look respectable now. Even Zombicide Black Plague worthy if they can (and they should) hit 18,500 backers though it seems unlikely they’ll crack the US$4 million mark.
But how have they added almost 4,000 new backers since the 14,000 they had at the fourteen day mark? Pretty simple really: they appeared to listen to their market. They finally did a redo on Spiderman. CMON have a history of doing a redo on a single sculpt in a pre-planned “we’re listening” bit. But not Gwen or Miles or Bucky or Falcon. No changes there.
And both the Punisher and Doc Strange have made an appearance, as well as Squirrel Girl and 2099 Spiderman, all requests that were pre-planned. The Sinister Six showed up in, you guessed it, another op buy expansion, US$35 or you could just do an all-in US$190 pledge. Vulture, Mysterio, Sandman, Electro, Doc Oc and Kraven.
A lot of boxes with very little content, no henchmen (don’t need them for a book keeping card game… not sure what the point of the minis is really), and a headache to find somewhere to store it all if it actually arrives. 77 minis with a day to go. US$190 plus P&H for all those boxes. Zombicide Core Boxes had around 72 minis standard, some of them big ones, for a pledge of around US$100 to US$120 plus P&H.
Why all the boxes for MU? Why the limited content? Why not just jam them all into the MU Core Box and Infinity Gauntlet Box as the United and Infinity Pledge? Could have saved a mint on P&H and it would have taken up less space to store when not being used. Why do they cost so much more? It can’t be all “Marvel royalties IP” BS.
There’s an argument for someone getting greedy here, and not the trolls hiding behind anonymity to bully backers who post legitimate concerns about the product they are investing in. Have a look at the SG totals and you’ll start to get the picture. They wander about all over the shop and hamstring the campaign like a Democratic Convention.
At the start it was US$180K, US$210K (+30), US$240K (+30), then US$280K (+40), US$320K (+40), got greedy with US$380K (+60), dropped back when it stalled to US$430K (+50), and again to US$470K (+40), and hovered between +50 and +60 for a bit with a brief foray to +80 and then dropping down to level off as the campaign nose dived.
At the end it’s US$1,670K (+70), US$1,740K (+70) accompanied by the offer of the all-in-pledge as that US$2,000K looks like it might be too far away and US$1,820K (+80) because greed beckons with the hope of what backers pledge with the offer, US$1,920K (+100) since the all-in pledge provided a momentary blip on the totals, US$2,040K (+120) because it all looks like gravy and the greed is really motivating them now the US$2 mil mark has been reached, US$2,180K (+140) and then US$2,330K (+150) because the backers just don’t care anymore! Take my money!
…and in less than 24 hours the backers will lie back and puff on that cig, spent, in that happy place where they got what they wanted and feel good as CMON counts the cash on the dresser and leaves. And, over the next few days, the backers will start to feel a little uncertain, an irritating niggling sensation as they don a hat and trenchcoat and visit an STD clinic a couple of suburbs over and experience regret that will bloom to full scale remorse upon delivery as their package arrives… or not.
And then they’ll discover just how much they spent for so little. And, for a lucky few, trying to get CMON to respond to requests to deliver what they paid for or replace goods damaged during manufacture or transit (good luck). They’ll look into the boxes taking up a large chunk of a room and wonder why it couldn’t have all gone into the Core Box and a single op buy expansion, and why they paid around US$2.75 (including P&H) for each plastic mini that isn’t as solid or good as it looked during the campaign.
But it’s not just the lack of value for money here, or the failure of MU to do as well as Zombicide. “Zombicide? I know about Marvel, but what’s Zombicide?” Exactly. Marvel should sell well even in the current economic climate, but it didn’t. The real issue here is damage to brand. Marvel was a safe place for a lot of kids who grew up abused and bullied at home and school. It was a refuge for nerds before Marvel became mainstream.
Stan Lee changed society and culture with stories about inclusiveness, diversity, and accessibility. But CMON changed that back. Marvel sold them an IP agreement and CMON did the MU campaign, turning it into another commodity that quickly became the playground for bullies and elitists who cyber-trolled investors posting legitimate feedback.
And again, just like during the ZGH campaign in 2017, CMON enabled this vile behaviour by doing nothing to stop it. That drives backers and potential backers out of the market and presents a false sense of investor-happiness leading to a product that isn’t as good as it could be. I actually wrote about this, and to CMON at the time, and got trolled for my efforts by half-wits who claimed to know better, insisting I shut my mouth. I made predictions.
2018. CMON suffered US$4.1 million losses and a 30% drop in share price. A combination of poor decisions. Just as I predicted. It wasn’t marco-economics. Anyone with even half-a-brain could see it coming, and yet the trolls were still woefully under-qualified. Failing to discourage trolls and make their campaigns more inclusive and accessible are just two of these issues. Raising prices through too many op buys, too many KSE not available at retail, people don’t like to feel like they are missing out so cancel pledges. They don’t back it at all.
2020. MU campaign. Same problem. This product should have been better packaged, planned better too, and the greed and trolls should have been kicked to the curb. If they had, if the product was more affordable, with the current minis and SG content that should have been in the existing sets divided between just one Core and one expansion box, with henchmen and civilian minis, with SGs being lesser know characters like Beta Ray, Spider Pig, etc, and the trolls blocked from commenting and comments removed after bad behaviour, this product would have done much better.
But it hasn’t. It should make around US$2.5 mil at this point with around 20K backers. Maybe add +25% to those totals as hobby stores buy-in extra sets for sales to collectors, or even CMON steps in and adds some ghost pledges it will remove after the campaign closes to make the totals look better. Either way, a disappointing failure for a Marvel product for so many reasons, worst of which is the tarnished reputation of the brand. CMON needed worry. Its brand was already tainted. A lot of the backers, whether they stayed in or not, won’t be back. A wise choice.