2008 saw another abysmal year for the collectible gaming industry – with the continued winnowing of the field, the stillbirth of even more games and the outright extinction of entire companies dedicated to the medium.

So what went wrong in 2008?  The item that I keep calling people’s attention to is the spectacular failure formerly known as Mutant Chronicles.  This gem had a good heritage (great property, well-liked rules) and then totally imploded prior to release – inevitably switching to a non-collectible format before ultimately fizzling out completely.  Lest we think that this might have been mismanagement by an inexperienced publisher, this was Fantasy Flight, who as we all know, can do no wrong (‘k…maybe that’s a bit strong – they have to work really hard to do wrong?).

But Mutant Chronicles wasn’t the only collectible to blow up this year.  Remember Eve: The Second Genesis?  You’re probably the only one – this one debuted at GenCon and White Wolf isn’t even advertising it on their own website (and they haven’t posted new articles on the game since last year!).  We also had a relaunch of Dragon Ball Z (coming not too long after the line was shut down…), a wave of new-breed anime-based games (Bleach, Naruto) and two new miniature games (Monsterpocalypse and the World of Warcraft Miniature Game).  Let’s face it, out of all of these, only Monsterpocalypse seems to have developed any legs and even that is really hard to determine (there’s a lot of collectible hate going ’round and Privateer Press doesn’t publish sales figures…).  And what about the must-have title for the Playstation 3’s magic eye accessory, Eye of Judgment – they haven’t officially killed the game, but with two expansions that haven’t done much to move the game along and no mention of a set 4 in sight, I think we can go ahead and write this one off.  Fantasy Flight took a number of their games out of the collectible realm this year, including the venerable Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu CCGs, moving them to a non-collectible, fixed set format.  No break out hits here – certainly nothing the likes of Pokemon or Magic.

So how are the stalwarts of collectible gaming doing during this down year?

Click here for our full rundown of the beating collectible games took in 2008!

• 1 Comment

Winnipeg, CA: Authorities find 2k of heroin inside two gift-wrapped boxes of Monopoly. (source)

Jackson, Mississippi: One man shot and killed while playing cards and dominoes. (source)

• 0 Comments

I don’t have a lot of time these days for collecting and painting miniatures, but I can always aspire…

• 1 Comment