Megacon Games MERCS & Myth Interview!
October 3, 2014 by deltagamegirl22
We're sitting down for a chat with the guys behind Megacon Games who have created such games as the awesome MERCS and of course Myth! If you ever wanted to find out more about these games then you don't want to miss this!
Find out more about Myth!
Head on over to the MERCS Hub!
More coming in an extended Backstage interview too!
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You say ‘and of course Myth’, but alas I am yet to see my Kickstarter arrive here in the UK. Never has a product been better named – we’ve heard great stories from afar, but as yet no physical evidence has reached our shores!
I’m afraid I’m very sceptical of supporting megacon games in the future. They handled the Myth Kickstarter very, very poorly. Talk is evidently very cheap.
Same here. Also europian. Hopefully we get our stuff at the end of the month.
I wouldnt be bothered by the delays if the guys from megacon had delivered when they said.
First they said before xmas 2014. But then because of tax issues they said next year. Then they delivered the base game only to US backers(bad show there). Now we have to wait……
I already played the game because of an amercan friend in the army. The game is very good, but as they say its a sandbox and you need to be ok with that….
I agree completely. Their mishandling of Myth put me off the Mercs Wossname Kickstarter. That it’s on open sale in the US and Europe is still waiting is pure BS.
I managed to pick up a copy of Myth in a retail store here in the UK recently – so I’d probably get in contact with them if I were you.
We have to wait. The game is curruntly in customs in germany and hopefully be release next week.
Yes, that is all part of the problem. It’s been available retail for a while now but there have been many issues with actually delivering the kickstarters. Last I heard they were all in Germany, but I have yet to receive an update like the rest of the backers in the UK (and possibly Europe) I imagine.
All we hear are excuses, followed by weeks of ignoring the backers, followed by more excuses to explain why the last set of excuses apparently amounted to nothing. By the time the game gets to us it will already have an outdated/incorrect set of cards and a rule book that has since been fixed to make it usable. Do they offer to replace those cards and rule books like other Kickstarters? No. Apparently they will be made available on the next kickstarter.
Anyway, I hope you got the reprint.
We all expect some issues with Kickstarters, but it’s mainly down to how problems are handled that keeps everyone on your side. At times megacon games have been downright rude to their backers over here, seeming almost offended that anyone should expect to receive the game outside of the USA. But don’t just listen to me, check it out for yourself on the kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1700755582/myth-0/comments
But I warn you, there’s a lot of anger in that thread!
Also, noticed how BoW have refused to put up the week of Myth content until it’s delivered over here? Solidarity!
There are a lot of upset Myth backers and there are also a lot that are really happy with it. As someone who missed the KS and then kicked myself repeatedly after seeing the gameplay videos, I have been following all the twists and turns ever since. I was lucky enough to buy a refunded pledge several months back and as in the UK I am also looking forward to EU shipping hopefully starting next week. When buying a refunded pledge I had to pay $50 international shipping rather than the $13 of the original KS. However, the pledge value with all the stretch goals is immense even with that and that has been part of their problem, getting all those pieces together at once. Sure they could be better at communicating, but TBH my KS experiences with Dust and Mantic have shown the norm now seems to be minimal updates and slow/poor communication, not something I’m happy with, but just to highlight it isn’t just a problem with Megacongames.
Hopefully everyone will be happy once the pledges start to arrive. I’ve had time to read all the rules and get upto speed, so looking forward to jumping straight in. Well, that is after I’ve waded my through the ton of plastic soon to descend on me.
I got a refund in the end – could not be doing with all the work of dealing with imo a flawed game…disappointing.
Meh, as long as I get my stuff I can live with a delay.
Sure, Megacon games had made some decisions I disagreed with, but I still expect to love this game. As long as they come through in the end, I consider this a succesfull kickstarter.
I’m looking forward to the next one.
Doesn’t mean I’d mind having my stuff now, though.
I have to say. Mercs Minis really hit the nail on the head when they changed their name to MegaCon. lol
Still waiting for this farce of a kickstarter to arrive.
Lol. Just lol.
The thing is, i’m expecting to see a shed load of Myth coverage on BoW saying how awesome the game is and completely glossing over the problems and outrage that people have had.
Afterall. When was the last time you saw anything on BoW that slagged off one of their sponsors..?
Don’t get me wrong. I love BoW and I love Warren and the gang that run it. Hell – I think they’re awesome. But at the end of the day – How can they be unbiased when Mercs sponsor them..?
The Myth kickstarter has provided me with a shed load of real life agrivation and i’m not affraid to admit that that is a factor on how much slack i’m (not) willing to give MegaCon in the future.
We have already stated we held back coverage until EU kickstarters were shipped.
We’ll judge the game on the game and how much fun we can have with the game, you might have had a bad experience granted, but I’m not sure why we should have to take that into account on the game itself.
We have waited until it’s available, you go into kick starters aware of the risks – I don’t think many have shipped on time.
If you’d like me to quiz them on a show about what happened I’m happy to do that, if you’d like me to consider a game and its mechanics, production values etc are shit because it shipped late… I’m not happy to do that 😉
I do appreciate and respect that you’ve held back the coverage. And i’ll admit that I wish you’d waited untill the EU backers had their stuff, but I also understand that you can only do it for so long.
I’m not saying slag the game off for the sake of slagging it off. If that’s the impression I gave then I appologise. What I meant was that there will always be an element of bias towards the designers and even if the game was a sack of arse I doubt that BoW would come out and say so – or at least not outright – as this could potentially affect your advertising deal.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand and accept this. I know that the only true way for Bow to be 100% unbiased is to have no sponsors at all. Which, unless somebody wins the lottery is a bit unlikely for the forseeable future.
Does this mean I have any less respect for you and the rest of the BoW gang? No of course not. As I said. I love you guys. I hope you run forever. But I’m savvy enough to know that not everything is going to be as awesome as might be made out.
Even with games I know from experience are a bit iffy. I still enjoy your coverage of them and i’ll probably love the coverage you do of Myth – Even if i’ve been soured towards it and wish i’d taken the refund option for the KS when it was offered.
It will be interesting to see how you tackle the fact that the game is a bit of a mess and almost unplayable out of the box though. :-p
I don’t even know why I posted my original post. Maybe a bit of bitternes towards Megacon for the personal pain they’ve cause. ( Which was a lot and is far to complicated to go into here. )
I wouldn’t expect you to do any different Warren! Impartial is the name of the game…
True, I wouldn’t mind a ‘from the horses mouth’ question and answer session on the whole affair, but I don’t expect it to affect the review of the game itself or even be included in the same discussion.
Must admit I’m worried about the increased usage of the term ‘sandbox game’ that appeared as the, erm, ‘delivery’ of the Kickstarter progressed. I really don’t know what that is supposed to mean. It seems to be used as some kind of excuse for shortcomings in the game, but I really would like an explanation of just what it means so I can decide if that matters to me or not.
Sandbox is normally a term you hear more with computer games and rpgs, particularly the former as rpgs are inherently sandbox to begin with. It refers to a game in which the player or players have considerable freedom in their actions and can explore the setting, rather than being railroaded from one point to the next.
I just got my second wave shipment of Myth as a US backer today. Very pleased with the quality and packing. Tiles and cards look great. I am ready for some coverage. Hope everyone else gets theirs soon.
🙂 I’m hoping we can film a full demo game with them. The guys are so much fun and really bring life to the game with their enthusiasm. They truly make anyone want to play when you see them in action!
I have to say, I was super enthusiastic about Myth when I backed it.
I offered to pay to get the game shipped to me, when it shipped to US backers. Didn’t get a response. I still haven’t received a single part of my kickstarter rewards, even though the game has been in retail for ages. How hard would it have been to involve the EU and AU distributors to ship the main box locally? Apparently that’s whats happening now anyway, AU backers are getting their core game through Aetherworks, who is a distributor.
It’s hard not to feel frustrated, when your reward for helping make a product a reality, is receiving it after a general consumer. Like a year after :/
People seem to have a misconception of how Kickstarters work. I have yet to find a miniatures game kickstarter that hasn’t met some sort of delay or other problem (except maybe Reaper but even they had a delay I believe). Although, the stars did seem to align for Megacon as far as misfortune goes, look at games like Kingdom Death (still being developed and it ended like 2 years ago). The whole point of KS is that it is a gamble. Could they have done shit better, communicated better, etc, of course, but they’re like a group of 4 people with a million dollar project on a scale they weren’t prepared for. I think that deserves a bit of slack as long as you eventually get your product. They had to put stuff to retail because of space issues (again could have been handled better), but without that we’d all be waiting even longer than we have for our waves.
As someone who almost got the refund, and finally received wave 1 of ROTW (wave 2 still on the way) and then proceeded to watch a youtube tutorial ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPsmOng-CBw&list=PLGZRC0voW5eB9CxFXJMgo8jS8LcNLDVXQ this is the best one I have found) along with spending a significant amount of time figuring out how to play so that I could teach friends and whatnot, I can say it is worth the wait.
The game play is fun even playing solo. It can be very very very free-form (but that makes it very easy to play a quick pick-up game) and it can also be well structured with a storyline. Also there is ever increasing community content coming out, so even if you hate the free-form aspect and don’t want to make your own adventures or even just play quest cards, you can still have fun following the adventures the community has made in addition to the adventure from the KS. You’re also getting like $300+ worth of extra stuff if you pledged just captain ($100). I mean, for example, a minions box is like $20 retail and you are getting like 10+ of them in addition to the base game…
In just a about a month everyone who backed will most likely have the game in hand, running out of patience or being angry at this point is silly. We’ve all waited 6+ months, what’s one more month?
Wel for me it’s not the wait. It’s the things that megacon guys did and said. I think it unheard of (for me at least) to ship stuff only to one part of the backers. And if you say in oktober/november 2013 the base game will be shipped before xmas, and then because of understandable reasons dont ship it and then only deliver to a potion of the backers in 2014. That just bad judgement and doesn’t sit wel with me. I already played the game and above issues dont take away its a good game to play….
Are you serious?
That’s some pretty epic straw manning.
I was happy to receive the game when it was done. I was happy to wait, until they could fulfil. What wasn’t communicated during the kickstarter, was that shipping of the base game, was done first. That’s fine, I understand they want to get the game out and selling. But to decide that they won’t ship the game to people outside the US, until everything is ready is really tough.
The game has been on sale for a year. I could have bought the base game myself. It was being distributed, in my country, through megacon’s distributor. I offered to pay shipping, to get that copy when the game launched, and heard nothing back. I’d have been happy to pay the distributor a shipping fee to get my game a year ago.
As it is, I’ve just received the first parcel. But because I’m waiting for the distributor to ship me my copy of the base game (which could have been done a year ago) along with the heavier components, such as cardboard bits, I can’t use the miniatures I’ve just received. It’s frustrating.
It didn’t stop me backing Mercs: Recon, but if they repeat the same effort as they did on Myth, then I’m done them them. It’s not acceptable to have your game on sale, and not provide copies to the people who kickstarted it.
TLDR: It’s fine for a kickstarter to be delayed, but when you launch it for sale on retail, a YEAR before you fulfil for a good portion of your backers, you are giving them a kick in the teeth.
Reading the comments here about how badly MegaCon Games handled the Kickstarter I feel these are not entirely fair.
I can understand some of the frustration but a Kickstarter of this proportion being late is almost expected, especially when the company is still forming. There were some Kickstarters like Kingdom Death, Relic Knight or Through the Breach that were even worse. MegaCon Games posted an update for MYTH roughly once a month. Again, not bad for a Kickstarter.
Regarding issues: they tried both aproaches, being up front about possible issues on one hand and waiting till the issue arose befor writing about it. In both cases, there were those among the backers who were shredding them to pieces, no matter what they said. There was a lot of willful misunderstanding, insinuations that they were not willing to fullfil the pledges and even accusing Brian and Kenny of lying. Rectifying comments were simply ignored and the whole mood turned rather sour. I cannot blame them fo eventually losing it. However, even then, the comments that were pointed out as being rude were quite harmless, especially compared to what they had to endure.
Lastly there seems a whole lot of envy going on because others already have the game.
Best regards
Bartender
They shipped the game for sale, without fulfilling the base game to all their kickstarters. I’m sure it would have been hard work. But the result would have been a whole bunch of backers, happily playing the game. And when people offer to pay to have it shipped from the distributor, you can at least answer their email.
There were some negative things said, some impatient and horrible people. I was one of the people who stood up for MCG on Kickstarter. The guys bitching and moaning, a bunch of them have had the game for a year. I could have bought it in time for Christmas last year, and I still don’t have the base game.
It’s not a heap of people being unreasonable. It’s a heap of people feeling like they put their cash in to start the game, and were then ignored.
And you know what, I don’t dislike MCG. They seem focused on making great games, and fantastic models. I’m really excited about Recon. But I’m putting it out there, that they mishandled international fulfilment for their product. If that’s how they choose to fulfil Recon, they are definitely going to do their brand damage!
Actually I am happy that delivery starts today/tomorrow from germany. So this should really make a difference then.
I do not like, yet do understand the reasons why the base game was shipped to the US, but nowhere else. They needed to get some more free space in the warehouse. And this is also why they put the base game into distribution channels back then.
The pledge levels though are not just the base game, there are lots of goodies in there. This is the real value of the KS. And shipping twice to countries where is it most expensive did not make sense in the beginning of the year, when they still thought things should be going out by March / April. Shipping was really cheap in this KS, nowhere near the actual price.
So these are the reasons behind it, and I do not like them, but I can understand them and would have done the same thing if I were in their shoes.
But: I am happy it starts this week! 🙂
Umm just a question, what do you know that we dont,, uum let me refrase that.
Dont think we have had any word about the boxes being released by german customs or that megacon people are on there way to germany.
I quote ” Quick Update: Today we got through most of Texas and its 300 pledges. If our current speed continues we should be done by Thursday. EU backers: Everything looking good so far for the container to clear customs. If this holds true we will be in Germany on the 7th of October. There is roughly 1500 pledges to take care of so it will probably take 7 days for Nikki and i to fulfill this. If we have additional help this time will be reduced.”
No word of either if im not mistaken
Well it’s the 7th today… we shall see…
According to the german fan community “weltvonmyth.de” the guys from MegaCon did arrive today in Germany and are at the warehouse of Ulisses Games and are currently organizing and discussing everything.
It seems they will start sending out the stuff from tomorrow morning onwards.
The source is well trusted and will be there tomorrow as well.
– See more at: http://www.beastsofwar.com/megacon-games/megacon-games-mercs-myth-interview/#comment-149235
According to the german fan community “weltvonmyth.de” the guys from MegaCon did arrive today in Germany and are at the warehouse of Ulisses Games and are currently organizing and discussing everything.
It seems they will start sending out the stuff from tomorrow morning onwards.
The source is well trusted and will be there tomorrow as well.
They have postponed again, as the container were held up by customs, in contrast to what the delivery Company suggested… 🙁
Seem to me that MCG cant catch a break. If they would just communicate, but its a skill they havent aquired yet it seems. No official word.
Really looking forward to receiving the main game and goodies when the ship finally arrives in Australia… still think this game looks great and from all the videos I’ve seen of it, it looks like I’ll definitely enjoy playing it…
… However, I probably wouldn’t back another Megacon KS (and in fact did skip on the Mercs:Recon one because of this) – not because of the delay, which I totally understand having backed over 25 KS – but I just didn’t feel the communication was up to scratch. I don’t know if it was the tone of the updates or the lack of response to backer questions, but it just didn’t feel like a positive experience…
… still looking forward to the game though 🙂
I’m anotheer EU backer who has lost a little faith with MCG and KS in general after this.
Just to be clear, it is not the delay that bothers me, but the complete and utter lack of communication. There were some very unpleasant exchanges on KS and I appreciate that the conversations could be difficult. It is, however, unfair to freeze out all the backers due to some awkwardness from a small subset.
I am still looking forward to the game arriving and all the minis, but I am v disappointed with the level of communication latterly.