Well, at least there wasn’t a denial.  I’ll take that as a positive sign and look forward to an eventual announcement.

Man I hope they give us something soon, at least last year we had “bigfoot” to speculate on. hehe.

"No Comment” policy aside, I’m surprised no attempt was even made to give some type, ANY type of content.  Heck, even a “although we can’t comment, we did recently announce… yada yada yada...” would have been fine.

If ya wanna to come to the sandbox, ya gotta play! <grin>

Here’s a question for a future column:  How are your older (non-TTR) games such as Mystery of the Abbey and Pirate’s Cove doing?  Do you expect to keep them in print for a while?

Why is this topic even worth an entry?  I stopped checking the DoW message boards a long time ago, because of them being so tight-lipped.  I wish they would change their policy.

Was really hoping for a Shadows over Camelot expansion.

Alas.  More days of wondering....

I am a firm believer that in this lightening fast communication and internet era, being tight lipped hurts more than helps. To DoW’s credit though, they have started individual Blogs for some of their expandable games like Battlelore and Memoir’44.

What would be the harm though in just saying something like: “We are working on a space game with giant turtles.” Short, simple, does’nt give away too much info, but whets the appetite.

Peace

Note to DoW: I would SO buy a space game with giant turtles!

Is it worth publishing this kind of answers?

DoW is working on a space game with giant turtles?

is this how rumors get started?

Are there any updates on the Pirate’s Cove mini-expansion that was announced quite a while back?

Why did you even bother publishing this? I thought Jay’s one word answers to questions were bad.

If the publishers don’t want free publicity, don’t give it to them.

Yikes.  How about we give any publisher who comes on BGN to answer questions a little space to “feel things out” here on the site a little? 

I know we view it as free publicity (which it is), but they have the right to be less than an open book at all times to our questions.

One solution might be for the gamin community to submit more questions for the Publisher to answer.  Maybe start with some “softball” questions about the past (like the Pirates Cove, Mystery of the Abbey question) that we have interest in to build up a comfort level and then perhaps a little opening up will come.

Peace.

Chris,

DoW has posted a lot more content on this forum just as replies in the last few days.  They don’t need softball questions or the need to feel things out.  We should deliver them more questions, though.

Frankly, I’m hyped about the upcoming game about Giant Gree Space Turtles.

Chris,

I don’t normally comment on typos, but this one was wonderful:

“One solution might be for the gamin community...”

It made me think of a large group of street urchins, like in Bugsy Malone or Newsboys.

I heard that there were Giant Gree Space Turtles in the upcoming Pirate’s Cove expansion (or maybe it was the Mystery of the Abbey expansion?)…

Everyone KNEW I would comment on this.  (LOL)

I applaud Eric Martin for at least asking the question on behalf of BGN. 

Days of Wonder is a great company.  Eric Hautemont, in particular, is one of the nicest, most helpful, most modest & unassuming people in the entire game community.  But he is also very smart and has excellent business sense.

Days of Wonder had earlier stated that there were plans for two standalone games this year.  But they have been quiet for a long time about standalones in 2007… and even the one game they did release, Colosseum, did not appear to get that much of a push from the company, IMO.

In recent weeks they have been opening up a bit in terms of communicating with their fan base.  Which is nice to finally see. But kinda like the shy girl at prom, they just don’t ever say much… until they are ready to. 

So have patience with them.  Days of Wonder has a very disciplined business strategy regarding communications.  They release news on their schedule, not ours.  That business discipline has served them well in the past and is really an example of a well-run business. 

My hope, even as a fan of the company, is that BGN cultivates the existing relationship with DOW, so that we do get access to more news.  And ya can’t get an answer if you don’t ask the question. Right?

At least BGN stepped up and asked the question.

Well said Ryan.

DoW is entitled to any communication strategy they feel is necessary to keep their business running.

However, they can’t possibly expect anything good out agreeing to do the BGN equivalent of a Fireside Chat, and then coming to the table with nothing more than corporate PR speak.

In light of all of the comments they’ve posted on other articles, it’s obvious they are trying to open up a bit more to their fans.  That’s precisely what makes this article such a let down.  Even a touch of humor would have saved it!

The Rio Grande column has been such a great success—I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping it’s expansion to other publishers will be just as successful.

I’m on to you, Erics!

It all makes sense now!  “No Comment” is actually a clue as to what the next game will be.

Let’s see - they were talking about Christmas ... “no comment” ....

Silent Night!

My guess is the next big DoW game will be called “Silent Night”.

Well if I had to guess, judging from the syntax of the discussion, it appears as though this is Mark Kaufmann that Eric Martin was speaking to; probably not Eric Hautemont.  Mark Kaufmann is their marketing guy.

Hoo boy, did I ever choose the wrong question to stand on its own—and when I was traveling, too, so that I couldn’t respond earlier.

I goofed by choosing to run this question and answer on its own. Four different people had submitted the same question, so I thought it would be the most obvious question to run in the first DoW post. Mark Kaufmann has answered about a dozen different questions from gamers, and I’ve added three Q&As about BattleLore to this post to show that Days of Wonder does talk about its games.

In the future, I’ll try to ensure that the Q&As make sense and stand on their own. At the same time, readers should give publishers leeway in how they run their business. They don’t have to participate in forums like this one, and readers jumping down a publisher’s throat for not giving a satisfactory answer would likely discourage future publisher participation.

DoW is more than open when it comes to existing titles and support for them - but they don’t like to comment on upcoming titles.

This makes sense - they don’t need to feed the business with hype, and it avoids the negative press that is inevitable whenever a title ships late or is cancelled or whatever.

As luck would have it, I sent Mark a list of questions a couple of days ago and thought the reponses were interesting enough to turn into an atricle (with Mark’s blessing, I should add).  Look for it to appear on the site shortly.

pk

DoW has given us LOTS of information about upcoming games… just not fast enough for our voracious 24-hour-news-cycle appetites.

Keep up the good work, Mark & Eric.

Patrick,

When you receive the blessing of marketing, you truly do have it all. (LOL)

(i.e. I work in sales & marketing...so I can say that!)