Z-man Games: A Brief History

Z-man Games was launched in the mid 1990s to produce the  Shadowfist trading card game, one of the early TCGs and one that  drew upon themes from Chinese martial arts movies.  Z-man  then released what was for the store the much more successful line of B-Movie card games, starting with Grave Robbers from Outer Space, which parodied the horror films of the 1950s and 1980s and branching out into other genres such as the Western, fantasy,  pirate, blaxspolitation, Asian cinema and Christmas. Though not commonly seen in stores in recent years, a decade or so ago, the B-movie card games were a ubiquitous offering in game stores and I saw many a game of them played at gaming conventions throughout the Midwest.

Z-man Games biggest hits, releasing several years after the B-movie card games peaked, were Agricola and Pandemic, both posting respectably steady sales for several years until the advent of Wil Wheaton’s TableTop web series, which featured Pandemic in one episode, giving it the “Wheaton Bump”, quadrupling, at least for us, sales of the game and allowing Z-man to create a Catanesque line of expansion for Pandemic. The success of other games such as Tragedy Looper and The Walking Dead (based on the comics, not the television series. Cryptozoic has the rights to that and puts out its only line of TV series based games) likely attracted the attention of Quebec based game publisher/distributor Filosofia, which bought Z-man in 2011.  

Another Distributor Exclusive Ends

In case you missed the announcement earlier this week, Z-Man Games announced that, on March 15, it would end the exclusive distribution deal it has had in place for several years with Alliance Game Distribution, broadening its distribution channel to include not only Alliance but also Southern Hobby, ACD, GTS and Peachtree Distribution. Z-Man Games is probably best known for itsPandemic line of co-operative board games but the company also produces theCarcassonne, Agricola, Stone Age, Tragedy Looper as well as Camel Up and Dark Stories.

Z-man Games is part of the F2Z Entertainment publishing house, which also publishes the Plaid Hat, Pretzel and Filosofia lines of games and the success of Plaid Hat Games and Pretzel Games in using multiple distributors is what likely encouraged the company to end the exclusive arrangement with Alliance and move to a less exclusive arrangement with the other four distributors, which still leaves out smaller and regional distributors such as Aladdin’s and Mad Al.

By my calculations, this leaves about four publishers exclusive to one distributor or another. Alliance Game Distribution still maintains an exclusive relationship with WizKids Games, publisher of the HeroClix line of collectable superhero miniatures games; and Twilight Creations, best known as the publisher ofZombies! and its dozen or so expansions. ACD has an exclusive arrangement with Playroom, publisher of Geek Out and Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot (if it ever gets back into print, copies are going for over $100 on eBay); andPersonally Incorrect, a card game similar to Cards Against Humanity, is distributed exclusively by Lion Rampant Imports.

In addition, Looney Labs reduced its number of distributors a couple of years ago to two, ACD and Alliance (see “Looney Labs Cuts Distributors”), and added a third, GTS, six months ago; while whoever publishes Kittens In A Blender had an exclusive arrangement with GTS, though I am not sure if that was a permanent arrangement or just for the first (and only) reprinting of the game.

So far, WizKids seems pretty happy with how Alliance has handled distribution of their lines and, especially with HeroClix's heavy reliance on distribution of Organized Play materials to drive participation in OP events and hence sales of HeroClix products, I see no reason to expect WizKids to end the exclusive relationship now and since, from what I understand, money is involved in the ACD/Playroom deal, it is doubtful that one will change any time soon.

However, I would not be particularly surprised to hear an announcement from Looney Labs that they will expand their distribution channels from ACD, Alliance, and GTS to encompass the other two distributors as well. It would give them greater access to retailers that do not have one of their current three distributors as one of their first choices and would make it much easier for stores to restock products like Fluxx and Just Desserts as they will not have to hold off putting in an order until time to place one with one of Looney Labs' current distributors.

The thing that concerns me most about the expansion of Z-Man to additional distributors is the company’s notorious out of stock problem. Though Pandemicand its expansions remained in stock through this holiday season, this has not been the case in past years and the need to bump up production to supply the needs of four additional distributors may prove problematic for the company. I am hoping we don’t see a return to the days of Z-Man’s popular games out of stock for weeks or months again.

More on the Pandemic Pre-release

The annoying thing about the early release of Pandemic 2^nd edition to Target is that, unlike broken street dates on Magic and Yu Gi Oh products, theoretically, Z-man Games had much more control over the release of the second edition game and therefore should have managed to keep the February 6^th release date.  WOTC and Konami both have a number of distributors to deal with regarding street dates and each distributor has hundreds of stores to deal with as well.  In the Pandemic case, Z-man had only one distributor with which to work and that distributor only had one account carrying the product.  I am not privy to the inner workings of that particular channel of distribution but I would imagine it not too difficult to make certain that Pandemic did not arrive in Target’s distribution center until just before the release date, or even after. 

I really doubt the amount of sales generated by the extra week of early release amounted to even a fraction of a rounding error on Target’s income statement.  Meanwhile, it cost stores in the game channel sales, generated negative publicity for the company,  and likely annoyed to no end Alliance Distribution, Z-man’s official distributor to the specialty game channel, and likely the recipient of hundreds of emails and calls from perturbed retailers, wondering why Target had the hotly anticipated reprint a week ahead of the scheduled release whilst they did not.

Queen Games Goes Exclusive

Queen Games got more press this week then they have so far this year, with their announcement of  agreement for exclusive distribution with ACD Distribution.  In the last few months, that makes two for ACD (Queen Games and Playroom), one for Alliance (Z-Man Games) and a split between the two (Looney Labs).  I find it interesting that all of these exclusives are happening in the boardgame industry.  No exclusives signed with RPG companies, none with miniatures companies, none with book publishers and certainly none with any TCG companies.