SotM at ThinkGeek.com

Don't need to wander into an actual game store to stumble on the game anymore.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/1a65/?pfm=Search&t=sentinels%20of%20the%20multiverse%20card%20game

This is gonna be really good for the GtG guys. Congratulations!

This is going to be awesome for everyone.  More Sentinels!

Whoo hoo! They need the expansions and mini-expansions there too!

COngrats >G!



That is awesome!

> Does your team have what it takes to save the day? Or will you just be a League of Losers?

That does not sound like very polite advertising.  If I were Christopher, I would protest the use of such a tone to describe my product.

Hey, I don't write copy for Think Geek or police what tone they want to use advertising what they sell, and they don't tell me how to make my games. Works for me!

You're not concerned that a possible description of your players as "losers" could hurt your brand?

I have a feeling that many geeks may have heard that word directed at them at some point in their past before. It didn't stop them liking things then either.

But it probably did stop them liking the people who called them such a name....

Yeah, I don't think people are going to stop liking Think Geek because of it, though.

We all liked SotM before it was cool. Great. We're Hipsters now. Congrats to >G. I hope that this makes for logistical issues for you from the orders pouring in.

ThinkGeek has a specific attitude to uphold. That phrase is very consistent with that attitude.

Personally, I'm not going to judge what ThinkGeek decides to do in their marketting of a product to their customer base. They know their customers very well and are good at selling their products. I don't.

Also, Think geek paid for the games. How they want to resale them is their own thought.

If you lose, you're a loser. I don't see that it's an insult, merely a description of the fact that you didn't win. 

If ThinkGeek were using copy that I found gave a bad/wrong impression of a product of mine, I'd certainly want to see what I could reasonably do to get the copy changed. That being said, I didn't see anything bad or wrong about their copy.

I was a hipster before it was cool.

I think it's just a difference between loser = "person who lost" and loser = "worthless failure person". They seem to be going for the first definition, but with a subtle hint at the second, suggesting that your play might lead to you representing a group of crappy superheroes if you don't win the game. 

Seems fine to me. It isn't insulting players (or the hero characters, or the game) as far as I can see. Insulting people isn't a good way to get people to buy games. 

I agree, it it's also in ThinkGeek's style of self-deprication and love for fun, especially alliteration!

For the record, the Leauge of Loser's was a marvel comics team from around the mid 2000s. I think they are just going for the obscure reference.

And suddenly everything makes sense.

It did not seem fine to me for exactly this reason.  Perhaps it's a culture difference; I find it hard to picture Britons calling each other "loser" (if only because you have so many much more cutting insults like "tosser" and "poof", which we Yanks find impossible to take seriously, but which I can objectively tell are pretty vicious to people raised the right way).  But over here, we have always had a strong culture of "winners never quit, quitters never win" and "the measure of a man is the work he does" and so forth (which is a logical extention of being a nation that boostrapped itself into existence in less than 500 years, instead of having millenia of tradition to cling to), so being called any form or variation of "worthless, weak, will never amount to everything" tends to really get to us.  Even a person like me, who actively prides himself on his laziness, can recoil at being judged in such a fashion, particularly when coming from an apparent peer group…such as the gaming community, or "geekdom" in general.  Since most of those I know in sci-fi fandom grew up being 'the uncool people' who were always mistreated by the mainstream, I've come to expect an exquisite level of tolerance and compassion among us, with very few exceptions.  (The trash-talk among Magic gamers being one of those exceptions, but SOTM is not Magic.)

Insulting people isn't a good way to get people to buy games.

Right, which is why I thought it was bad copy.  Why couldn't they say something more charitable?  That said, if "their crowd" responds positively to such a tone, c'est la vie.  I just know damn well that I won't ever buy anything from them if they might call me a Loser before I even click "add to cart".

Quoted for both truth and emphasis.

ThinkGeek is full of self-deprecating humor.  The fact that they coupled it with a Marvel reference speaks to their 'authentic nerdity'.

I have no problem with self-deprecation, as long as it's not myself being deprecated by somebody else, which is what this copy reads like to me.  Self-deprecation would be something like "We at ThinkGeek have so little to do with our time, we just sit around playing SOTM all day...it's pretty awesome, so even if you do have an actual life, you should still check it out".  I would have had no problem with that message.

My point is, if you lose it's not an insult to describe you as a loser, because you lost. If you chose to be insulted by that, that's your choice, but it's still true. If you won, you're a winner. Simple. Same as you can describe me as white, British, female, gamer, musician, artist, non-German speaker, or whatever, and none of these things are insults. I have been the loser of many many games. That's fine.

We totally use "loser" in the UK, in the insulting rather than descriptive sense. And "tosser" means exactly the same "jerk" (and also "wanker"). "Poof"? We're going for homophobic insults now?

The problem is that associations can be stronger than meanings.  Yes, the ad is using the literal meaning of "loser", and it's easy to recognize what they mean.  But that doesn't prevent the association "Playing SotM = Loser(at life)".  It won't be a strong association, but it will still be there, and it's not an association we want made at all.

That being said, if ThinkGeek has a deprecating sense of humor, then that goes a great way to breaking the association.  It's like calling your friend a jerk - you are familiar enough with each other that you know that term is meant in a meaningless fashion, and no negative connotation is attached to the insult.

It also helps that "League of Losers" feels like a reference, even if the readers aren't familiar with it, which also helps break the negative connotations.

I do trust ThinkGeek though.  They've had a lot of success selling to the geek community, which is a community with a particularly strong negative association with the term "loser".  It's not something that would slip under the radar.  If it's there, it's because they don't think it's a problem.

You can always tell a Hipster by the blisters on their tongues. They are always trying to eat that pizza before its cool

Essentially, ThinkGeek is one of the major hubs for buying cool geeky things. Having TG's monkeys (they call themselves that!) put a product on their site on their your product on there is an excellent mielstone!

I've bought a lot of cool stuff from them, and their  customer service, style, and care has never let me down. We should not make a post about how TG describes products on their site.

We should all be buying >G beer, shots, goblets of chocolate milk, what ahve you. This. Is super super super cool!

More importantly, we did know about and like this first. That doens't make su hipsters, that makes us ahve great taste!

Totally going to start using this as an insult now. All the time. Everywhere. (Except to people who speak German.)

Are you kidding me? It's an even BETTER insult to those who DO speak German! 

It's a pretty accurate insult for people from Bavaria.

I cna juts imagine the >G group apologizing to all of Germany and Bavaria, and that it wasn't their intent to be rude, and they apologize on our behalf.

Hey, it's not our fault they dont speak German.  If they don't like it they can learn.  Jetzt sprechen Deutsch!

Just popped by to mention that Sentinels was also listed as a new product in the latest ThinkGeek newsletter.

Sounds pretty obvious, I know, but they don't actually list everything new in those, so it's really pretty cool.

Semantics and whining aside, congratulations guys! I can't wait for the cooperative comicbook card game bug to infect greater masses.

Think Geek is access to a wider market which is fantastic, and with a product that is so strong … a little here or there doesn't matter.