Asmodee makes US mass market push with launch of new party games-focused studio Moodbox Games

Board game publishing and distribution giant Asmodee has continued its reignited expansion strategy by launching a new party games studio as part of a push into the US mass market.

Moodbox Games will be led by former Catan Studio director of brand development Kelli Schmitz and long-time young adult-focused book editor Shaina Olmanson, who joined Asmodee as an operations and communications manager in May of this year.

Schmidt has spent the last year at Asmodee working on inventor relations for social games in the US market across its family game studio Zygomatic, quiz and party games-focused Bezzerwizzer Studio, and Dotted Games, which Asmodee launched last year to creating new LEGO board games.

Asmodee said Moodbox had teamed with creative development studio Hedyverse to develop “unique new games with stunning visual appeal, quality components, and affordable prices”.

Hedyverse was co-launched last year by Jessica Aceti – who previously helped establish Seattle-based game design collective Prospero Hall, was VP of business development, marketing and licensing at board game design studio Forrest-Pruzan Creative, and helped launch Funko Games after Funko acquired Forrest-Pruzan Creative in 2019.

Asmodee said the creation of Moodbox marked a “major milestone” in its ongoing commitment to expand its presence in the US mass market.

Jean-Sébastien De Barros, chief product officer and EVP publishing at Asmodee, said, “We are thrilled to launch Moodbox Games studio.

“It will strengthen our presence in a category where Asmodee studios, such as Exploding Kittens and Zygomatic, are already seeing great success.

“I truly believe Moodbox will become a hub for creativity and innovation, giving inventive designers the space to explore new ideas and continue delivering engaging experiences for players in the US market.”

Moodbox said it is actively accepting submissions from designers and inventors for “unique and engaging party game concepts”, and will be at Spiel Essen in Germany next week, and the People of Play Inventor Pitch and Innovation Conference in Chicago in November.

Asmodee revealed last November that it was preparing to double down on the heavy expansion it undertook after being bought by private equity firm Eurazeo in 2014, which saw it swell from a specialist French operation to a global heavyweight across publishing and distribution.

The company had picked out a pipeline of more than 20 acquisition targets, similar to the decade-long spree which saw it buy up studios including Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight Games, Lookout Games, Catan Studio and Z-Man Games, as well as a string of distribution companies across the globe.

One potential acquisition target for Asmodee in the party games space might have been Big Potato Games, the UK board game publisher behind titles including The Chameleon and Herd Mentality – but that company recently picked up £16.2m of outside funding from investment firm Mobeus Equity Partners.

The opening salvo of that push saw Asmodee buy the Zombicide IP from financially-troubled board game publisher CMON in June – a series which has raised more than $40m on Kickstarter since its 2012 launch.

That move raised the prospect of Asmodee making its first proper push into the crowdfunding space – a possibility bolstered a week later when it emerged the company had hired David Preti, one of the architects of CMON’s Kickstarter strategy, to head up its own crowdfunding and miniatures operations.

Asmodee has also telegraphed a push in the TTRPG space in May this year through the hire of Mike Mearls, who previously spent 15 years rejuvenating and growing Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast as a senior manager and the franchise’s creative director.

Mearls’ blurb on his LinkedIn role as Asmodee Creative Director says, “Tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) are the best games you can play. If you don’t play them regularly, it’s because no one has made the right game for you. My job is to change that.”

Asmodee is yet to officially announce its intentions within the crowdfunding and TTRPG spaces.

Last month Asmodee launched a dedicated kids-focused brand as it prepares to release a slate of re-worked, simpler and shorter versions of some of its most popular titles.