Majesty
Release Dates: August 1999 (Set 1, "Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Simulator"), August 2000 (Set 2, "Majesty: The Northern Expansion")
Publisher: Cyberlore Studios
Designer: James Ernest
Artist: David White (Set 1), Michael Knight Clarke (Set 2)
New Rules: None
Cyberlore Studios produced the Dirgo/Flaire pair of Button Men as a freebie to promote its new computer game, Majesty, at Gen Con 1999. The recipes match two characters from the Soldiers set, Iago and Niles. Cyberlore studios released the second set, Nerni/Yeti, at Gen Con 2000 to promote their Northern Expansion for Majesty. Unlike the 1999 Majesty buttons, these characters have original recipes instead of being re-themes of previously printed Button Men.
According to Jay Adan, marketing director at Cyberlore:
At the time we were preparing to go to Gencon and looking for ways to promote our upcoming computer game, Majesty. I'm a long time tabletop gamer (started playing D&D in 1978) and at the time I was even starting a new game store in addition to working for Cyberlore so Button Men was something I was familiar with. One of the things I liked about doing marketing at Cyberlore was that I was tasked with coming up with ways we could do promotion as a scrappy game developer with little in the way of budget. I'm pretty sure that the idea to do Majesty-themed Button Men was mine. I had seen other branded Button Men buttons in the past so it seemed possible. The process after that was pretty simple. I think I sent out an inquiry to whoever was manning the Cheapass Games email at the time and got a quick response. They were fine with the concept but just wanted to do approvals on what we came up with. I do recall that there were some comments that came back on our designs but I don't think any changes needed to be made. One of the interesting things about the core design of Button Men is that it is somewhat self-balancing. The artwork came from existing game art but the final visual design and layout was done by the studio art staff.
I haven't really thought about this for a long time. It's funny to remember that I was also responsible for the actual production of the physical products. Again, we had a tiny budget for stuff like this so I sourced button-making supplies, learned how to use them, created instructions, had a local printer print the art for the buttons, cut out the art, stamped hundreds of buttons and packaged them up in their ziplocks. Prepping for events like this was always an exhausting process but none really compared to this.
As I expected the buttons were VERY popular. I can't recall how many we gave out but I'm pretty sure we didn't bring any back with us. We also ended up getting periodic requests for them after that event. I definitely felt like it was one of my better promotional ideas.
Buttons[edit | edit source]
Dirgo
(20) (20) (20) (X)
Flaire
(6) (10) (10) (12) (X)
Nerni
(4) (4) (12) (X) (X)
Yeti
(10) (20) (30) (30) (X)
