Fantasy Flight Publishing was founded in 1995 by its CEO Christian T. Petersen. Since the release of its first game product in 1997, the company has been doing business as Fantasy Flight Games. Since that time, FFG has become one of the biggest names in the hobby games industry, being a marketplace leader in board games and maintaining strong businesses in the card game, roleplaying game, and miniature game categories. In 2008, FFG partnered with Games Workshop to represent Warhammer and Warhammer 40K settings in role-playing, board, and card games. FFG announced the end of that partnership on September 9, 2016. Effective February 28, 2017, FFG no longer offers for sale any games made in conjunction with Games Workshop. In August 2011, Fantasy Flight Games acquired the license for card, miniature and role-playing games set in the Star Wars universe. They have also created board and card games for the well-known licenses Game of Thrones, Battlestar Galactica, and Lord of the Rings, as well as board games based upon popular computer games: ', ', and . They are also known for revising and reprinting popular or cult classic games, including Cosmic Encounter, Arkham Horror, Talisman, and Netrunner. From 2010 to 2013 FFG was Dust Studio's partner in publishing and distributing Paulo Parente's miniature wargameDust Tactics. Commenting on the shift in 2013 Petersen stated “it became clear that Paolo and the Dust games would be better served by a partner who specializes in the unique business of miniature games.” Fantasy Flight Games was known for their game franchiseMidnight, which was also made into a movie called Midnight Chronicles by the company's short-lived Landroval Studios. As of 2012, it appears that Midnight'' is no longer produced or supported by Fantasy Flight. On November 17, 2014 it was announced that Fantasy Flight Games had agreed on a merger with French board game publisher Asmodée Éditions. Asmodee has helped to bring some of Fantasy Flight's board games to digital form, and in October 2017, Asmodée and Fantasy Flight announced the formation of Fantasy Flight Interactive, a division of the merged companies to bring more of Fantasy Flight's physical board games to digital implementations. However, as part of a company-wide layoff, Fantasy Flight opted to close Fantasy Flight Interactive in January 2020.
Fantasy Flight Games defines a "Living Card Game" as a variant of collectible card games. LCGs have regular expansions and deck construction like CCGs, but do not have the "blind buy purchase model" of CCGs. Instead of randomized starter decks and booster packs, LCGs have core sets, expansion packs, and deluxe expansions with fixed non-randomized distribution of cards. Core sets come with pre-constructed starter decks, and are designed to be self-contained. They can be played by themselves or expanded for constructed play with expansions. Expansion packs are released on a monthly or near-monthly basis, each containing 60 cards, with a number of copies of each unique card equal to the limit of the number of copies a player is allowed in his or her deck. Deluxe expansions are released less frequently, and typically contain a total of 165 new cards, still with enough copies of each card for a full deck. Many games from other companies use a similar distribution model, but because "Living Card Game" and its initials "LCG" are registered trademarks of Fantasy Flight Games, other publishers do not use this term. For example, Upper Deck Entertainment relaunched VS System in 2015 as an LCG-style game but markets it as a "Two-Player Card Game" or "2PCG." Fantasy Flight Games currently prints the following LCGs:
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Fantasy Flight Games has previously printed the following LCGs:
Fantasy Flight has also printed Blue Moon Legends, which is a comprehensive collection of Blue Moon and its expansions. Although it has similar gameplay and a fixed card set like a Living Card Game, it was not released in the Living Card Game line.
