On Wednesday, Michael Shinall announced on LinkedIn that he was no longer in post as the director of design and development at Cool Mini or Not, “along with some other of my remaining co-workers”. Shinall joined the board game publisher “just on the tail-end of fulfilling Zombicide”, and over the course of “around 15 years” with the firm he designed some big hitters, most notably working with Eric Lang to make the extremely popular A Song of Ice and Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game.
“As of yesterday I was effectively and entirely removed from any ongoing projects, in-development projects, and (potential) future designs I was working on for the company”, Shinall states. “I don’t publicly speak about any of that anyway, but even more so now that I am separated from the company – e.g., I cannot nor will I answer any questions related to anything I was previously-or-up-until-today-currently working / worked on”.
Shinall does not name the other staff who have left CMON, saying it’s “not my place to speak on their behalf”. Wargamer has contacted CMON to request more information, including who else has left the company, whether Shinall’s role will be restaffed, and how the firm will continue with its previously announced plans to return to crowd-funding new game development in the second half of the year.
Shinall’s gameography with CMON is enviable, and exemplary of the kind of work that the studio has produced: big, shiny, stuffed with miniatures, and sometimes genuinely genius. Shinall says he is “proud of them all for various and diverse reasons”. He’s spoken in many interviews about his designs, such as this interview with On the Table Gaming about DCeased, a comic book tie in to Zombicide:
Shinall seems to have landed on his feet, stating “it has happened that, literally overnight, I’ve already been approached by some entities” with proposals, though he doesn’t “want to just rush into anything” and is open to being contacted about other opportunities. If you’re looking for a new senior games designer, you’ll find him on LinkedIn.
Once positioned among the best board games firms in the industry for highly produced games bulging with miniatures, CMON recorded losses of $20m in 2025. Efforts to stem the bleeding have included selling many of the studio’s most significant IPs, including the flagship Zombicide series, the critically lauded Blood Rage, and the table-devouring Cthulhu: Death May Die. The firm secured $1.2 million in investment capital through the sale of shares in February, largely earmarked for game development; then in April it committed to buying a $2.1 million stake in a loss-making NFT videogame developer.
Where would you like to see Shinall employ his talents next? I hadn’t realised he was responsible for the 2013 remaster of the sci-fi skirmish wargame Dark Age – it’s unlikely he’ll return to that well, but if he continues with wargames design I will be watching. Share your thoughts in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
