John--
In your excellent discussion you got at something that I should have made
clearer.
The "put them out of business" list was so foreign to the gaming cottage
industry at the time not because it was evil (it may or may not be), but
because it was pure capitalism/corporate thinking. That's what you do when
you're a competing company: seize market share. You don't sit around and
wait for the pie to grow so everyone's slice gets a little bigger. And
that focus on market share is what distinguished the Real Businesses like
WOTC when they arrived. Until then, the industry was, by-and-large, what I
called a "cottage industry," or you called a "quaint sub culture hobby
thing." Mom and pop shops.
And don't get me wrong, I thought MTG was brilliant. It combined the two
great addictions: collecting mania (and gamers were very much already in
the collector mindset) and power-gaming, where the more you buy, the
better you can play. Honestly I don't recall in time where MTG fell out
compared to Pokemon, but MTG was certainly a tidal wave within the
"wargame" industry proper, as opposed to larger gaming where Pokemon might
have been.
As you observed, because MTG succeeded, it generated money, which allowed
them to behave the way they did, and of course attracted the attention of
Big Business and Big Business Practices. Like running competitors out of
business for market share.
One of the things I hate about the Big Business model is that so often the
non-creative types set the vocabularly. Everything is called generic,
undifferentiated "product," like it's a brick of concentrated protein, or
a 55 gallon drum of toxic waste. I don't give a hoot in hell for someone
who doesn't care if something is a "book" or a "game" and why that book is
important. And maybe that's partly why I was one of the ones swept away.
In a sense, the industry went through a huge evolutionary extinction
event. 1993 was the end of the Triassic and GDW was one of the great
archosaurs that got swept away by the asteroid (or whatever else it might
have been).
GDW DID consider attempting to put out a CCG, but our decision was no, and
for two reasons:
1. We figured that most of the late-comers jumping onto the CCG bandwagon
would get lost in the backwash, and instead of doing a "me too!" change in
direction, we should stick to what we already did best. Call that artistic
integrity of a sort.
2. In order to compete with what MTG already was, you had to have really,
really high production values. If not, you'd fail immediately. We realized
we did not have the money to completely change direction, put out all
these slick, high-quality, cut-edge card stock things. Call that economic
realism.
So we went down. (and yes, there were other factors, but that was the
final blow)
Dave
> I have two minds about my hobbies and the industries that make them.
>
> I recall well the time Dave refers to and with honest reflection back that
> far gaming was a quaint sub culture hobby thing.
>
> When business folk figured out how much money there was to be made from
> it,
> that is when it became an industry. Obviously not over night or all at
> once
> but it did happen over a decade.
>
> I do not begrudge anyone trying to make a buck or lots of bucks, if
> someone
> thinks there is a market god bless go forth and try.
>
> But in the story of WotC/TSR circles it seems that a couple of key factors
> play into this. While I am an outsider to both companies I live 15 minutes
> from WotC HQ in Seattle and over the years in Computer Games have worked
> with designers and artists that have worked at both companies on and off.
>
> A couple of facts about them are clear and are pretty much undisputed by
> former employees. WotC would not have been the beast it was without MTG
> and
> the Pokemon phenom that propelled CCGs into the craziness it because. This
> level of widespread acceptance gave WotC the 'money' to basically curb
> stomp competitors wholesale. Without the successful MGT they wouldn't be
> the company they are today for good or ill.
>
> The corporate culture at WotC as odd as it sounds is controlled by their
> R&D department because they created MTG originally. Because of this they
> have been stuck in a rut for over a decade, at least imo.
>
> TSR for all its troubles simply failed to transition from a publishing
> business model (making books) to a service model. Perhaps this is still a
> struggle they experiencing today under WotC not so gentle 'eye of sauron".
>
> And while it may not of been indicative of the game industry back in the
> day to have a 'competitor list' to crush its pretty common in other
> industries where there is a lot of variety.
>
> And at the end of the day, business' are in it for the money otherwise
> they
> fold. We can have all the romantic thoughts we like but this however it is
> the true in today's world.
>
> Its a sad state of affairs but its an inevitable truth of capitalism.
>
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 7:46 AM, <> wrote:
>
>> **
>>
>>
>> We got independent accounts from a number of people in the gaming
>> "industry" that the WOTC staff were keeping a list of the other gaming
>> companies they hoped to put out of business, and GDW was on it.
>>
>> If true, that sort of thinking was so foreign to the way the gaming
>> "industry" ran it was ridiculous. We were all each other's biggest fans.
>> One of the best things about the cons was getting together, seeing each
>> other, trading copies of our newest games to each other, etc. The last
>> thing any of us ever wanted was to put any one of us out of business. We
>> did grate a little bit under "the 800 pound gorilla" of TSR, living in
>> the
>> shadow of their castle at the cons, but we all had friends working
>> there.
>> One of the reasons I took the "putting out of business list" seriously,
>> aside from the fact that so many reputable people came to us with it
>> (Mayfair, for example) is that it was so foreign to the thinking in the
>> game "industry" that how would anyone even think to make that up?
>>
>> And that's when the game "industry" became the game industry. Might as
>> well be working for Lockheed-Martin.ill
>>
>> "Brilliant Lances" was nominated for best SF boardgame of the year, but
>> lost to MTG. The next year they had a new category for CCGs so they
>> wouldn't beat boardgames in the boardgame category, but by then, MTGs
>> and
>> CCGs were beating down entire companies. And they eventually bought out
>> the TSR castle.
>>
>> I may have said that before here, but I'm talking to lots of people, so
>> I'm not sure.
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>
> If the world was fair then every bad thing that has ever happened to you
> would have been deserved.
>