In the fall of 1985, Gary Gygax was the most famous and powerful figure in hobby gaming. He was President and Chief Executive Officer of TSR, Inc., the company that published Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax had personally directed the development of the game for the last decade, most recently producing new titles for its Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line: earlier in 1985, he was the lead on Unearthed Arcana, and in the fall they were putting the finishing touches on his Oriental Adventures. He had been featured in People magazine, and appeared on national television. His name and his game seemed inseparable.
This is the story of how he was separated from his game.
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How Gary Gygax Lost Control of Dungeons & Dragons
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday August 13 2014, @07:40PM
Typical startup story, eventually the VCs end up owning everything, but sometimes the founders turn out OK financially anyway. Sometimes.
Exponential growth? I'm sure that'll continue forever, right? Just like the CB radio fad, or the social networking fad.
Interesting how times change. Now a days they'd skip the VCs and just upload to "thegamecrafter" based about 50 miles from Lake Geneva (no kidding) and sell online. If you print on demand you don't need capital to pay the printer. In the long run the VCs are running out of things to fund. They'd best start looking for things to diversify into.
The gencon saga is related and moderately interesting. I believe it started in Lake Geneva itself, got way too big, moved to Milwaukee, and a decade ago or so took off for greener pastures because frankly the city was unfriendly (financially speaking) and is going on roughly now-ish. Which is probably the motivation for the story. I've seen that dynamic play out with other conventions, where a city plays a "push your luck" game to claim they've got massive vendor lockin... oh wait I guess you don't. See Ya, we're going somewhere else next year LOL. All I really remember of the gencon in milwaukee is it was like next door to this spy themed bar, "the safehouse"
Not having gamers in charge seems to have resulted in some pain for a game company. Compare their stuff to Paizo's pathfinder stuff. No real contest.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday August 13 2014, @08:33PM
Just what I was thinking. Who needs printed books anymore? Go online! I suppose in those days there wasn't much option. Took money to build a gaming business. To get money, get in bed with soulless business interests and accept that sooner of later, they will take it away.
D&D has morphed into dozens of MMORPGs. I've played EQ, WoW, and LOTRO. So far, I find them all lacking in two important ways, the RP part, and the free form of available actions. They take care of all the calculations very nicely. No more rolling of dice (though rolling dice that weren't cubes was part of the fun) and consulting of tables and so forth. But we have no AI capable of being a real Dungeon Master, listening to whatever wacky ideas the players come up with and then figuring out whether they worked. Free form play is the essence of D&D, and its lack in MMORPGs makes it all too easy for them to devolve into simple, boring grinds.
(Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Wednesday August 13 2014, @09:26PM
That is truth. Any DM/GM who tried to run a table top RPG like a crappy MMORPG would be replaced by his players instantly.
(Score: 4, Funny) by gman003 on Wednesday August 13 2014, @08:04PM
The real story, of course, is that Gygax failed his opposed Persuasion check (CHA was his dump stat), then got a natural 1 on his Reflex Save for half ownership.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday August 13 2014, @08:13PM
Well I can see why the submitter didn't try to summarize that.
Never issue more than 49% of your stock. Never.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Alfred on Wednesday August 13 2014, @10:02PM
I saw several points that made him look bad at math beyond 49/51 problems.
1)Especially in the case of projected sales figures. Way-off starry-eyed kind of bad.
2)Sales are down, revenue is down, trends are down so lets hire more staff, like that won't cut into the bottom line. WTF? Bad business sense?
3)Giving Williams 270,000 is a lot of 1980s dollars for a salary, way too much IMHO, even if a third was to be given in stock.
This is how business degrees people get on top of the creative geniuses and crush every dollar out of them. Your only hope is a good lawyer. Especially when your largest growth is based on luck, his was being implicated by a detective in a random case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13 2014, @10:18PM
I agree completely with points 1 and 2 ,though I'm not clear exactly how much Gary had to do with the hire,hire.hire mindset. He ran entertainment at that point, and it doesn't read like he was bringing on hundreds of people. He certainly wasn't the one that had to cut hundreds of jobs.
For point #3, they weren't hiring the woman for a job, they were essentially doing exactly what they said they wouldn't do: looking for outside investment. "Here, we'll give you a nice cushy job, and you buy shares up front and then continue to invest, since you're part of the family now." That it turned around and bit him so hard doesn't sound surprising to us, but these guys clearly weren't sharks. They made something they loved, and then poured everything into it even when it wasn't the wise decision.
I'm not a gamer, tabletop or otherwise, so I don't know the later history for this fellow. I was surprised that the article didn't expand on what happened to him later, other than saying he tried a few things, and *shrug*... I hope it worked out for him in the end.
(Score: 1) by arslan on Wednesday August 13 2014, @11:09PM
That's probably why the dies went up to 20 only... any further and he'd be hard pressed at the math involved..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cafebabe on Wednesday August 13 2014, @11:55PM
This has similarities with the WordPerfect Corporation [wordplace.com]. Specifically, sales doubling each year and three managers in control before one was ousted. In the case of WordPerfect, they failed to compete with the transition to graphical wordprocessing due to Microsoft's vertical integration. For TSR, I presume tabletop gaming was superseded by console gaming and home computers.
1702845791×2
(Score: 1) by anarchy on Thursday August 14 2014, @12:29AM
The 5th edition of D&D just released. It's moved away from the tactical combat game of the last couple editions. In fact, it feels more like a nostalgic trip back to the early days of D&D. I haven't played in 10-12 years, but we just started a new campaign.
The basic rules are free:
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules?x=dnd/basicrules [wizards.com]
Shame Gygax was a terrible business manager, but he did influence an entire generation (and several industries) along with Dave Arneson and other early pioneers.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday August 14 2014, @07:02PM
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday August 14 2014, @11:16AM
I am not a player of DnD, but ... still a victim of TSR. I started reading fantasy books in the 80s as a teenager, when the fantasy genre was largely a backwater filled with quirky titles from Tolkien, Le Guin, and others. It was so small that bookstores didn't have a "fantasy" section, but they were tucked into science fiction. Discovering these unusual, quirky, original books was an important influence on me. So as the 80s wore on, TSR started publishing fantasy books. These were absolute schlock. They were so bad I couldn't believe how bad they were. And I was a teenager who would read almost anything. Suddenly, bookstores had a "fantasy" section. And then they had a TSR section. TSR just kept pumping out this formulaic product, which pushed out all the quirky, original books. Pretty much ruined the whole fantasy genre. Sure, the influence of Terry Brooks and other formulaic authors (anyone remember Dennis McKiernan's schlock?) helped, but TSR "productized" fantasy and ruined it as a genre. I stopped reading in the fantasy genre, but since the 80s it's been dominated by hacks like Robert Jordan.
Every now and then something quirky like the old days slipped out. Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn could have been good if it was about a tenth of the size. He padded out an interesting 600-page story into a remarkably boring four-novel travelogue that put me to sleep.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Thursday August 14 2014, @01:35PM
Preach it, brother! Same story/views here...
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday August 14 2014, @07:06PM
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Thursday August 14 2014, @12:00PM
A bloody reminder to the rest of us that behind every awesome thing/experience is some stupid corporation wrangling with lawyers and stock deals and business shenanigans. Too bad.
It's a good story. For anyone interested in the bit about that student "Egden" who died in Louisiana, there's a good book about it called "The Dungeon Master." I read it at length back in the 80s because the section where the researcher plays D&D is a great recounting of an adventure/campaign. Miss those times. I've still got my AD&D stuff stored away - hoping my kids will be interested in it.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey