SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 12 submissions in the queue.
SoylentNews
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.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
How Gary Gygax Lost Control of Dungeons & Dragons
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 15 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
-- Gandhi
(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..