Once, in the mid-80s, I was working late at the West End offices in New York, which were in a pretty dicey neighborhood, on a Saturday. I went out to pick up some takeout, and while I closed the gate, which locks, I did not close and lock the metal door--it was possible to open the gate with a swift kick. While I was out, the fellow must have gotten into the office. And he must have been there for some hours, hiding in another office, waiting for me to leave and getting frustrated when I didn't. At one point, I walked down a corridor, and he came out of a darkened office along it, pistol-whipped me, got me into the office, and tied me up (incompetently) with a phone cable. I realized almost immediately that I could free myself quickly if need be, but frankly didn't want a confrontation with a gun-toting idiot, so waited as I heard him rummaging about the office. Eventually, I heard the back door close--he had taken my keys--and after waiting a bit, got up, and went down the street to the nearest police station (a couple of blocks away).

Two cops came back with me, and we took inventory; as far as I can tell, the only thing he got away with was a roll of quarters (hadn't even lifted my wallet). In a back area, there were a bunch of storage boxes he had been going through--and it seems that he had been opening them with a scissors, and must have sliced open his palm with them, because there was some blood about. I called Eric and Holly Rubinstein, then the company's president, and we had a locksmith in to change the locks.

One of the cops was an old Avalon Hill gamer, btw.
posted by Greg at 10:21 AM

James Wallis, original publisher of my obscure tabletop RPG, Violence: The Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed has kindly generated a PDF from his original files.

I'm releasing it under a Creative Commons license; you can download it here. Warnings: It's about a meg. It also contains foul language, lots of violence, and drug references, and certainly implies some rather unpleasant sexual practices. Also: If you actually expect to get a playable game, you may be disappointed. However it is, I believe, pretty funny.

The history: James founded a company called Hogshead Publishing (which still exists, under new management), and produced a line of small, cheap RPGs called "New Style" which were designed to showcase innovative and offbeat ideas. (Other games in the series included James own The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, John Tynes's Puppetland/Power Kill, and Robin Laws's Pantheon.) I had mentioned the idea of a satirical game dealing with violence to him a couple of years previously, and he wrote asking if I'd consider doing it for him. I said sure, what the hell, and cranked the thing out.

It was released at GenCon in 1999--but GenCon's rules specifically rule out games with sexual content. So James sold the game over the table by selling "a brown paper bag, the contents of which I am forbidden to reveal." Apparently, Peter Adkison, then CEO of Wizards of the Coast, which then owned GenCon, found it so amusing he wandered about the show floor reading bits of it to people and chuckling. You see the irony in this, I trust.

The game sold pretty much what James had expected--a few thousand copies--but has been out of print for some years now. I hope you're amused.

I still want to be a shooter bhoddisatva, baby.
posted by Greg at 9:31 AM

According to this article at Forbes.com, News Corp, Rupert Murdoch's company, which owns Fox and the New York Post (America's sleaziest major urban paper), is contemplating buying out IGN, parent of (among other sites) GameSpy.

Just so long as they don't replace Fargo with Bill O'Reilly, I guess.
posted by Greg at 4:29 PM

As you might expect, I generally like Scott Miller, since he actually puts his money where his mouth is, in terms of the necessity for developers to own their IP--and deliver original content. Which is what his most recent post is about: the fact that 80+% of best-selling games are based on original IP, rather than licensed crap. (Take that, Warren.)

Of course, the calculation only works if you include sequels of successful games in the "original IP" column. And I suspect it works less well for console than for PC, where the conclusion is clear.

At this point, though, I'm less interested in "original IP" than in "original game." EA has apparently decided that it needs to foster "original IP," and has actually appointed some fellow (don't recall the name, saw him talk at a conference, he was godawful dull) to encourage the development thereof. In other words, I can have "original IP" by trying to establish a new brand for the same old driving game, the same old RTS, but marketing it under a new name.

Age of Empires, when first published, was "original IP," but basically, it was the same game as Command & Conquer and Warcraft, but with a slightly different take. No shame in that, really, as they did a good job. Diablo was a computer RPG, not all that different from, say, Akalabeth--but was done well. It was "original IP." I have no beef with this--doing an established game style well is perfectly honorable (doing it badly is not).

But what I really want is for people to find entirely new game styles, combinations of mechanics that work well and haven't been seen before, at least in this combination. Doom, Dune II, Worms, The Sims--for that matter, Magic: The Gathering and D&D.; I want not "original IP," but original =designs=.

And my frustration with the current industry derives from the inability of anyone other than Will Wright to create them.

I don't think I dimish my admiration for Wright by saying that I don't think he's the only guy who can do so--he's just the only guy with both the creativity and the clout to get innovation through the system.

Here's a proposal, EA: Instead of funding only $10m+ sure bets, why don't you fund ten $1m wild-ass ideas? You only need one Katamari Damacy out of the ten to justify the investment....
posted by Greg at 2:26 AM

So The Escapist has an interview with Warren Spector, conducted by Allen Varney in which I'm protrayed as sort of the anti-Spector--Warren the proponent of the view that licenses aren't necessarily a bad thing, and I fulminating that they are eevviill (which they are, by the way). This has a couple of humorous aspects for me:

1. I've actually done licensed games (Star Wars: The RPG, Star Trek: The Adventure Game, Star Trek III, and Return of the Stainless Steel Rat). Warren never has :).

2. This is so incestuous. Warren and I are old friends, and went to the same high school; in fact, I tried to hire him in the 80s (he was at TSR) for my then-company, West End Games. Allen and Warren worked together at Steve Jackson games, both live in Austin, and hang out together. Allen and Warren collaborated on a Paranoia adventure (I co-designed Paranoia), and Allen is currently editing the Paranoia line for Mongoose, which publishes it under license from me (and Eric Goldberg). And--The Escapist is published by the Themis Group, on whose board of advisors I used to sit (I was required to resign when I went to work for Nokia).

Incidentally, if you haven't been reading The Escapist, you should check it out. It's uneven, but it's trying to do something nobody else in the industry does--showcase intelligent writing about games, often by "New Games Journalism" types. I'll have a piece in it in a few weeks, btw.

It's not clear to me what the business model is. Though the corporate bumf on the site provides a contact for those who want to advertise, the current issue, at least, contains no advertising--and they're paying a pretty high word rate. Themis does well enough to carry it for a while, but my suspicion is that it won't last long unless they start getting some advertisers.
posted by Greg at 2:34 PM

So it seems that Vivendi is licensing the rights to Ludlum's books. Obviously, they're looking at the success Ubi has had with "Tom Clancy" as a brand for military thrillers (something they inherited when they bought out Red Storm, which Clancy co-founded). And yeah, okay, if you say "thriller," Ludlum's the next name you think of.

There are, however, a bunch of problems with this:

1. My guess is that the average Ludlum reader is 50+, with the average Clancy reader at least a decade younger. My Dad reads Ludlum. I certainly don't. Is this a name that particularly resonates with current gamers? I'm doubtful.

2. Clancy's work is almost all tied to military tech in some way; he's the virtual inventor of the "technothriller" genre. Ludlum's stuff is much more along the lines of the conventional spy thriller. Now there have been successful spy games--but if you're looking for something to go up against Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Rainbow Theory Chaos Somethingorother Redux Tomorrow, or whatever silly long name Ubi gives the next one, you want something that focusses on combat action, not spy stuff. In other words, the nature of the material does not really give VUG the directly competitive brand they want.

3. Clancy is a gamer. He often shapes his novels with the game version specifically in mind. This makes it a lot easier to get a good game out of his work. What, exactly, is the game in The Bourne Identity?

I see the logic behind the deal, but I'm pretty skeptical. And of course, there's always the question about why you buy instead of build. Why doesn't VUG establish its own brand for military action games? Isn't it better to build your own IP than pay for someone else's?
posted by Greg at 8:35 AM

Har... Gamesindustry.biz is reporting (by way of Kotaku that ESA president Doug Loewenstein (along with Steve Schnur, EA's head of music) are attending a $1000-a-plate fundraiser for my state's junior senator, the renowned scurge of the Eeevils of games, Ms. Hillary Clinton.

I suppose Doug can have whatever politics he likes, and maybe he can even get a word in sideways over the rubber chicken--and you know, I'm a Democrat by genetics, but yeech. What next, drinks with Jack Thompson?
posted by Greg at 6:57 PM