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SJGames Layoffs
Robotech_Master writes: "Citing financial difficulties (stemming from a CFO who apparently didn't keep the books in sufficiently good order), Steve Jackson has announced the layoff of 13 employees from Steve Jackson Games today. (Long-time Internetters will recall that the FBI raid on SJG was one of the first causes celebre of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)" Update: 07/07 12:32 PM by michael : It was the Secret Service, not the FBI, of course. We've had several stories mentioning the raids on the Illuminati Online bulletin board and SJG.
Steve Jackson (the same Steve Jackson) is my proofreader. Despite the fact that he's a giant in the gaming industry, and really busy, and about ten years or so older than I am, he takes the time twice a year to go over Nova Express proofs with a fine-tooth comb so I don't look like an idiot due to the dozens of typos and tiny details I can't see because I've read every article and review 14 times already. And like all the rest of my contributors, he doesn't get a dime for doing it. He does it just because he thinks Nova Express is a worthwhile zine and is happy to give back to the SF community, for which he has my Eternal Gratitude.
So dig deep, me brothers. If you have any teenage nephews and nieces you've been looking to introduce to role-playing games, now's the time to get them that GURPS or Illuminati set...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
The game insustry has always worked in cycles though, although a lot of the quality games are dissapearing it seems to me (GW giving up Fantasy Roleplay was a killer for me, arguably one of the best fantasy rpg's ever made). But a lot of that may be a function of getting older. Along with feeling silly sitting around a table an basically just telling stories with other adults starts to lose it's appeal. Akthough I personally still long for those all day sessions once in a while, the few times I've tried playing as I got older the magic of the game seems to have faded away with my youth. And it's like you said, it's hard to get players together regularly to play an rpg. Nowadays I keep a collection of one night games (Settlers of Cataan ect.) that anyone, even non gamers can sit down and have fun with. I don't know it seems to me that the older I get the more 'beer and pretzels' games take over. If I want to play an RPG I just duck into a pc game. (But from what I've see of Neverwinter Nights it looks as though some of pen and paper rpg elements may make it to the pc screen)
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
The fact of the matter is, when you work at a small company, you grow to trust people. When you grow to trust people, you manage them less (and generally speaking, that's a good thing, if someone is competent, they shouldn't have to have you giving them anally retentive directions). Unfortunately, good people can get locked in destructive cycles such as the one above, where they tell themselves "if I just work extra hard tomorrow, then I don't need to work on this today," making the task ever more daunting, until finally the whole thing falls apart, as in this case.
I've seen this happen in high school (our yearbook was a year late once, because the faculty coordinator, who was a really great guy, suffered from the above problem), I've had it happen to me in college, and I see it all the time on a smaller scale in people's personal lives. Good, competent people sometimes fuck up, and fuck up big time, and so the only solution (which is not a solution at all) is to trust no one.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
(Long-time Internetters will recall that the FBI raid on SJG was one of the first causes celebre of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)
No, I recall that it was the Secret Service.
Steve Jackson Games has been around since 1980, which makes it one of the oldest surviving companies in the adventure gaming hobby. With TSR absorbed into Wizards of the Coast a few years back, only Flying Buffalo, Chaosium, and possibly Palladium are older than SJG, and even Chaosium exists only as a shadow of its former greatness. The others, though of widely varying size, are essentially one-man shows, tied to the will and whim and stubbornness of their founders.
I worked for Steve Jackson Games from 1984 to '86, under Editor-in-Chief Warren Spector (a great guy who later blossomed into "the legendary" Warren Spector, at least in the eyes of PC Gamer magazine, for his pivotal role in the development of such computer games as System Shock, a couple of Ultimas, both Ultima Underworlds, Deus Ex, and many others). While I was there, SJG went through a financial crisis startlingly similar to the current situation, though without substantial layoffs. Then, some years after I left, I heard the company suffered another almost identical episode. In each case an incompetent financial officer drove the company into the red, sometimes deeply.
It keeps happening because Steve has arranged his company so that he can exercise absolute control over those matters that interest him -- the creative side, scheduling, print-buying -- while paying as little attention as possible to matters that don't -- mainly accounting. This wouldn't be much problem if the company had a deep bench of talented business people, but company turnover has always been a problem.
Still, I have no doubt SJG will once more weather this current crisis. It's like the old saying about the difference between monarchy and democracy: Monarchy is a proud ship, sailing untouched through the storm, but if it hits a rock it sinks utterly; democracy is a raft, which never sinks but your feet are always wet. Except for a glorious year during the trading-card game boom -- when Illuminati: New World Order singlehandedly pushed annual sales above the million-dollar mark for the only time in company history -- SJG's feet have always been wet. Their feet will still be wet, but above the waterline, a decade and more from now.
Yes, it was the Secret Service. And if you don't know what we're talking about, their ordeal is well documented here.