A History of Wizards of the Coast

HerderOfCats writes "Shannon Appelcline has written up an excellent independent history of Wizards of the Coast, the company that brought us Magic: The Gathering, eventually acquired TSR and D&D, transformed the paper RPG game industry with d20 and the Open Game License, and eventually was acquired by game giant Hasbro." From the RPGNet article: "Overall, Hasbro was looking to make Wizards meaner and leaner, and thus a better profit making machine. In 2001 and 2002 Habro also divested themselves of their conventions. Origins went to GAMA and GenCon to Peter Adkison. Around the same time they also outsourced their magazines by licensing Dungeon, Dragon, Polyhedron, and Amazing Stories to Paizo Publishing, who continues to publish the RPG magazines today. Two years later another pruning would come. Wizards had also been running 85 'Game Keeper' and 'Wizards of the Coast' retail stores, but in early 2004, Hasbro shut them all down. Together with selling the conventions, this relieved any concerns that Wizards might be developing a vertical monopoly, like that controlled by Games Workshop in the UK--and really such a monopoly wouldn't have made sense given the d20 strategy. "

Comments

Kevin Siembieda is a jackass

[dR.fuZZo]

I bought WotC's _The Primal Order_ back in the day. It was amazingly well-written. One of the few RPG books I ever read cover-to-cover. In the very back there was an appendix that listed out how to convert The Primal Order to other systems. That's what Kevin S. and Palladium were suing over -- just that one or two pages in the back of a book from a tiny little RPG company.

I believe it was also around this time that I read about how Palladium had sent off some cease & desist letters to game magazines, asking them not to publish certain types of content for their games. (I don't even know of any independent RPG magazines these days -- not that I've been paying attention. Back in the day, it was normal for these magazines to publish adventures, characters, and other materials for various RPGs.) I recall one magazine editor wrote an editorial saying that since Palladium seemed to be so heavy-handed, they wouldn't be covering anything about Palladium games from then on.

Reading Kevin's history of Palladium on their website is a bit disturbing. It's clear that this guy is very full of himself. And for what? He re-made D&D with renamed alignments, two types of hit points, and a larger number of classes.

Without a Future?

[TiredGamer]

Sadly the published RPG is dying an agonizing death. Nobody wants to pay $30-$40 for a hardcover rulebook when they can pay that for a full-function CRPG (computer or console, take your pick). Add to this the unending supply of "optional" supplimental books and the industry just cannot survive the same glut that TSR produced in the 2nd Edition AD&D days. The promise of OpenGaming and d20 can't save an industry that relies on an ever-shrinking market of buyers and an ever-increasing price of entry. Further pressure is being exerted by decreasing literacy among teens, lower interest among young adults, and thus an aging tabletop gaming populace hemmoraging to real-life issues and other problems.

Finally, Wizards has ensured the demise of their original cashcow, Magic: The Gathering, through an unending stream of expansions and rules changes & negations. This is further eroded by the fact that it attempts to be a game and a collectible object: you force consumers to pay repeated costs for the same game, both through randomized packs of cards, and by a continual "revision" of the game. Gamers must continuously pay money to Wizards and retailers in order to remain "tournament legal". Why pay $20-$30 per month to Wizards for a card game, when a kid can pay $15 a month to Blizzard Entertainment and still hang out and be cool with his friends?

Electronic gaming in its various guises isn't just eating its grandfather's lunch, it's putting gramps in the home to die. The sad part about all of this is that companies like Wizards are willingly going.

Pax Electronica.

Re:Without a Future?

[oberondarksoul]

So long as there are players willing to devote the time and materials to a pen-and-paper RPG, then they will survive. Perhaps the big name companies will fall - WotC and White Wolf would be fatally hurt if a mass exodus did occur, not to mention the many other smaller companies - but there will always be some players who will want to continue with pen-and-paper, and new companies will be created to cater to that niche (or the old companies will adapt, or diversify). There are hundreds of computerised wargames, but people still happily paint miniatures and send them out to do battle on the tabletop. The market may be shrinking for traditional RPGs, but let's not mourn them just yet.

Re:Without a Future?

[GMontag451]

Finally, Wizards has ensured the demise of their original cashcow, Magic: The Gathering, through an unending stream of expansions and rules changes & negations. This is further eroded by the fact that it attempts to be a game and a collectible object: you force consumers to pay repeated costs for the same game, both through randomized packs of cards, and by a continual "revision" of the game. Gamers must continuously pay money to Wizards and retailers in order to remain "tournament legal". Why pay $20-$30 per month to Wizards for a card game, when a kid can pay $15 a month to Blizzard Entertainment and still hang out and be cool with his friends?

That's nonsense. The fact that they keep coming out with expansion is *precisely* what keeps the game alive. They come out with new cards, change up the tournament formats, and all of a sudden, the players have to actually design, build, and test new decks rather than using the same old Psychatog deck that they ran in Extended 4 years ago. This applies even in formats like Type 1 where you can use any card ever printed. Fundamentally, the fun of the game isn't in the game itself, it's in the metagame. Keeping up with the meta, finding ways to exploit and overcome the decks you expect to see at the tournaments, these are the things that keep people coming back to the game.

the fallout of Hasbro's shutdown of Game Keeper

[teflaime]

The one problem with Hasbro shutting down all the game stores is that in alot of places, the WotC or Game Keeper store was the only game store in town. And a lot of people looked at these stores closing down and thought, "If they can't keep a branded store open, why would anyone open an indy store?" So these places lose a venue to get gamers together and encourage gaming as an activity and a hobby. Yeah, I know, you can buy anything you need to game off the internet. But it's getting harder and harder to find people for TT gaming if you want to get a game going in your living room. If anything is contributing to the decline of the gaming industry, it's that fact. Because for all our high tech nature and the potential geekiness of the people who game, gaming still thrives on face to face interaction. Another thing lost, with many of these little game shops closing down, is the last refuge for the geeks and misfits that we are in some very geek/misfit unfriendly parts of the country. Even the most anti-social amongst us still liked to go to the game store, if only too look over the latest game offerings and get an idea of what's coming down the pike (yeah, they would still go home and order it off the internet where it was probably cheaper). And for all of you who will chime in and say, "My local game store is doing fine," I'm happy for you. But I'll tell you, it was nigh impossible to find a gaming store in LA (lots of card stores, and the Games Workshop store, sure, but not a plain old gaming store). And now that I've moved back to Ilinois, the local gaming stores that used to be here have both closed. So I am reduced to searching the net for my games. Yeah, I can get in the car and drive, but it lacks both the convenience and the comraderie of a local game store, where you know the guy who runs it and you know a lot of the people who go there. I'll miss the local game store; it was often a fun place to be.