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The History Book: Weeks #40 & #41
Dec. 27th, 2010 09:46 pmThe weekend before last I edited my article on West End Games. It took me quite a long time because it was a long article and I had a busy weekend. I also wrote a mini-history of Eon Games. West End's own story hadn't changed much since when I'd drafted the piece. My 2007 talked about how they were in the process of publishing what turned out to be their last book which they were never able to get to print. Because I'm not trying to write the gossip-history here I hand-waved some of the details of the horrendous mismanagement & mismarketing of West End's final years (though I still hit the major points, as that's the point of a history).
When I was gathering quotes for the articles, I was somewhat surprised to see how alike both of WEG's major owners were, as each of the quotes I grabbed had the owner saying that no matter what people might think, they hadn't done anything criminal.
This weekend I edited my article on Hero Games. A very similar article, since both companies got into the RPG industry in the early 1980s, self-destructed in the late 1990s, were owned by an interim company for a few years, then came under new ownership in the 2000s. The difference is that where WEG self-destructed in the last two years, Hero has just increased their success, thanks to the sale of properties to create a major MMORPG. Kind of nice to have that contrast, since more RPG companies tend to be like WEG, without good business sense, than like Hero, who really gets it.
When I was gathering quotes for the articles, I was somewhat surprised to see how alike both of WEG's major owners were, as each of the quotes I grabbed had the owner saying that no matter what people might think, they hadn't done anything criminal.
This weekend I edited my article on Hero Games. A very similar article, since both companies got into the RPG industry in the early 1980s, self-destructed in the late 1990s, were owned by an interim company for a few years, then came under new ownership in the 2000s. The difference is that where WEG self-destructed in the last two years, Hero has just increased their success, thanks to the sale of properties to create a major MMORPG. Kind of nice to have that contrast, since more RPG companies tend to be like WEG, without good business sense, than like Hero, who really gets it.