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Games Entertainment

SJGames Layoffs 83

Posted by michael from the ogre-ogre-burning-bright dept.
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.
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SJGames Layoffs More

SJGames Layoffs

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  • Fnord. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This comment does not exist. Fnord.

  • Re:I had gotten worried... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You're slightly off-base here... Steve said they have a cash flow problem and have no idea if they're profitable or not. As he pointed out, you can have a cash flow problem and still be profitable. But without the books being up to date, he has no idea where he stands... except that he's low on cash and has bills to pay.

    So is SJ Games over-extended? We won't know until the books are brought up to date. So it's too early to blame Steve for over-extending. (Though I think we can blame him for not insisting on keeping the books current.)

  • I'm surprised that nobody remembered that Steve was also one of the first to take his business to the net, before there was even a web. I used to have a telnet account with Illuminati online starting back in the early 90's. His Metaverse (a MUD equivalent) was almost an early portal, with several organizations, including the EFF, having an online presence inside of it. And then IO became a full blown ISP, with service in at least two cities in Texas. Not too bad for someone the government did their level best to squish.

    He may not be making the buckets of cash he deserves to, but SJ has been net-savvy longer than almost anyone around. Its just a shame that he can't find some aging gamer geek with a CPA to help him do all that nasty money stuff.

    -reemul
    who, by an amazing coincidence, happened to be chatting with SJ in the Metaverse when the settlement check from the Secret Service came in
  • and all you need is three d6's and two d10's. Very nice rules set.
  • The reason Car Wars didn't come out on computer to begin with was that it was designed in 1980/1981, when an Apple II was $2000 or so, and not that many people had them. When the Origin version came out a few years later, it wasn't as detailed as the paper version.
  • I was online a lot during the Hacker Crackdown year, as well as being a regular visitor to the SJG BBS by plain old modem. As a former employee, I liked to keep up with things. When the Feds hit SJG, I was spending up to eight hours a day online (at 2400 baud, for the most part - builds patience). One day, the Secret Service raided SJG and Took The Computers Away, and I was, of course, a bit freaked out. So the following Saturday, I got up to watch cartoons and play with the computer. I booted up the old Apple, logged on, and got ready for some Usenetting.

    There was a knock at the door. Looking through the peephole, I saw two young men in dark suits, carrying briefcases. "Oh, crap!"

    Visions of search, seizure, and other fun things in my mind, I opened the door. One of the men spoke. "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"
  • Yikes! I hope they still plan on making a showing at GenCon [gencongamefair.com].

    If so, there will probably be some long faces in the booth.

  • Is it just me, or has every company that had the Traveller license suffered somehow? I can think of 4 or 5 different incarnations (Traveller, Traveller:TNE, Megatraveller, GURPS Traveller, and I think there was another edition in there somewhere). It's a great game (any game that uses hex for attributes is cool!), I'd hate to see it orphaned AGAIN. SJGames has produced excellent material for it.
  • Or you could subscribe to Pyramid [sjgames.com], SJGames' online gaming magazine
  • Argh. I knew it was Secret Service, I said Secret Service, I thought I typed Secret Service...but when I typed it in, it came out FBI.

    I blame the Slashdot person for not catching my mistake when he posted the article. Yeah, that's the ticket! ;)

    --

  • Hrm. Maybe the gods of rand(x) are being nice to me but it doesn't seem to require *that* much background to get the items.

    Okay, the tenth dentist still has me stumped...


    rark!
  • I used to be an avid RPG'er back in the days before multiplayer online games and collectible card games hit the market from both sides, and used to spend a great deal of my limited income on gaming books, most of which ranged in price from $10 to $25 USD . . .

    These days, however, when I can play some pretty absorbing computer based RPG's like Deus Ex, or go frag a group online, the lure of the game store and trying to get a group of gamer geeks together to play an adventure just doesn't have the same pull as it used to.

    Anyone who still follows the business able to tell me what the current state of the industry is?

  • Let me guess . . . (Score:3)

    by SimplyCosmic ( 15296 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @08:35PM (#102699) Homepage
    You're playing a live-action version of Illuminati: New World Order and are trying to play the "Senseless Propoganda" card, right?

  • Although i vaguely remember a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle game that i think was GURPS based that was pretty fun.
    TMNT was Palladium based. And yes, the game came out when the TMNT genre was more dark scifi oriented instead of the kiddi-fied "gay" version it became. I spent many hours creating mutants and playing the system.
  • Why not buy something? I just picked up another GURPS book that I'd been meaning to get "sometime real soon".
  • You open one of the 1002 boxes on this floor and find...

    A cat slowly rotating in midair. There is a slice of buttered toast strapped to its back.

    Hmm....Cat...

  • > T, MT, and TNE were all Game Designers Workshop products. GDW went down some years ago, when the collecting card games industry took off, roughly. Oweing a bunch of us for contributions, too, though not nearly as badly as IG screwed people.

    I always thought GDW was the prince of wargaming companies, but unfortunately they started well, improved a bit, and then went through a long demise of dumbing down their games and/or not providing ongoing support for big series that they had launched. They also suffered quality-wise when they expanded, because some of the new developers they brought on board were not made of the same stuff the originals were.

    However, what finally killed them is when they hired Gary Gygax to do an RPG game for them and foolishly named it "Dark Dimensions" or something to that effect, and gave his ex-wife-of-very-nasty-divorce, then owner of the latter-day D&D system, who had vowed that GG would never work in the gaming industry again, a pretty legitimate excuse for suing GDW on trademark infringement issues.

    GDW was already in decline, but the suit killed them off. However, Frank Chadwick was able to announce a simple closing of the doors rather than going into bankruptcy.


    --
  • Like the illuminati, or the masons, or the stonecutters. . .

    The illuminati was the name of his BBS... so, yes you are correct. Plus in online computer age he has been around as long as those you refer to..
  • Well reread I guess. For about the 50th time.

    Sorry as a long time Car Wars fan this really dissapoints me. Not at SJgames (kick ass game company) but at the industry in general I guess. It's them newfangled collectable card games that are out there these days. Sucking up all them kids disposable income. No more money to spend on GURPS or Vampire or even good 'ole D&D (oh, your book says 'demon' in it. Let's ban it!). Magic cards are like the crack rock. There are never enough. I think I sold my soul for an 'Ancestral Recall' and a Lotus once. Okay I got bit by the Magic bug. But I'm clean now.

    okay back on topic. Sorry about that. Anyway, when I played magic I still played other games. Car Wars, D&D, even Some Warhammer RPG. Oh, wait. There was some Twilight 2000 in there too. Sure I worked in a comic shop (discount) but we had a pretty big game selection. We had everything from Avalon Hill to Warhammer. We had a huge wall of Warhammer 2k minis. Talk about inventory overhead. Eventually the place went under.

    Back on topic. Okay so far we've established

    -CCG = Bad

    But out of all the games I listed above, Car Wars was my absoulte favorite. Maybe its a math thing. All those gridlines and calculators. Mmmmmm....gridlines. I know it wasn't a favorite, but it seem to circle the drain for years before they finaly put it to death. It's been out of print for a while now, but check it out on ebay if you've never tried it and if you like

    - Car Design (but with .50 cals!) in a Mad Max sort of setting
    - have paitence
    - Enjoy the thrill of a good dice roll (I'm not kidding!)
    Anyway, get the Compendium or Delux Car Wars. Good stuff.

    Sorry about the randomness and the spelling and/or the HTML. Stoned stream of conciusness sort of thing

    Oh yea, ADQ stands for Autoduel Quarterly. The Car Wars magazine. Ran for about 10 years. Also good stuff. Even if you don't play.

    Pete

  • Deception starts with the individual, and feeds on itself. Note the drug addict.

    Too true. (And especially, for me anyway, since I've been dealing with someone who deludes herself regarding some of her, err, habits.)

    However, the guy I was trying to convince knew that Windows was crap and crashed and caused him all sorts of grief. He was/is an structural engineer for a small company. Either by choice or by fiat (I think it was the former, but can't remember) he became his firm's ``computer guy'' - he knew first hand just how irritating Windows' fallability was.

    One excuse he used was that clients were billed for time working, even if that time working had to be done more than once due to computer unreliability, but he was only rationalising by that point, trying to get something good out of the situation.

    Still leaves me puzzled that he would prefer to be lied to.
    --

  • And especially, for me anyway....

    Oops, make that ``...especially apropos...''. There is no such thing as ``especially true''. :)
    --

  • Re:Don't mean to sound the troll here but... (Score:3)

    by maw ( 25860 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @10:35PM (#102709) Journal
    personally I would rather hear a "Sorry but we're tight right now" and not some "Oops my bad I didn't watch so and so"

    So would many other people, apparently. For some reason, a reason which is totally beyond my power to explain, people like being lied to. I wish I knew why.

    Once, back when I used to attempt to play Linux advocate (btw, it seems that media manipulation, something I never tried or even considered trying, has been the most successful method of advocating free software) I spent quite some time extolling the virtues of Linux to someone I knew. One point I mentioned was that the producers of Linux systems are more likely to admit mistakes (securty flaws were less important to this person, but basic things like bugs in the OS that would cause a crash) due to the nature of openly developed software. He told me that he would prefer a vendor who did not admit mistakes. It was the kind of statement to which I could never really refute. It still is. It's pretty difficult to refute a statement which is totally beyond one's comprehension.

    Why do people prefer to be lied to when they know the truth? I really can't understand it, but it does seem explain some otherwise apparently irrational actions by people and/or organisations who want to pretend that they can't be held accountable for anything.

    Having said that, kudos to PJG for being forthright about their problems. I respect them much more for it.
    --

  • I've read lots of people saying how pencil and paper RPGs are dying out, etc etc... Well, maybe but I'm still playing. We have a group at OSU, made of half staff, half students and play Aberrant (White Wolf's supers RPG) and Deadlands (weird wild west) about once a week each. The group has been going for 3 years or so, with some rotating membership but I have to say having the gaming group is probably one of the best things in my life. The fact that I always know that I'll be hanging out killing an evening with friends in some crazy setting, its great security. I usually pick up a gaming book or two a month, and I actually just picked up a Gurps book at Marcon, Technomancer. However I'm not crazy for the rules, so I've been figuring how to convert it to Storyteller, but thats whats cool about Gurps, they're meant for that. Gaming may be on hard times, but we just need to introduce a new generation to it.

    ps. And yes, I'm play plenty of videogames but those don't hold a candle to a good gaming session
  • It was indeed the Secret Service, but my main beef is with the next line or two of the story post:

    (Long-time Internetters will recall that the FBI raid on SJG was one of the first causes celebre of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)"

    It wasn't just one of the first causes, it was the reason for the founding of the EFF [eff.org]. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for all those who are new here, is the organization dedicated to protecting all internet-related civil liberties, and they generally fight injustice in the electronic world. Think ACLU without the penchant for being rabidly anti-religious or doing other silly things occasionally.
  • 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.

    This is exactly what happened to me at my first professional programming gig. My first year was great, I was hammering out projects left and right. But then our projects became more long term and more individual, less directly supervised. And the last one had a schedule of about six months, with just me. Combine that with telecommuting and you can imagine what occured.

    I've spent the last several years wondering if there was anyway for me to have gotten out of that situation before it became a nightmare. So far, not really.

    In the future, I would suggest to all those who manage projects with long deadlines: Demand to see progress. Stick to the milestone plan. You can be the guy's friend, and yet still stick to professionalism; ask to see the code(/work). No matter how awesome you think the developer/worker is, check.

  • Steve Jackson has given many classical hackers years of joy. Metagaming, now SJG brought forth not only some of the most wonderful games, but also seminal ideas for game design. Ogre proved not only that a complex game (other than Chess) could be elegant, but he showed us how that could be done.

    Perhaps all of we old farts are irrelevant today, but Steve's works inspired most of we early game designers, and I'd like to think that, in turn, we passed the torch that thereafter "stood on ye shoulders of giants"

    Steve was such a giant. This is not only "news for nerds." Its also stuff that matters.
  • I always had so much more fun combining my two hobbies by automating these games. I wrote programs for Starfleet battles, battletech, and harpoon to do things like track ships (or mechs) datasheets, compute damage amounts and locations, and in the case of harpoon, to keep track of missile intercepts. It removed a little of the tedium (especially in sfb) and let us concentrate on the game.

    Maybe rpgs were better because they never got so tedious as to require this kind of automation. At any rate I agree that the best part of all non-computer games is the ability to bend the rules to make gameplay more fun.
  • Ignorant asses! Dont mod this down. This is a popular saying at SJG and IO, the ISP spawned form SJG.

    Fnord.
  • Is this what people are talking about when they say "kharma whore"?

  • But a few weeks ago, our CFO left. Our financial reports are over a year out of date (that is, it has been more than a year since any accounting period was fully closed to show profit or loss). Our inventory is a mess. I have been writing personal checks to keep our bank account in the black. It is hard to describe the problem in more detail without using technical accounting terminology and really bad language.

    I never understood why a company (and I have seen this happen before) hires incompetent personnel, and allows them to do whatever suits them. I honestly feel bad for the company, but how much of the blame can be pushed off the the CFO, if no one is managing the company, and its workers.

    Now I've never owned my own company, so I don't know the ins and outs of running a business, but if I didn't have my books on point to show what I am spending on, what I am getting in returns on a quarterly basis (not yearly) heads would roll.

    Its easy to cast blame on someone who's walked out, or been fired, but the ignorance, or negligence (take your pick) of not running a company properly is not an excuse to throw out when firing someone, personally I would rather hear a "Sorry but we're tight right now" and not some "Oops my bad I didn't watch so and so"
  • Yes, it's Clarke's Third Law.


    Clarke's Laws (in order):

    When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

    The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  • I dunno. I see a lot more board games these days than ever before. Maybe I'm just turning into a fanatic, but ... I guess that doesn't do Steve Jackson that much good since most of the ones I see and play aren't SJ (US distribution is usually covered by Rio Grande)..
  • An acquaintance from my So. Cal. days took a partner to handle the business end of his company, while he and the coders pumped out C-64 games. Partner used to sell for one dem "get rich on no-down real estate" shops, so it wasn't a surprise that he pocketed the FICA withholding, and left the founder holding the bag.

    Same old story, been told *many* times before. I'm guessing Steve didn't bother to have his books auditted at least yearly by an outside CPA, either.
  • IMHO gaming of all sorts (but mostly RPGing) is fading back into the darkness of obscurity, it was a good run, the 90s, but many are turning away from pen & paper RPGing. I think it is one of those socialogical things that waxes and wanes from being nerdy to being "fringe" trendy every six years or so.

    One positive thing about a tougher gaming market, quality, and not marketing, becomes the driving economic factor...

    Or maybe it's just the many, many beers talking...

    -----

  • Its interesting that you mention Warren Spector. Deus Ex (which is an excellent game) carries many themes from previous works of his (e.g., the Illuminati).
  • Steve Jackson is definitely one of the best in the business. He once came over and played Illuminati (the original) with us when I was in high school. A few of my friends and I joined up with the EFF Austin chapter, of which he was a major player. We went and saw "Sneakers".

    I remember using The Mentor's hacking guides to help me learn the Net. The Mentor was an infamous hacker at the time. He was Lloyd Blankenship and he wrote GURPS Cyberpunk, which was later seized by the SS as a guide to hacking.

    I remember the day that the Federal Judge (Sparks, I think) ruled against the Secret Service. I was in the courtroom. The only people I remember are Steve and Paco Xander. That was a long time ago. I still have my copy of Cyberpunk.

    And I will forever be grateful to Steve Jackson for including my first writing efforts in his edition of the Principia Discordia.

    Hail Eris. All Hail Discordia.

    Good luck, Steve.
  • Sure, computer games kick ass, but there's nothing quite like getting together with a bunch of friends and playing Starfleet Battles, Shadowrun, MERP, or TMNT.

    It's a totally different gaming experience with paper RPGs. Lots of imagination goes into these games, and the gameplay is much better than on a computer. You aren't bound to the strict rules of a computer game (as long as you have a good GM running things, at least).

    Bah... Before I moved halfway across the country (USA), I had friends and family at my house every Wednesday night to play an RPG into the night... Much fun, much fun. I'm now trying to figure out a way to play from my remote location. :-)

    Interested in weather forecasting?
  • How great a guy? I publish a science fiction critical zine called Nova Express. Despite having several professional SF writers contribute work, and despite having gotten a Hugo nomination in 1997, I've never printed more than 800 or so copies of any issue of Nova Express.

    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...

  • Did you look up that game he mentioned, Frag [sjgames.com]?

    Looks like a winner to me!

    steveha

  • Non-computer games having a tough time now (Score:4)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @09:16PM (#102727) Homepage
    I know someone who runs a very small games company. He told me that when Magic: The Gathering (the collectable card game) came out, it had a huge negative impact on every other part of the games industry. In his estimation, the total dollars being spent on games didn't change much; it's just that millions of dollars got sucked out of everyone else's pockets and spent on Magic.

    I have no way of knowing how true his comments are (and of course he is prejudiced a bit!) but it does seem to me that the games business has fallen on hard times. I remember when Dungeons and Dragons outsold Monopoly to become the top-selling game of the year; I doubt this is true any more!

    P.S. Speaking of non-computer games: I saw a special edition of Dungeons and Dragons... on the cover it said: "Diablo II" (fine print) "Non-computer version" On the back it said something like "No computer required. Play Diablo II with your friends!"

    The circle is complete.

    steveha

  • Magic did it... (Score:3)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @11:51PM (#102728)
    In South Florida, there was a gaming store that had HUGE tables everywhere. After Magic, there was more money in it, and it expanded the store. Instead of one big table (where the owner or the other guy that worked there could play) there were two tables in the back. However, without the owner's personal involvement in games (as Magic grew), it became easier to spend money buying products online and playing there. Definitely hurt them.

    However, Magic eliminated other games. When I started hanging there, it was trying to get into a good RPG. A friend played there for years. However, I never saw anything but Magic (except the occaisional wargaming league games). It was simply easier to play Magic for hours where people could pop in and sit down, then try to coordinate an RPG. Hell, even the RPG group I played with would rarely play a session, because Magic was easier to play with no need to plan out an adventure.

    Unfortunately, WotC needed constant infusions of cash, so they ruinned Magic with bad expansions and attempts to remove the dominance of the older players. Eventually CCGs started to die off.

    Unfortunately, when the CCGs slowed, there wasn't anywhere for people to go. RPGs need to be restarted with a young crew. Existing groups died off. Also, I loved the place in my life for RPGs, but I've never been able to reestablish them. It's easier to spend my few spare hours computer gaming than getting a group together.

    I'm one of the lucky ones, my girlfriend would play in a game that I ran. If you have someone in your life and they aren't into gaming... good luck.

    Honey, I don't want to go hit a local hot spot, I want to throw some odd-shaped dice around...

    Laugh,
    Alex
  • YESSS! Cheap Ass games. I own Lord of the Fries and Pass the Brain. Those games are a riot. Some other good ones are Awful Green Things from Outer Space, Coup (to mention two SJG products), Che Geek it a pretty entertaining card game. Those quick and dirty games are fun (and some of them can be more in depth than would be expected). But I still have the urge to geek out on all day Civilistion, Titan, or even Axis and Allies.

  • Re:How is the pencil-n-paper business these days? (Score:5)

    by jgerman ( 106518 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @09:14PM (#102730)
    I started getting out of it five or six years ago but I have some friends that owned a game shop. It was pretty much downhill when Magic came along. Games companies tried to go more mainstream and target kids (who had parents with disposable incomes) with games like Magic. The aim was to get parents to continuosly buy their kids 5 or 10 dollars worth of stuff a week. A kid could bring his allowance in every week to spend it. Unlike traditional rpg where you could save up, buy everything you needed and not have to go back. Games Workshop (which I'm ashamed to say I was addicted to) took the same path. Taget kids who will spend all their money. So the games became much less involved and a lot more 'cartoony'. Contrast that with the mid to late eighties when you would see biker types jumping over the bar when the beer went on sale at Golden Demon every year.

    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 got a copy of Car Wars signed back in '86 by Steve Jackson (the little plastic box version)- at a convention in Missoula, MT...he was cool

    The hell he went through with the Govt. and now this would put most businessmen out of work. It's good to see someone who loves the hobby sticking in there, and I'll have to take a look at some of their new products...(haven't bought one since "Killer" in the mid 90's at college.

    Whereas most people would have just canned and moved on, he posted to the website, offered to help those laid off find new jobs, and in general has been the king of CEO's, (if that's what he actually is - maybe a better term is head honcho) - we should all be so lucky.
  • I've read the Daily Illuminator on a daily basis for about the last 5 years (I just work it into my cycle of daily comics), even though I stopped playing Gurps around 2 years ago. For the last year, or so, I'd noticed they'd been adding a LOT of new product lines. New card games, a complete miniature line, the Gurps Traveller line (a whole RPG line within the Gurps system), and on and on. I started worrying a bit that maybe they were stretching themselves a little thin, but maybe business was better than I thought.

    Unfortunately, I guess I was right all along. They were stretching themselves thin, they just didn't realize it because of poor bookkeeping. That's really too bad, Steve Jackson has always been an exceptionally cool guy. I think I'll head over to Warehouse 23 [warehouse23.com] and buy myself a copy of Deluxe Illuminati, since I've always been curious about that game.

    The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

  • Re:Don't mean to sound the troll here but... (Score:5)

    by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @09:54PM (#102734)
    Accounting is complicated, and for privately held companies, there's less of a need to hammer out a report every quarter. So, my guess is that the CFO had a history at the company, and was trusted. SJ Games has put out a lot of new product lines over the last year, and so a full accounting report was probably put off a bit to figure out how they wanted to account for certain new investments (like their miniature casting shop). Then, once the CFO got behind, he found it easier and easier to think to himself "oh, well we've put it off a quarter already, I'll start on it next week, no need to get it done right this second." Steve, having known the guy to be competent for a long time, accepted his excuses and assurances that it wasn't a big deal, and he would get it done before it became a problem.

    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.

  • Chez Dork looks AWESOME! Domination Spank Police: How could any REAL woman stand up to that? ROFLROFLROFLROFLROFL I've got a huge HUGE stack of GURPS rule/world books, but I don't have GURPS basic rules, nor have I ever played GURPS; the books are SO DAMN WONDERFUL and can be applied to ANY FREAKIN RULESET with a wee bit of work. They're great.
  • "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Isaac Asimov

    Wasn't that an Arthur C. Clarke quote?, not Asimov?

  • No, I was already at the karma cap when I posted it.

  • FBI? (Score:5)

    by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Friday July 06, 2001 @09:38PM (#102738) Homepage
    (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.

  • BBS not Internet (Score:3)

    by fleener ( 140714 ) on Saturday July 07, 2001 @05:54AM (#102739)
    (Long-time Internetters will recall that the FBI raid on SJG was one of the first causes celebre of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)

    What does the Internet have to do with it? You mean longtime modemers, because this was a case involving e-mail [eff.org] on SJG's Bulletin Board System (BBS) and the rights entitled [sjgames.com] to electronic publishers.

  • Sorry as a long time Car Wars fan this really dissapoints me

    Especially as they are/were about to come out with a new version. Though I'm not sure I'm altogether happy about it; they've thrown some anime-style covers out and announced that that reflects the style of the new version. Car Wars has always bordered on not-quite-gritty-enough (I would really rather see the Chassis & Crossbow timeframe done right), and happy big-eyed goofy-armored anime characters just push it over the edge for me.

  • I'm surprised that nobody remembered that Steve was also one of the first to take his business to the net, before there was even a web.

    That wasn't Steve's doing so much as it was geeks working for him talking him into it, though, wasn't it? I mean, I remember asking Steve when the Illuminati BBS was going to get a QWK packet option, and he told me it sounded good but he "wouldn't know a QWK packet if it committed an indiscretion on [his] shoe." Heh.

  • Maybe rpgs were better because they never got so tedious as to require this kind of automation

    Oh, if you're geeky enough, you find a way to devote fifteen years of your life to automating RPG's, like, say, running the Phoenyx. [phoenyx.net]

  • Steve Jackson Games is almost an institution, they've been around forever

    Like the illuminati, or the masons, or the stonecutters. . .

  • "Our per-product sales were up in 2000 (and are up more in 2001), we've been producing more products, and the distributors have been paying their bills. The cash ought to be there, but it's not"

    I don't know anything about the people at this company so I hope I'm not totally off when I wonder if the CFO was pocketing some money. Has anyone heard about an investigation of the CFO? It's mighty suspicious. Then again, it could just be gross incompetence.


    --

  • info (Score:3)

    by Docrates ( 148350 ) on Saturday July 07, 2001 @09:10AM (#102745) Homepage
    I know this post came a little late, but here it is anyways. for the complete story on the SJGames Vs. Secret Service saga, check out this link:

    http://www.2600.com/secret/sj.html [2600.com]

  • I was too dumb to stay out of the industry forever, so I am publishing stuff for 3rd Ed. D&D. On the one hand I like having a well-known system for which it is legal to print new materials... on the other hand the D20 System has come to really dominate the marketplace. Lots of upcoming games are being released under this (somewhat retarded) rules system when they would be better off doing their own thing.

    There's a Farscape RPG on the way, for example... and it will use the 3rd Ed D20 rules. But I can't really blame the publisher completely for that, the system is so popular you'd probably be crazy not to use it, even where it doesn't fit.

    I wish that GURPS had opened up their system. If they did that a while ago they'd be reaping the benefits today, and I wouldn't be stuck playing 3rd Ed rules so much!

    Third Edition has followed AOLs example and dumbed the game down slightly.

    I wouldn't put it that way. 3rd Ed is more simple, yes, but mostly in good ways. Like one experience table for all classes... getting rid of special-purpose rolls like "listen at doors" in favor of a generic roll-and-add skill system... making AC an additive system... It still has PLENTY of warts but it's an improvement on 2nd Ed, IMHO.

    I still don't think it's the best choice for sci-fi games. Heck, I don't think it's the best choice for fantasy, but I seem to be in the minority.
  • IMHO gaming of all sorts (but mostly RPGing) is fading back into the darkness of obscurity...

    Then you aren't paying attention. The RPG market is growing. It's more popular now than it has been in years.

    It will never be a mass-market activity, but it does have its little booms and busts. Right now it's on the upslope. Where it tops out remains to be seen but I think the plateau is in sight.

    Question is, where will the crash come and what will start it?
  • At least we know he'll never sell out to the likes of Hasbro.

  • You missed the Imperium Games edition and Far Future Enterprises (aka Marc Miller Rides Again) edition currently going nowhere.

    T, MT, and TNE were all Game Designers Workshop products. GDW went down some years ago, when the collecting card games industry took off, roughly. Oweing a bunch of us for contributions, too, though not nearly as badly as IG screwed people.

    My impression, based on Steve's report on his website, is that there's gotta be financial chicanery going on with his ex-CFO. Steady fundamentals but a lack of closed accounting periods equals something rotten in Denmark. This would be unlike what took GDW down (fundamentals faded as industry changed) or IG (never had 'em to start with...).

  • In the past week I've spent 3 full sleepless nights playing D&D 3rd Edition(usually its just every saturday night, but we bumped it up a notch just this week) in a group of 7 people and in a normal week(less D&D) probably as many or more hours playing CounterStrike. I don't "follow the industry", but from casual observation, it seems things are actually on the rise. It appears there are pencil&paper more RPG players than ever. The average players handbook and set of dice run about $20 and $3 respectively. There are published campaigns to play from. Third Edition has followed AOLs example and dumbed the game down slightly. There are new books popping up left and right. Neverwinter Nights is looking like a decent though not perfect port from pen&paper to electrons&wires.

    "// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"

  • SJ Games seemed like they were doing well. I think GURPS rules, and any techie should like the silicon valley tarot! [svtarot.com]

    Good luck and I hope you prosper...

  • Why do people prefer to be lied to when they know the truth?

    Deception starts with the individual, and feeds on itself. Note the drug addict.

    I love every SJG product I've ever had. OK, Up Harzburk was not a shining moment. Hope they recover.

  • the link to the story is just to the sites newspage, and now has a story about awards. to get to info about the layoffs you need to scroll past that, the link IS correct
  • Allen, I remember you writing games and articles for the Space Gamer a while ago, but didn't Steve end up with The Fantasy Trip? I thought it evolved into GURPs, and Space Gamer and Fantasy Gamer had articles about it.

    My memory could be faulty, because my magazine collection has been archived. The only ones I keep around are the copies with my articles in them :)

  • you are quite humorous.

    .

    .

    p.s. - you missed, moron.

  • Metagaming, now SJG

    Oh god, I envision Steve reading that and clutching his chest and gurgling in total revulsion. Howard Thompson founded Metagaming in the mid-'70s, and he published Steve's early designs (OGRE/G.E.V., The Fantasy Trip, and a few incidental works). Jackson and Thompson had a somewhat public falling-out in the late '70s, and the dispute over rights left SJ with Ogre/G.E.V. and Thompson with The Fantasy Trip. Steve left and started SJG in 1980. Metagaming lingered on until about 1986, when it voluntarily ceased operations.

    Given the bitter blood between them, phrases like "Metagaming, now SJG" carry the risk of heart attack.

  • didn't Steve end up with The Fantasy Trip? I thought it evolved into GURPS

    No, Howard Thompson (founder and president of Metagaming) kept The Fantasy Trip after Steve Jackson fell out with him in 1980. Thompson offered TFT for sale; rumor says his asking price was $250,000. Nobody bought. Steve developed GURPS (the Generic Universal Roleplaying System) because he couldn't get TFT. It's very much the same design approach, though GURPS more strongly emphasizes nominal realism.

  • SJG can weather the storm (Score:5)

    by Allen Varney ( 449382 ) on Saturday July 07, 2001 @12:45AM (#102758) Homepage

    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.

  • Because it's News for Nerds, dummy. Believe it or not, at one time, "Nerds" did in fact play real-live, face-to-face board games and paper-and-pencil RPG's with each other. This was in an era before Quake 3 (I know it's difficult to believe, but stay with me here), when arcade games only cost $0.25 (I know, unbeliveable...read on), and a not-very-useful personal computer cost upwards of $5,000. Steve Jackson Games is almost an institution, they've been around forever, and published many good games that have (mostly) stood the test of time. SJG laying off 13(!) employees due to a financial controller's incompetence is certainly a newsworthy item.

  • Re:Padding Pockets? (Score:3)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @09:00PM (#102760) Homepage
    Well, Steve Jackson Games doesn't make enough money to embezzle...they make enough for Steve to have a halfway decent house, and for him to go to all the cons he wants to.

    To help Steve out, purchase the Car Wars Card Game [sjgames.com] (unfortunately, non-collectible), or my favorite, The Awful Green Things From Outer Space" [sjgames.com], which Steve picked up the rights to a few years back. Despite the unpopularity of real-live face-to-face board games nowadays, Awful Green Things was just a dang good Beer & Pretzels game.

  • Fun things at SJG website (Score:4)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @09:20PM (#102761) Homepage
    Try opening a random package from Warehouse 23 [warehouse23.com]. This might be a little old-school for most folks (half the items assume a knowledge of science and physics that used to be common among the geeky set) but still a rather fun way to while away 5 minutes or so.

  • I've been an avid player of RPG's for a little over 20 years now, and I've seen many gaming companies come and go. However, I certainly don't see RPG's going out; ever. And I certainly can't see a publishing juggernaut such as SJGames going out because of this! Granted, I've never been a real big fan of SJGames... don't get me wrong, there's plenty there that I like: CarWars, Illuminati, and some others are pretty fun. But for me; DnD is my first and last love as far as gaming goes.

    I'm always a little saddened when I walk into a gaming shop and I see most of the younger crowd playing Magic ( or, *shudder*, Pokemon ), Warhammer, and the various Vampire games... that's all well and good I guess, but too many times I see nothing but Hack-n-slash/Monty haul campaigns being played, be it DnD or any of those other games. It's much more fun, and challenging, to not just run in and kill everything in the room.

    Whatever happened to actual "Role Playing"?
  • "News for Nerds." Doesn't that cover it? Unless you want to quibble over the difference between "Nerd" and "Geek."
  • I still don't think it's the best choice for sci-fi games. Heck, I don't think it's the best choice for fantasy, but I seem to be in the minority.

    Well, there's more than just you. I personally prefer the Shadowrun rule system, with a close second to White Wolf's Storyteller system. (I realize this may tarnish my image with many roleplayers, but so be it).

    While I have serious issues with what was taken out, and put back into 3rd edition, on the whole it certainly is an improvement on the basic D&D game. My own bias, just gets in the way. I am _very_ glad that they opened up the system in the way that they have, allowing for people to legally publish their own home-brewed campaign worlds and even make some kind of profit off their labors. (Or at the very least, not recieve mounds of threatening mail from T$R lawyers, accusing them of theft). However, I really think someone should've pulled the plug before they took on Star Wars for D20. $30 better spent on beer, that book was.

  • Re:Wasn't it the SS? (Score:5)

    by bartlett's ( 465717 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @08:41PM (#102765) Homepage
    I thought it was the Secret Service that raided Steve Jackson Games, not the FBI.

    Yes, it was the Secret Service. And if you don't know what we're talking about, their ordeal is well documented here [sjgames.com].


  • and the first fiasco with Steve.

    Thankfully he was aquitted, but now faces another bleak challenge.

    Does anyone thinkg it would be a good idea to start a PayPal donation system?
  • For many years Steve Jackson Games and FASA were probably my two favorite companies in the world. I remember being back in junior high pulling out those handy little cases that Ogre and Battlesuit came in... trying to get in a few good games during lunch. Or selecting which Mechs we were going to have battle each other.. usually going with the Wolverine because I loved jumping around like a madman... But my favorite always was Car Wars. We had so many battles on the streets of Midville... so much destruction on Kazango. Those are some of my fondest memorier (and often the only ones) of my junior high years. I think the best thing about Car Wars was spending hours and hours designing cars.. sharing the Uncle Al's catalogs between 4 of us... and then finally playing and having all be over in 30 minutes... Those were great days.
  • Car Wars is back in print again. Take a look at Warehouse 23 [warehouse23.com]
  • PayPal? Nah, just go to the Warehouse 23 SJ Games page [warehouse23.com] and spend a few hundred dollars on some good stuff. The Pyramid (SJG's on-line magazine) discussion boards have been running a contest on who will spend the most on Warehouse 23. My $504 is leading at the moment, so /. might want to try beating that.

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