| From: | Bull <chaos@*****.COM> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | [Slightly OT] The death of gaming, and a rant |
| Date: | Sat, 8 Feb 1997 15:09:17 -0500 |
>The Bookworm wrote,
>> so whoes next for the bankrupsy courts?
>
> Their not a game company but Marvel Comics has filed chapter 11 to
>reorganize and generate cash to pull themselves out of a crunch. This is
>an increasing trend in general and something I hope will end soon. I
>don't think the American economy is in great shape right now. Now is this
>a dip or a dive?
>
Marvel and TSR have both driven themselves out of business, really...
Marvel in particular is a major Pet Peeve of mine... I used to love their
comics, in the mid to late 80's, but they got WAY too commercial... Every
comic character that was even remotely popular made guest appearences in
every book, they suddenly decided that every character had to be killed,
cloned, resurected, and given a new costume (Not necessarily in that order).
They went from making 30 titles a month to 100+ in just over 5 years...
They killed the market, and killed most of the comics taht I liked to read.
After Spidey satrted going grim and gritty, I stopped collecting...
With TSR, they've just over marketed themselves, and managed to upset the
gamers... Now it's a trend for gamers to TSR bash... granted, they've
given gamers reason to do it, but....
Too many senseless books, too many marketing ploys taht haven't worked
(Like their CD play along adventures), too many worlds taht are only
slightly successful (Dark Sun, Ravenloft (Now, these aren't bad worlds, but
they really weren't popular enough to warrent the mass products that got
produced for them)), etc. etc.
Also, they keep producing products LONG after the they're dead... I know
no one that plays dragon dice or the Spellfire CCG, yet they STILL make
expansions for them.
And now they're screwing around with my favorite AD&D world, Dragonlance.
For some reason they think their old standby game system isn't good enough,
so they're going with a "new" diceless system, despite the fact no truly
diceless game systems have ever proven popular, or survived to any real
extent.
Ah well... FASA seems to be better connected to it's customers (After all,
we have Mike AND Steve on the list, and Tom Dowd shows up on teh cyberpunk
newsgroups), so hopefully they won't make the same mistakes that others
have been.
Don't overcommercialize! I can't stress that enough... Once something
becomes popular, don't push it into the ground and force it on us... I
don't think FASA will, after all, Mike's doing his best to squash the
EI's... That right there could have been (and still could be) WAY
overcommercialized... After all, even though the majority of the list
seems to not like 'em, there's still plenty of gamers out tehre who do. In
fact, I knew a guy once who wanted to play one...
Ok, I'm done... Rant over...
Bull-the-hoping-FASA-doesn't-screw-up-Ork-Decker
--
Now the Fearless Leader of the New Star Wars Mailing List!
=======================================================
= Bull, aka Chaos, aka Rak, aka Steven Ratkovich =
= chaos@*****.com =
= "Order is Illusion! Chaos is Bliss! Got any fours?" =
=======================================================
"I finally find a guy I like, and you got to go and kill him!"
-Kom, "Outlanders"
