Speaker 1: Out of the street corners. They scream. You knew it
Speaker 1: was coming. You've been waiting for this for months, rumor
Speaker 1: hardened into fear, and now they scream at you, the sirens,
Speaker 1: their hysterical wail, tearing through the white noise of the city,
Speaker 1: and you run. You run to pick up those things
Speaker 1: that can never be replaced, a picture of them in
Speaker 1: the days when they still loved you, your mother's wedding ring.
Speaker 1: And then you turn to your shelf of games. You
Speaker 1: only have room for five. Five Games for Doomsday. Five
Speaker 1: Games for Doomsday is a show in which board game
Speaker 1: personalities are thrust into a cabin in the woods to
Speaker 1: outrun an oncoming disaster, but can only take five of
Speaker 1: their games with them. But which will they choose? My
Speaker 1: guest this week is a legend in the gaming industry.
Speaker 1: A former systems analyst for Boeing, he formed a company
Speaker 1: named after his role playing guild that would become and
Speaker 1: still remains, one of the most significant names in hobby gaming.
Speaker 1: This company was Wizards of the Coast, who would publish
Speaker 1: Magic the Gathering and acquire tactical Studies, rules, and publish
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons. After leaving WATSA. After the acquisition by Hasbro,
Speaker 1: he would go on to buy gen Con. My guest
Speaker 1: this week is Peter Adkisson. Peter, Welcome to the cabin.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you for having me. What a pleasure
Speaker 2: to be here.
Speaker 1: So my first question is how difficult was it for
Speaker 1: you to pick the five games to take to the cabin.
Speaker 2: Well, I was. It wasn't too hard. I had to
Speaker 2: think about, like, you know, I asked like, who's going
Speaker 2: to be there? I asked you, who's going to be
Speaker 2: in the cabin? You know? Is that my wifer is
Speaker 2: at my war gaming buddy, you know, and he's like, well,
Speaker 2: whoever you want or something like that.
Speaker 1: The premise is very thin, Peter, I could tell you
Speaker 1: that much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So I figured I had to take some
Speaker 2: Diversity and replayability were the two things that I was
Speaker 2: concerned with. Diversity in terms of having different types of
Speaker 2: games for different types of people that I might find
Speaker 2: in the cabin. And I don't know how long I'm
Speaker 2: going to be there with only five games, So I
Speaker 2: wanted games that I feel I could play many times
Speaker 2: and really be happy with them.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to the beginning then, So when
Speaker 1: did you first realize that you were a gamer?
Speaker 2: Well, good question. I you know, my family played games.
Speaker 2: I mean not the types of games that we think
Speaker 2: it was gameing, you like hobby games. But as you know,
Speaker 2: I grew up in in sort of the environment like, hey,
Speaker 2: gaming is something you do, and it was things like
Speaker 2: peanutle and hearts and you know, you know, aggravation and
Speaker 2: monopoly and games like that. And then so I didn't
Speaker 2: really identify and didn't even wasn't aware sort of the
Speaker 2: wonderful world of war games and eventually euro games and
Speaker 2: all this sort of stuff like that that came as
Speaker 2: as I was a teenager, and immediately, like as soon
Speaker 2: as I was exposed to that world, like okay, this
Speaker 2: is where I need to really, you know, this is me,
Speaker 2: this is home, this is my dribe.
Speaker 1: And when you get an email from you, your your
Speaker 1: signature says peace love and wargames Are war games your
Speaker 1: first love?
Speaker 2: Do you think I think in terms of hobby games? Yeah,
Speaker 2: My the gateway drug was risk and from there I
Speaker 2: discovered Avalon Hill Games. This would be in the nineteen
Speaker 2: early nineteen seventies, and that you know, that was a
Speaker 2: hobby game industry at the time that miniatures, which were
Speaker 2: even harder to find, you know, like war were miniatures.
Speaker 2: So and then I kind of went on a forty
Speaker 2: year side quest into rgs and magic the gathering and
Speaker 2: board games were always there, you know, I just was
Speaker 2: never something I was fanatical about. I always liked board games,
Speaker 2: but and so recently, it was about a year ago
Speaker 2: I decided to go back. You know, it's like, hey,
Speaker 2: war games, I really want to go back into war games.
Speaker 2: And so I did. And the piece love war games.
Speaker 2: I just kind of liked the sort of the inherent
Speaker 2: conflict and the idea of peace of love and war
Speaker 2: games because I think that, you know, if you're a
Speaker 2: war gamer and you're honest about it and you're you're
Speaker 2: a good guy, there's always a little part of You're like,
Speaker 2: why am I spending all this time thinking about people
Speaker 2: killing each other? You know? And I don't really have
Speaker 2: a good answer for that. I'm okay with it. I
Speaker 2: know that it's just all fake, it's all pretend, and
Speaker 2: that I'm a good guy. But yeah, I like war games.
Speaker 2: Can you explain it to me? I don't know.
Speaker 1: So you went on then to study computer science? Why that?
Speaker 2: Well, I started off in history, to be honest, and
Speaker 2: I knew two people who have PhDs in history. One
Speaker 2: of them was working at a hospital and the other
Speaker 2: one was a janitor. You know, I love history, but
Speaker 2: you know, I want to be able to have a
Speaker 2: good income, you know, to support my family and do things.
Speaker 2: You know, I want enough money to support my family
Speaker 2: and have something left over to go and do fun
Speaker 2: things on top of that. So I thought, you know,
Speaker 2: how about computers. Yeah, let's let's try that. And so
Speaker 2: I was never I was never passionate about computers. I
Speaker 2: was okay at it. I mean, you know, I studied it,
Speaker 2: did did fine with it. But I just did it
Speaker 2: because I wanted to have a marketable skill.
Speaker 1: And so you you went on to have a job
Speaker 1: but one of America's most famous companies, Boeing. What was
Speaker 1: it that you did that?
Speaker 2: I you know, I love my time at Boeing. It
Speaker 2: was fantastic. I worked Boeing has you know, people think
Speaker 2: Boeing to think of airplanes, but Boeing is also very
Speaker 2: active in like rockets and aerospace and satellites and stuff
Speaker 2: like this. And I worked in that. I worked in
Speaker 2: that part of Boeing and It was a I was
Speaker 2: in a study group would study do studies for NASA
Speaker 2: and for the Air Force relating to space transportation, which
Speaker 2: is just a kind of fancy word for how do
Speaker 2: you get stuff up into space? You know, you know,
Speaker 2: that's what it's really about. And with my computer degree,
Speaker 2: I was there as a programmer and they called me
Speaker 2: a system's analyst, which I didn't mind because it was
Speaker 2: actually a better title in terms of conversations and stuff. So,
Speaker 2: but I was basically writing code, and I specifically this
Speaker 2: was pretty cool. I look back and like, wow, that
Speaker 2: was a cool job. I was writing code to to
Speaker 2: simulate the ground operations, you know, the ground of a
Speaker 2: launch vehicle, like like the place where you build a
Speaker 2: launch vehicle, like a vertical integration building or a mobile
Speaker 2: launcher platform, the launch pad, refurbishment centers and stuff like this.
Speaker 2: And so I would get input of what a projected
Speaker 2: scenario for delivering payloads into orbit, and I would model
Speaker 2: what sort of ground operations facilities and how long it
Speaker 2: would take up to build them and operate them to
Speaker 2: support that scenario. And it was kick ass.
Speaker 1: And during it was during that time that you formed
Speaker 1: Wizards of the Coach what is the story behind that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we know, you know, I had an RPG.
Speaker 2: I was deep, deep into dungeons and dragons back in
Speaker 2: those days. And we had actually, me and some of
Speaker 2: my buddies had actually thought about starting a game company,
Speaker 2: and way back in college, you know, so like several
Speaker 2: years earlier, like at least five or six years earlier,
Speaker 2: and when the idea sprang from, we were opening up
Speaker 2: a judge's guilt supplement called the Invincible the City State
Speaker 2: Invincible Overlord or something like that, and we were looking
Speaker 2: through it, and my buddy Terry's like, you know, we
Speaker 2: could do this, you know, we could create something like this.
Speaker 2: And we were all like, yeah, that's a a great idea.
Speaker 2: And then I'm like, maybe we should finish college first,
Speaker 2: you know, just for the hell of it, right, And
Speaker 2: so but I never let go of that idea, and
Speaker 2: we finished college. We kind of went our separate ways,
Speaker 2: and I ended up in Seattle working at Boeing, and
Speaker 2: that seed had been planted, you know, and one day
Speaker 2: I just told my asked my buddy Ken who was
Speaker 2: there at that first meeting, and say, hey, why don't
Speaker 2: we do this. Let's let's let's start this company and
Speaker 2: do it on the side, you know, And so we
Speaker 2: did that. Wasn't that conversation happened in nineteen ninety and
Speaker 2: we uh and we got our buddy friends together and
Speaker 2: we just sort of re it was to do role
Speaker 2: playing games. It wasn't to do magic theatering. I hadn't
Speaker 2: met I had not met Richard Garfield yet, and we
Speaker 2: sort of reversed engineered the process of holding up a
Speaker 2: role playing book, like, how did they make this? What
Speaker 2: did they do? Oh, somebody had to type it up,
Speaker 2: somebody to do art, stuff like that. So we didn't
Speaker 2: even think about what it was like to sell it.
Speaker 2: We're just like, uh, yeah, And so we just started
Speaker 2: doing it. And I mean it sounds like we did
Speaker 2: it on a lark, but I took it very seriously.
Speaker 2: From as soon as they decided to do it, I
Speaker 2: started taking it very seriously. I continued working at Boeing
Speaker 2: for the next three years. But yeah, I did this
Speaker 2: on the side, and of course I met Richard and
Speaker 2: we would magic and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So your first game then is intimidating, and it's a
Speaker 1: game that I've often thought of maybe trying to play.
Speaker 1: And then I think about it for another second and
Speaker 1: I just say, I'm not sure I have the intellectual
Speaker 1: capacity for it. And this is Advanced Squad Leader, So
Speaker 1: why are you taking ASL to the cabin.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, you gotta there's a war game inside
Speaker 2: of me, right, So it's like I I one more game.
Speaker 2: Had had to be on the list, absolutely at least one,
Speaker 2: and you know, I just wanted something with a lot
Speaker 2: of playability. I mean ASLs best squad leader or squad leader,
Speaker 2: and you know either one does don't really matter. Has
Speaker 2: you know, it's tactical combat World War two, and there's
Speaker 2: just an endless supply of scenarios that you can play
Speaker 2: with that, and it's it's it's gone deep into all
Speaker 2: the different types of all the theaters of operation, all
Speaker 2: the different types of things amphibious landings or you know,
Speaker 2: gorilla action or you know the street fighting in Stalingrad
Speaker 2: or or or what have you, any anything, So it's
Speaker 2: just it's just the variety. And then there's something very
Speaker 2: tactically engaging about like, Okay, I've got a military force.
Speaker 2: What's in the force, what's the train? Like, what are
Speaker 2: the objectives? And then what's the force? The other side
Speaker 2: has and you know, setting it up, you know, push
Speaker 2: start pushing counters around. It just never gets tiring, you know.
Speaker 2: It's it's not like playing, oh, let's play the Battle
Speaker 2: of the Bulge. It's just the Battle of the Bulge
Speaker 2: every time, you know, instead of this time. It's it's
Speaker 2: just the wide variety of the stuff you can do
Speaker 2: with that game.
Speaker 1: And So how significant would you say as L's in
Speaker 1: the world of wall games.
Speaker 2: I think it's quite It is certainly very significant. I
Speaker 2: mean it is Is it the most significant game? I
Speaker 2: don't even know how can major those things, but you
Speaker 2: know it first of all, it has a long pedigree.
Speaker 2: It goes clear back to I don't know, nineteen clearly
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies is when it came out, and
Speaker 2: and it is and it's never died. I mean, like
Speaker 2: there's a lot of games that came out in the
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies and you play them and they're like,
Speaker 2: that's a little long in the tooth, you know, But
Speaker 2: you could play Original Squad Leader scenario one, set it up,
Speaker 2: and it holds its own here, you know, fifty years later.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just very very well designed. It came
Speaker 2: right out of a miniature you know, it started its
Speaker 2: roots are a miniatures gaming. It was a World War
Speaker 2: two tactical combat thing. So yeah, what other game has
Speaker 2: that pedigree in the work aiming? Uh? Nothing, nothing does
Speaker 2: and so uh and and I know, and certainly the
Speaker 2: genre has been tackled by many different designers, and there's
Speaker 2: other good ones. I also love Combat Commander is an
Speaker 2: excellent game that actually designed in this century, and same
Speaker 2: genre World War two, same scale, tactical combat. And and
Speaker 2: they're both they're both fantastic, you know.
Speaker 1: And so then there are people listening to this who
Speaker 1: will have played ASL, but there will be many people
Speaker 1: like me who are curious about ASL but are intimidated
Speaker 1: by it. Should we be? Yeah, I mean, thank you
Speaker 1: for the eldestizza.
Speaker 2: I mean that's the fun too. I mean that's I mean,
Speaker 2: I got it, Okay, I will confess I the complexity
Speaker 2: of these games is a feature, not a bug for me.
Speaker 2: I love like, Okay, this game is going to be
Speaker 2: really complicated, and I'm gonna have to spend some time
Speaker 2: to understand it and play it. And I think that's
Speaker 2: that's cool. If it holds up, If the complexity is
Speaker 2: rewarding in that you feel like that it gives you
Speaker 2: a richness that it's not just for complexity's sake, right,
Speaker 2: And that's what I think ASL fits that criteria. I mean,
Speaker 2: there are other games, I a World of War, the
Speaker 2: OCS system, I'll just not quite that complex. But I
Speaker 2: mean I think the complexity is yeah, but there are
Speaker 2: gateways into it. There are starter ASL, there are starter kits.
Speaker 2: I also, you know, to be honest, I said ASL,
Speaker 2: I actually primarily play the original squad leader across environment.
Speaker 2: But I figured, hey, if it's doomsday and I might
Speaker 2: be there for you know, it might be stuck in
Speaker 2: the cabin for a early long time, maybe it's time
Speaker 2: to take the plunge and really transition into ASL.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to go now more into
Speaker 1: Wizards of the Coast. So Richard Garfield, who some of
Speaker 1: the listeners might have heard of in this listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast, he approached you with a game that he
Speaker 1: is that he's a classic robo rally, and you told
Speaker 1: him it was too expensive to produce and could he
Speaker 1: come up with something cheaper.
Speaker 2: What was the result of that, Yeah, Well, you know
Speaker 2: we had I started Wizards of the Coast to do
Speaker 2: RPG stuff, and not even an RPG design, but like
Speaker 2: just you know, you know, like a system independent sort
Speaker 2: of supplements, you know, like campaigns and stuff and uh.
Speaker 2: And the thing about that stuff is it's just a book.
Speaker 2: And so we spent quite a bit of time just
Speaker 2: trying to figure how to make a book. And so
Speaker 2: Richard comes over this, you know, some missus game for
Speaker 2: us to published robt rally and this is a board
Speaker 2: game that you know would be in terms of components
Speaker 2: are not outstanding by today's major but for me as
Speaker 2: an RPT publisher, and eighteen ninety one, that would have
Speaker 2: been I'm saying, oh my god, I gotta I gotta
Speaker 2: make a map a board, and I got to make
Speaker 2: a box, and I got to make miniature robots or
Speaker 2: something like that and different and and a book on
Speaker 2: top of all that. Right, So, and you know, board
Speaker 2: games had a respectable position to market those days, but
Speaker 2: nothing like they are now in terms of a magnitude
Speaker 2: of And so I just like, I I like this game,
Speaker 2: and if I was a board game publisher, I would
Speaker 2: definitely want to publish this game because it's cool. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's going to set the world on fire,
Speaker 2: you know, Like I don't think if I'm going to
Speaker 2: get into board games, I don't know that this is
Speaker 2: a game that's that I you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: that I'm ready for that challenge. And I said, I
Speaker 2: just want something easier, you know, and he's like, you
Speaker 2: know is Richard's response was like, well, what would you like?
Speaker 2: I will design anything you want, which I love that response,
Speaker 2: you know. And I and so I said, well, how
Speaker 2: about a card game? I mean, just just just cards,
Speaker 2: no other components, no, no, no, no, just cards, you know,
Speaker 2: some of you put in your pocket. And because I thought,
Speaker 2: you know, printing that's printing on paper basically just like
Speaker 2: a book, but just smaller pieces of paper, right, and
Speaker 2: laminated and stuff like that, and and so, but I
Speaker 2: really want to make it clear to anybody that's listening
Speaker 2: and might be hearing his story for the first time,
Speaker 2: I am not taking any credit for the real innovation
Speaker 2: of the game, which was way beyond just a typical
Speaker 2: card game. I mean, I was just thinking of something
Speaker 2: like you know, Heart's Poker or whatever, but the different heart.
Speaker 2: And so I don't want to steal any credit from Richard.
Speaker 2: It was his entirely his brainchild to what magic gathering is.
Speaker 1: And so you know magic the gathering happens. We know
Speaker 1: Richard Garfield as Richard Garfield. You could never go back
Speaker 1: in time. So all of us listening to this know
Speaker 1: Richard Garfield as the inventor of magic. Richard Garfield, the
Speaker 1: great think of the great innovator. And the listeners can
Speaker 1: can have a drink.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm writing a book at the moment, and it's astonishing.
Speaker 1: I'm writing a book on the twenty first century in games.
Speaker 1: It's astonishing how many people in this century were inspired
Speaker 1: by magic. But what was Richard like at the time,
Speaker 1: you know, before he'd really had anything published, as he
Speaker 1: was pitching magic to you right, well.
Speaker 2: You know, he was still a student at the time.
Speaker 2: He was in his last year, I think are very
Speaker 2: close to his last year, and he wasn't aspiring to
Speaker 2: be a game designer at all, and not professionally, right,
Speaker 2: He was aspiring to be a mathematics professor, you know.
Speaker 2: And he was a math student and he was very smart,
Speaker 2: very slupbull. But Richard is also very playful and a
Speaker 2: bit mischievous, you know, like somebody who will play a
Speaker 2: prank on someone, but careful not to like try to
Speaker 2: really embarrass or get them in trouble or hurt them
Speaker 2: or in any sort of way, you know. Just and
Speaker 2: so he has a clever playfulness to him and a
Speaker 2: silliness you know about him too, like wearing mismatched colored socks,
Speaker 2: which he's famous for, you know. And and he used
Speaker 2: to carry He'll be he'd be in a board moon meeting.
Speaker 2: It was much later, but he would have done this
Speaker 2: then too. This is you know, taking a spoon, you
Speaker 2: know how you take a spoon and kind of balance
Speaker 2: it from your nose, you know, like that. And he
Speaker 2: would he carry around a little horn, like a little
Speaker 2: bicycle horn every once in a while. So he'd say
Speaker 2: something and it'd be kuind of a quiet and he goes,
Speaker 2: you know, off the horn. You know. That's that's who
Speaker 2: Richard was. He was very modest because you know, he
Speaker 2: was uh, it was just nice, you know, not always
Speaker 2: super talkative. Sometimes I have run into people who thought
Speaker 2: that Richard was aloof for arrogant, and boy, that is
Speaker 2: that is not fair at all. He but he sometimes
Speaker 2: is just kind of quiet and like doesn't feel like,
Speaker 2: oh there's some silence in a room, I need to
Speaker 2: fill it by talking.
Speaker 1: I mean, shyness can often come across as a loof right.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, But I wouldn't even say it's shy. I
Speaker 2: think he's he can be quiet. He can be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's a conversation here, and I don't feel like I have,
Speaker 2: you know, something interesting enough to say it, So let's
Speaker 2: let somebody else talk, you know, and then like he
Speaker 2: you know again, going later on in board meetings, So
Speaker 2: he was the largest shareholder was the Coast because they
Speaker 2: brought us magic, of course, and he would he was
Speaker 2: always on the board of directors, and oftentimes he would
Speaker 2: go an entire meeting without hardly ever saying anything, and
Speaker 2: then when he would say something, it would be profound,
Speaker 2: you know, like even the business guys sitting at the
Speaker 2: table were like, eh, interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I often take the opposite tack, which is throw as
Speaker 1: much against the wall as possible and hope that something sticks.
Speaker 1: And it really does so obviously, so obviously, you know
Speaker 1: it's been told a thousand times. He brings you magic,
Speaker 1: magic becomes magic. People are paying ludicrous amounts of money
Speaker 1: for black loads and all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: But how did this change your life? Was it at
Speaker 1: this point that you stopped being a systems analyst of
Speaker 1: Boeing and became what's the CEO full time?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I when Magic came out in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: it it kind of trickled into the market with a
Speaker 2: little things, and then the alaunch was at gen Con.
Speaker 2: That was our official launch Magic, and it went really
Speaker 2: really well, and we had we sold. We had no
Speaker 2: idea how much to take we sold, and we didn't
Speaker 2: actually sell everything we had at the at the booth,
Speaker 2: and so we had some much or but distributors who
Speaker 2: were there heard about it and saw the excite of
Speaker 2: it and all came and they all came and bought
Speaker 2: everything we had left. So by the end of the show,
Speaker 2: we had sold out everything we'd taken to the show.
Speaker 2: And I'm sorry, I have no idea how much that was.
Speaker 2: I don't so but then I you know, I flew
Speaker 2: home to Seattle and the next day I went in
Speaker 2: and told my boss up Boweing, that's it. I'm out
Speaker 2: of here, you know. So it was three years that
Speaker 2: I was doing my day job at Boeing and moonlighting
Speaker 2: as the CEO was the the Coast, and so when
Speaker 2: I told my boss I was quitting, he was really
Speaker 2: excited because he had invested.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So then then it was yeah, changing, I mean,
Speaker 2: it was so thankful, thankful for the you know, the
Speaker 2: prosperity of being able to publish a great game and
Speaker 2: have it, you know, have the company take off and
Speaker 2: be super successful. And of course that I was able
Speaker 2: to get an income better than I was making and
Speaker 2: boeing in the income that I could up of working
Speaker 2: going and also that the company was making up money
Speaker 2: that I wasn't having to pay a lot of company's bills,
Speaker 2: you know, And so that was there was just so
Speaker 2: wonderful to focus on this one thing, you know, and
Speaker 2: not really worry. I mean, you're always worried about money
Speaker 2: when you're running a business, but there's a difference between
Speaker 2: worried about you know, or do you have enough to
Speaker 2: eat and pay rent? Versus like, wow, am I really
Speaker 2: maximizing when you turn on an investment for the shareholders?
Speaker 2: Those are different levels of worry. So it was nice
Speaker 2: to just be able to sink into playing the game
Speaker 2: of running Wizards of the Coast.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's undeniable that Magic changed the
Speaker 1: world to a greater or lesser degree. I mean, as
Speaker 1: I say so many designers. I was speaking to Mark Herman,
Speaker 1: the war game designer, and he says he based the
Speaker 1: card driven system on Magic just one thing, for instance,
Speaker 1: which which blew my mind because they seemed very different concept.
Speaker 2: You know, I would love to meet Mark Hervis someday,
Speaker 2: I think as well.
Speaker 1: I was with him at a convention this this spring,
Speaker 1: and he's he's a very nice.
Speaker 2: Guy, that's what I've heard.
Speaker 1: And and also you know it, it has gone on
Speaker 1: to keep the brick and mortar store kind of a
Speaker 1: float over the last twenty years. Were you surprised that
Speaker 1: Magic changed the world in the way it did, because
Speaker 1: I guess you can never foresee that kind of success.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh? Absolutely. We were just hoping for you know,
Speaker 2: we just we just like, okay, this is doing really well. Hey,
Speaker 2: we can quit our day jobs and do this full time.
Speaker 2: I mean, that was like our dream of house. That's
Speaker 2: the goal, right, That's that's the goal, Like just get
Speaker 2: to where we can be self employed in this in
Speaker 2: this industry. The fact that it was so much more
Speaker 2: than that, of course, we couldn't have anticipated that, and
Speaker 2: we were always worried it was going to crash, you know,
Speaker 2: We're always worried that it was just a bubble and
Speaker 2: there was a bad and what's going to happen when
Speaker 2: people move on from I think started doing something else.
Speaker 2: It's not that we lacked faith, and I mean we
Speaker 2: we certainly knew Magic was a great game, and we
Speaker 2: enjoyed Magic ourselves. But you just, you know, when you're
Speaker 2: being pragmatic as an entrepreneur, you're always thinking about like
Speaker 2: when's the other shoe going to drop? You know, when
Speaker 2: when's when things gonna uh turn differently? You know. And
Speaker 2: and in the nineties, you know, the threat was, you know,
Speaker 2: computer games, why these computer games are getting so good?
Speaker 2: And then especially things like a request where you can
Speaker 2: play online with other people and the graphics, like how
Speaker 2: do board games going to card games whatever? How's it?
Speaker 2: How are we going to compete with that? Right? And
Speaker 2: there was a genuine worry that, you know, within ten
Speaker 2: years nobody would be playing tabletop games at all, and
Speaker 2: thank god we couldn't be from the truth, you know.
Speaker 1: And so how long was it that Richard was the
Speaker 1: sole designer on Magic? When did you start recruiting new
Speaker 1: people to come in and design com.
Speaker 2: Oh, actually that was baked in with Richard. Okay, so
Speaker 2: the the original Magic R and D he used a
Speaker 2: Boeing term, and you know, the game design and development
Speaker 2: staff at Wizards at least for Magic to gathering and
Speaker 2: all of our training card games eventually and so on.
Speaker 2: The heart and soul of those of that group were
Speaker 2: all people that Richard went to school with. And because
Speaker 2: when Richard when he designed Magic and started playtesting Magic,
Speaker 2: he was still a university student at the University of
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania working out his mathematics PhD. And so the people
Speaker 2: that he and he was he wasn't one of these
Speaker 2: designers don't understand the value of playtesting. He he lives,
Speaker 2: He thrives the playtesting. He thrives with showing his game
Speaker 2: to other people and getting feedback. And he's tough. He
Speaker 2: can take the you know, whatever the critique is and
Speaker 2: analyze it. And so who better than a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of people who are at a in advanced degrees in
Speaker 2: hard science as any university. And so it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: physics students and chemistry students and mathematics students and attorney
Speaker 2: you know, tax attorney even worse, you know, just all
Speaker 2: these and so when he came over, Magic took off.
Speaker 2: We just started hiring some of those people in with
Speaker 2: us as developers. But then, you know, there's a fine line,
Speaker 2: and some people just want to be designers or just
Speaker 2: want to be developers, but of course a lot of
Speaker 2: people can do both, right, So a lot of these
Speaker 2: developers were natural choices to design sets, and Magic lent
Speaker 2: itself so well to that, because you know, there's one
Speaker 2: thing with magictery gathering comes out in its original form,
Speaker 2: but everything since then has been an expansion to Magic gathering,
Speaker 2: right and building on the original, and so it lent
Speaker 2: itself to being able to open the doors to other
Speaker 2: people to put their creativity into the game. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's how that all happened.
Speaker 1: Well, your next game is Magic, and one thing that
Speaker 1: is the I think the usp to Magic. I work
Speaker 1: in a board game shop and I see people's sort
Speaker 1: of reaction when they open a bootstore, and this is rarity.
Speaker 1: Tell us about how you came up with rarity, why
Speaker 1: you came up with rarity, and if you think that
Speaker 1: that is an important factor in magic subtraction?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's you know, that's first all, it's all Richard.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't personally, and so the rarity, you know,
Speaker 2: it was people won't believe me, you know, I know
Speaker 2: people don't believe me when I say this. There's some
Speaker 2: people do, but not. But like, it was never about
Speaker 2: trying to get people to buy more, you know, it
Speaker 2: was it was just about how to make cards special
Speaker 2: and how to add variety to the game. Like there's
Speaker 2: some common cards, Well, you need lots of land cards,
Speaker 2: just basic things, you know, like bears and wild growth
Speaker 2: and you know whatever, you know, just sort of the
Speaker 2: we recognize that there are many cards that are just
Speaker 2: kind of the fundamental building blocks of having a magic deck,
Speaker 2: and then there should be these cards that are weird special.
Speaker 2: Richard actually saw you know, a lot of the rare cards.
Speaker 2: You you shouldn't want too many of those in your deck.
Speaker 2: You know, they're too weird, right, I mean, sure, maybe
Speaker 2: some of them, but you know, like a Chevan Dragon, Okay,
Speaker 2: it's a great card, but it's expensive, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you draw a couple of those in your opening hand,
Speaker 2: you're like, I wish I had, you know, goblins instead,
Speaker 2: And so I think it was just I don't think
Speaker 2: it was anything more complicated than that, just sort of
Speaker 2: recognizing that different cards should be more common or less
Speaker 2: common in other cards, and that it would be fun
Speaker 2: to be Like Richard, we never anticipated it would be
Speaker 2: so big like and so Richard's vision for magic, the
Speaker 2: way he described it to me back in those days,
Speaker 2: was that it is funny because we're there now. We
Speaker 2: have been for a while, but in nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: is unfathomably He's imagine that magic there's so many cards.
Speaker 2: An ideal world, there would just be so many cards
Speaker 2: that you've you been playing a game and somebody plays
Speaker 2: a card on the table. You've never seen it before,
Speaker 2: and so you read the card and find out what
Speaker 2: it does. And you know, at the time, we couldn't
Speaker 2: imagine that, like, well, yeah, okay, that's if you're an
Speaker 2: avid magic player. There's only a few hundred of them.
Speaker 2: You're going to see all the cards. I mean, now
Speaker 2: we're there, It is kind of like and so rarity.
Speaker 2: There's rarity in terms of ravers of common and uncommon,
Speaker 2: but there's just rarity in terms of like the lifespan
Speaker 2: of magic has been around long enough that cards like
Speaker 2: when I play magic. I sometimes play Magic at conventions
Speaker 2: and I take old cards, not because they're I don't
Speaker 2: take like really expensive cards, you know, But I'm just
Speaker 2: talking about like I took all the pre constructed decks
Speaker 2: that Magic the Wizards made for Magic in the nineties,
Speaker 2: and I have one of each of those decks, and
Speaker 2: I take them in a suitcase, mister suitcase, and I
Speaker 2: take them and I play them, and people love it
Speaker 2: because most people are like, oh yeah, I never say,
Speaker 2: oh ice Age, Oh here's four decks that feature ice
Speaker 2: Age or Ursasaga or tempest or whatever. And I think
Speaker 2: that's the beauty of the rarity is the and it's
Speaker 2: also circles back to your question, why would I choose
Speaker 2: magic the Gathering to take with me is because there's
Speaker 2: so much variety, and there's so there's just so much
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: A lot of people choose this because frankly, it's cheating,
Speaker 1: because you could just take all of magic and then
Speaker 1: you've got a game for the for the rest of
Speaker 1: the apocalypse.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, Yeah, I cheated too. Yeah. I was thinking
Speaker 2: about that too. I mean, asl is the same way, right, Okay,
Speaker 2: probably the scenario where you're dashing off with with a
Speaker 2: bundle of things under your arms. Okay, you're not taking
Speaker 2: the entire Magic collection and every ASL expansion, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I cheated along with the best of them.
Speaker 1: And so you know, how long did it take for
Speaker 1: the secondary market market to kick off? And when you
Speaker 1: see the prices of some cars, does it make your
Speaker 1: eyes water? Well?
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I don't. I well, I water. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you mean out of sadness or out of joy,
Speaker 2: but neither one.
Speaker 1: I mean just pure incredulity.
Speaker 2: I think incredulity. Yeah, yeah, that's I think that's that's
Speaker 2: part of it. Yeah, I saw it's it is. You know,
Speaker 2: we we never wanted magic to be out of reach
Speaker 2: of people, right, and so we when magic started becoming
Speaker 2: very quickly, like Magic comes out in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: within six months, people are hoarding cards and it's hard
Speaker 2: to find. And it takes us a year and a
Speaker 2: half from when Magic cames out. It wasn't until Fallen
Speaker 2: Empires that we got to our goal of magic, that
Speaker 2: that the latest expansion would be available at ms RP
Speaker 2: at retail for like three months. That was our state
Speaker 2: of goal, like we want when you come out with
Speaker 2: a new set, we don't we want you to be
Speaker 2: able to buy it at ms RP. It's the opposite
Speaker 2: of wanting this crazy price uh inflation. We never wanted that,
Speaker 2: now we do. It's wonderful that people want to collect cards,
Speaker 2: and we certainly want to, you know, wanted to accommodate
Speaker 2: collectors to some extent. But it was always gamers first,
Speaker 2: you know, and if the uh so now, uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it wasn't. It wasn't about these crazy prices. But you know,
Speaker 2: it is nice that some people who made investments good
Speaker 2: and have been able to It is heartwarming when somebody
Speaker 2: tells me I sold my magic collection from the nineties
Speaker 2: and bought a house, you know, like first set my
Speaker 2: kids to college, and like wow, I mean, okay, that
Speaker 2: is that's great, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk now about what C and
Speaker 1: D and D because for me, as a D and
Speaker 1: D player, I actually only started playing D and D
Speaker 1: fifth edition, and so what C and D and D
Speaker 1: have always been inextricably linked for me? How did you
Speaker 1: end up buying TSR and was the sort of completion
Speaker 1: of a circle for you?
Speaker 2: Very much completion of a circle in that I started,
Speaker 2: you know, the I mean, I started with war games
Speaker 2: in terms of my personal love, but I started with
Speaker 2: the coast to do RPG stuff, and that's where I
Speaker 2: thought the market was. That was my passion, my primary
Speaker 2: passion at the time in the world of games was RPGs.
Speaker 2: And we actually and we published some RPG stuff before
Speaker 2: Magic Tellaslan Order, and we continued even after Magic came
Speaker 2: out with the like every Way and some other things.
Speaker 2: But we realized that we were not It wasn't a
Speaker 2: good place for us to be competing, and that it
Speaker 2: was in that in those days, RPGs were such a
Speaker 2: small sector in terms of economics, in terms of dollars
Speaker 2: compared to Magic, that it just wasn't worth our time
Speaker 2: to be in it. And I made the statement, you know,
Speaker 2: when I closed down our RPG department, I said, okay,
Speaker 2: I you know, if we can't have the number one
Speaker 2: brand in this category, we shouldn't be in it. Well,
Speaker 2: they're not. Later we had the opportunity to get the
Speaker 2: number one brand. So the only the reason we had
Speaker 2: the opportunity was that the TSR fell on hard times
Speaker 2: as an independent company. Ben Riggs. By the way, it's
Speaker 2: written a great book about this, uh and John Peters
Speaker 2: has written articles about it as well, about the history
Speaker 2: and it. Uh. Yeah, and you know, they were basically
Speaker 2: on the verge of bankruptcy. They needed somebody to buy them.
Speaker 2: They were in a cash to the lockdown and it
Speaker 2: was ended up having I ended up having that opportunity,
Speaker 2: which was absolutely wonderful and thanks to Ryan Nancy who
Speaker 2: opened that door. And so it was like a full circle.
Speaker 2: It was like, wow, this is what we got in
Speaker 2: got into doing. I love magic, really happy. You know.
Speaker 2: Magic was a wonderful consolation prize if you will. I
Speaker 2: mean that's now, you know, in terms of you started
Speaker 2: off doing RPGs and had you know, did something else.
Speaker 2: So it was so that's how it happened.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you were a player, and I
Speaker 1: assume you started playing D and D when you were young,
Speaker 1: and D and D is this very cool thing that
Speaker 1: you do as a kids, and he opens you up
Speaker 1: to whole new worlds and new ways of creativity and storytelling.
Speaker 1: Was it just playing bloody weird to think I owned
Speaker 1: this now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my god. Yeah, it was so surreal, you know,
Speaker 2: to go to Lake Geneva and to buy a company,
Speaker 2: and it's just weird, I mean, buying a company, Like
Speaker 2: how how do you do that? What you do with
Speaker 2: a bunch of money? And it feels kind of awkward,
Speaker 2: you know, and like, I don't I deserve this aside
Speaker 2: from the fact that I just happened to have a
Speaker 2: bunch of money and can make it happen. But I
Speaker 2: also knew that I was saving a lot of people's
Speaker 2: jobs and saving a game that a lot of people
Speaker 2: really loved, and many people thank me for that over
Speaker 2: the years. So I knew that we were doing a
Speaker 2: very noble thing in addition to a very smart thing economically,
Speaker 2: you know, with our money. And but yeah, it was
Speaker 2: very hard, Like the morning that the deal was done.
Speaker 2: You know, we went and sign documents at Lorraine, the
Speaker 2: previous owner's place, the night before and the next morning, okay,
Speaker 2: so she meets me at the company, you know, and
Speaker 2: hand me the keys literally here's the keys of the building.
Speaker 2: And I sent in the car before I went in
Speaker 2: to see her and just cried. I mean, like, I'm like,
Speaker 2: what am I doing. I was raised on a farm
Speaker 2: and Idaho, you know, Yeah, it was very emotional and weird.
Speaker 1: And so, as far as I know, Gary Gox wasn't
Speaker 1: there at that time. Dave Hoison kind of was only
Speaker 1: there right at the beginning as far as I know.
Speaker 1: I mean, what was your relationship with those guys, Like,
Speaker 1: after you bought it, did you consult with them? Did
Speaker 1: you speak to them? What were their feelings on that acquisition?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, we did. I did know Dave and Gary
Speaker 2: outside of all this through gaming, but only briefly, you know.
Speaker 2: And of course, when I became interested in in acquiring
Speaker 2: D and D and kind of the word got out
Speaker 2: that I might be, then they were both uh. You know.
Speaker 2: In fact, I got to make have a really nice
Speaker 2: series of game sessions with Gary guy because he lived
Speaker 2: in Lake Geneva still and so uh. And so when
Speaker 2: in the process of acquiring both before the deal was
Speaker 2: done and after the deal was done, I was going
Speaker 2: out to Lake Dania, spending a lot of time there.
Speaker 2: And you know, it can be kind of awkward. You're
Speaker 2: buying a company. You don't go out, you know, you
Speaker 2: don't go hang out with the employees. You know, as
Speaker 2: much as you might like to and wish you could,
Speaker 2: it's just too awkward. And probably inappropriate for some legal reasons.
Speaker 2: And so you know. So, so Gary actually gave me
Speaker 2: a call. He said, hey, you know you want somebody
Speaker 2: game with, come on over. So I went over and played. Uh.
Speaker 2: We played war games together. I'm playing Battle of the
Speaker 2: Bullets actually, and we played U D Day and and
Speaker 2: UH Africa or some of the old classic Alan Hill games.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know Dave as much, but I met
Speaker 2: him a couple of times. But then then I had
Speaker 2: a you know, after the deal was done, I had
Speaker 2: a business reason to spend them. I certainly wanted their
Speaker 2: warm wishes. I was worried about I'll be honest, I wasn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't feel like it was the right thing to
Speaker 2: try and recruit them in some way, you know. I
Speaker 2: just felt that well, selfishly, perhaps I just want to
Speaker 2: put my own stamp on the game and thought that
Speaker 2: I knew better maybe in them, or you know, just
Speaker 2: I have my own opinions about how the game should go.
Speaker 2: And uh, but I wanted there. I was hoping for
Speaker 2: their endorsement, and they did endorse it. They we got
Speaker 2: the two of them on stage together, UH for at
Speaker 2: gen Con. I remember exactly what year, but it's either
Speaker 2: the year renounced D and D third edition or the
Speaker 2: year we published it. I can't remember which. And I
Speaker 2: also wanted a There was a lot of legal disputes
Speaker 2: and some open lawsuits, some legal actions between various you know,
Speaker 2: between various parties related to all this, and so I
Speaker 2: wanted a clean bill of health on the intellectual property.
Speaker 2: So I went and went to Gary and Dave and
Speaker 2: a couple other people and just paid them a bunch
Speaker 2: of money to sign over just a statement of varying
Speaker 2: that we owned property entirely and blah blah blah. So
Speaker 2: that was I think that was a good thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: it certainly a good thing for me. I think it
Speaker 2: was a good thing for them too, because they certainly
Speaker 2: weren't getting money from TSR.
Speaker 1: So yeah, And so then you know, you're in a
Speaker 1: position where you are the originat sort of magic, which
Speaker 1: by this time is probably the biggest hobby board game
Speaker 1: in the world, certainly the biggest CCG, and and you
Speaker 1: owned D and D, which you know is at this
Speaker 1: time legendary. People of my age remember the cartoon and
Speaker 1: all of that sort of stuff. Where was wats then
Speaker 1: at this time? Were they the pinnacle of hobby publishing.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say we were certainly in competition for it,
Speaker 2: you know. I I think that it kind of depends
Speaker 2: on how you value companies and look at stuff. But
Speaker 2: Games Workshop was a pretty close uh to to us
Speaker 2: in terms of size and magnitude. In fact, they were
Speaker 2: actually a public companies I think probably still are. I
Speaker 2: don't don't keep track of things, but so it wasn't
Speaker 2: like we were alone. And also depending on your on
Speaker 2: which year you pick, you know, at some point and
Speaker 2: whether or not you want to include you know, you
Speaker 2: Gil and Pokemon in in as hobby games. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: at some point Pokemon passed us up, you know and
Speaker 2: became a bigger company than was the Coast and know
Speaker 2: and stuff. So but there was certainly, you know, we
Speaker 2: certainly have you know, felt happy that we were, you know,
Speaker 2: in that stratosphere if you will.
Speaker 1: So you next game means dungeons and drugons And we've
Speaker 1: talked about the business, so we don't need to we
Speaker 1: don't need to dwell on the business. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the game. So what's your favorite class to play? Oh?
Speaker 2: My god? So okay, well, come on, man, a wizard
Speaker 2: of course of course, yeah, totally. Seriously, I like playing.
Speaker 2: I mean I liked it more in earlier editions back
Speaker 2: I mean now, I mean, okay, all the every edition
Speaker 2: is good. Okay, every edition of D and D is
Speaker 2: great and wonderful, fabulous. Firstly, I preferred it back when
Speaker 2: Wizards were the only ones that were casting the spells,
Speaker 2: or most most of the spells, you know, the magic spells.
Speaker 2: They are not the healing stuff, right, So now it
Speaker 2: seems like everybody's a spellcaster, and so it feels, uh
Speaker 2: so my preference playing you know, a early edition wizard.
Speaker 2: Modern editions, Yeah, I think kind of doesn't matter. They're
Speaker 2: all kind of yeah, everybody do everything.
Speaker 1: But it's one of those things like I've never played
Speaker 1: the early editions, but I hear that Wizards are essentially
Speaker 1: one hit killable, a level one. I mean, how do
Speaker 1: you deal with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it's wonderful, man, It's it was this idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, you were a first of a wizard.
Speaker 2: You had one spell. It was probably asleep. Although if
Speaker 2: you're fighting Goblin Stuf, sleep's pretty good or magic missile
Speaker 2: or something, and the party protects you because the party
Speaker 2: can't do what you can do you know the things
Speaker 2: that you can do, like if you know read, you
Speaker 2: know readmagic, nobody else can do that, you know. And
Speaker 2: so there's certain spells that that you alone have that
Speaker 2: the party is going to need. So the party protects you.
Speaker 2: And that was a very special dynamic and early D
Speaker 2: and D. And yeah, you're right, you don't, you know,
Speaker 2: protect the wizard? What's the comedy? But and so you
Speaker 2: are the weakest character in the party, but as time
Speaker 2: goes on, eventually you're the most powerful character in the party,
Speaker 2: right And and I you know, I think Jonathan I
Speaker 2: always like this about it. But Jonathan Tweet, who's lead
Speaker 2: designer and third edition we had, you know, he you know,
Speaker 2: he brought me around and they know, you know, a
Speaker 2: better game design would be at every level all the
Speaker 2: classes are balanced with each other, like okay, boring, but
Speaker 2: you're probably.
Speaker 1: And so then what kind of D and D do
Speaker 1: you like? So when I run D and D, I'm
Speaker 1: very vibes based. I'm not very rules based. I like
Speaker 1: to tell a story. I'm far too nice to my players.
Speaker 1: What are you? Are you someone who likes the tactic
Speaker 1: call the sort of war gaming aspect of D and
Speaker 1: D or are you more of a storyteller.
Speaker 2: I like trying to both, you know. I my favorite
Speaker 2: edition these days is Shadow Dark. I think. I think
Speaker 2: it's really brilliant. I think, uh, Kelsey did an amazing job
Speaker 2: of that, and and that is it has. I like
Speaker 2: the old school field of things. I love the old
Speaker 2: school D and D. I know it's almost a mantra now,
Speaker 2: but I like that feel of danger and the importance
Speaker 2: of tactics and uh and a lot of combat. I
Speaker 2: like that. But I was also never a fan of
Speaker 2: how clude you the system was, and I think, uh,
Speaker 2: I think that so I I like having a combat heavy,
Speaker 2: drama heavy, you know, on the verge of death, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to you know, crawl your way through there, you know,
Speaker 2: through the dungeon, unlimited resources and and barely escaping to
Speaker 2: tell the tale. And it's it's hard to push it
Speaker 2: to that without accidentally, you know, killing. I don't really
Speaker 2: actually want any player characters to die, but I want
Speaker 2: them to feel like they could and be worried about it.
Speaker 1: The threats of death has to be real, right, otherwise
Speaker 1: it's pointless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that threat of death has to be real
Speaker 2: and and it has to be strong enough. I mean,
Speaker 2: and and so I mean once in a while, you
Speaker 2: know it's going to happen, and and it's always sad
Speaker 2: what it does, but at the same time, it's crucial
Speaker 2: for the enjoyment of everybody else, for the for the
Speaker 2: long term of the of the campaign. So but I
Speaker 2: never liked how cluegy a lot of the early edition
Speaker 2: rules were, and so one of the reasons I like
Speaker 2: Shadow Dark is it it? It's I think Kelsey went
Speaker 2: through it and grabbed the best bits out of every
Speaker 2: single additionally edition of D and D and then ruthlessly
Speaker 2: cut out all the crap. And uh so that's that's
Speaker 2: what I play now.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk now about your the end
Speaker 1: of your time at Watson and gen Con. So why
Speaker 1: did you leave Wizards of the Coast.
Speaker 2: Well, I have that weird sort of entrepreneurial thing of like,
Speaker 2: you know, you start a company and eventually you move on.
Speaker 2: I get. I think part of it was that Wizards
Speaker 2: stopped being real interesting for me after D and D,
Speaker 2: in the sense that the company got big enough that
Speaker 2: it's it was hard to you know, entertain launching new
Speaker 2: games because you've got a business, you know, You've got
Speaker 2: Pokemon and Magic, which are both several hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: revenue businesses, and you have D and D, which D
Speaker 2: and D is a tens of millions dollar business, which
Speaker 2: is small compared to the other two. And so like,
Speaker 2: I have a company at running a company that where
Speaker 2: D and D is the small product, and I'm having
Speaker 2: trouble having it get all the attention I wanted to get.
Speaker 2: Although it's doing you know, we're doing well, but you
Speaker 2: launched anything new? What you know, how do you do that? Like?
Speaker 2: And you know, and I really wanted to be able
Speaker 2: to be publishing doing new things all the time. And
Speaker 2: I just I don't feel like I could do this.
Speaker 2: And I was also just as an entrepreneur, we're you know,
Speaker 2: thinking about things like return on investment and maximizing shareholder
Speaker 2: value and all this sort of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: I had to respect the fact that all the shareholders
Speaker 2: of Wizards of the Coast in the nineties, a few
Speaker 2: of them were investors, but for the most part, it
Speaker 2: was all sweat equity. It was all all the people
Speaker 2: who built the company, and every employee had had shares
Speaker 2: of stock and Wizards of the Coast and so when
Speaker 2: Wizards got really big, people are like getting out the
Speaker 2: calculators and looking up, you know, how do you value
Speaker 2: this company? My stock worth right, and realizing that, wow, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm a millionaire. But and then to go down and
Speaker 2: try and buy a house, you can't buy a house
Speaker 2: with it. And so it's just on paper. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, unless you can convert this ownership into cash,
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean anything. And so I felt that there
Speaker 2: was I just felt it. I was definitely there were
Speaker 2: people had stock were saying, Peter, come on, let's sell
Speaker 2: the company or take on a big investor or something,
Speaker 2: buy a bunch of people out or something like that.
Speaker 2: So we we the message was clear by around nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight that we had to have some sort of
Speaker 2: what they call a liquidity event where you make the
Speaker 2: stock liquid, you know, sellable for the shareholders. So that
Speaker 2: was the primary driver. But personally I was okay with
Speaker 2: it because you know, there was I was curious about
Speaker 2: doing something else too, And I also liked the idea
Speaker 2: of like quit while you're on top.
Speaker 1: Man, you know, and so then why gen con.
Speaker 2: Well, uh, you know, after I left, you know, after
Speaker 2: I sold Wizards to Hasbro. I stayed on there for
Speaker 2: about a year and a half, and then after I
Speaker 2: left that, you know, suddenly I was unemployed and I
Speaker 2: was too young to not be working, and it was
Speaker 2: very much like, well, what do I want to do next?
Speaker 2: And don't want to start in a company whatever. And
Speaker 2: I told my successor at Wizards as a part of Hasbro,
Speaker 2: I said, you know, at some point, Hasbro is going
Speaker 2: to want to sell some of the different parts of
Speaker 2: this company. You know, you should think of me as
Speaker 2: a potential buyer because I know the company really well,
Speaker 2: so I might be interested. And so sure enough, at
Speaker 2: some point I got the call and said, yeah, you
Speaker 2: were right, Peter. We're selling off four different business groups
Speaker 2: of of Wizards, and you know, would you be interested
Speaker 2: in any of them? One was the magazines, one was
Speaker 2: the online store, one was the brick and mortar stores,
Speaker 2: because some people remember the Wizards had a change. We
Speaker 2: bought a chain of retailers and in the nineties, uh
Speaker 2: uh and and gen Con and so gen Con, Oh
Speaker 2: my god, I mean to me, you know, when we
Speaker 2: bought TSR, it's like, yeah, we bought d D And
Speaker 2: I'd always like yeah, and gen Con. By the way,
Speaker 2: because even though it was much bigger now, it was
Speaker 2: then it was, you know, the biggest game company around,
Speaker 2: at least in the US market. And so, uh well,
Speaker 2: send me the financials. I was pretty sure, just based
Speaker 2: on my own memory, that it was a profitable business.
Speaker 2: And uh so they sent me the financials and we
Speaker 2: did a deal, and I loved it because it put
Speaker 2: me after a year of not having a job. I felt, wow,
Speaker 2: I'm not connected to the gaming industry. I'm used to
Speaker 2: having this position of prominence in the games and being relevant,
Speaker 2: and now I'm not relevant, and so acquiring gen Con,
Speaker 2: uh me, it gave me a place in tabletop game,
Speaker 2: a professional place in the gaming industry that I was missing.
Speaker 2: Didn't realize I would miss when I sold off Watzy.
Speaker 1: And you know, as you said, gen Con is now huge.
Speaker 1: It is. There's always the big argument which one's bigger,
Speaker 1: essenal gen Con, but it's definitely one of the two
Speaker 1: biggest analog gaming conventions in the world. And this was
Speaker 1: achieved under your stewardship. How did you achieve that? How
Speaker 1: did you change gen Con to make it this huge institution?
Speaker 2: You know, I I wish I had a real like
Speaker 2: you know, gen Con is a very logistical sort of organization.
Speaker 2: Running a convention is it's almost a trap to in
Speaker 2: to do it as as like you don't if you
Speaker 2: get too creative. It's almost a bad thing to do.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, really, what you want to focus on
Speaker 2: is you want to focus on the operations. And that's
Speaker 2: what we did. It was like, Okay, we've got it.
Speaker 2: We've got to have a really kick ass registration system.
Speaker 2: We've got to have the right city because Milwaukee was
Speaker 2: not the right city. We need to have the right
Speaker 2: venue contracts in place, the right hotel contracts in place.
Speaker 2: We need to organize around how do we do this.
Speaker 2: We need to have really good people in all the positions,
Speaker 2: the important positions of the company. Uh So it's not
Speaker 2: a very sexy answer, but that is the answer. That's
Speaker 2: that's what we did. We we just took what was
Speaker 2: already an absolutely wonderful show and and and it was
Speaker 2: the biggest in the US. Yeah okay, esson who knows,
Speaker 2: but and uh uh, and we just we just doubled
Speaker 2: down on it. And I I also had the a
Speaker 2: very strong interest in wanting spectacle, like what what can
Speaker 2: we do? This is kind of exception all the logistics stuff,
Speaker 2: but like in addition to all that, is there something
Speaker 2: we can do that is just really special that you
Speaker 2: can't do anywhere else. And I met Jeff martin True Dungeon,
Speaker 2: and I saw that. I invited him to bring True
Speaker 2: Dungeon to gen Con and for a long time comes
Speaker 2: in a place you could play True Dungeon. And so
Speaker 2: that was like a huge sort of spect I think
Speaker 2: that was an important part of it. It was certainly
Speaker 2: our best selling event for many many years, probably still is,
Speaker 2: you know, and doing things like like those opportunities. Sometimes
Speaker 2: you have these opportunities we're like, oh, hey, we could
Speaker 2: make a spectacle out of this, Like when grabbing the stadium,
Speaker 2: Like when we got really big, we say, hey, what
Speaker 2: if we rent out the Colts Stadium Football stadium is
Speaker 2: right next door and just like have space for gaming
Speaker 2: on the on the grid iron, right, you know. And
Speaker 2: so and then that year that we did that was
Speaker 2: also the fiftieth anniversary of gen Con, and so we
Speaker 2: did a big fifty of gen Con sort of thing,
Speaker 2: and we built a museum. John Peterson, Paul Storenberg and
Speaker 2: Bill Mainhart helped me do this. We effectively created a
Speaker 2: Tabletop Gaming History exhibit there, and we built a facade
Speaker 2: of the Horticultural Hall in Lake Geneva, which is where
Speaker 2: the first gen Con was held with fifty attendees back
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven or sixty eight. Always get confused
Speaker 2: which one was. That's some very embarrassing to me, And
Speaker 2: that was right on the fifty yard line of the stadium,
Speaker 2: you know, So I think that, And then you know,
Speaker 2: just you know, being being a good salesman and talking
Speaker 2: to all your exhibitors and like appreciating them and loving
Speaker 2: them and loving all the attendees and playing lots of games,
Speaker 2: you know, And that sort of thing always comes naturally
Speaker 2: for me because I love playing games, I love hanging
Speaker 2: out with gamers, and I love, you know, showing my
Speaker 2: appreciation to all the people that come to my show.
Speaker 1: So your next game, and he's a sort of it's
Speaker 1: from a Leviathan of the eurogame world and it's one
Speaker 1: of his biggest games. And this is a feast for roading.
Speaker 1: So how good is Uve Rosenberg?
Speaker 2: I think it's amazing. You know. I don't know him personally,
Speaker 2: you know, so, I but I love, you know, I
Speaker 2: love the work replacement games that you know they I
Speaker 2: feel like he's like, if you think about the world
Speaker 2: of eurogames and stuff like that, he's like the guy
Speaker 2: that's running, that's carrying the ball straight up in the
Speaker 2: middle towards a touchdown. You know, he's like doing the
Speaker 2: hard work, you know, Agricola, Coverna, you know, fast for own.
Speaker 2: You know, just these are his games are absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 2: And I I could have picked one of several fields
Speaker 2: of r Oh my god, if I'm gonna be stuck
Speaker 2: in the cabin. But you know, for if I stuck
Speaker 2: in I can't say my wife, now, can I?
Speaker 1: But if I'm.
Speaker 2: But have the pleasure of my wife being there, it's
Speaker 2: optimized for two players fields of row. It's just amazed.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think that he is. There's something sort
Speaker 2: of to me. His designs sort of define the central
Speaker 2: position of what. And I'm not a euro games expert.
Speaker 2: I'm saying this is kind of a euro Games dabbler.
Speaker 2: But I just I just love his games, you know.
Speaker 1: So you know, as you say, you're you know, you're
Speaker 1: a wold gamer, You're a role playing gamer, You're a
Speaker 1: thematic gamer. What is the joy for a thematic gamer?
Speaker 1: What is the joy of a good euro game.
Speaker 2: Well, the theme is still important for me, it is,
Speaker 2: I think maybe I can now I can see, you know,
Speaker 2: over to an adjacent space where somebody doesn't really care
Speaker 2: about the theme. I can see that. But for me,
Speaker 2: I like the theme. I like magic, the gathering. I
Speaker 2: never forget I'm a wizard dueling with you as a wizard,
Speaker 2: you know. Uh So the theme of you know, of
Speaker 2: developing your garden or running your biking clan, you know,
Speaker 2: you know. Uh, I think the theme is I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's important. It's certainly important to everybody, but
Speaker 2: I think it's important. It's certainly important to some of us,
Speaker 2: and it's very important to me. I love the theme
Speaker 2: of the game. It's very and I really enjoy the
Speaker 2: the aesthetics that have developed in gaming, you know, like
Speaker 2: it's basically a box of toys now, you know, and
Speaker 2: you know the beauty of tabletop games, you know, the
Speaker 2: higher end ones with lots of cool components and all
Speaker 2: that stuff like that. Yeah, I like that. It's nice.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk met about the future. So
Speaker 1: what are your plans for the future. As I know
Speaker 1: you've sold some of gen Con to our mutual friend
Speaker 1: Corey Thompson. Does that mean you're stepping back?
Speaker 2: Yes, I did. I retired from I haven't run Jencon
Speaker 2: directly for like a wow, fifteen years or stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So I for a long period of time, I was
Speaker 2: the chairperson of the board of directors, and which is
Speaker 2: there's for a long time four I had three other
Speaker 2: partners who are owners in the company, and so I am.
Speaker 2: But about a year ago I decided that I was
Speaker 2: going to step back and not even be the chairperson
Speaker 2: of the board anymore. And so Brian Lewis is doing that.
Speaker 2: He was I've known Brian forever. He was a general counsel,
Speaker 2: was the coast for back in the nineties for a
Speaker 2: while and stuff. So he is, he's chairing the board now.
Speaker 2: And I did sell some stock. My wife kind of
Speaker 2: suddenly decided that we were moving from a condominium which
Speaker 2: she owned uh in downtown Seattle, UH to to get
Speaker 2: out of the downtown area. And and so I said,
Speaker 2: well for moving out of downtown, I want a big house. Then,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I loved I loved living downtown.
Speaker 2: The reality is living that now you have to live
Speaker 2: in a condominium. We're apartmenting. Right, So so if we're
Speaker 2: gonna if we're gonna go out in the neighborhood, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna lose the joy of being downtown. What how do
Speaker 2: I make this? What am we gonna get? You know? What?
Speaker 2: What is it? What is going to be the improvement
Speaker 2: to offset the disappointment? And I for me, it was like, well, okay,
Speaker 2: if I if I can have a house, now I
Speaker 2: guess I guess we have to live in house. Let's
Speaker 2: make a big house. So yeah, so I sold about
Speaker 2: a quarter of my holdings in gen Con to uh
Speaker 2: Corey Thompson and John Peterson and use that to my house.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so we live in a house. And and
Speaker 2: I am even though I am the largest shareholder of
Speaker 2: gen Con, I just like, Okay, I don't want to
Speaker 2: I just I just want to think. I don't want
Speaker 2: to think that much about it anymore. I just really
Speaker 2: want to be able to well play more games.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I'd say, then, I think let's let's
Speaker 1: take modesty and put modesty in a box somewhere where
Speaker 1: it's not going to interrupt us for the next five minutes.
Speaker 1: When you think about your impact on the world of
Speaker 1: hobby games. How would you assess it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I yeah, I know, I try. You asked
Speaker 2: me to put modesty aside. That's hard to do because
Speaker 2: I really don't see myself as I see myself more
Speaker 2: lucky than good if you you know. I mean, I
Speaker 2: know it's a horrible thing to say, but you know,
Speaker 2: none of the things I've done would have happened if
Speaker 2: it would have been for Richard Garfield designing Magic the Gathering.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, like, let's come on, you gotta
Speaker 2: be honest now, I'm I take pride and uh and
Speaker 2: I feel like I was a good steward for that game,
Speaker 2: you know, like like he you know, the idea for
Speaker 2: the game came based on a conversation he and I had,
Speaker 2: so I was there. I contributed to the thought process
Speaker 2: that that to whatever foundation of thinking had to happen
Speaker 2: for him to have the eureka idea to create Magic Gather.
Speaker 2: So I did contribute to that. I didn't know it
Speaker 2: at the time, but I've learned that designers work best
Speaker 2: if you give them a box to work inside of.
Speaker 1: Limitation is vital for creativity.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, you have to I
Speaker 2: didn't know that, but you have to have when you
Speaker 2: have some parameters, you know. So by telling him I
Speaker 2: wanted a card game and it just had to be
Speaker 2: cards and nothing else, and that I thought I could
Speaker 2: get good deals on fantasy, science fiction and horror art
Speaker 2: because I was a participant in these. I would go
Speaker 2: to these fantasy, science fiction, horror conventions, literary conventions, and
Speaker 2: at a staple at these conventions was art shows. And
Speaker 2: I recognized that there was a lot of art being
Speaker 2: made and they had nowhere to sell it, really because
Speaker 2: there was a very limited market of people of businesses
Speaker 2: buying this type of art. There was you know, books
Speaker 2: like TSR and there were people publishing books, but you know,
Speaker 2: so covers of books, but even RPGs mostly just to
Speaker 2: cover mostly interior stuff was all black and white. So
Speaker 2: so Richard designs magic. And I'm flattered that he don't
Speaker 2: know how much of his obligation, feeling like he was
Speaker 2: obligated to let me published it since I contributed to
Speaker 2: the thought process there, or maybe he saw something in
Speaker 2: me that uh that he thought well, because I certainly
Speaker 2: wasn't an experienced businessman at the time, but I think
Speaker 2: he so. I So I always felt like I had
Speaker 2: to prove that he made a good choice. That was
Speaker 2: a driving force that I didn't want to disappoint Richard.
Speaker 2: I really wanted him to feel like he made a
Speaker 2: good choice by bringing that game to me. And so
Speaker 2: if I did anything well, it was I took that
Speaker 2: responsibility seriously and was at least competent enough of a
Speaker 2: businessman that that we published, we raised the money, got
Speaker 2: it out into distribution, and managed our way through several
Speaker 2: you know, the inevitable rocky situations that happened in the
Speaker 2: you know as in the tail of that, you know,
Speaker 2: like the market glutting and you know problem in international distribution,
Speaker 2: organized play, you know, repositioning the brand from I always
Speaker 2: felt that one of the proudest moments I had on
Speaker 2: behalf of the company I was managing. Like any company
Speaker 2: I've run, where like this a company does under my leadership, Sure,
Speaker 2: but us as a company get together and do something
Speaker 2: really difficult as a company not relying on just some
Speaker 2: creative smart was when we repositioned the brand of Magic
Speaker 2: the gathering from being a primarily a collectible and a
Speaker 2: speculation where people are speculating product to a organized play,
Speaker 2: a mental sport. The idea that we're going to make
Speaker 2: this game about competition.
Speaker 1: And I guess having elite players is when I think
Speaker 1: about Magic, I think about the Magic churn, I think
Speaker 1: about these these world champions. I mean that must have
Speaker 1: been wonderful and weird at the same time, right, yep.
Speaker 2: And this is where my proud the thing I'm most
Speaker 2: proud of is that that was a conscious decision. It
Speaker 2: was we hired a guy that had a sports marketing background,
Speaker 2: and we said, we want to make Magic an intellectual sport,
Speaker 2: and so he helped us design competition structures, you know,
Speaker 2: like the Pro Tour and the Grand Prixs and the
Speaker 2: pre releases and and organizing the ranking systems and all
Speaker 2: this stuff like that. You know, we had to build
Speaker 2: all that from from scratch, and none of that relied
Speaker 2: on Richard Garfield being a genius, which is what magically gathering.
Speaker 2: So I feel like if I you know, forced modesty
Speaker 2: in the box, I think I feel the best about
Speaker 2: is is that moment actually taking taking this game that
Speaker 2: Richard did, and then with his guidance all stead. I mean,
Speaker 2: Richard loved the idea. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't
Speaker 2: something I did without Richard and Richard and Scapphlias Rick
Speaker 2: Errans contributed mightily to this whole thing. We as a company,
Speaker 2: uh did that at the moment, you know, and I was,
Speaker 2: and I'm The other thing is I'm glad I recognized
Speaker 2: the potential in gen Con and and acquired it. So
Speaker 2: I think those are what I'm most proud of, those
Speaker 2: two things.
Speaker 1: So your last game, then, is is optimistic that you'll
Speaker 1: have electricity in the in the apocalypse. But this is
Speaker 1: a video game, and this is Sid Maya's Sieve six.
Speaker 1: So how important is Sieve? Do you think two analogue games?
Speaker 2: How important civilization in general? Specifically said my civilization?
Speaker 1: Well, sidmya civilization.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I don't think it's important analogy games at all.
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean
Speaker 2: because I mean there's lots of video games and it
Speaker 2: has some effect on analog games, right, but I don't
Speaker 2: I don't know. If that game didn't exist, with the
Speaker 2: world of table dot games be any different.
Speaker 1: Well, my my favorite game of all time wouldn't exist.
Speaker 1: So for me, it's it's very significant because through the
Speaker 1: through the ages was the designer decided that it was
Speaker 1: going to be a board game implementation of.
Speaker 2: Save Oh the CGS game exactly. I love that game.
Speaker 2: That's an amazing game. That's a hard game. That is
Speaker 2: a really hard game to play.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I don't play it well, but I
Speaker 1: enjoy it when I play it.
Speaker 2: Okay, then I'd be willing to play with you. Sometimes
Speaker 2: I have I'm good friends with Nate heyes, who's as
Speaker 2: a long listed design credits and he loves that game.
Speaker 2: And it's just like, well, okay, in all fairness, doesn't
Speaker 2: matter what game we're playing. We have a joke that
Speaker 2: when Nate comes over to play, the rest of us
Speaker 2: are all playing for second place, competing.
Speaker 1: I know some people like that, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well okay, then I could see that if there wasn't
Speaker 2: a Sidmyer civilization, maybe there wouldn't be through the ages,
Speaker 2: and that would be horrible. But I think also the
Speaker 2: other way around, right, you know, there's always been a
Speaker 2: little I'm not up on all the gossip, but I've
Speaker 2: never met sid Meyer. But you know, there were always,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of accusations that that sid Meyer's civilization
Speaker 2: was a derivation, if you will, of the old Avalon
Speaker 2: Hill right civilization game. From the sixties seventies or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's that's no longer a rumor.
Speaker 1: I think that's fairly established fact at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think also nobody cares this, right, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, because that's just the way games work. Everybody
Speaker 2: designs games based on other people's games. You know, Richard
Speaker 2: Garfield didn't care that other people were designing trading card
Speaker 2: games that looked a lot like Magic Gathering, you know,
Speaker 2: didn't care, right.
Speaker 1: That's why I think gaming mechanisms shouldn't be copyrighted, right,
Speaker 1: because it allows the creativity of the old industry.
Speaker 2: Well, I think copyrights are fine. I think it's patents
Speaker 2: that are dangerous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's uh yeah, I
Speaker 2: think even though I mean, we did patent certain aspects
Speaker 2: of Magic the Gathering, but you know, we were never
Speaker 2: we were never jerks about it. We never sued any
Speaker 2: of the The only people that we enforced the baton
Speaker 2: with was with Konami and Pokemon. But yeah, no, I
Speaker 2: am uh uh yeah. I think it's an interesting point. Okay, So,
Speaker 2: uh you know, at sid Meyer Civilization, I think it's
Speaker 2: a great franchise. I don't play many video games. I
Speaker 2: don't like them. I'm much better play with a human opponent.
Speaker 2: But I do like having a game where, at some point,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're feeling it is to play a game,
Speaker 2: and there's nobody around to play with it. So okay,
Speaker 2: you play, But to me it is the last resort there's,
Speaker 2: you know. And but I love I love the genre
Speaker 2: civililding games. I just I love that genre. Games through
Speaker 2: the Ages is a great game, the old Avalon Hills civilization,
Speaker 2: And to do it electronically, that's just a wonderful fantasy
Speaker 2: to start off, as in the Stony Age, I got
Speaker 2: my settler, got a warrior, build a city and start
Speaker 2: build a monument, you know, and build more warriors and
Speaker 2: go out and conquer them. And I think, I, you know,
Speaker 2: I and I also debated, well should I choose six
Speaker 2: or seven or so five or whatever? You know, and
Speaker 2: you know, I could have chosen a different one, but
Speaker 2: I think, uh, there's so much replay value with all
Speaker 2: the different civilizations you can build, and all the different
Speaker 2: uh map types and slower long and which uh uh
Speaker 2: you know, which civilization you're playing, and all that sort
Speaker 2: of stuff like that. Oh, in different types of victory
Speaker 2: conditions to diplomatic or science and stuff like that. I
Speaker 2: think there's just this huge, uh array of different ways
Speaker 2: you can play this one game. So throughout most of
Speaker 2: the games, except for FEAV and all the other games
Speaker 2: I've chosen, I was rating highly at the criteria of
Speaker 2: you know, how long am I going to be in
Speaker 2: the cabin? What's the replay value of this game?
Speaker 1: So I've got one more question for you. So you're
Speaker 1: heading out of Seattle towards the cabin, and you go
Speaker 1: at a corner and the back door of the car
Speaker 1: flies open. Four of the games fly out, Dinah, Ravine
Speaker 1: into a river, and I swept away to posterity. Which
Speaker 1: game do you hope is sitting on the backseat of
Speaker 1: the car.
Speaker 2: I really go with Peace for Owen because out of
Speaker 2: all those games, that's the one my wife will play,
Speaker 2: and I am I'm certain I would not have left
Speaker 2: Seattle without her in the car with me.
Speaker 1: So I guess you're not a very big social media guy.
Speaker 1: But if you ever do post anything, if you ever
Speaker 1: write articles or anything like that, how can people see
Speaker 1: what you're up to.
Speaker 2: These days? Really, I'm primarily only active on my personal
Speaker 2: Facebook page, so I'm Peter Adguson on Facebook, so follow
Speaker 2: me there. That's that's about it. I also once in
Speaker 2: a while I did start a newsletter a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago sent but I haven't I don't use it
Speaker 2: very often, but I do have a newsletter. So to
Speaker 2: reach out to me on Facebook messengering, it's I give
Speaker 2: you the way to subscribe to that.
Speaker 1: Excellent Well, Peter Atkinson, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thank you Ben, thanks for inviting me on.
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