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- From: bmac@trifid.astro.ucla.edu (Bruce Alan Macintosh)
- Subject: Re: Dumb Moves By Game Companies
- Message-ID: <1993Jan1.124259.6759@mic.ucla.edu>
- Summary: GDW
- Sender: bmac@astro.ucla.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: trifid.astro.ucla.edu
- Organization: UCLA Dept of Astronomy
- References: <1992Dec30.195744.525@afterlife.ncsc.mil> <rleroux1.725750755@sol.UVic.CA>
- Distribution: na
- Date: 1 Jan 93 12:42:59 PST
- Lines: 31
-
- acadams@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Arthur C. Adams) writes:
- >what are some of the dumbest moves made by game companies?
-
- Nearly everything GDW has done in the past several years.
-
- Highlights include
- -releasing a large number of games in almost unplayably badly-edited states
- (anyone buy the first edition of Megatraveller?) and badly playtested states
- (remember all the thrashing about Traveller: 2300 went though?)
- -turning good, old-fashioned and solid Traveller into Megatraveller with its
- unplayable task system and innumerable other flaws
- -coming out with far too many role-playing systems to support adequately
- (Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Dark Conspiracy, etc.)
- -coming out with Twilight:2000 2nd edition even as history was making the game
- completely obsolete. (Not really their fault, but they could have tried to come
- out with a background better suited to the rapid evolution of events...)
- -dropping their serious wargames. (They dropped Air Superiority, easily the
- best modern air-combat game on the market with really good air-to-ground rules,
- just after Desert Storm - a war in which air power was one of the dominant
- forces.)
- -putting their faith in a new game designed by Gary Gygax - I haven't seen it
- but can't imagine it's any good, or selling very well.
-
- You just have to look at the changes in their position - 8 years ago they had
- the best-selling SFRPG on the market and a number of very solid wargames; now
- they have nothing. I don't expect them to last more than another year or
- two.
-
-
- Bruce Macintosh bmac@astro.ucla.edu
- UCLA Department Of Astronomy Infrared Imaging Detector Lab
-