Just one more opinion (as if we didn't have enough!) The success or non-success of AH breaking into the mainstream or at least continuing as a viable company has to lay at AH's own feet. They came out with a line of "new" and "revolutionary" style of games back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. At that time they were pushing the envelope, they were selling in TRU, etc. When I was a kid in the mid 60s I remember reading AH ads (the little one column ads about "you being a general" changing history) in mainstream magazines. AH has continued putting out really great games into the 80s and 90s, but...

The problem was that once the audience reached critical mass, and make no mistake, in the 70s wargaming or strategy gaming was BIG, with stories in newspapers, etc., AH stopped marketing them. Don't you think it's interesting that many (not all) of the AH "loyalists" are of the same relative age. AH had stopped being marketed to the next generation.

Do I think AH games are irrelevant to Gen X? Absolutely NOT! I can look at Avaloncon where kids of all ages are running around and playing games. And by kids I include lots of teenagers and even young adults. I know one boy who came to Avaloncon, with his mom in tow, as a 13 year old to play EIA! That was four Avaloncons ago. He's 17 now and still comes to play. I can also look at my kids who were practically born holding a computer mouse. Still, they're more than happy to lay down the Nintendo controller or computer joystick to play an AH or similar board game. Heck, usually they're the ones that come and ask me to play. Why are these kids like that? Because their parents have "marketed" the games to their kids, and the kids have discovered that these games are kewl and awesome! Well, we all already knew *that*, but how many others don't have a clue.

To put it in a different light, why do you think Coke still advertises so heavily? I mean everyone knows what Coke is, why should they have to repeat the same message over and over again? Because there are new consumers being born by reaching "spending" age every second of every day.

Sure, D&D, computers, M:tG all helped split up the consumer game market, but if AH's "marketing strategy" were being practiced by U.S. car manufacturers, right now we'd be mourning the sale of GM to Toyota. Once a company is committed to a business or industry, then the "cost of doing business" is to introduce, remind, and educate new and old consumers. It cannot rest on its laurels the way I saw AH did.