Here we are. As of January 14th, The Gamers, Inc. has been an operational corporation for seven years. This article looks at last year's operations and what happened-with a little bit of "why" thrown in. I had hoped to combine this with the usual external business report, but (as Dave pointed out in his "In Brief") I decided not to use the Distributor sampling method I have used in the last two years. Instead, I chose to ask each manufacturer to provide their own information (given that I felt some would try to pull our collective legs). Unfortunately, only a few responded at all and only some of the respondents gave the sort of information we needed. I do not feel exposing these companies (which sent this information in good faith) while others remain in the shadows would be fair. So, I will merely thank them and keep their information confidential. Those who took the time to respond were: Avalanche, Clash of Arms, GMT, and Moments in History. Thank you for your openness-it is a pity more companies didn't participate.

Recap

1994 was a good year for us. (Too good if you think a lot about taxes ... ) We released four games, which is down from 1993's five games because of the switch to the bimonthly schedule in September. Even so, sales per game release went up from 3,205 to 3,545 per release-even though the raw total of game units sold dipped from 16,027 to 14,180. This all bodes very well for this year and its six releases (giving an expected unit total of somewhere around 19,000 games-given a little degradation of the per release figures due to a level of saturation).

Financially, the company posted an unfortunately high profit (taxes, again) which effectively made 1993 a record year for us. Here are the raw dollar figures:

Income $323,262
Expenses $294,126
Profit (LOSS) $29,136

Aside from the tax burden, much of this paper profit was devoted to inventory increases which will not show up as earnings (in real money) for a year or more. The good news is our annual profit effectively doubled (on paper) even with less game sales.

Unit Sales

On the table at the bottom of the page are the by title sales of each game.

The surprise below, for the nay-sayers out there, is that Enemy at the Gates sold almost as well in its first season as its brother game Guderian's Blitzkrieg, and is close (SCS games excepted) to being the best first year performance of any of our games (only GB and Austerlitz did better). Ardennes had the best first year for any of our titles, ever (but was blown away by a heavy-weight such as EatG in terms of dollars brought in).

1994 was the year of the great "die off." Fully six games which started the year in-print, went out of print during the year-and a further four titles are on the verge of running out as of right now. The games which gave their last during the past year were Barren Victory, Bloody Roads South, Perryville, Objective: Schmidt, Omaha, and all but a few Zip-Locks of Stalingrad Pocket. Nearing extinction (get your order in while you still can ... ) are Thunder at the Crossroads II, Embrace an Angry Wind, Guderian's Blitzkrieg, and Afrika. Of special note is the fact that of those on the short list, only EAW wasn't subject to a 5,000 copy print run and that means that for the other titles, a 5,000 run didn't quite last them two years. Good news indeed!

Summing Up 1994 was a year of transition. We shifted gears from our earlier ways of doing things into our new bi-monthly schedule, revamped our vendors from the ground up, acquired one new employee (Don Nesbitt), and generally prepared our internal systems for new and better ways of doing things. With all these things behind us, and the first four bi-monthly games down the ramp and the system working as expected, we look to the future full of hope. See ya next year!

Stock No.	Title	Units Sold
1-02	Thunder at the Crossroads	909
1-04	Barren Victory	219
1-05	Bloody Roads South	58
1-06	Perryville	84
1-07	Embrace an Angry Wind	368
1-08	No Better Place to Die	1,697
2-02	Objective: Schmidt	153
2-03	Omaha	242
2-04	Matanikau	541
2-05	GD'40	734
2-06	Hunters from the Sky	1,495
3-01	Force Eagle's War	118
4-01	Guderian's Blitzkrieg	549
4-02	Enemy at the Gates	2,322
5-01	Stalingrad Pocket	2
5-02	Afrika	957
5-03	Ardennes	3,145
6-01	Austerlitz	587