Attached to the wall in our library at home is a newspaper ad from about ten years ago. While the original purpose of the ad (to sell me insurance, I think) has been long lost, the ad remains. It shows a model of the Earth with a vast assortment of disasters (tidal waves, big chunks falling off around Australia, the North Polar Cap on fire-nothing much) and above it in large type it announced "It's Always Something". The same can be said about game publishing (and, I dare say, any other business venture-although my experience is limited to game publishing). I wanted to let you in on some of the mistakes, missteps, and screw ups that have occurred here on a game by game basis. For most gamers, it can be worth a laugh, etc. For those anticipating starting their own game company, call it a primer on what to expect.

In Their Quiet Fields (1st Edition)

Two things happened with this game. One was based on the means of production at that time. The other on our naivete. In the first case, all rides type had to be retyped into an archaic image setter by a little old lady who neither knew nor cared about games. It took a number of weeks to get her to faithfully retype my rather poor notes. All in all, that was a way of doing things (old fashioned copy work) which I'm satisfied to see go the way of the dinosaurs.

The other event was my white elephant: die-cutting. Since we were a shoe-string operation and then some, we couldn't afford to have the counters die-cut by a company which did that sort of thing. We had a die made (an interesting operation in itself!) and built a press out of a hydraulic pump and press assembly. The first several hundred games were cut on that press at the grand rate often a day (atmost) andl staned to look like Amold Schwartzenegger from pulling down the pump handle. Then one day the press literally exploded. You've seen those submarine movies where the bolts start blowing out of the hull due to the pressure? Well, that was what it was like when the welds on that press gave out. A most amazing popping sound...

Thunder at the Crossroads

By the time Thunder printed we had a real die-cutter. We still had only enough cash to be able to mount and die-cut half the print run at onceand it was a good thing too! I delivered the first half of the counter run to the die-cutter who promptly die-cut them upside-down. These counters were cut from the back to the front and were totally unacceptable tome. I brought down the other portion of the print run and they die-cut them correctly.

Bloody 110

While nothing actually went wrong with this game during production, the threat was made. A couple of months before the game was to come out,our print CTcafled and informed us that this one was going to cost about five times as much per map as the earlier ones. Ibis had to do with the background tints I used in that one. After some intense negotiations (with the all too real threat of being exterminated in our third release), we got the price down to reality and went ahead.

August Fury

August Fury had the honor of having a simple "printer's error". (Actually, I hate that term because it seems to be used commonly in the game industry to pass the buck for responsibitity-printers generally do exactly what they are told and shouldn't be forced to wear mill-stones due to producer incompetence.) Map A's hexes were in 100% black, not the grey specified. I sent out the pre-pubs with the bad maps and followed them up about a week later with the good maps in the mail. The usual reaction was "Why did you bother?"

Force Eagle's War

FEW didn't suffer any production mishaps-I was the error in that one. A couple of weeks before its release, I had my accident. It was only by the dint of heroic actions by my friends (notably: Dave Powell, Sam Simons, Rick Knaak, and my wife Sara) that the thing got out at all.

Objective: Schmidt

This was to have our first computer generated map, required due to the above accident, and one was made. However, no one could print the thing out! I even had some high-speed computer expert in California try his hand at it and he couldn't get it to go. I had to do the map by hand, anyway, at the last minute, in great pain, late at night. It was the last hand done map I'll ever do.

Barren Victory

This was another map printing nightmare. The computer map was generated after several weeks of bet hedging by the film company. When the film carne back, I learned something about what kinds of symbols work and what kinds don't, in color, using that program. I also learned my current method of making woods wouldn't work right-which is why the woods don't quite line up with the hexes.

Omaha

Besides being more work than I care to remember, this was another disaster in the film department. It took many phone calls, much begging and praying to get this one to print out. When all was said and done, I was still short one negative. That one I had to replace by hand since I was tired of messing with the film outfit.

Bloody Roads South

This game had the illustrious scored counters and another f ilm nailbiting exercise. The scored counters were made with a pressure guide that the die-cutting press uses to keep all the blades cutting about about the same pressure in an even manner. They cut one side of the sheet first and turned it around to cut the other. In doing so, they placed the already cut portion under the guide blade which gave each set of counters a nice slit across most of the sheet.

Stalingrad Pocket

Now you might wonder what could possibly go wrong with a game this small, etc. I would too, had I not seen it happen. In this one, for some unknown reason, the pages of the two being more rule books became scrambled, and when printed, each booklet consisted of o ne-hat fofone book, and one-half of the other. These were reprinted before the game was shipped so no one ever saw the malformed rulebooks. I think I might have one set left around here as a warning to the others.

It's too early to tell what fate will dream up for Guderian's Blitzkrieg (knock on wood). The moral is that all projects as complicated as a wargame have many things that go wrong. The above are things that actually went wrong-it gives no hint as to how many near-disasters occurred which were averted by a watchful printer, pressman, die-cutter, or even myself who just happened to notice and say "Hey, that doesn't look right!"

If you are not planning to start a game company, I hope you have found the above amusing.

If you are planning to start your own game company, I suggest you look long and hard at the above list. Don't get cocky and think that you are far to smart to have any of these things happen to you. They will-no matter how much effort you put into making it just so. If you do intend to be cocky about it, go right ahead and laugh it up. Laugh while you can monkey boy!