I have just completed a couple of large professional projects which have netted me piles of wonga (and this may give me the loft extension later this year) and as bad a case of Barking Mad as I have seen for a long time. I have worked unremittingly since before Christmas and it is beginning to tell. I find it difficult to get more than seven hours solid work done a day, whereas in the past I have knocked out ten hour days (these are real ten hours too, none of your coffee and chats stuff). I would dearly love to do some more playing and designing but circumstances are conspiring to make sure I will not be free of this until September. There is even the risk of a public flotation in that month.
Setting up games and playing them over a number of weeks does help. It may be my imagination but there really are a lot of playable games out there and some of them are even good. This is remarkable for me as I seldom play any of The Gamers or GMT's products, and do not regularly purchase Command or Strategy & Tactics. This heavily reduces what is available to me but there is still lots of interesting stuff. My only regular weakness is Vae Victis.
What is changing is that more and more gamers are being driven back to the quicker stuff to fit in with their life styles. When I suggested this on AOL I was met by a barrage of "I play twenty hours a week" men but pardon me for not believing these chaps are in the majority (or their right minds).
Game Kit News
The game is now reaching the stage that each calibration is much less violent. German losses have now reached the correct level without falling over, although the French do need to be handled carefully. The funny thing about the game is that it can draw you in and make you forget the strategic plans. Artwork on the counters has commenced (and Mike has surpassed himself - live in fear Vae Victis!). Gareth Simon has produced some excellent sources and these are being reworked into set-ups and maps. I have finally admitted defeat and include Prince Frederick-Charles (so Mike can do him in a red hussar uniform).
In bosky Holloway, Achille Barker displays impudent tendencies driving his cavalry in front of his infantry to suffer losses from my guns. A rule change there! The new map and arrival schedule - based on Gareth Simon's new books - work very well at getting some of the tension of the real thing. The balance of French and Germans in now much closer to what I wanted, although possibly average dice would give a "tighter" result. Chassepot Fire is being refined to encourage the French to built a "line" something which they did throughout the day (because they thought they were under attack by four corps).
I then re-test over the anniversaries but using tactics which I would not usually use (frequent play of the Advantage for example), and it is beginning to feel very close in style to the accounts. I have not yet tested the "average dice rather than D6" method but it must be close.
The Wages Sin Pays Is Death - never struck me as grammatical that, but ever one to avoid trouble, I keep mum. However, it is true that some "professions" are poorly remunerated. On Richard Berg's AOL folder he has been wringing a tear from my eye by explaining that one cannot spend too long on the historical detail because the publishers cannot afford to pay for it. Now on the basis (going Biblical again) that a labourer is worth his hire (The Epistle to the Foppingtons 5 Verse 3) one can follow this.
How much is Poor Old Richard paid? We do not know but an irate Ulrich Blennemann posts to say he only pays his people $2,500 a game and for this he does not expect them to read original sources. (So stick that in your pipe and smoke it Mr Editor - but then for $40 I expect designers to have researched properly so we have a bijou problemette on the Vasey-Moments in History interface).
The designer's bung looks spookily like $1 a game, so our $25 game is being prostituted for the sake of another 3% - who takes the major piece of the pie - the naughty distributor and saucy retailer, but none of them are exactly rolling in great wealth - true Jim Sandefur often refuses to buy a copy of THE BIG ISSUE off me, but he objects to the Ferrari so I discount him. (And he discounts everyone else plug plug). So here is an industry produces admittedly substandard stuff because it cannot find another dollar a game for Richard. (A Dollar For Dickie Campaign springs to mind but I would only abscond with the funds so we put it aside).
No wonder we have problems. I quite see Richard's points and even those of our manly publisher friend. I am sure they will see why I do not often buy their games. My interests (fortunately for them they are not common interests) are history and atmosphere. I do not find either served by their approach.
This problem is why I think game-kits win, those of us who produce them are so full of enthusiasm we do the research without noticing (playtesting can be a bind though as some of our brethren have found out). In industries where the "professional" approach is less effective than the amateur the "professional" must perish. Sadly it does militate against the professional designer because he simply cannot build up the hinterland of knowledge necessary to generate the history and the atmosphere. Although I note that crafty Berg has used a Japanese assistant on Samurai to neatly deal with the point. This promotes Richard to a Jim Dunnigan role of laying out structure and policy while the enthusiast injects dollops of the good stuff.
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© Copyright 1996 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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