Fans, Friends and Industry. Lend me your ears!

This note is a follow up to our announcement at Dundracon this weekend. After almost a year of serious thought on the matter, I (Mike Pondsmith, for those of you not paying attention) have decided that I'm overdue for a badly needed break from the game industry. And the best way to get that break is to scale R. Talsorian Games down to a part time operation. This is a personal decision made to preserve what little sanity I have been reputed to have.

For most of you out there, this change will probably have no effect on your relationship with RTG, but I'm posting this right now before the rumor mill gets going and the next things I know, people start circulation stufflike the story that went around last year that I was dead.

And now, the inevitable Q?:

Are you guys going out of business?

No. Absolutely not. We are just kicking the operation down a notch; from a full time concerned to a part time one. (Relax; many game companies are part time; only a very few try it full time; and we've done a pretty good job of it for nearly twelve years.) We will still produce and sell product, just less of it. In an overloaded market, this might even be a blessing.

This does mean that we have cut staff and facilities back; a part time gig means you don't need a big suite of offices and a bunch of people at desks. Unlike other well-known industry cutbacks though, this wasn't a Friday Morning Massacre; the whole staff banded together to work out the easiest transition of all of us, and we all are pretty much in agreement that this is the best path for the company to take; an orderly scaling back of operations that takes care of fans, consumers and ourselves alike. We still plan to work together as tome and interest permit. We will still be in the game; just on terms more acceptable to US.

In short, think of this change as though a popular band decided it was time to put out some solo albums, but still got together to tour every so often.

What prompted this change?

Reality set in. I have been considering this move (as many of my friends know), for over a year. The full-time gig was wearing Lisa and I out, and we felt that if we kept on at it, in a few more months we would absolutely hate gaming. As Dave Ackerman (Tal's Head Production Guy) said, "I want to get my hobby back! " We also felt that a full time Tal was getting in the way of other opportunities. Staffers here have had to pass on comic and book deals, freelance gigs and even screenplay jobs that we could have pursued if we weren't trying to crank out a never-ending stream of books.

Lastly, the game industry overall is going through a whole lot of turmoil. Sales are constantly up and down, the distribution network is in trouble, companies are in chaos, and basically, the hassle factor is starting to outpace the fun factor (which is why we get into this in the first place). Frankly, in this market, we feel a part time op is far more profitable, especially if we're doing other (more lucrative) things to make a living. And when you're constantly hearing stuff like "Huge Company X could annihilate the entire game business in a nanosecond." all over the place, it doesn't make you feel that secure about banking your four year old's college fund on the outcome.

Is this the reason why RTG's not going to GenCon?

No. Actually, it's the other way around. We'd already been kicking the part time idea around, and when the GenCon thing came up, we just said, "Aw, the heck with it! We don't need this grief anymore! We're outa here!"

I'd like to reiterate at this time that we also felt on a fundamental basis that the combination of large price hikes, changing from zone pricing, the arbitrary "grandfathering" of space and the generally poor way in which this had all been implemented was the last thing the industry needed at this time. (BTW, we also strongly object to the snide implication that the companies who are not attending will be going under). WE chose not to go because we objected to these changes and felt that this was our most effective means of protest.

Will you finish Cyberpunk V3?

Actually, this gives me MORE time to finish V3. You have no idea how much time it actually take managing a staff, making deals, working with lawyers, projecting budgets and the hundred million other things required to run a company. Writing has been squeezed to only a tiny portion of my day, which is one reason it's been taking so frustratingly long to wrap this project. And that was another reason for the scaling back, I wanted to get some writing done!

What about DragonBall Z?

We're already working on the design side, and we've put a lot of work into it in the last two months. It's still moving along and I don't see any reason to stop now. Stay tuned.

Will you still support your other lines?

Yes, but on a reduced basis. In fact, a new Bubblegum Crisis product is shipping right now; we're banging away on Dragonball, and the heroes and I are working out the best way to produce human imagination.

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com