The State of Geek Culture

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-geek-culture-image21420053It’s March, and we are now weeks away from the beginning of Convention season.

I know that conventions actually go on year-round, but March is often considered the kick-off of convention season with Emerald City Comicon at the end of March and going through New York Comic Con at the beginning of October.

Already, I hear the laments of cosplayers trying to get their costumes done in time. I hear fans complaining that San Diego Comic Con sold out in under an hour, again. I have friends doing panels at conventions who are stressing about what they are going to say. I had one person explain to me how the Gen Con Hotel lottery system is broken and how he wrote a program to fix it, if they would just respond to him.

All in all, pretty normal stuff.

But this year feels different.

There has been a lot of stress lately in geek culture and, with convention season almost here, people have to deal with what is happening in person instead of just online. The concerns about harassment, and even violence, have a lot of people on edge.

Most of what is going on is not new. I have been covering it here for the last few years. A lot of the old factors are still at play: misogyny, gatekeeping, fear mongering, and privilege. What has changed is the level of focus.

It would be easy to say that this is all Gamergate’s fault, but that would be over simplifying the situation. Gamergate is not the cause of what is happening, it has simply provided a rally point for the problematic aspects of geek culture. The old triggers are still at the heart of what is going on, but what has caused things to go ballistic is actually the fact that things have been improving.

Last year we saw several conventions adopt harassment policies that were well worded and comprehensive enough to actually be effective. You have also seen women, minorities, and LGBT come forth and demand representation and a safe place to be geeks with the rest of us. You’ve seen the industries that fuel geek culture start to respond positively to these segments of their audience.

Sadly, for many people, strides made by others are seen not as an expansion of geek culture but as a threat to them. It’s as if even though 95% of everything is still being about them, they begrudge the other 5%.

Thus, we have the atmosphere of fear that now pervades geek culture. The old guard fear that they are losing something, and they use fear to try to drive off those they see as interlopers. And with the escalation of threats, there is a legitimate fear of violence.

But as awful as Gamergate is, it also has a silver lining.

Yes, there are people being driven off, or deciding never to join in geek culture due to this, but others are being galvanized. People who might have just been going along have become activists to show that the harassers are a vocal minority and not representative of our culture.

The escalation of harassment is terrible, but it has caused wider exposure to it, resulting in more discussion on how to deal with it. It has also led to more mainstream media attention, which helps.

I am not saying it is all rainbows and kittens. I know several people who have been targeted. One had to find a new bank, due to repeated hacking attempts at her account. Another deleted her twitter history after receiving a Gamergate education post, so that she could remove any potential information about her daughter.

As a white heterosexual cis male, I doubt I can even begin to imagine what it is like to be a woman, minority, or LGBT on the internet.

I also do not expect any of this to just go away. I have been writing about it since 2012 and I expect I will still be writing about it, on some level, in 2020.

But as long as we still talk about it, and make sure we as a culture strive to be better, I can have hope for the future.

Until then I am still going to several conventions this year, and plan to do my part to make sure they are safe and inviting events for everyone there.

DC Comics PR Meltdown

batwoman-maggie-It’s been two years since the launch of the New 52, so it’s time to look at the state of DC comics again. Last year at this time, I took a look at the individual titles that make up the new 52 and how I thought they were doing. I cannot do that this year; two months ago I stopped collecting all DC titles.

If you have been following me for a while, then you know how much of a DC comics fan I am. If you are new, here I suggest clicking on the DC comics tag at the bottom of the column. But if you have been following me, you also know I have been very critical about the direction DC comics has been going. Over several months I started slowly dropping titles, as I had decided I should not be reading books I was not enjoying. Two months ago was where I hit the point of looking at what was going on at the company over all, and decided to vote with my wallet and drop them completely. I found that DC comics overall had just become a joyless place, where every book was being written like it was Batman, and the Batman titles were being written like they were a Lars Von Trier film.

And then this last week happened.

I find it interesting that everything hit critical mass at the 2 year point on the New 52. It all started on September 5th when J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman, the writers and artist for Batwoman, were leaving the series with issue #26. Their reason for leaving was given as last minute editorial meddling on an already approved storyline. In this case, it was the marriage between Batwoman and her girlfriend Maggie Sawyer. With same-sex marriage being a major social issue, this got a lot of attention.

To be clear Williams and Blackman gave their reason for leaving as constant editorial interference, not specifically that there were not being allowed to follow through on the marriage.

Keep in mind that this has been a common complaint over the last two years. Talented creators leaving DC, for this reason, has become so common that the site Gutters and Panels created a timeline about it.

On September 7th at Baltimore Comic Con during a DC Nations panel, DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan Didio clarified the company’s position: Didio said that they have no problem with gay marriage; they just don’t want any of their heroes to be married, gay or otherwise. Didio went on to say that to be a superhero is to sacrifice your own happiness. In other words none of the heroes in the DC Universe can have a happy personal life, and that includes being married.

It was also announced that Mark Andreyko would take over as the new writer on Batwoman with issue #24. This means that Williams and Blackman will not be doing the last two issues of their run as they planned.

This led to one unnamed DC executive being asked “what about Aquaman and his wife Mera?” The executive clarified that Aquaman and Mera are King and Queen of Atlantis, but that they are not actually married. This came as a surprise to Aquaman’s current writer Geoff Johns.

While this was bad enough, DC had another problem come up at the same time. An artist talent search was announced. Basically, this contest involves drawing four panels of the character Harley Quinn, based on description’s from the writer of her new series, Jimmy Palmiotti. The problem arose from the description of the fourth panel:

Harley sitting naked in a bathtub with toasters, blow dryers, blenders, appliances all dangling above the bathtub and she has a cord that will release them all. We are watching the moment before the inevitable death. Her expression is one of “oh well, guess that’s it for me” and she has resigned herself to the moment that is going to happen.

People complained about the promotion of a “sexy suicide”.  It was later clarified that the sequence in all four panels involved Harley breaking the fourth wall and discussing the absurd situations her writers put her in. Palmiotti eventually took the blame for the uproar, for not providing context to the scene. However even with context there are a lot of people upset simply by the imagery.

Both situations were bad enough, but DC found a way to make them worse. In both cases, DC co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee took to twitter to defend their positions.

If you follow this link, you will find a listing of how Didio defended the prevention of Batwoman’s marriage and spun the departure of Williams and Blackman as a good thing.

And if you follow this link, you can see the very long twitter thread that Lee made explaining context in sequential art.

After reading both threads there was one conclusion I was able to come to: neither Didio nor Lee have much respect for their fans. Both took condescending tones on twitter, and dismissed fan concerns out of hand.

That last really doesn’t surprise me much. Both have displayed this behavior before, especially at conventions. It can also be seen in how they have been handling the overall promotion of the DC comics universe for a while now. Between the overall presentation of the new 52, or particular storylines such as the Superman/Wonder Woman romance, there has been the underlying message. Unfortunately that message is “this is what you are going to like, and we are going to keep hammering you with it until you accept this.”

It should go without saying that the fan reaction has not been positive, but again this is nothing new. There is now a website called Has DC done something stupid today. If you go to the link, you will see it has a counter for how many days it has been since they posted something fitting their criteria of something stupid. The record so far is eight days.

Due to his position at DC Comics, and his public visibility, Dan Didio has been the focal point in all the online discussions related to DC’s direction. For example, fans on twitter have created a hashtag #firedidio as a place to vent their frustration over all of the above issues as well as the handling of the company overall.

But not every bit of coverage has been against DC. Rich Johnson, of Bleeding Cool, wrote an editorial in response to #firedidio defending the DC co-publisher and citing the good things he has done for the industry.

So where does all of this leave us?

As I made clear at the beginning, I personally am not happy with the direction DC comics is going in. From the beginning, I feel that the New 52 was a hastily thrown together project. Rather than take the time to put together a cohesive reboot of the DC Universe, a rush job was done without any clear vision, and the result has been a muddled mess.

On top of that, you have had the editorial turf wars and the non-stop executive meddling in the process. If there has been a consistent narrative that has emerged, it is that DC comics no longer values its creators. Writers and artists, even well respected ones, are now considered disposable as the editors ride roughshod over them.

Does this mean that the ire directed at Dan Didio is deserved? I think the answer is yes and no.

From the outside, the problems appear to be on a corporate culture level at this stage. This means it comes from the top down. In this case, we have four people that need to be held accountable. DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson, DC Comics co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee, and DC Comics Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras.

There could be an argument made that Chief Creative Office Geoff Johns should be included here, as well, but his duties in that role involve DC properties outside of comics so, in this regard, he is a writer who happens to have a great deal of influence.

Lee is in a similar boat, in that although he is co-publisher he appears to spend a lot of his time on outside branding and lives on the west coast, so is not often in DC Comics New York office.

Bob Harras, on the other hand, is a flash point for a lot of fan ire. As Editor-in-Chief, he has certainly been involved in much of the interference that creators have complained about. Also, when he held the same position at Marvel, the company was on the edge of bankruptcy. He also gave the green light to the Spider-Man Clone Saga, considered one of the worst storylines in comic history. Many fans on the #firedidio hashtag want him gone just as badly.

And, of course, we have Dan Didio himself. Unlike his co-publisher, Lee, Didio is very much involved in the day to day running of DC Comics, and is basically the person setting the pace. He is also a very public figure at conventions and on social media. It should come as no surprise that he would be the focus of fan ire and, given his position and statements he has made, there is a lot to reinforce that.

On the other hand, from a strictly business perspective. he has gotten the job done. DC Comics owner, Warner Bros, is concerned with two things – profits, and being able to leverage the DC brands into other media, for additional profit. From this perspective, Didio has done a fair enough job that there is nothing directly warranting his removal. The PR faux pas are not enough to get their attention.

Of all the people in charge, Diane Nelson is arguably in the toughest position. As president of DC Entertainment, the buck stops with her. Also, if Didio, or any of the others were to be fired, she would be the one doing the firing. But, as I have written before, she is not a comic publisher; she was originally a movie brand manager. She looks to Didio and Lee to handle the publishing side of the business, and has always presented a united front with them. Unless something drastic happens, she is not going to do anything to them.

So what can we, the fans, do? Two things:

A lot of people have said that the #firedido hashtag is useless, as it will not actually get him fired. They are of course correct about it not getting him fired, but not that it is useless. It gives the fans a place to vent their frustrations, and is a public sign that a lot of people are not happy with the direction DC Comics is going. It also lets fans that are feeling that frustration know that they are not alone. Of course the same is true for the fans who are happy with DC Comics, and that want to defend them.

The other thing is what I and others like me have done: vote with your wallet. A twitter hashtag may not make WB pay attention, but dropping sales certainly will. If you are not happy with a title, but are still buying the book, then you are telling them to keep doing what they are doing since you are willing to pay for it. Remember that the bottom line is the almighty dollar.

And if both are happening at once, then we may see something happen. If sales start dropping and fans are complaining loudly about something, and citing it as the reason they have stopped buying, then you will see changes happen.

Do I expect that anytime soon? No, but if DC Comics does not do something to halt the drain of the talented creators it will eventually.

Until then, I will wait for the day when I can return to reading the stories about my childhood heroes.

The Dickwolves rise again

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I had planned to have a completely different subject for this week’s column, but then the dickwolves had to rear their ugly heads. So now I feel the need to really weigh in on this matter.

Some ground rules before we get into this. I am going to recap what led us to this sorry state of affairs, if for no other reason than to make clear what my understanding of it is. Then I am going to give my opinion on what it all means and what can be done about it.

And due to the subject at hand, I feel the need to place a trigger warning here. This subject includes discussion of rape and sexual harassment. I am going to go in bluntly at times, so be aware going in.

And with that, here we go.

This all started on August 11th 2010 when the web comic Penny Arcade published a strip titled The Sixth Slave. The strip was about the odd morality presented in MMOs where you are given a quest to rescue five slaves. In it, a sixth slave begs for rescue and when detailing the horrid conditions of his captivity says he is raped nightly by monsters called dickwolves. The mention of rape is not the central them of the strip, and is clearly there as a means to make the condition of the slave as horrible as possible.

However it was still a gratuitous use of rape as set up for a joke and some people did take offense. The creators of Penny Arcade, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, reacted to the criticism by offering a quick commentary in their blog which amounted to “agree to disagree.” If that was all they had done I doubt I would be writing this right now. They also made a response strip called Breaking it down, which made light of the rape concerns.

This was the insult that really started the issue. Several blogs and even newspapers comment on the situation and almost universally object to how Penny Arcade had handled the situation. If you are interested in looking at these then go here to the Tumblr Debacle Timeline which has an exact timeline of events and links to articles.

Penny Arcade responded to these complaints by making dickwolves merchandise and selling them through their store.

Courtney Stanton, who had been asked to speak at the Penny Arcade convention PAX East, said she would not go to the convention as she is a rape survivor and could not support them, due to how the dickwolves situation was being handled. There were a couple of responses to this. One is that the dickwolves merchandise was removed from the Penny Arcade store. The other is that Courtney Stanton starts getting harassed by Penny Arcade fans. Of special note is that a pro Penny Arcade twitter account, @teamrape, is created with the express purpose of harassing people who voice any disapproval or the Penny Arcade over the dickwolves.

During all this there were no comments from Jerry Holkins. Mike Krahulik does comment, but only to mock the complaints or egg on the fans who are supporting the dickwolves. Again look at Debacle Timeline for specific examples.

And there were death threats made. Courtney Stanton of course received both death and rape threats. So did many others who commented on the situation. My friend Mickey Schulz, who writes Geek Girls Rule, wrote about this and to this day receives threats whenever the story resurfaces.

In February of 2011, Krahulik also received a death threat. This marks the only time Holkins makes any comment, to decry the people threatening Mike and to ask people on both sides to calm down.

There is much more that happened over the next year. Far more than I can possibly go over here. Again, debacle timeline covers it all very well.

Over time the dickwolves controversy, while never going away, faded into the background. But it was not completely forgotten. In July of this year, Krahulik had another controversy come up when he got into a twitter fight over his views on transgender. I covered that situation here. Unlike the dickwolves situation, Krahulik actually apologized and made an act of contrition. It was a good sign. However, this incident, combined with the dickwolves, led indie game developer The Fullbright Company to cancel their booth at PAX prime.

There was also an article posted by the Financial Post, in July, titled Penny Arcade needs to fix its Krahulik Problem. While a direct response to the transgender issue, it does reference the dickwolves.

And this leads us to the most recent event. On the last day of PAX Prime, at a panel, when asked what his biggest regret was Krahulik said it was removing the dickwolves merchandise from the Penny Arcade store. PA President of Operations and Business Development Robert Khoo backed him up, saying the complaints should have been ignored. The audience cheered and applauded.

This, of course, has reopened the wounds of the entire controversy. Almost immediately, articles and blog posts came up condemning the statements by Krahulik and Khoo. On the flip side, you had posts once again calling those making complaints crybabys, and defending Penny Arcade by pointing out all the good work they do.

On Wednesday, following PAX Krahulik posted an apology and clarification on his position. While he does think it was a mistake to pull the dickwolves merchandise he does state that he thinks making it in the first place was also a mistake. He basically says that their handling of the entire situation was a long series of mistakes.

So where does this leave us?

First, why does this situation keep having legs?

The problem comes down to the how Penny Arcade overall, and Mike Krahulik in specific, have dealt with the situation.

As I said earlier, the original joke was about the senseless and abusive MMO story mechanics but the execution of the joke was crass and caused the point to get lost in the ensuing argument.

The entire mess could have been avoided, in the first place, if Krahulik and Holkins had just apologized for offending readers and moved on. Even a BS non-apology, or simply ignoring the situation, would have probably led to it blowing over. Instead, they opted to mock those complaining and double down on the offense. That fact that Krahulik himself says he now recognizes this is hopefully a step in the right direction.

But there are a lot of people not giving any slack on this. They have pointed out that this is not the first time he has apologized, after doing something like this, and yet here we are again. There are a lot of people saying that this is purely a PR move by Penny Arcade, and that when everything dies down it will be back to business as usual. This could very well be the case, and if true than something else will happen again, and we will all be having this discussion all over again. That is assuming this blows over, this time.

There is also a lot of speculation that this may not have been the most sincere of apologies.

One good question, about the apology, has already been raised: if Krahulik says that he regrets everything they did, than why, when asked at the panel, did he say his biggest regret was pulling the dickwolves merchandise, instead of saying his biggest regret was making it in the first place?

Also, there is no mention of any steps he is taking to avoid doing this in the future. Now it could simply be that he is not the most introspective of individuals, and taking those steps never dawned on him. It could also be that the entire apology is damage control, with no other purpose behind it.

Really, there is no way for us to know.

For the purposes of the rest of the points I want to make, we will be taking Krahulik’s comments from Wednesday at face value. Just mentally add “if he is truly sincere” to everything I write, from this point on.

Krahulik had stated, during the transgender incident, that when he feels threatened he gets hostile. If he is now recognizing this, and trying to work on it. then it is a step in the right direction.

When the comments appeared on Monday, Krahulik appeared to be lacking in this empathy. I think there may be some truth to this still, as he seems to not have the necessary awareness when he says things like he did on Monday. It is also possible that his apology comes from the fact that he has at least learned to recognize when something is blowing up in his face. His comments on Wednesday show that this may not be the case. The impression coming out of his latest comments could be those of someone who is in over his head. I don’t think he ever imagined, when starting the comic with Holkins, that they would end up running one of the largest conventions in the industry, and be seen as role models by the community. He has said that he still sees himself as just the guy that draws a web comic.

Unfortunately for Krahulik and Holkins, they now are role models, and off the cuff comments from them do have an effect.

Then you have the fans. As I stated earlier, Penny Arcade fans can get really passionate and aggressive against PA critics. They have been known to crash web sites in the name of PA. Hell, I recognize that just by writing this column I could very well become a victim of the Penny Arcade fan rage. But if Mickey can stand up to regular death and rape threats, then I can handle being called names and maybe having my site crashed.

Let us remember that the fans cheered when the dickwolves were brought up and people in the audience called for the merchandise to be brought back.

There is a very straight forward problem with all of this. Penny Arcade has made a goal of making PAX a safe and inclusive environment for all gaming fans. In fact, they have one of the best harassment policies of any large scale convention that I have seen. However, with the continual uproar over the dickwolves and the stirring up of the fans, they actually create a hostile environment for rape survivors and, really, women in general. During PAX east, in 2011, the @teamrape twitter tried to organize a dickwolves flash mob, and did so using classic bullying language (come join our fun dickwolves flashmob). If  Krahulik and Holkins really want us to believe they want the inclusive environment, then they need to publicly decry @teamrape, and others like them, that harass people in Penny Arcade’s name.

Whether the apology was sincere or not, if they do not get a proper handle on this, Penny Arcade is running the risk of having the good work they do being damaged. Already you have people writing that they do not find PAX a safe place in light of these comments and the fans reaction to the dickwolves statement on Monday.

That segues into another problem with this, a lot of the people defending Penny Arcade simply point to the good work they do, such as the Childs Play charity, as a defense saying that they do more good than harm. This is an empty defense, as harm is harm and good work does not offset it. It would be like saying Michael Vick does good work through the Vick Foundation, so that offsets staging dog fights. And Krahulik knows this, as he has said that he worries that his comments can damage the work they do.

So what needs to happen?

A lot rests with Mike Krahulik himself. He is not just an owner and creator at Penny Arcade, the brand is largely built around him. He has to internalize that his words carry weight, and that he needs to learn to pick them more carefully. If he has not taken sensitivity training, he needs to consider doing so.

In addition, Penny Arcade and its subsidiaries are going to have to face up to the fact that they have been damaged by this. They are certainly losing the impression that PAX is an inclusive environment. They are going to have people, in increasing numbers, not want to have anything to do with them. Right now, that will not have much impact, as Penny Arcade and PAX are so popular that there are more than enough fans to take up the slack. But if their long term goals are to be welcoming and inclusive, then they have a lot of work to do in order to regain that.

We, as the greater geek community, have a role to play too. Just as I am doing here, people need to give voice to this issue. But in doing so, we have to be careful to not just be screaming into the wind; we need to be making points and backing them up. The best way to make change happen is to make sure things don’t just get swept under the rug

And then we bury the dickwolves once and for all.

Magic: The Gathering Year 1: Epilogue

wotc logo

When I decided to write about the first year of Magic: The Gathering, it was driven both by a desire to do something for the game’s 20th anniversary, and the fact that I was witness to so much of what happened in the early days. It was also an exercise to see if I could write such a series on short notice and make my deadlines. The process has been eye opening for me, and I’ve learned a lot from it. So much went into it, in fact, that I wanted to do this epilogue to wrap everything up. So, forgive me if this rambles a bit.

First, I want to make the offer I do every time I write about incidents from the past: if you are someone I knew from that time and you either disagree with something I have written, or have your own take that you would like to add, I invite you to write up your position and I will publish here unedited and uncensored. I want to stress that I am only going to accept those from someone I know.

If you are someone unknown to me, and still want to write up something about this period and have it posted here, contact me and we can discuss it, but I will reserve the right to edit those.

Next, I have a lot of people I want to thank. First off are Matt Hamer and Stax Blackmoore who were my Beta Readers/Editors. Their ability to get columns back to me, in time for publishing, is appreciated and invaluable.

I also want to thank the people who were there at the time I was, who were willing to answer questions I had to fill in memory gaps or provide details I was unaware of previously. So thank you to Beverly Marshal Saling, Rick Marshal, Ron Richardson, Kyle Namvar, Matthew Burke, Cathleen Adkison, Pete Venters, Jillian Venters, and Alex.

I also utilized the book Designers and Dragons by Shannon Applecline to fill in other knowledge gaps. This book is a comprehensive history of the gaming industry. Applecline cites her sources in this work so it is the most trustworthy source you are likely to find about the industry. If you are in to the history of the hobby game industry, this is a book I would recommend checking out.

If you are interested in another take on the history of Wizards of the Coast I recommend checking out Rick Marshal’s blog Oaths and Fate where he has been detailing the rise of WotC from a more philosophical perspective. Rick witnessed the very beginnings of the company and has a much different perspective.

One question I have gotten a couple of times, while working on this series, is if I am considering writing a book about the early days of Magic: The Gathering; I find the concept interesting, but do not think my stories alone would be enough to support an entire book. I do think that if I could round up some other old timers, we might be able to put together a nice oral history style book that covers several perspectives. I’m not saying that this is going to happen for sure, just that it is being considered. Is this something people would be interested in, if it were to happen? Let me know.

So with that, I put this project to bed. I am sure that in the future I will cover other tales of WotC’s history, but now it is time to move on to other subjects.

I will be doing a theme month again in October, which will be all about reviewing horror movies.

Until then, I am going to cover other areas which have caught my interest. And I am always willing to take suggestions so feel free to write me at caliban@fanboynewsnetwork.com .

Thanks for your time.

Magic: The Gathering Year 1: Gen Con 1994

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As we conclude our look back at the first year of Magic: the Gathering, and the conventions I went to, we come full circle and return to Gen Con for the one year anniversary.

When we left off last time, I had just returned from England and Euro Gen Con. The next several months saw an insane amount of activity; as Magic: the Gathering exploded into the market, Wizards of the Coast found itself in a constant state of trying to keep up with the growth. That meant we needed a lot more people than we had before, and they were not all going to fit into Peter Atkinson’s basement.

So, in January of 1994, we moved into a pair of buildings in an industrial park, in Tukwila, Washington. My first role, at this new location, was in facilities (making sure we had drinks, snacks, and all of the sundry office supplies, along with other similar logistic duties). Eventually it became clear I was not really cut out for that kind of work and, when Gen Con rolled around, I was in the process of moving over into customer service, where I was a much better fit. During the first half of 1994, it seemed like we were bringing on new people constantly. More members of the Camarilla board of Directors joined the company, as well as several other club members by association. My sister Jillian was hired during this period to be part of Merchant Relations, our retail-specific customer service department.

Magic: The Gathering continued to sell at an astounding rate. By the time Gen Con rolled around, we were already on the third edition of the game. We also had released 3 expansion sets: Arabian Nights, Antiquities, and Legends. I felt a special connection to Legends, as I had been brought in as part of the team that wrote flavor text for the cards.

We also had two new games to promote. The first was the original game Richard Garfield had approached WotC about publishing, RoboRally. The other was a bit more problematic. It was a Trading Card Game based on Vampire: The Masquerade. At White Wolf’s insistence the game was called Jyhad, as the term was prominent in V:TM. There were several voices speaking out against this name, including Myself and Camarilla founder Matt Burke, who was working at WotC by then.  Needless to say we were not heeded, and a year later we had to sit down and come up with not only a new name but how to implement it due to game play considerations. From here on out I am going to refer to the game as V:TES, because it’s eventual name was Vampire: The Eternal Struggle.

I could go into great detail about other products being produced at that time, and the various things being worked on, but that would take up the too much space.

So let’s get to Gen Con.

The event was held August 18th to the 21st, 1994, again at The Milwaukee Exposition Convention Center and Arena, better known as The MECCA center, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As stated in the first part of this series, in our previous trip we were a little company off in one of the side booths trying to get noticed. Now we were the highest selling company in the industry, so you can be sure that we were not going to be in a little booth off to the side.

TSR had rules for the size of booths at Gen Con. There was a maximum on how much floor space you could have and how tall the booth could be; part of this was to make sure that no booth was as big as the TSR castle. The result was that WotC had a booth constructed that was exactly as big as it could be, under Gen Con rules. It was mostly black, with a central tower that branched out into pylons. Between the pylons were tables that were used alternatingly for sales, game demos, and artist signings. An added bonus was that, due to our size, we were located right next to the TSR castle. Remember that fact, for it is going to be important later.

In the previous parts of this series, I detailed who was on the team for that convention, but this time that would be an impossible task. The reason is that we brought almost the entire company to Gen Con. I believe that final count was 104, including artists, and the team from Night Fall Games, which was now Wizards of the Coast UK. I think only about a dozen people were left back at the office. This included Jillian, as she had just had a very bad break up and her dad, her best friend Alex (who also worked at WotC), and I all convinced her that she was in no condition to go to the convention. In hindsight she agreed with us, although I still get a little glare/pout combo from her when it comes up.

Bringing this many people added several logistic concerns. The first was finding hotel rooms for everyone. We ended up in a hotel about 20 minutes away from the convention center, as it had enough rooms for everyone. This led to our next logistical issue: transportation. Several mini vans were rented, and certain people were designated as van drivers, and I was one of those. This meant we had to enforce a schedule of when people had to be ready for the vans both coming and going. If you missed the van rather than make other people wait for you, the van would leave and you had to catch a cab. Of course, while that was the plan, office hierarchy could mean the reality was much different, but for the most part it worked (not that there wasn’t bitching from some quarters). Specifically there was one person who, already suffering from an overblown ego and out of proportion sense of entitlement, demanded that there be regular shuttle runs between the convention center and the hotel throughout the day. Fortunately the response he got from the top was “you’re being paid to be at the booth, not the hotel.” I say fortunately as he was trying to make me be the shuttle driver, to which he was told “Jeff has enough to do without being a limo driver.”

And to that last point, on site everyone had basic jobs they were expected to do. We had some people who were there to handle sales, others were doing product demos,  PR people for the press, the artists would have scheduled time to do signing, and the executives were talking up the business and taking meetings. We also finally had enough people that there was no problem taking breaks.

I had two jobs to do. Primarily I was there to demo V:TES which had only been released days before the convention. My other job was to be the liaison between the WotC booth and convention facilities. It had been determined that having only one person do that was a good way to make sure we didn’t have crossed connections, and I was still technically part of the WotC facility team. More to the point, at this stage I was one of WotC’s more experienced convention crew members.

The booth had been set up by a separate company, so we did not actually get in to see it until the morning of the first day. As soon as we got there, someone( I think it was Cathleen Adkison) noticed a problem: the way the booth was set up, people were going to naturally form a line that would likely wind its way through the convention floor. We needed to get polls and rope to make some rope lines. So off I went to get rope and polls.

This shouldn’t have been hard.

I went to convention facilities, which was being run by Gen Con, who then worked with the convention center. I introduced myself, and explained our situation.

And I was promptly turned down.

The person I was talking to did not think we needed rope lines. After all, how many people did we honestly expect to show up at our booth? I tried explaining how popular we had been at other conventions, but the guy just blew it off and said we would be fine. I returned to the booth and explained what had happened. Since we could not get the ropes, we just went with it, as is.

And then the hall opened.

I’ve seen animal stampedes depicted on film many times, but this was the first time I saw one in real life. The gaming hordes had been waiting on the other side to be let into the hall, and thanks to the height of our booth and the fact that we were a straight shot from the main doors, we were easily located. As one they thundered down the aisle toward our booth, woe be to any who got in their path. They formed up at the main sales table, but at least sales lead Sue Mohn, using her mommy voice to get them under control, formed a line. This line, as predicted, wound through the convention floor and somehow managed to cut through the TSR castle. Please note that this was not going around the castle, this was cutting through going into one entrance, cutting through the courtyard, and out another entrance.

TSR definitely noticed this. Shortly we got a visit from someone from convention facilities who brought with them ropes, and poles. They informed me that we would have to use these. I took this opportunity to ask why I was not given them when I first asked. The guy’s eyes said “please die in fire,” but his mouth said “I have no idea sir.”

Sue and I spent the next ten minutes setting up rope lines, and getting the hoard to form into several orderly lines. The people in line were very understanding and accommodating, especially when I pointed out it was all TSR’s fault.

The rest of the day was a blur. I spent most of my time demonstrating V:TES. There was a lunch break in there somewhere, and I found a nice diner nearby. At the table next to me was Mark Rein*Hegan talking to a potential writer about the next White Wolf game Wraith.

After the day was done we all piled into vans and headed back to the hotel. After that it was figuring out where we were going to dinner. I couldn’t tell you where we went on any given night, but I know that every night, after dinner, about 2 vans full of us ended up at the Safe House (and there will be a full write up about this place in the next few weeks).

On day 2 we were greeted by an interesting sight: traffic barricades had been set up in a few of the aisles (specifically the aisle that led straight to our booth from the main door and the aisles on either side of that, as an attempt to reduce that stampede to our booth that had happened the day before). Apparently there had been a lot of concern amongst Gen Con organizers about that, this was their solution.

Just before the doors to the hall opened, several people with press badges and cameras staked out positions either near the barricades or our booth. They wanted to get photographic evidence of what was to come. The staff at the WotC booth got ready for the onslaught, having learned the hard lessons from the day before. Everyone else cleared the aisles out of a sense of self preservation.

And then the hall opened.

What I saw next reminded me of a scene from Jurassic Park, which I had just seen two months earlier, where the Galliminus are stampeding to get away from the T-Rex and are observed turning as a group like birds do.

The hoard of gamers burst through the doors with the same enthusiasm as they had the day before. When confronted with the Barricade as one they turned left with no decrease in speed and continued on down past the other barricaded aisle until coming to the next opening, where they turned right twice and continued down at us. This did require some of our friends from the press to quickly flee the aisles.

At least this time we had the ropes and polls, and orderly lines were quickly established.

The barricades were removed shortly thereafter and were not seen again the entire weekend.

The rest of day two was pretty much a repeat of day one, outside of the running of the gamers. The night was basically a repeat of the night before, but for one slight hiccup.

Without naming names, in the previous year someone had overindulged one evening and thrown up. As a play on the name of a Magic card, we referred to this individual as the Hurling Minotaur the rest of the convention. Well on the drive back to the hotel after a night at the Safe House another individual earned the Hurling Minotaur title. This would end up happening every year at Gen Con during my time working at WotC. Not a title anyone sought, but hey a lot of us were young.

Day three started out much as the previous two days. At least everyone in the hall knew to get out of the path between our booth and the door prior to the hall opening. However, part way through the day we ran into a problem: we had brought a set amount of stock for each of our products we planned on selling. While we had some limits on purchase, they were on how many deck and booster boxes you could buy, not decks. It turned out that the Legends expansion of Magic: The Gathering was really popular, so popular we were running out. Eventually we decided we needed to make an announcement. We had no PA system so someone was going to have to talk in a loud voice. Normally this duty would fall to either Shawn Carnes or myself, as we both have very naturally loud booming voices. However, we both had been doing game demos the entire convention and our voices were already strained.  The duty of making the announcement fell on the shoulders of Alex who, while not being as tall or burly as Shawn or myself, has a very commanding voice. Alex was another Cam member, who was now working in the finance department. He was also one of a small group wearing costumes based on cards, in his case the Wizard from the Card counter-spell.

Alex got up on a chair to maximize the attention he would draw and loudly proclaimed “We are all out of Legends.”

At which point all the lights in the hall went out.

After a moment of shock we all heard Kyle Namvar say “Damn it Alex, what did we say about only using your powers for good.” After the laughter subsided we heard Alex say “Sorry.”

At which point the lights came back on.

Apparently the gods of comedic timing were smiling on Alex that day.

Eventually my lunch break rolled around and I joined a group that was heading off site to get food, because you should always avoid eating convention hall food whenever possible. I am not going to name any names of who was with me, due to the information that was shared. I don’t think anyone would care anymore, but I can conceive that it could still lead to issues for some people.

Our lunch group was a mix of non-management employees of WotC, White Wolf, and TSR. The TSR employees held the floor during the meal due to the amazing story they had to share. I want to stress that what I am about to write about is the story as they related it. I did have someone else say it was basically true a few years later, but by that time it was hardly the only TSR management horror story going about.  Everyone at the table had to swear not to let this get out too widely until after the convention before we were regaled with this epic tale of workplace terror.

According to them, just a few days before Gen Con, TSR had an all-company meeting. This isn’t surprising, most companies do that, and TSR was running the show after all. The problem was what was announced to the company at the meeting. Instead of being a prep for Gen Con meeting, or a pep rally, it was a come to Jesus meeting and company reorg.

Apparently TSR upper management was not dealing well with not being the sales leader in the hobby game market any more. There was also the fact that the onset of the trading card game market had led to reduced sales of role-playing games overall. TSR had tried to jump on to the TCG band wagon, but their entry was the clearly hastily designed Spellfire, that no one was buying. So clearly the answer was to chew out their staff right before the eyes of the entire industry was going to be on them.

They also decided it was the perfect time to reshuffle their brand management. At the time, TSR had 10 or 11 campaign settings for Dungeons & Dragons, and each one had its own brand manager. During the meeting they asked all the brand managers to come forward. As the managers were doing so, they told one of them to sit back down. He was being demoted right there in front of everyone. I don’t remember if his line was suspended or not. The rest of the brand managers were informed that the company was going to shake things up by reassigning all the remaining managers to new brands. Again this was being done at a companywide meeting in full view of everyone. No one could detect any rhyme or reason for the new assignments, other than change for change’s sake. Later one of the office staff, who was tasked with printing up sheets of the Brands and who was in charge now, brought one of the sheets to one of our dining companions and pointed out something interesting;  they had arranged the sheet alphabetically by the name of the brand, and noticed that it was also alphabetical based on the new brand managers last names.  Of course upper management was not giving any reasons for why they had made the assignments they had, so those left dealing with the changes could only speculate. I know that the folks we were eating with were convinced that the alphabetical match up was the method used as it seemed to be the only thing that made any kind of sense.

Needless to say, the moral at TSR was not at an all-time high anyway, and this pre Gen Con reorg and dress down had not done it any favors.

After again reaffirming we would not share this beyond the table until after we were home, our little inter-industry group broke up. Those of us at WotC were glad that our management was not going anywhere near that level of crazy. Even years later, when WotC did make some unpopular business decisions at least there was a core of logic to them.

The last odd event of day three occurred at the booth. As I said, there were a group of employees who were at the booth in costume as characters from Magic art. People would have pictures taken with them and it helped add color to the booth. We were far from the only booth doing that. One notable costume to be seen, was a guy walking the floor dressed as Batman; DC comics had a small presence at the con and he was part of their booth. Batman was followed around the floor, by what I assume was a PR guy from DC and a kid with a sign stating that Batman was a trademarked charter of DC comics. Any person who wanted a picture with Batman either had to hold the sign, or the kid had to be in the picture holding the sign. When Batman passed by our booth, one of our people in costume wanted to have their picture taken with him. The PR guy would not allow it, because she was in an official costume of a character whose copyright was held by another company.

Yeah, I don’t get it either.

Other than that, the rest of the day ran pretty standard. And the night was a repeat of that previous two.

The final day of the show had arrived. Everyone checked out of their rooms and, since we had vans, just brought their luggage with them.

It was a slower pace, as Sundays often are at conventions. There was no thundering hoard that morning, as we had already sold out of Legends. We still had people coming to the booth, and elsewhere in the building the first ever Magic: The Gathering World Championship tournament was being held. As the show wound to a close we started clean up and then it was off to the airport, and home.

The Gen Con experience in 1994 was a unique one, due to the sheer number of people we brought. It was commented on in trade magazines. The intention was to give anyone who wanted to go to Gen Con the chance to go, but it was looked upon as arrogant by the industry. It was also a huge logistical headache. Due to this, it was the last time you had a convention team of that size go to any convention.

It was also my last Gen Con ever. Basically, they had to decide who would go to what conventions and I lobbied to go to San Diego Comic Con every year, so that meant I was never on the Gen Con team again. For me, it was a fair trade off as I was better with the comic con crowd (being more a part of that fandom than a lot of people in the company).

And with this we come to the end of my tale of five conventions attended during the first year of Magic: The Gathering. But be back in a couple of days, as I provide some wrap up to this series.

Magic: the Gathering year 1: Comicfest

Comicfest program cover

Comicfest program cover

A lot happen at Wizards of the Coast in the month following our return from Worldcon. As recent events had shown, Magic: the Gathering was proving to be popular, in fact more popular than had anticipated. When the original print run of approximately 10 million cards had been set, Peter Adkison had figured that would last a bit over six months. What happened instead was that the entire print run was sold out in less than six weeks.

This led to another problem. We were having the cards printed by a company out of Belgium called Cartamundi. This was the best possible printer we could have gone with, as they also print Bicycle poker cards. But we ran into a problem based on their business practices. After they had printed around 2.6 million of the cards they shut the equipment down for maintenance. This by itself would not have been that big a deal. No, the other problem was that in accordance with European tradition they then shut the company down for a month so that the entire staff could take holiday.

If Magic: the Gathering had simply had the popularity that Peter and Richard Garfield had anticipated this would not have been a big deal. But no, it had to go off and be a mega hit. So people were demanding cards, and we were still waiting on the remainder of the first print run.

Finally in October we got the remaining cards in that print run, and learned that we had one final issue to address. During the maintenance, Cartamundi had apparently fixed something in the card cutting process that was out of alignment. The result was that the corners of the cards were visibly different than those pre-maintenance. To Cartamundi this seemed to be no big deal; after all, with poker cards who cares if the corners of one deck are slightly different from another. But with Magic cards you are mixing together cards bought from many different decks. This was bad, because in game play you could tell the difference just by looking at the deck, and then you could put certain cards in with the different corners and know when you were going to get that card. Make it a game-changer card, and you have a strategic edge.

This is what led to the two parts of the print run coming to be known as Alpha and Beta. Rules had to be made for tournament play that if your deck had Alpha cards they all had to be Alpha. In later years card sleeves would be introduced that masked the corners and would allow Alphas in regular decks.

But coming into October we were still figuring this all out. And with these discussions we headed off to another convention. This time it was a comic book convention in Philadelphia, Comicfest, which was held October 8-11. As far as I can tell it was a onetime event, as I have found no other reference to a show called Comicfest in Philadelphia outside of 1993.

The crew for this this show was led by Peter Adkison and Lisa Stevens, who were there mostly to talk to industry people. Jesper Myrfors was there to look for new artists. A new addition to the company named Vic Wertz was with us; he did operations work for the company, and was going to work the booth mostly. Steve Bishop was with us as well, as by this time he had settled into the role of WotC tournament coordinator. And then there was me, and my job was to work the both and demo Magic.

Several people had shown up early to meet with people. In fact I think when I flew it was just Steve and I the night before the convention, so we did not have to deal with the preshow set up. Getting there we were greeted by Jesper with a warning not to eat at our hotel’s restaurant. He described it as a great place to eat if you wanted to learn all the different ways to serve botulism. So it was off to Denny’s we went.

Unlike the previous two conventions we had attended, it was decided that we could now afford to book enough rooms so that no one had to sleep on the floor. This was a great relief to everyone. Steve was additionally pleased to learn that our room was set up so that there was a main bedroom with its own door and a fold out in the main room. This meant he did not have to deal with my snoring, which, thanks to Ron Richardson, had gained legendary status.

Coming into the convention itself we were once again in a new position. This was a comic book convention, so as a game company we were a side item and so we had a booth that was a bit off to the side. It was slightly bigger than the ones we had at the previous conventions, but our neighbors were a video tape seller, a table promoting a comic book featuring a heroine based on a Playboy Playmate, and a group selling an independently produced parody of Spider-Man set in Jamaica.

Unlike Gen Con or Worldcon we were now becoming a known commodity; even in comic circles, since many comic shops who otherwise didn’t carry games were selling Magic: the Gathering.  Other game companies were at the show, most notably TSR and White Wolf. At this point in time we were still considered a lower tier than either of these. But we were still drawing enough traffic to make the other tables around us a little jealous.

In the industry we were getting a bigger reputation as well, especially amongst artists. Jesper had made it his mission to not only make the art in Magic: the Gathering iconic, but to raise the status of the artists to superstar level. His goal was to make artists who worked in the industry stars and improve their overall position. He also wanted to make sure they were well-compensated for their work, and thus WotC had one of the best deals for artists signed to work on Magic, including retaining ownership of the original art. So naturally, at a comic book show, we had a lot of artists stop by to show Jesper their portfolios and see if they could get work. Not only would they come to our table, but Jesper would go out to seek out artists to see if he could find good ones that had not heard of us.

At one point during the first day, while only Vic and I were at the booth, one such aspiring artist approached.

“Hello,” he said with a British accent. “Who do I talk to about showing my art?”

I responded that Jesper was our art director but was away from the booth, and would be back in a while.

“Ok, can I leave a sample with you?”

“Sure.”

With that he handed me a comic book for which he had done the art. Remembering that I should be professional and personal, I figured I should make a proper introduction.

“I’m Jeff Harris by the way.”

“Hi, I’m Pete Venters.”

If you are a Magic: the Gathering fan you probably recognized his name right away, as Pete is the second most prolific artist in Magic, having illustrated 272 cards.

But if you have read this site for a while you will remember that I have made mention of my sister (again, not by blood, but my sister none the less) who runs the site Gothic Charm School. If you follow that site you know her name is Jillian Venters.

So not only was this how WotC came into contact with one of its most celebrated artists ever, it was the first meeting with my future brother-in-law, and one of my oldest friends.

At the time he was a guy I just met who handed me a vampire comic to show one of the bosses. I also took a card. We saw each other a couple of times throughout the show, and became at least acquaintances. He was around a lot at the end, as Jesper did like his art and was interested in using him.

There was another thing that separated this convention from the previous ones, Adkison had rented a car. So we were able to venture forth and see more of the city than just the area around the convention. This led to Lisa for some reason constantly doing a Rain Man impression that mostly consisted of her saying, “Excellent driver, Pete’s an excellent driver.” I have no idea how it started. The only reason I even remember it is that Pete took a wrong turn at one point onto a short one way street just as a cop passed us. This resulted in everyone in the car, myself included, doing the impression.

Overall the convention was a good one. We made good contacts and the response to the game in the comics market looked strong.

Due to the way the flights had been booked, Pete Adkison, Steve, and I ended up having an extra day in Philadelphia. Pete had arranged some meetings, but Steve and I really had nothing to do.

Well, nothing official. Steve had a plan.

All weekend Steve had been talking about wanting to visit The Mütter Museum. This is a museum of medical oddities. It includes a collection of skulls used to prove there is no racial predisposition in brain development, a nine foot long human colon, the conjoined livers of the Siamese twins the condition is named after, and many others points of interest, most of them gruesome.

After that, we went to a place we were both interested in, Independence National Historical Park. This is where Independence Hall is located, as well as the Liberty Bell. I have a great love of the history surrounding the Founding Fathers, so I was very interested in visiting. Steve on the other hand, while also interested, was a dedicated smart ass. When the one of the park rangers was giving us a history of the Liberty Bell and took questions, Steve asked, “How many slaves died during its construction?” His logic was that this is how you rated any monument. I made it clear that I had no idea who he was or why he was standing with me.

It was a great time.

And thus concludes my third convention for WotC.

Next time, in the wake of an unprecedented event I find myself overseas and without pajamas.

Magic: The Gathering Year 1: World Con 51

confran93logo

ConFrancisco Logo

I had just gotten back from Gen Con in 1993 and managed to land a job at Wizards of the Coast. The week following Gen Con was a busy one. Magic: The Gathering had taken off like a rocket, and the interest had led to a lot of activity at the WotC office. My job in those early days was basically being the office gopher. Mainly I answered the phones, sorted the mail, and ran any errands that needed to be done.

It was a flurry of activity as a lot of people wanted a piece of the Magic: the Gathering pie. And that was just the first week. At the end of that week I was asked to go to yet another convention. This time it was Worldcon, or more specifically ConFrancisco, the 51st World Science Fiction Convention.

For those not familiar with it, Worldcon is the annual convention of the World Science Fiction Society, the same group that runs the Hugo Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy works. Worldcon is a traveling event, with a different site every year. Every Worldcon has an election for where the convention will be held two years later; this way the following year’s show can be hyped secure in knowing where it is set. A bid is submitted by a group, and if they win, they will be the primary convention organizers for that event. Each year has its own name, as they are separate events with separate organizers.

In 1993 the event was in San Francisco on the weekend of September 2-6. While Worldcon was a general Science Fiction convention with a focus on literature, it did have representation of the wider range of geek culture, including gaming. We had a small booth on the dealers’ floor and unlike Gen Con, we were not sending all the company leaders; mostly because everyone was busy and a lot of them could not be spared to go. This trip was being led by head editor Beverly Marshall Saling. The only other actual employees on the trip were myself and Dave Howell, who, as the lay out person, was also our liaison to the art department. Ron Richardson was also with us. At the time Ron was just a friend of a lot of the original staff, but would later officially join the company, first as a brand manager, and ultimately as director of logistics. There were two other people there with us, but having recently spoken with Beverly and Ron, none of us can remember who they were.

The flight to San Francisco stands out in my memory as one of the most interesting I have ever taken. Please know that it was literally the third time I had ever gotten on an airplane. I was seated next to Beverly, who was a bit of a white knuckle flyer. About an hour into the flight, we experienced what is known as wake turbulence, which is when two airplanes get too close to each other and one gets caught in the wake of the other. This caused the plane to drop several feet, and by drop I mean like going on Tower of Terror at Disneyland. For just a moment we were all weightless.

Remember how I said that Beverly was a bit of a white knuckle flyer? Do you want to take a guess how she reacted to that?

If your guess was that she nearly dislocated my shoulder grabbing onto my arm than you would be correct.

This event did verify that I myself have no problem flying, as I was over it very quickly.

There is one other thing I want to mention about the flight. Getting a booth for this convention was a last minute thing and there had not been time to arrange for shipping cards to the convention center. Everyone who went had to take boxes of cards as their carry-on.

Once we arrived it was time to settle into the hotel room and head over to the hotel for set up. And when I say hotel room, I mean that we had just one room. WotC was still on a budget, and to save on costs they had all six of us sharing one room. We had a rotation on who got the beds. Beverly had an advantage in that her husband Rick was in town for unrelated reasons and she was able to stay with him a couple of nights. Her motivation for this was not just the cramped quarters. Several of us snored. The worst one was myself. At the time I had not yet been diagnosed with sleep apnea. If you have never heard an apnea sufferer snore, let me assure you it is epic. It was so bad that one morning I woke up to find that Ron had covered each ear with a rolled up pair of socks and tied a t-shirt around his head in an effort to block out the noise. Ron made it a point of never sharing a room with me again when we were both at a convention.

The only other challenge we faced was relatively minor – our hotel was four blocks from the convention center. We didn’t have a car, and even if we did, parking would not have been worth the hassle.  So we had to walk each day. This wasn’t horrible, except that at the end of each day we were already tired, but that just meant we got food after the day was done and then usually crashed.

Since we were a small crew, we had jobs to do, so there was not a lot of time for going to panels or other not–WotC-related activities. Beverly set up a schedule for us. She made sure that she, Ron, or I were present at the booth at all times, as we were the only ones she trusted with the cashbox. She also had us use the same basic strategy we used at Gen Con. We limited sales to two decks and four booster packs, and we had people go to the gaming area and the hospitality suite to play Magic in order to get people interested.

As for the convention itself, what I saw of it was fun. The guests of honor was Larry Niven, who was carried around the convention in a sedan chair by fans, so that made an impression. The convention also had two people portraying Mark Twain and Emperor Norton. Twain was listed as a guest, and Norton may have been the con chairman based on some of his proclamations. I had to explain who Emperor Norton was to my booth mates. Like the Safe House mentioned in the last article, it would take too long to explain him here, so I will do an article on him later.

The spot we had on the floor was near a stage that was set up as some kind of town square where people could sign up and talk about whatever they wanted to. This led to some interesting individuals saying some interesting things in our earshot.

The sales of Magic was much like it was at Gen Con, just on a smaller scale. Thursday started nearly dead, with just a few people sort of looking at our booth but not stopping by. Once we had people playing the game out in other areas it started picking up. By Friday Sales had picked up considerably. By Saturday, Magic: The Gathering had been declared “The Game that Ate ConFrancisco.” People were playing it everywhere and Dave and Ron were lamenting that we did not have enough leftover product to use as a prize to set up an impromptu tournament.

By Sunday we had actually sold out of Magic. We still had plenty of WotC’s other products available, but no one was interested in them. Working the booth had slowed down to a relaxed pace that was mostly about answering questions about the game and taking information from people interested in getting it for their stores or artists interested in working on the game. Sunday would have just been a footnote to the convention except for one thing. During a point in the day where I was the only person at the booth I was approached by two individuals who were part of the convention staff. After brief introductions they got to the issue they had come to talk to me about.

“We are getting complaints from local game stores.”

If they had said they were getting complaints from con goers about all the people playing Magic everywhere, taking up all available table space, I would have sort of understood that. This of course was not the complaint that prompted their visit.

“We’ve been getting calls from local game stores.”

Ok this had me intrigued. So the problem was, as I said earlier, that we had run out of Magic cards to sell. What we did not understand in the early days was the specific addictive nature of Magic card collecting. WotC had merely mimicked the card sorting used by baseball cards. What we failed to realize was that this specific sorting pattern had been designed to appeal to a specific reward behavior wired into the brain. As a result, people really wanted to collect new cards. Add the reinforcing environment of the convention, and people had a serious jones going on. So we had basically whetted their appetites, and then run out of cards.  Several groups hit on the idea of piling into cars and going to the local game stores to see if they had any. Using the local phonebook (this was 1993, webpages weren’t a thing yet), they had hit every store in the San Francisco area. The problem here was that the first group, or “raiding party” as the convention representatives described them, would get to a store and buy up their entire stock of Magic cards. The next group, and all groups after them, would arrive at the store only to be told that they were sold out. Not every person in the second category was gracious upon learning that someone had beat them there. The stores had quickly learned that these Magic Card Marauders had come from the convention, and called the convention center to ask them to do something about it. The convention in turn had sent these two representatives down to our both.

Of course I said the only logical thing I could.

“I’m not sure what I can do about it.”

“Oh we just want you to pass this along to anyone asking about getting more cards. If they know the stores are out they should stop bothering them. We just wanted to let you know before we have Emperor Norton make an announcement. “

With that we all had a good chuckle, chatted for a bit about how crazy it had been during the convention, and they headed off to tell the guy playing Norton that we were in, and he could make his announcement.

When everyone else got back I told them the tale of the raiding parties. Everyone was amused; especially Ron, who thought it was hilarious.

And that was that. The rest of the day was uneventful. We packed up our booth, collected our luggage and headed home.

And once we got home everyone had a good laugh about the raiding parties.

Next time we will go over my first big comic book convention, and my first meeting with a person who remains a very important part of my life.

Magic: The Gathering year 1: Gen Con 1993

magic_the_gathering

In my articles about my past with the Camarilla, I have talked about how being on the board of directors led directly to my working for Wizards of the Coast. So I think now is the time to start going over some of my history with WotC.

Since this month is the 20th anniversary of the release of Magic: the Gathering, I thought I would cover some Magic history. This month has five weekends, so I am going to relate stories about five conventions I attended for WotC during the first year of Magic: the Gathering’s release

First off I would like to talk about the events surrounding my attending Gen Con in 1993, which was the debut of Magic: the Gathering to the gaming world.

I met Peter Adkison, President of WotC, at Courageous/Necrocon, and he invited me, along with the other board members of the Camarilla, to attend the WotC weekly staff meetings/ brainstorming sessions. Several of us took him up on the offer originally, but I was the only one to attend regularly. This was largely due to the fact that at the time I was newly unemployed.

Back then, WotC was very different from what people picture today. In early 1993 it was a small gaming company that was run out of the bottom floor of Pete’s house, and his garage acted as the warehouse. WotC had two product lines then; Talislanta, which was licensed from the original creators, and the Primal Order, which was an original creation of Pete’s. At the time I started showing up, the company had just settled a lawsuit that had threatened to shut them down.

Due to my consistent attendance I started getting included on a lot of things. I had a chance to pitch an idea for a supplementary product for Talislanta that came very close to being made, and I helped man the WotC table at some local conventions.  So I was certainly seen as part of the gang, even though I was not an employee. But I was hardly the only one. There were also Kyle and Steve, who, like me, were part of the group but not employees.

Of course there was something else going on at the time that I’m sure everyone is waiting for me to touch on – Magic: the Gathering.

I’m going to work on the assumption that anyone reading this knows what Magic is, so I will not go into explaining that. What is worth talking about is what was going on at WotC surrounding it. At the time I showed up Magic was well into development. Art had been created, cards laid out, and a printer engaged to make it. At the time, Magic was actually being produced by a secondary company, Garfield Games, to protect it in case WotC lost that lawsuit. Garfield Games would later be merged into WotC. Around the office, the game was being played with mocked-up cards. I first learned to play the game from Pete himself. There was a lot of excitement about the game around the office. Magic was previewed at Origins during July of 1993. This is also why you will hear people refer to it being released at Origins – it was the first time people had a chance to see it on any kind of mass level.

And this leads us to Gen Con. At the time Gen Con was to the gaming industry what San Diego Comic Con was to the comics industry. WotC had a table at Gen Con and it was going to be the big debut of Magic. Gen Con that year was August 19th through the 21st, and Magic was scheduled to release on August 5th. The plan was that Pete would drive to Milwaukee where Gen Con was held and along the way stop off at various game stores to demo Magic. Everyone else would fly to Milwaukee and meet him there. Due to some timing issues with the printer, Cartamundi, who were located in Belgium, the product needed for the convention was to be drop shipped directly to the convention hall.

At the time I was not going to Gen Con with the company. I was the newest guy around the office, and tickets had been purchased before anyone had a chance to get to know me. I was fine with this of course.

That changed about a week before Gen Con. I showed up to the office to help out with packing and prep for the trip. Pete pulled me aside, and told me that one of the people who was going to Gen Con had to pull out at the last minute. He wanted to know if I was interested in taking his place.  Being unemployed, it was not like I had any reason not to go, so I of course said yes. Being the early nineties we did not make any arrangements with the airline; I was just going to use the ticket that was in the other guy’s name. Looking back, it seems so surreal that we got away with that.

So we had a small group that was going to Gen Con. I can’t remember everyone that went, but I know for sure we had Pete and his wife Cathleen, VP Lisa Stevens, Art Director Jesper Myrfors, Head Editor Beverly Marshal Saling, her husband Rick, Dave Howell, who did the card layouts, Richard Garfield, and several of his college friends who ultimately formed the Magic R&D department, Steve, Kyle and myself.

Even though I was in my mid-twenties this was the first time I ever traveled on an airplane. Some of my fellow travelers made sure I had a proper send off, and by “proper” I mean “did everything in their power to make me nervous.” Their failure was the first sign that I was not a nervous flyer, unlike other members of our team who were more angry at them than I was.

Once in Milwaukee we had a little time to settle into our hotel before we had to get over to the Mecca Convention center to set up our booth for the next day. Due to budget issues, we only had three rooms (if I recall correctly), so we engaged in the time-honored convention tradition of room-stuffing. I got very lucky that first night, as Richard and his crew did not show up until the next day, so I got to sleep in a bed that night.

I remember being impressed with the Mecca Arena where Gen Con was held. At the time, it was the biggest convention I had ever attended and Gen Con used it to the full 12,700 person capacity. This was a year prior to my attending my first San Diego Comic Con where I learned what a really big convention looked like.

As we were a very small company, we were off in a section of the hall that was populated by other small publishers and specialty merchandise vendors. I can’t remember all of the companies around us, but I do remember that the company directly across from us was Inner City Games Designs, and they were showcasing their game Fuzzy Heroes, a miniatures combat game that used stuffed animals and action figures.  We were roughly in the center of our row. This detail will be significant later.

It was at set-up time the day before the convention that our first problem came to light. The drop shipment of Magic cards from Belgium was short, and by short I mean it was only 10% of what we were expecting. As this was a four-day convention, we clearly would be painfully short of enough product to make any impact. We had plenty of the other games that Wizards produced, but that was not what we wanted to push. While the rest of us set up the booth, the higher-ups had some stressful phone calls with Cartamundi and the shipping company. It was determined that the shipment had been separated, and the shipping company had to work to find the rest of it. As a result, it was decided that we had to limit the amount of Magic cards any one person could buy. The limit was one deck and two booster packs per purchase. This would turn out to be a very good thing as the convention wore on.

Somewhere during all this Pete finally arrived from his road trip. He was tired, but energized by the response the game had received turning the store visits.

The next day the convention started. While we were setting up for the day we learned that the rest of our card shipment had been located and would be delivered to the convention hall in time for the second day of the convention. With that bit of stress out of the way, the day started.

At first things were slow. After all, we were a very small company off to the side of the hall. But there was a plan. We had learned from previews and the tour was that the one thing that would attract people’s attention was seeing the game being played. The combination of the unique game play and the eye-catching art would draw people in. To that end, part of our strategy was to have a couple of us go up to the open play area and just play Magic, and be ready to answer questions about it, including being able to direct people to our booth. This was a simple and very effective plan. By about lunch time we started to see some traffic as people were seeking us out to find the game.  This traffic slowly increased as the day went on. It was a simple progression really. People would buy cards, they would go somewhere to open the packs to see what they got, and play a bit. Other people would see them do this and ask what they had, thus bringing in more people. Our initial plan had a viral factor.  Of course the original people would come back to buy as we were only applying the limits to that purchase, as long as they did not hang around the booth. Towards the end of the day, we had a steady stream of people and were sold out of the stock we had on hand.

There was some nervousness as we had not yet received the rest of the cards, but we decided to trust that the information we had received was accurate about the shipment.

With the first day done, it was decided that we were going out to celebrate having survived. This took us to what still stands as the most interesting bar/restaurant I have ever been to; the Safe House. I would go into detail describing it, but it would take its own article, so we will save that for another day. Just know that we ended up there a couple of times.

The next day we got to the convention center and were happy to find that the rest of the cards had arrived. A decision was made to continue with the rationing of cards, but to up it to two decks and four booster packs. This was based on the increased popularity towards the end of the previous day. This turned out to be a wise decision, as even with the rationing we did eventually sell out, but had product available the entire convention.

And we knew this was true once the doors to the hall were opened. While we were out at the bar, the convention rolled on, specifically the gaming area. People who had bought cards the previous day had spent the night playing and trading cards. These had gotten even more attention from people around them. So when the hall opened, a crowd of people made a beeline for our booth.  At first it was in waves. The folks who had gotten into Magic would come, buy cards and go off to see what they had gotten, build new decks, and try them out. This would lead to even more people seeing the game, coming down and buying it, thus increasing the exposure. By Mid-day Friday we determined that we did not need our people going to the gaming area to promote the game. Instead, we needed people at the booth so that others could take breaks. This was necessary as those waves of purchases became more frequent, and eventually we just had a steady stream of people lining up to buy Magic.

This led to some other interesting developments that I doubt anyone could have really foreseen. The first was the effect this had on the booths around us. For the booths to the right of us, I suppose it was ok. The line for our booth stretched all the way down the aisle, so people waiting to buy Magic cards would have a chance to check out their stuff. As for the booths to the left of us and across from us I think they were less pleased, as the moment people had their Magic cards they would run off and thus not check out those booth’s stuff.

The length of line in our section started to attract attention as people wanted to know what was going on and what all the fuss was about. From this, we started getting attention from the gaming magazines and other publishers.  One publisher, Darwin Bromley of Mayfair Games, spent a lot of time around the booth. I think he did know some of the WotC higher ups, but mostly he was fascinated by Magic. Mayfair would later product one of the first non-WotC trading card games, an adaptation of SimCity.

A problem we ran into was the fact that we did not have a cash register, but instead just a cashbox, a calculator, and receipt books. This is fine if you have slow sales or even steady sales. It is not as good if you have product flying off the shelf as we did. Beverly was most often in charge of said cashbox and receipts. She was so busy that on day three she got a split on her index finger. Being the smart asses we were, the advice she got from Cathleen was, “Don’t bleed on the money.”

It was clear by the third day that we had a hit on our hands, the convention itself helped prove that.  As Gen Con is a gaming convention, it has a lot of tournaments going on. One thing the convention provided for these were coupons for five dollars that could be used at any booth. At the end of the weekend the vendors would be able to redeem those coupons for cash from the convention. When Lisa went to redeem ours, she was asked how many booths she was redeeming for.  When she said just ours, she was told our stack of coupons was three times the size of any other booth’s.

On day three Peter took me out to grab some lunch. Peter told me that it was clear that Magic was going to be huge and he knew that there was going to be more work around the office. Based on my being around and helping, and my performance during the convention, he wanted to hire me to work in the office. I of course accepted.  A little later he had the same conversation with Kyle. I suspect Steve also got hired at the Convention, but I was not able to confirm this; but since by the following week we were all working at the WotC office full time, I figure he probably did.

One highlight of the convention worth bringing up is that we held the first ever Magic: The Gathering tournament there.  Unlike the high stakes tournaments that exist now, this was a low-key affair played with decks the players had just constructed that weekend. The winner was a guy named Alex Parrish, who won a box of booster packs, a t-shirt, and a plaque. The amusing story here is that during the final match, there were people writing down the play-by-play so that we could publish it later. Unfortunately, one of those people was Kyle, who does not have the best hand writing in the world.  Weeks later Steve and I were going over the notes to get it written down, and we were trying to decipher what Kyle wrote. On one play we both agreed that what Kyle wrote looked like it said, “Bong water propane”. Kyle later corrected us that it was “Bog Wraith Played.”

So the convention was a huge success for us. The industry started talking about this new game that had captured everyone’s interest, and I had a new job.

Next week we will cover the next convention I attended for the company, and what happens when an entire crew tries to share one room.


San Diego Comic Con 2013

comiccon-150x150It’s that time of year again. San Diego Comic Con was last week, and as it is the premier geek culture event of the year and we are a site that covers geek culture, I am obligated to say something about this year’s event, even though I am not able to attend.

Last year I focused on the problems of just getting to the convention, with record sell-out times. Everything I wrote about that is still relevant this year. The other area I focused on was San Diego Comic Con drifting from its original focus and becoming more of a media show, and in that arena there is more debate this year.

The crux of that complaint is that major portions of the show floor have been bought up by media companies who are pushing their various movies, TV shows, and other non-comic-book-related media. This has pushed out more comic-focused vendors and driven up the price of booth space.  To be fair, most of these media companies are focusing on product relevant to geek culture, but not exclusively. An example was a couple of years ago when there was a booth for the NBC show The Playboy Club which, let’s face it, was not geek culture. On the other hand, it was a small booth and the show did bomb.

There is also the complaint that panel time is taken up with shows that have dubious geek credentials, such as How I Met Your Mother and Psych.

But how fair are these complaints?

During the convention prominent comic writer Gail Simone went on twitter to address these concerns and ask some pointed questions.

The first point was to ask if fans were asking for more comic-focused content. If so, she pointed out that every major comic publisher and most minor ones had booths at the convention. She could not think of one that was not there. Also the majority of convention panels were comic industry focused. She said that if you took out all the other media at the convention, you would still have the largest comic convention. So is there really too much other media at San Diego Comic Con, or does it just seem that way because of what other media covers?

She does concede that small vendors and people in artist alley do get marginalized and could use more love. However, this could be said of any comic convention; it is just magnified at San Diego Comic Con.

The feedback from some of the web comic creators at the show illustrates that point. Randy Milholland, creator of Something Positive, commented throughout the show that he was not making enough money to justify the expense of traveling to the convention. He said he lost a few thousand dollars, and of course the time lost that he could have been working, so he says this will be his last year going. I have heard similar tales from Studio Fogilo, but they still attend; although I suspect more for contacts and publicity.

But I think the best summation of what is going on with San Diego Comic Con came from web reviewer Leo Thompson, who hosts the show That Sci Fi Guy. Thompson was explaining the difference between San Diego Comic Con and Dragon*Con. His conclusion is that San Diego Comic Con is a trade show, where Dragon*Con is a fan-focused convention. To build on his point, I would say that this would be like the difference between E3 and PAX in the gaming community . A lot of fans would go to E3 when it was open to the public, but it is acknowledged that it is an industry show; where PAX is very clearly focused on the actual fans.

If we assume that Thompson is right, the question becomes: is this a bad thing? My gut check is that if this were how San Diego Comic Con was openly presented, then no it is not; but right now that is not the case.

I think this bears more analysis, and I will look at it again after Dragon*con happens later this year.

In the meantime, please let me know what you think.


 

How I would fix the New 52

 

Once again we are being bombarded by news about the nonsense surrounding the DC Comics “New 52”, both storyline-wise and the many issues with the creative staff, and dropping sales. I, like many comic fans, find myself musing about how it could be fixed. If you think the New 52 is great and does not need fixing, you might want to skip this, you aren’t going to like it very much.

If I lived in an alternate universe where I found myself able to mandate a fix to the New 52, how would I go about it? The answer lay in the very story that set the whole mess in motion in the first place: Flashpoint.

At the end of Flashpoint, Barry Allen, the Flash, has to correct a broken timeline. A mysterious figure called Pandora influences the Flash to merge the DCU timeline with the Vertigo and Wildstorm timelines to strengthen it against an oncoming threat. The merged timelines created the New 52 universe.

For the purposes of our fix let’s assume that either Pandora was wrong, or better yet, she is the oncoming threat and the merger was step one of her plan.

And no one remembers the old timeline, so there is no way to oppose her. Or is there?

The storyline in my imagined “fix” would start with a mysterious figure observing events of the New 52, much the same way Pandora appeared in the background of all the New 52 first issues.  This goes on for a couple of months. Eventually the figure reveals himself as Wally West, who succeeded Barry Allen as the Flash during the period that Barry was dead.

Wally, along with prominent DC characters Donna Troy, Stephanie Brown, and Cassandra Cain were not included in the New 52 timeline. They have been exiled to a limbo outside of the timeline. After months of effort, Wally was able to use his connection to the speed force to enter the new timeline.

Wally has spent time observing the New 52 timeline to figure out what has happened. Piecing together what has happened, Wally sets a plan in motion to fix the timeline and save the world. This would be the sequel to Flashpoint.

Wally would recruit a team including Barry, Superman, and Booster Gold. They would be opposed by Pandora, who would recruit her own team to fight them by convincing them that Wally is the threat they have to fight.

The tide would be tipped by Batman, who was not as affected by the timeline change due to his own time travel misadventures caused by Final Crisis.

The result would be the separation of the three timelines (mostly) and the return of the proper DCU timeline. Some elements of the New 52 timeline would be retained, either because they would have happened anyway, or just as echoes of the merger.

This would give fans back the lost characters they have missed so much, and could be used as a jump point of more storylines, especially if Pandora survives the event as well. The event would be notable as a major crossover that does not try to prove how edgy it is by killing off a major character.

So what do you think? Would this work? If not, what are your ideas?