Greg Costikyan on Origins

[Krug]

http://www.costik.com/weblog/

Gives his frank opinion of Origins...

 

[JoeGKushner]

Can you post that here? I can't reach that site from my connection.

 

[Vaxalon]

Can you post that here? I can't reach that site from my connection.

Dude, it's HUGE.

 

[Ottergame]

No, as it is a HUGE paper. But generally, he was unimpressed.

 

[Psion]

intendo, Konami, and Bandai all had presences here, pushing CCGs based on their properties--sometimes also published by the same company, but sometimes licensed to others (Pokemon to WOTC).

Am I (or he) missing something here? I thought Pokemon and WotC were history, Neopets being WotC's pokemon replacement?

And there's White Wolf, still doing elegant-looking product, and still unable to find something other than World of Darkness to flog.

And what's Exalted? Chopped liver?

I dunno. He seems like someone who should know quite a bit about the hobby, but he seems a little out of touch.

 

[johnsemlak]

Can you post that here? I can't reach that site from my connection.

Hoping this isn't too large...

Origins
Dah History


Origins, the "national adventure game convention" (meaning the Midwestern-regional hobby games convention), was founded in 1975 by the Boys from Baltimore, the management of The Avalon Hill Game Company. The name, suggested by Don Greenwood, reflected the fact that the hobby games industry had been founded in 1958 by Charles Roberts, founder of Avalon Hill, with the publication of Tactics. Thus, by attending the Baltimore-based convention, gamers were returning to their "Origins." In 1977, the third "Origins" was hosted by SPI, at Wagner College in Staten Island.

These days, it's permanently located in Columbus, Ohio, and run by the Game Manufacturers' Association, an institution created in the 80s when hobby game publishers got sick of being marginalized at the Hobby Industry of America tradeshow. The GAMA show is now the main (non-consumer, trade-oriented) show for the hobby game industry.

Origins was predated, by some years, by GenCon, originally named for Lake Geneva, where it was located, and originally a fan-run convention. In the early days, Origins was larger than GenCon, which was still a small regional; once D&D boomed, however, TSR took over GenCon, made it their house convention, and turned it into the largest such thing in the game industry.

From its inception through about 1987, I'd attended every Origins. I had professional reason to do so, of course; during those years I was, in succession, an SPI staffer, a freelance game designer, director of R&D for West End Games, and a freelance designer again. But in the late 80s, I took my leave of the hobby game industry. I was trying to write, I had kids to take care of, I needed to make a living (and hobby industry rates of pay make that extraordinarily difficult), and I felt quite burned by my experience at West End.

I decided to go this year, for two reasons. First, they asked me. Second, Paranoia XP is coming out for GenCon, and I figured it couldn't hurt to make an effort to do a little promotion.

The reason they asked me, apparently, is that this is the 30th Origins, and they'd invited everyone who had, in the past, been inducted into the "Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame."


Gettin Dere


I got up at 3:00 in the morning on Thursday, to catch a 6:00 flight out of Newark. Shortly after my arrival, I was to have my "guest of honor" presentation in an enormous ballroom capable of seating at least 100 people, quite likely 200. In the program book, this event was unmentioned, save for a quarter-inch high squiff in the "special events" section, as prominently listed as, say, a "Kobolds Ate My Baby" demo. Nor was there any sign outside the ballroom, indicating the proceedings within. I had an audience of one. Another supposed 'guest of honor' told me that he, and others he had spoken to, had audiences of zero. Well planned, say I.

That same day, I was to run Toon, at 7 PM. Nothing quite like a frenetic, fast-paced and funny RPG with a half-asleep GM. I managed to nap for a couple of hours before running it. It went okay.

This session, and the Paranoia session I ran on Friday, were part of "Play with a Creator," a series of games GMed by World Famous Game Designers, including Reiner Knizia, Jonathan Tweet, Sandy Petersen, Robin Laws, Dave Arneson, Greg Stafford, Peter Adkison, and me. I'm sure there were others, but those are the ones I happened to notice as I stalked past the area where these were held. Six per table; not all were fully subscribed. 13,000 attendees.

Sometimes I do despair.

On Friday, I ran Paranoia, using the XP rules and the adventure included in the forthcoming edition (partly to see how well it worked). Tolerably well, I'd say; the spam system was well received, the players certainly enjoyed it--but they also managed to completely obliterate the evidence they were supposed to pick up, and (reasonably under the circumstances) decided they had completed their mission when I still had a third of an adventure to run. Since their conclusion was reasonable, and they were (by design) completely mistaken about what they were supposed to be doing anyway, I took them in for debriefing, interrogation, and the inevitable salutary executions. The players seemed happy enough, albeit I did feel they'd been cheated out of another hour of play.


Duh Huxterz


I spent some time stalking about the dealer's room, largely to get a better sense of who the major players are at present, at least under the assumption that booth size is a proxy for industry prominence. WOTC, of course. Decipher and Upper Deck, but I hardly consider them real game publishers; essentially, they're publishers of collectible cards who also happen to publish some mediocre and extraordinarily unimaginative CCGs, battening onto licensed properties to which they have access. Nintendo, Konami, and Bandai all had presences here, pushing CCGs based on their properties--sometimes also published by the same company, but sometimes licensed to others (Pokemon to WOTC). Interestingly, none were really pushing electronic product--but all do well with CCGs in Japan, and any promotion they do at Origins comes out of the petty cash drawer, as far as these operations are concerned.

The first real gamer game company we come to (at least, if you can say that WOTC, short of Adkison and deep in the bosom of Hasbro is no longer True Blue) is Jordy Weissman's Wiz Kids, publishers of Heroclicks. I've had a kind of a negative attitude about Weissman for years, partly because when I was at West End, we had a bit of a pissing match with FASA, his then-company, over the Star Trek rights. (Essentially: Paramount licensed FASA the "roleplaying boardgame" rights, and they published a highly successful Trek RPG of Weissman's design; Paramount turned around and sold us the "adventure gaming boardgame" rights, which was a problem, because we both published Trek boardgames, and both claimed the exclusive rights to do so. In retrospect, it was Paramount's -up, not FASA's.) But hey, any man who can come up with both BattleTech and Heroclicks deserves a bit of slack; that level of creativity is pretty rare. The same day, we speak on a panel on "hard sf in gaming," which is pretty amusing given that I'm best known for Paranoia, about as non-hard as you can get, and, well BattleTech is pretty goofy on the science as well. I find that I like the fellow. Nice to put a nail in ancient prejudice.

Then we come to Alderac Entertainment Group, publisher of Legend of Five Rings, one of the very few CCGs that isn't, in essence, a thinly veiled Magic rip-off. Although they do some D20 RPg product, they're almost exclusively a CCG publisher, and at least they're game geeks, not card publishing drones battening onto a secondary market.

And there's White Wolf, still doing elegant-looking product, and still unable to find something other than World of Darkness to flog. The creative spark has left the building, I'm afraid.

After that, we're onto the second tier, where the creative spark is likeliest to be found. Green Ronin, some tasty looking RPG supplements and an interesting boardgame concept. Fantasy Flight, striking off in a lot of different directions, very stylishly; their Game of Thrones boardgame, based on the George R.R. Martin series I can't stand (though I adore some of Martin's other work, and think highly of him as an essentially decent human being, not to mention a lad made good from dear old Hudson County) wins an Origins Award later that evening. I think about buying it, but at $50 a pop... well, I can pass.

Looney Labs has a larger booth than I would have expected, and Cheapass Games a smaller one, but I suspect this says more about corporate ego than industry prominence. Looney has a new version of Chrononauts, based on American history--but while I'd be happy with a version of Chrononauts with different events, my main complaint with the original one was its US-centric nature. Please, given me vast Aztec interstellar empires, Hellenistic Greeks with the steam engine before Christ, and a global Qin dominion fated never to develop modern technology. Cheapass has nothing new that tempts me, but I do buy full-color, glossy-card editions of Give Me the Brain and Lord of the Fries.

Stevie is Stevie, though he's not at the show. A coupla Munchkin titles are Origins Award nominated; never understood the enthusiasm for them. Although they're vaguely humorous, only vaguely so. To be sure, they're solid, in terms of game design, but Steve is a professional--and the design is not as original as I'd hope from him. SJ Games does seem to be republishing virtually the complete ouevre of Tom Wham, for which they are to be commended, of course. And when do we get a new edition of The Great Khan Game?

Zev Shlasinger's Z-Man Games, which I'd thought a highly marginal operation, looks a lot more professional and on the ball than I'd thought, and they garner 4 Origins Award nominations... I definitely have to take Zev more seriously. (But Zev--put your corporate logo more prominently and centrally in the booth! I walked past it three times before I went to look at the program book to figure out where it was! Promoting the games is fine, but promoting the company brand is important, too.)

I also run into the 9th Level Games guys, who give me freebies of Kobolds Ate My Baby and the Ninjaburger RPG. I really like Kobolds Ate My Baby; I can certainly imagine running this to general amusement. Whatever happened to the market for cheapo, quick and funny games, anyway?

For me, Origins (and GenCon) have always been mainly about the show floor, largely because I spent many, many hours on said floor, flogging merchandise and ducking behind a screen for quick business meetings. But I'm here to do only a little business, and it's a little sad, really--I generally hold up the hobby games industry as an example of a veritable fervent of creativity by comparison to digital games, and actually it is--far easier to experiment on a budget of $25k than $5m--but Sturgeon's Law still holds. There is indeed much of a sameness here; most hobby games are like heavy metal. Loud, dark, aggressively self-important, somber palette. The {Castle/Imperium/Realm/Alchemy/Magic/Handbook} of the {Elves/Dragons/Orcs/Space Marines/Vampires} of {Doom/Death/Destruction/Desolation/the Fifteenth Reich/Pits of the Somethingnorother}... Blah blah blah..... bleech.



Someone's Idea of Ceremony


But it's time to move away from the show floor and onto the Origins Awards, which are as little attended as they were, lo these 17 years ago. That is to say, there a hundred something attendees, rather than a few dozen, but then, the convention has 13,000 attendees instead of a couple thousand. My guess is that the only people in attendance are company employees... and we geezers, crammed off on the sides as 'hall of fame' members.

There are 26, count-em, 26 categories. The Origins (then the Charles Roberts) awards launched with five. And we were proud.

I fought this fight long ago, and I'm not going to fight it any longer; the more categories you have, the more you devalue the award. Prune it to 10. Preferably, say, 5.

They've instituted a "game of the year" award, and no wonder; with 26 categories, none of them means a damn.

They've also decided, this year, to induct 4 people and 2 games into the Hall of Fame, when previous practice was to induct one item (person or thing) each year. None of those announced is objectionable--rather, all quite deserving--but I surely hope this is a one-time expedient, and not a continuing practice, or the Hall of Fame will be equally meaningless in short order.

Mike Stackpole is MC, and he moves things swiftly along. It's not a bad ceremony--

Except for the fact that at no time is the name of a game designer, miniatures sculptor, graphic artist, illustrator--or, god help me, author--ever mentioned. Everything is ascribed to the publisher.

I'm sure this is extremely just. Gone With the Wind , product of MGM, right? (Selznick who?) Viking Publising, Grapes of Wrath, what a great novel. (Steinbeck? Who dat?) Dungeons & Dragons by--Hasbro, yes, that's the ticket.

Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. I stay away for nearly twenty years, and nothing changes. ing Christ almighty, give me strength. Even when they come to the crap-licensed game "novel" (and I suppose no one else will give this dire less-than-genre anything like an award, so Origins ought to), they announce the name of the publisher--but not the person who actually did the work. Haven't we ascribed novels to writers for three hundred years and more? Where's Al Qaeda when you need them? The Columbus Convention Center, let me tell you, it needs a coupla hundred pounds of gelignite just about now, praise Allah.

This is getting me increasingly pissed off, but thankfully, we now have a break. Some fanboy with shag carpet glued to his feet is going to give us the Frodo rap.

I am not kidding.

Now, years ago, I remember Lou Zocchi getting up at some similar event and playing the saw. And I remember sitting, in slack-jawed amazement, as everyone just kind of sat there and was polite about the whole thing--and thinking, only in ing Wisconsin. I mean, yeah, Lou is a good old boy, as decent a human being as they come, and a man with an underappreciated influence on the early development of the field--but I'm at a ing awards ceremony, listening to a goober from Mississippi play the ing SAW?

Fanboy is prouncing around, wearing shorts and a green cape, carpet on his feet, rapping to some mediocre hip hop about Sauron. I am longing, longing I say, for Lou and his saw.

I am sitting in four rows of seats with some of the finest game designers of the 20th century--Jimmy D., Dave Isby, John Hill, Greg Stafford, Dave Arneson, Reiner Knizia, Jordy Weissman, Liz Danforth, and I don't remember who-all... While those poor benighted bastards still glued to the hard-scrabble, desperately impoverished, but vital hobby games industry wait with baited breath to see which of them have achieved some tiny sop of peer recognition this year (not that they will be mentioned by name)--and we're listening to "the Great Luke Ski" tell us he's a geek.

That's real evident, pally. Shut the up and sit down. I thought this was a professional event.

Oh my god, do the Nebulas make this look like amateur hour. And let me tell you, the Nebulas are kicking rubes giving each other daisies, by anyone else's standards.

So after all this, telling myself it's damned unseemly to play the angry young man now that I'm well into middle age, I go up and, trying to be nice but still express my profound and existential despair, I talk to Mike Stackpole, who I am sure is to blame for none of this, but whom I know, and probably won't decide I'm the ultimate bastard of the nether hells for bringing stuff up.

Mike says they -do- normally announce designers, sculptors, and the rest, but there was some kind of timing problem, and he (who normally calls around to find out all this info) was informed at the last instant. When the press release goes out, it will say who the people are.

This makes me breathe a little easier. As for Luke Ski... oh hell, most of the audience was laughing, and Adkison, from behind me, was squeezing my shoulder and chortling a little as I writhed in agony on my chair and the one next to it during this little performance. Maybe I'm just too sensitive a soul. Yeah, yeah, that's it. You have to be a sensitive soul to be a great artist. Or something.

After this, they have some folks say a few words about Don Turnbull (Hall of Famer, recently deceased), who used to run TSR/UK (and I remember as an old-school postal Diplomacy player). And then they yank the Hall of Famers up on stage--I guess this is our big moment... And to a degree it is, given that the audience consists largely of current professionals who might have a prayer of knowing who these guys are, and might actually aspire to be among them. Meanwhile, 13,000 gamers are playing out on the floor. I think perhaps there's a fundamental disconnect here.

More awards, down to the end... Indy Clicks as Game of the Year. Okeydoke. Heroclicks, a great concept when it was launched, but... Really? Game of the Year? Now?


If this is Saturday, It Must Be the Pride Parade


Saturday, I awake with two realizations: I have finished the scotch, and also all the books I brought to read with me. There do not seem to be any book dealers on the show floor, unless you care to read licensed game drivel. A look at the yellow pages convinces me that the only possible way to get to any Borders or B&N is by car to the 'burbs, and I -am- a city boy, and certainly have not rented a vehicle. However, High Street runs by the hotel, and several bookstores can be found in the 1200s, and again in the 1800s on High Street. I begin to walk.

This takes me through a neighborhood evidently called the "Short North," which looks almost like an actual city. That is to say, the buildings are adjoining, and most of the blockfront consists of shops and restaurants. There also seem to be a remarkable number of men holding hands, which strikes me as odd for a swing state, but comfortingly homey. "The Open Book" proves to be a bust, however, since it's basically a gift shop, with a few shelves of mainly gay-interest volumes. The stores in the 1200s are also worthless--one an African-American specialty bookstore, the other specializing in volumes of, ah, erotic interest. I continue marching up to the 1800s, which leads me into Ohio State University territory--fine, I understand why there are bookstores here. I manage to find a couple of interest, and start sliding back.

(Incidentally, Ohio seems to be one of those states where you can buy booze only from state liquor stores. No problem; I can live on beer.)

I'd forgotten it was Gay Pride; and, perhaps unsurprisingly, given what I've learned of the Short North, High Street is the main route of the Pride Parade in Columbus. I'm slightly charmed, but a bit peeved, as I want to get back to my hotel in the most expeditious fashion, and the sidewalks are jammed. I'm surprised by this, actually; many people come out for the Pride Parade in New York (including the kids and me, when there), but the last time I was abroad on Gay Pride, I was in Pittsburgh, and surprised at how light the attendance was--virtually nobody watching but queers and dykes. Sad, really. That was a few years ago; I wonder whether the relatively higher attendance here says something about Ohio relative to western Pennsylvania, or something about changing attitudes over the last decade. Still it gives me some hope Ohio won't go for the fundie neocon boobs in power today.

Of course, the Gay Pride Parade is not exactly the right place to gauge the relative strength of the Right.


Promotion and Old Friends


A few blocks from the convention center, Alex Fennel of Mongoose ringed me on my mobile (as the Brits say), and I agreed to meet him at the Mongoose booth.

We spoke for a bit about promoting Paranoia XP, and the ineffable contrariness of illustrators, after which I wandered down to the "War Room," sponsored by the Columbus Area Boardgamers, where I ran into Gary Christiansen, with whom I used to game in the 70s and 80s. His youngest, whom I remember as an infant, is now apparently 16, 6'2", and an avid gamer, and good for him. Of course, Betsy is 15, close to 6 feet, and also a game (and anime) geek... The last time I saw Gary was the day I and Louise helped him and his wife pack up to move to the Midwest. I spent the day booking boxes down from his attic and into the truck; Gary spent the day taking games out of their boxes, putting the components in manila envelopes, and throwing away the boxes, to reduce their bulk. I didn't grouse, and actually, thought the whole thing rather funny.

In fact, more generally, Origins was a bit of old home week. I chatted with John Hill, whom I hadn't seen in 10 years; John Prados, more like 20; Greg Stafford, whom I'd seen more recently but who was surprised to learn I'd been divorced for 10 years (and in and out of a significant relationship since); Dave Isby, 20+ years; Frank Chadwick, at least 10 years; Tom Wham, ditto. I also spent some time chatting with Jonathan Tweet (who, it turns out, I'd met years before, although I'd forgotten it), and Knizia, who I had not previously met. Also Ken Hite, with whom I'd corresponded but not met face-to-face. Robin Laws was around, but I never got to chat with him.


Not With a Bang but a Whimper


After that, it was the Origins banquet. Typically, they had offered 100 tickets to gamers, free meals to guests, with the expectation that gamers would be eager to meet these game gods. No such luck; it was more like a 2-1 ratio, guests to geeks. (Not that we guests aren't geeks, and proud of it, I may say.) I was en table with Ken Hite and Andrew Looney--and also with JFD who, typically, talked so rapidly and continuously it was hard to tell when food actually left his plate and found its place in his stomach. Jim is generally entertaining but, having had sufficient exposure to the spiel Dunniganesque, I wouldn't have minded a few more words with Hite and Looney. C'est la guerre.

Apres le mediocre banquet meal, I wandered off to the Hyatt bar in search of pale ale, where I encountered the new owner of West End Games, which, I was happy to learn, no longer has any equity connection to D.S. Palter or Les Humanoids. They apparently have a generic space and a generic fantasy D6 system game out. I'd seen their booth (which I had avoided lest I encounter the odious Palter), and suggested that, in future, they might display a sign saying "D6 System" prominently, as neither "Adventure" nor "Space" was a well-known product name nor likely to elicit interest and enthusiasm. Not that I am high on generic systems generally (even when derived from my work), but D6 has =some= kind of following. More or less simultaneously, I encountered one of the folks behind Social Games, which is republishing the Cyberpunk CCG (with improvements). Seemed like a nice enough chap.

And so to bed, or rather, to several hours of tossing and turning as I contemplated a game concept that might actually do rather well in the soul-crushing cesspit of dreams they call the "adventure gaming industry." Perhaps I might even attend the next Origins to promote it. Assuming I ever do anything with it. I am rather overdue on a tutorial on the MIDP 2.0 Game API.

Sunday, I wandered around a bit, bought prezzies for the kinder (a wolf tee-shirt for Betsy, a "Power Goth Girls" tee for the Vick), and made an early retreat for the airport.

On the Detroit-to-Newark leg, I was seated across the aisle from Dunnigan. He perused some serious periodical, while I chortled along to John Fowles Mantissa. Can't imagine what he thought.

An easy connection to the 62 bus to Newark Penn Station, thence on the PATH (nee Hudson & Manhattan Tube, for the geezers among you), and home to well deserved sleep.


Conclusions


1. If you run a convention centered on gameplay, yet have a variety of panel discussions, presentations, award ceremonies, etc., you really have to break those things out of the general program, and make an effort to promote them. Your typical attendee will be focussed on the games, and while he or she might be interested in other events, won't think about them unless you thrust them before his or her eyes.

2. I question the utility (and cost-effectiveness) of paying for hotel accomodations and (in some cases, not mine) air fare for guests, if you do not use and promote their participation more effectively.

3. I hope Stackpole wasn't just jiving me to get me off his case, but I greatly fear it's the same old crap in this field. I genuinely suspect I was the only person pissed off that creators' names weren't mentioned in the awards ceremony. This makes me sad. And, you know, it's not like =my= name was omitted--I'm not eligible for anything at this point. This is a matter of principle, not personal interest.

4. 13,000 people, that's pretty cool. Too bad the average age is over 30. Maybe you should add a LAN room? We're all gamers, you know.

5. Good for Mythic for being there and promoting the crap out of DAoC.

6. Ow, what a dull convention. Wish you had some controversial panels to spice it up. Or maybe a WOTC-vs-White Wolf joust with nerf weapons...

7. If I do this again, I'm taking a suite, and running an invite-only party with some serious single malts. That should be fun.
posted by Greg at 8:03 PM

 

[Henry]

Actually, he kind of admits he's out of touch - hadn't been to Origins in 10 years, had been out of the industry during the 90's to make a living, etc.

It sounds overall like he had the same feeling about Origins this year as I did when I went in 1998. My ONLY trip to Origins, and I swear the last. The "RP Games" portion of the convention is quite poor from my experiences, and just not worth the trip time to me.

From his description of the Designer's award program, it sounds like the ENnies came off as professionally as the Oscars. Russ, Peter A, Mike M, etc. did a great job, AND had fun with it, but PROMISE ME YOU GUYS that we'll never have a rapping Hobbit onstage.

NOR a man playing a saw.

NOR a hobbit playing a saw.


In the end, though, Greg seems to have found the real joy of a convention in the first place - meeting up with old friends, making new ones, and having fun in the company you keep, not just the gaming. I'm glad it wasn't a total loss for him.

 

[johnsemlak]

Yikes!!

Mods, sorry for the grandma-unfriendly stuff in the middle of that text, I hadn't gotten to it. At least the EN World Grandma-censor got it

 

[Dogbrain]

My favorite line:

Sturgeon's Law still holds. There is indeed much of a sameness here; most hobby games are like heavy metal. Loud, dark, aggressively self-important, somber palette. The {Castle/Imperium/Realm/Alchemy/Magic/Handbook} of the {Elves/Dragons/Orcs/Space Marines/Vampires} of {Doom/Death/Destruction/Desolation/the Fifteenth Reich/Pits of the Somethingnorother}... Blah blah blah..... bleech.

 

[Dogbrain]

And what's Exalted? Chopped liver?

I dunno. He seems like someone who should know quite a bit about the hobby, but he seems a little out of touch.

Actually, it is. It has a very similar feel to the old White Wolf stuff. Now, you may think that there is a vast difference, but your scale could be similar to those people who insist, beyond any doubt, that there are vast and important differences between Budweiser and Miller. Compared to the far greater variety outside of White Wolf, Exalted looks like nothing but a World of Darkness prequel.