Wednesday, August 13, 2003

 

Steve Jackson Games Responds

As I mentioned yesterday, Paul Chapman, manager of the soon-to-be-closed miniatures division of Steve Jackson Games, responded to my rant from a few days ago. I'm posting his rebuttal here, because, well, it's only fair! I would like to thank Paul Chapman for his kind permission to repost this, which first appeared in the SFBay_OGRE Yahoo! group. Here it is:

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Yep, that's a rant all right. Pretty accurate for the most part. I
would like to put a different spin on a couple of things, though.

Point 1) "...SJG couldn't sustain it, despite demand from the
fans...." That demand didn't translate into sales. Had the sales been
higher, the line's overall priority would have risen. Case in point:
Chez Geek. When this little card game was released, sales sucked.
Bad. But over time, the sales picked up, and *bam* the sales drove
the line to produce sequels and spinoffs.

Point 2) Our focus was all over the place. In retrospect, I agree. At
the time, I was searching for the new cow to milk, as Ogre's sales
were telling me that well had largely gone dry (to horribly mix
metaphors). The reasoning for the well going dry isn't something I'm
going to debate at the moment -- ask me again in six months.

Point 3) "...why bother with Hellboy Miniatures?" Because Hellboy is
popular, and sold _very_ well for us. If we hadn't done HB, we'd be
having this conversation about a year earlier.

Point 4) Re: SJ's relationship with third-party miniatures companies.
I can't comment on RP, as I wasn't either here or there at the time.
Armorcast, I caught the tail end of the affair, and I can say with
confidence that casting blame on just one party isn't realistic. As
for the other resin companies, SJ had nothing to do with them. I was
the point man on those interactions, and I feel no shame in saying
that I should have terminated each relationship much sooner than I
did. None of the companies I worked with were able to produce the
quality on the schedule that was agreed upon. Characterizing them as
throwing up their hands "in utter frustration" is completely
inaccurate.

Point 5) "I'm afraid this is the beginning of another long
interregnum." Given the interest I've seen from potential licensees
in the past 24 hours, I'm going to disagree with your fears.

[This has been an official message from Steve Jackson Games'
Miniatures Division.]
Paul Chapman
http://www.sjgames.com/minis
Miniatures Division Manager
Steve Jackson Games
paul@sjgames.com

Jefferson 5:20 PM

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