Interviews by an Optimist # 31 -

Steve Jackson

Steve Jackson graduated from Rice University in Houston. While there, he spent most of his time playing wargames and working on the student paper, the Thresher (he spent two years as editor). He became a writer and game publisher, proving that college can be very valuable if you don't let classes get in your way.

He has survived involvements with the Republican Party (alternate delegate to the 1972 convention, but he got better - he now considers himself a Libertarian), the SCA (former landed baron and National Chronicler) and law school (escaping before the bar exam; game design was more fun).

Steve's first professional design work was for Metagaming, which published his Ogre, G.E.V., Melee, Wizard, and several other games. In 1980, Steve bought The Space Gamer magazine from Metagaming and started his own company. One of his first games, Raid on Iran, was a critical and sales success. The next year, Steve Jackson Games released its first big hit, Car Wars . . . followed shortly by Illuminati, and later by GURPS, the "Generic Universal Roleplaying System."

In 1983, Steve was elected to the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame - the youngest person ever so honored. He now spends far too much time helping to manage Steve Jackson Games Incorporated, which at the moment employs 15 people.

The company made national news in 1990 after the disastrous Secret Service intrusion, which nearly forced the company out of business by seizing hardware and data files. SJ Games filed suit against the Secret Service and the US government, and won more than $50,000 in damages. Steve remains occasionally active with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which works to prevent similar miscarriages of law enforcement. The local group he helped to found, EFF-Austin, has now been subsumed into Electronic Frontiers Texas.

He still writes, when he finds the time. In the 1980s, he tried his hand at interactive books or "game novels" (his first, Scorpion Swamp, was published by Penguin and spent six months on the British children's bestseller list). In 1994, he reworked the old faithful Illuminati to jump on the trading-card bandwagon. INWO (Illuminati: New World Order) became the company's biggest hit yet, and its first million-dollar ship.

In addition to gaming, Steve is a dedicated SF reader and fan, and enjoys attending both gaming and SF conventions. He writes folksongs (adequately) and sings (very badly). He still claims to be working on an interactive computer game about running the Worldcon; the beta-test version has been due Real Soon Now for several years. He is a confirmed computerphile and net addict. His other interests include gardening (especially water gardening), beekeeping, dinosaurs and tropical fish. In his copious free time, he reads, eats and sleeps.

Tom Vasel: Steve, has the focus of SJ games changed over the years? What game would you consider the "flagship" game of your company currently?

Steve Jackson: We've been around for 20 years, and yes, the focus has changed more than once. We started off doing minigames, for instance.

Right now I would say that GURPS and Munchkin share the flagship role.

Tom Vasel: Munchkin has a huge popularity rate amongst many people. Were you surprised by its success?

Steve Jackson: Yes. Surprised and delighted!

Tom Vasel: It seems that many of your new games focus on humor rather than game mechanics. How important do you think the theme is when producing a game?

Steve Jackson: Very. There are different styles of design; many European games focus on mechanics and theme is an afterthought. This sometimes produces very fun games that are "about" something totally off the wall. I always start with theme; I want to know what I'm designing the game about, and come up with mechanics to support it.

Tom Vasel: Can humor (theme) take a low to mediocre game and make it an enjoyable experience?

Steve Jackson: What is a "low to mediocre game"?

Tom Vasel: I apologize, I should clarify. Sometimes, when playing a humor-based card game, such as Battle of the Bands, I feel that while the theme is very humorous, the mechanics are only "so-so". I wonder if I might not play the game if the theme wasn't involved. What are your thoughts on this?

Steve Jackson: OIC. Okay. No, I think that if a game is no fun, it's no fun. I have seen card games in particular where reading through the cards ONCE is a lot of fun, but the play of the game is deadly dull. Humor can add to the fun, but it can't supply it where none exists.

Tom Vasel: You dabbled in the CCG market with INWO. Do you see something like that in the future, or has the market died for that sort of game?

Steve Jackson: The CCG market has not died, but it's chancy and largely dominated by unplayable concoctions based on big licenses. Not something I want to get involved in right now.

Tom Vasel: Do you consider Munchkin and the like (Chez Geek, etc.) a sort of collectible card games?
Steve Jackson: I assume you're asking that because there are supplements, but no. I don't think they appeal to the same audience. There's no rarity, there's no deck building, there's no collector mania and no Mister Suitcase.

Tom Vasel: What crowd do you think your games appeal most to? Do you have crossovers from role players, etc.?

Steve Jackson: Since one of our big games IS a RPG, yes, we get a lot of roleplayers :-)

And Munchkin parodies a certain style of RPG, so it takes a role-player to really get it.

Tom Vasel: Does SJ Games emphasize board/card games, or RPGs more? Is it hard to keep a balance between the two?

Steve Jackson: We do them both and definitely don't have any intent to emphasize one over the other. Over short periods of time one may get more support (for instance, last year we released the Fourth Edition of GURPS, and there was a lot of RPG hoopla). There's no particular trouble in keeping a balance . . . we have more ideas in both genres than we have time to pursue . .

Tom Vasel: Some critics have accused SJ Games of producing games that aren't worth their cost. How does SJ games compete in a board gaming world where component-heavy games, such as Heroscape, Memoir '44, or Doom: the Boardgame, dominate?

Steve Jackson: If you look at a game as a toy purchase, yep, Doom's the way to go ... Lots of toys there. It will be interesting to see if it's still on shelves in a year, and again in two years.

If the question is "How many hours of play do I get out of the components?" then some of these component-heavy games aren't much of a deal. Here I point to the ultimate light-component, heavy-play-value publisher, Cheapass. In the end, if a game isn't worth the cost, people won't keep buying it, year after year.

Tom Vasel: I understand the light-component value of games by companies such as Cheapass. But those games are also dirt-cheap. Why are the prices for SJ games so high, without the component quality of other companies' games?

Steve Jackson: Since you press the question, I can try to give you an answer you like better. But that's not a criticism that I see in my own mail, and the retailers certainly aren't telling us we're overpriced . . . and they weren't shy at all, a couple of years ago, when we released X-BUGS, and they thought it cost too much. (We were paying a license fee on that one, unfortunately.) We've now got games running from $9.95 (Spooks - a deck of cards) to $59.95 (Deluxe GEV, two big color maps, rules, three plastic boxes, and a whole bunch of metal minis). So I guess I'd have to know exactly which games "a lot of people on the Internet" are complaining about and what they're comparing to. I do go into stores and see boxes of plastic toys selling for $25 or $30, but I don't even think we're in the same marketplace . . . the people who are impressed by "component value" over "play value" will *never* be my customers. That said, I'm working on a couple of projects with more elaborate components, but they will NOT be cheap. Most of our press runs are in the 5,000 to 10,000 area, and we price everything we do to get a reasonable markup and stay in business . . .

Tom Vasel: These projects with "elaborate components" sound interesting. Can you give us any more info on them?

Steve Jackson: No. :)

Tom Vasel: Oh well. Are there any new games coming that you can tell us about?

Steve Jackson: I won't say that I have NEVER announced a new release in an interview before the regular site posting, but I sure can't remember the last time. Is there anything in http://www.sjgames.com/newproducts/ that you'd like to know more about?

Tom Vasel: No, nothing in particular. Let's talk about you, as a gamer. What are some of your favorite games?

Steve Jackson: Of my own: Munchkin for a quick card game, or Illuminati for a longer one. Ogre for a boardgame. And I really liked X-Bugs but the market didn't "get it." Tribes for a roleplaying game, even though really it's not, because really you DO roleplay if you're doing it right.

I didn't create UltraCorps, but SJ Games owns it now because I really liked it - enough to pay to rescue it from oblivion. Coming soon to a web browser near you . . . ! I'm having too much fun with the playtest.

Other games: Risk. Axis & Allies. I've really enjoyed several games of Puerto Rico recently. Parts Unknown. Starcraft. Haven't played Diplomacy for years, but someday...

Tom Vasel: What group do you cater your games towards? I'm assuming it's not the "Euro" games crowd.

Steve Jackson: Different groups for different types of games. Munchkin and most of our other card games are aimed at people who want fast social play and like to laugh. GURPS is aimed at roleplayers who actually like roleplaying, as opposed to, say, munchkining :-)

Tom Vasel: As a publisher, which conventions do you find are the best for publicizing your games?

Steve Jackson: Small and medium-sized ones, always. I get the chance to interact with everyone who wants to meet me. Large ones are only a good use of time if I'm a GoH and they get their scheduling right. I'm remembering the recent Origins where I was a GoH and the con (a) designated my main talk as 'ticket required', and (b) somehow managed to list the event as sold out while distributing no actual tickets. The only attendees in that biiiiiiig room were the people who decided to take a chance on finding an open seat. They succeeded.

Tom Vasel: How does internet buzz and reviews of your games affect sales?

Steve Jackson: I can't quantify it, but certainly it's good to have people saying they like the games!

Tom Vasel: What have you found to be the best way to spread word about your games?

Steve Jackson: Not depending on any one way is the best way! We spend a lot of time on our website, but we also work hard to get information to distributors and through them to retailers. We publish a regular color catalog, and our Men In Black volunteer program reaches lots of stores and conventions with demonstrations.

Tom Vasel: Have you ever tried to get your games into a mass-market medium, such as Toys 'R Us, or WalMart?

Steve Jackson: What, Barnes & Noble doesn't count?

We've looked into the two you mention. TRU, aside from apparently being dead at the moment, is not attractive to us, nor we to them, because their buyers are not impressed by products that are not supported by mass-media campaigns. WalMart actually carries our line in its online section, but they buy from one of our distributors, not direct from us, and we're not in their stores.

Tom Vasel: How are games designed at SJ games? Do designers singly work on a game, or do you have a team of people develop each game?

Steve Jackson: Typically, one person does the initial design, and one or more people then get involved as "developers" to polish it.

Tom Vasel: Do you accept game submissions, or do you have an "in-house" group of designers?

Steve Jackson: We do accept submissions - see http://www.sjgames.com/general/guidelines/ - but most of our GAME design is done in-house. By contrast, most of the RPG books we publish are written out of house.

Tom Vasel: What advice would you have for budding game designers?

Steve Jackson: “Don’t quit your day job.”

Tom Vasel: Steve, thanks for taking the time for this interview. Do you have any final words for our readers?

Steve Jackson: Okay. If you've got a good local gaming store, SUPPORT them. If your local gaming store isn't good, ask yourself if some friendly feedback would help MAKE them good . . .
And if you know somebody who ought to be a gamer but isn't . . . or who used to be, and doesn't think he has the time any more . . . invite him to a game. Spread the hobby!