For the Love

I recently discovered that I have a competitor. At first, I was unsure how to respond to this. My first reaction was territorial. RPGs are a small market by themselves. Oz RPGs would inevitably be a much smaller market. Could 2 games survive in the same very small niche?

I sent off a very guarded email to the designer of the other game. He was not interested in being adversarial. He offered some comments on my game and I gave him some on his. We've decided to just make the best game we each can do and let the chips fall where they may.

I recently had a conversation with Brad McDevitt, artist, industry veteran, and all around heck of a guy, about the state of the gaming industry. He said that through much of the '80's and early '90's, the gaming industry was rather friendly. Then Magic: The Gathering came along. And Magic made money. It made mad money.

Suddenly, all of these guys who were in the business for the love of the game realized that there was an actual hope of making serious money. And the love of money drowned out the love of the game. Publishers became much more adversarial, trying to get larger and larger pieces of the pie and making sure that their former friends didn't.

I have realized that I'm doing this for the love. I'm doing this to see my name in print. I'm doing this because I want to be able to say that I did something with my life. I'm doing this to show the world that I can.

And that's what really matters, in the end.