From mavra@wizards.com Mon Jan 29 10:26:10 1996 Received: from castle.wizards.com (castle.wizards.com [199.238.208.1]) by osceola.gate.net (8.6.12/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA43878 for ; Mon, 29 Jan 1996 10:26:07 -0500 Received: from [199.238.209.220] (w09-220.wizards.com [199.238.209.220]) by castle.wizards.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id HAA10638 for ; Mon, 29 Jan 1996 07:30:23 -0800 X-Sender: mavra@castle.wizards.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 07:27:50 -0700 To: daili@gate.net From: mavra@wizards.com (Peter Adkison) Subject: Re: Interview Questions for You Status: RO >1. You are the President of WotC, not the Janitor correct? I clean up messes. Some people who have this job are called janitors while some are called presidents, CEOs, or jerks. You decide. :-) >2. What has been Wizards of the Coast part in the development of the CCG >industry? What part will Wizards of the Coast continue to play in the future? Trading cards have been around for decades. But Magic: The Gathering was the first game published in a trading card format. As the publishers of Magic, I think it's fair to say that Wizards of the Coast founded the trading card game (TCG) industry like TSR founded the roleplaying industry and Avalon Hill founded the Wargaming industry. We of course would like to continue on as the leader in the TCG industry. But leadership doesn't come from reminiscing about past successes--we're going to have to keep improving Magic and publishing new TCGs as well. >3. What do you think of the way the game (Magic: The Gathering) has >evolved? Do you think that MTG is being taken too serious by some >Tournment players that insist on the use of Power cards like Moxes and >the like?? I love the way it's evolved. People love the game. I love the game. I still play fanatically like I did when I started in the fall of 1991 when Richard invented it. I used to get in huge debates about powergaming in roleplaying circles. People used to scream about munchkins and kids playing gods and stuff and my response was, "hey, I like roleplaying at all levels. I've played gods fighting over plains and I've played zero level characters trying to dig their way out of orc prison camps by stealing spoons from the mess hall." Same goes for Magic. I like limited environments like sealed decks, leagues, and drafts, but I also enjoyed a game in Paris I played recently with an amazing Type I denial deck. I'm a fanagic about games. It's difficult for me to be critical of others who are fanatics too. :-) >4. Is there anything you can tell us about the new Ice Age expansion, >Alliances? Is there anything you can tell us about what will replace Ice >Ages after its stopped being printed? Is Sosumi the new "IA" after Ice >Ages is retired? (See below) Alliances looks very strong. I think most people will rank it as one of our best expansions. I can't personally comment on Sosumi--it's still in playtesting. >5. Is there anything you can tell us about Chronicles 2? No. >6. Why won't Alpha/Beta/Unlimited cards like the Black Lotus ever be >reprinted? The cards that won't be reprinted are the cards that break the game, like Black Lotus. You don't fix broken cards by printing more of them. >7. What do you think about people who complain that Chronicles makes the >prices of their originals drop? (Can you explain, Why Chronicles was made >for people like this?) For every person who complains about Chronicles there's another person who's glad we did it. The answer is simple, it lets more people enjoy playing with those cards. I was at a tournament once where I met this kid who was a great player. I asked him why he wasn't in the tournament and he said he didn't have enough money to buy all the cards you need to play to win. That's not what this is supposed to be about. >8. What is NetRunner going to be like? When can we expect NetRunner to be >released? Netrunner will be released in April or May. It follows the cyberpunk paradigm developed in R. Talsorian's CP2020 roleplaying game. You can play a netrunner or a corporation. The decks are different. As the corporation you're trying to score data points, while netrunners try to steal data from the corporation. We've been enjoying it around the office, particularly now that we're starting to get some decent playtest cards in here. >9. What is Wizards of the Coast planning for the future? Our priorities right now are to continue building Magic, to expand internationally, to build Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, to launch Netrunner, and to focus on events like the professional Magic tournament circuit, the world championship, and Origins. The Events stuff is very exciting. No one is doing much in this area at all. I am much more interested in doing something very different. Lots of companies are doing RPGs and novels. Before WotC came along everyone thought the epitome of conventions was Gencon, but there could be so much more. >10. Do you think that Wizards of the Coast may return to making RPGs >sometime in the future? Sure, it's possible. I love RPGs, but I'll only publish RPGs if I think we can make money at it. It just doesn't make sense to be in business and publish products hardly anyone buys. I don't call that love for a hobby--I call it arrogance. >11. Can you tell us, how Wizards of the Coast came about? Before WotC I was a systems analyst at Boeing. But I really wanted to do something in gaming. So I asked my friends if anyone else was interested and many of them were. So we started. We had no clue what we were doing at all, but we learned quickly, and started attracting people who did know. We had no money. We never attracted the "big investor." It was always a few hundred here and a couple thousand there. We operated out of the basement of my house. Then Magic came out and changed everything. The rest is history. :-) >12. Can you shed any light on the rumors that WotC is developing the >BattleTech CCG? And if so, when BattleTech CCG will be released? We are not developing a Battletech TCG. >13. Can you tell us about some of the new MTG related products we will >may see in the future? (Software, Books etc.) Netrunner is our big new release. For Vampire we have a couple of pretty cool expansions, particularly Sabbat. Within Magic it's primarily Alliances and Sosumi this year, plus all the stuff we're doing in events. Duelist will continue on strong as ever and should in fact go monthly by mid-year sometime. >14. What exactly is Sabbat? See below. I probably shouldn't say. I'm not sure what we've announced. But it certainly the product I'm personally looking forward to the most this summer! >15. What is the status of V:TES? There have not been any expansions for >it or Jyhad to date. Is there a reason for this? Actually we came out with an expansion this fall for V:TES called Dark Sovereigns. It did very well for us. Compared to Magic it was only a drop in the bucket, but on the other hand, this one expansion sold more than all the roleplaying products we've sold, company wide, since the company was started. Dark Sovereigns focused on European vampires and locations. It has some amazing art in it! Ancient Hearts is our next expansion and should be out this spring. It focuses on Mediterranean vampires and includes Assamites and the Followers of Set. --- Hope this was what you wanted. Stay on target, Mav Janitor, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.