Games' Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Players, Pawns, and Power-Ups

5. Trailblazers

32 5 Trailblazers You may know the name of the game, but do you know the company behind it? Here are a few game companies responsible for some of the most popular games in the tabletop and video game industry. 1. TACTICAL STUDIES RULES The company that would produce Dungeons & Dragons began in 1973 with Gary Gygax and Don Kaye. Upon Kaye’s death in 1975, the company dissolved and reformed as TSR Hobbies with Gygax as its president/CEO. Gygax worked alongside Brian and Kevin Blume. It was that year that D&D saw its first release, followed quickly by several supplements and settings. The company moved out of Gygax’s home to regular offices in 1978 as the game’s popularity increased. By 1980, TSR Ltd. was formed in England to meet growing demand in the United Kingdom and Europe. Two years later, TSR had earned more than twenty million dollars in sales, and not just on the back of D&D. Other RPGs, such as Star Frontiers, Gamma World, and Top Secret, contributed to the company ’s bottom line. Despite the presence of these other game lines, it was clear that D&D was top dog in the company. The D&D line expanded to novels and soon made TSR the largest producer of fantasy and science fiction in the U.S. The game also brought about a popular Saturday morning cartoon show. Trailblazers 33 After ownership issues resulted in a slump in profits for the company, the Blumes and Gygax left TSR. Although profitability returned for a short time, by the early 1990s the company was producing more product than it could sell in a now saturated market. By the mid-1990s, TSR was more than thirty million in debt and faced bankruptcy. It was soon acquired by Wizards of the Coast, which continues to produce D&D products to this day. 2. WIZARDS OF THE COAST Wizards of the Coast began as many adventure game companies did: in the basement of its founder. Peter Adkison started the company in 1990 and struggled in the early years, producing RPG supplements and rules. The company nearly folded thanks to legal troubles. After weathering the storm, Wizards released a game that changed the adventure game market. Magic: The Gathering , the first CCG, brought a dramatic shift in the habits of players and business plans of many of Wizards’ competitors . Wizards underwent a growth spurt, from 8 employees in 1993 to more than 250 two years later. As if Magic: The Gathering wasn’t a big enough splash, Wizards acquired TSR in 1997. Many feared the end of the venerable D&D game, but instead it thrived under new ownership , with the release of the Third Edition rules in 2000. This release also saw the dawn of the d20 rule system, released as an open-source system, allowing many third-party publishers to capitalize on its success. Wizards was purchased by toy giant Hasbro in 1999. Peter Adkison left the company in the beginning of 2001 and went on to purchase and run Gen Con, the largest U.S. gaming convention that was once owned by TSR and Wizards. 3. VALVE Valve is best known for its Half-Life and Team Fortress franchises . Most recently, it has found success with the Left 4 34 Games’ Most Wanted™ Dead and Portal series of games. Well-known for first person shooter games, Valve took the genre in new directions by turning a mindless “shoot ’em up” into a game with a fully developed story line. The release of Half-Life was met with critical acclaim, netting the title more than fifty Game of the Year awards from various publications. Founded in 1996 by two former Microsoft developers, Valve has had a history of innovation and frustration among fans. The innovation came with the launch of Steam, a digital content distribution platform featuring games from Valve and other developers that allowed for multiplayer and social networking functions. Steam is the largest active online multiplayer service, with more than thirty million active accounts . Further innovation came from the use of the Source game engine, which allows for incredible and realistic graphic game development. Conversely, Valve has frustrated gamers for years with numerous broken promises of release dates; its big hit, Half-Life 2, took nearly five years to develop. 4. GAMES WORKSHOP A hobby game company based out of the United Kingdom and with a large international reach, Games Workshop is known primarily for the...