Report To The Stakeholders

[Christopher R. Rice]

Maybe "Just the right amount of evil."

[stefanj]

I just finished "Game Wizards," about the rise and fall of TSR, and I am once again impressed by the contrast between "let's raise a yacht from the bottom of Lake Geneva and rent a ranch in Hollywood for the boss to shmooze from and also do nepotism" and the honest, open, nose-to-the-grindstone work of SJGames.


Doing my bit to help by plowing a good chunk of my article earnings into Kickstarters! :-)

[pestigor]

There was a stretch a few years back that I thought Role Playing was on it's way out (and in turn that Gurps was going to die) I am glad to see that Gurps is not only still going but is a priority (and I infer doing well). Thanks for the Report.

[DeadParrot]

Please don't let the new Warehouse23 site become a 3rd party domain script fest like so many other sites have become. The current one just works without me feeling like every click is being monitored and sent to 20+ outside companies.

[Steve Jackson]

That sounds evil in the bad way, and it doesn't sound like any part of our plans. Can you give me an example of what you don't like, though? Put it in e-mail if you don't want to call an offender out in public.

[Polydamas]

Etsy appears blank when I use my VPN (there is not even a warning, it just appears blank) https://www.etsy.com/

Tod Cutler sends popups asking that I sign up for his mailing list (I am already signed up- ed.) https://todcutler.com/

Many sites are blank unless you enable cloudfront scripts

Edit: biblio.com (the main independent online used bookseller) wants me to enable scripts from chimpstatic.com, gstatic.com, googletagmanager.com, and cloudfront.net in addition to trustpilot.net, stripe.com, stripe.network which are presumably related to their payment processing and so more justifiable.

I will keep editing this post as I think of egregious examples.

[baakyocalder]

Is Steve Jackson Games reporting on a cash basis or an accrual basis? As a Certified Public Accountant and gamer, I'm wondering how much of the losses are just timing and base differences and how much of the losses are a result of sales decline and higher shipping costs due to the pandemic.

I don't need to see details, but it's a lot easier to get how bad a year is when you have things crossing between years if you know the base of accounting (which is why multi-year construction contracts make my head hurt).

I'm hoping that 2022 is highly profitable on whatever accounting base Steve Jackson Games uses. Great games, great people, great videos of the gameplay and great transparency. I really bet big on Car Wars and I am very happy with 6e. GURPS isn't something I get to play, but I keep picking up the books to use the good material in games that my players who are less detail-oriented enjoy me running.

Car Wars game I played since the late 1980s, mostly making vehicles, is now one I can easily play against bots or with friends once we actually get to go anywhere again. I went for everything and even got two sets. And Steve Jackson is totally right about more than 4 players. Bot duels of me against 3 cars take a while--more than 4 humans is going to be best Double Drum style. We start with 8 split into 2 sets of 4 in the drums and then one winner emerges once we get to mixing. But hey, I got two of the main set so I can also have two people playing the same premade car (give 'em different colored bases for sake of play ease).

Also, shoutout to Phillip and Warehouse 23 staff. Everything arrived in excellent condition from the Kickstarter and other orders. I had an order issue with getting an extra color of playmats and one less item than ordered and that was quickly and gracefully resolved once I reported it.

And seeing the level of thought that Sam has on the Car Wars design and the decades of Steve Jackson Games having good game design and editing, I don't know if the new games will fit my tastes. I do know that for anyone who likes that style of game, that game will be one that plays well for its niche.

Wishing everyone a safe, healthy and productive year making awesome games for us to play. . .

[DeadParrot]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

That sounds evil in the bad way, and it doesn't sound like any part of our plans. Can you give me an example of what you don't like, though? Put it in e-mail if you don't want to call an offender out in public.

Saturday was a game day with friends featuring Fantasy Trip. I will send some examples via email as I don't do photo hosting sites. Don't need yet another online account to keep track of. Message subject will be Website Script Examples. Included the current W23 for contrast.

[Aleph]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Many sites are blank unless you enable cloudfront scripts

Edit: biblio.com (the main independent online used bookseller) wants me to enable scripts from chimpstatic.com, gstatic.com, googletagmanager.com, and cloudfront.net in addition to trustpilot.net, stripe.com, stripe.network which are presumably related to their payment processing and so more justifiable.

Cloudfront is a content delivery network, aka those websites have put their content (or portions of it) on the Cloudfront servers to enable them to deliver the pages faster and/or less expensively to their users, by taking advantage of Cloudfront's distributed network of caching servers.

Chimpstatic is going to be MailChimp's site integration, which is used to embed their newsletter signup forms into a site.

Google Tag Manager and Gstatic are going to be tools from Google Analytics that the website operators use to measure and track performance of their websites.

Trustpilot is a platform for customer reviews, and has modules that website operators can install to enable reviews.

Stripe is Paypal's point-of-purchase and web API integration payment service.

None of these are nefarious actors, and all of them serve a legitimate business function for an ecommerce site.

Edit:
If you are looking for a return to the days when every web destination wrote 100% of their own code for everything, you are going to find much disappointment these days. The web has gotten infinitely more complex, the expectations of what a site should deliver has had the bar raised considerably, and the volume of traffic and data involved has increased exponentially. You *can* do it all yourself, but (to use a metaphor) re-inventing the wheel can be expensive, and not everyone can afford an automotive engineer, a car production factory, and custom maintenance team for their delivery truck. Especially when the competitors just go buy one off the lot.

[Buzzardo]

Thanks very much for the report. Given the nightmare that is international shipping, I feel like you did pretty well.

As a GURPS player, I'm also happy to see that it remains a priority for the company. On the RPG front, I'm going to try to get my board game group interested in The Fantasy Trip, as a gateway to GURPS.

I am considering Munchkin Batman. I've been a Batman fan since the 60s TV show, and Munchkin's way of making fun of things should be a good fit.