Eric Gibson's Ownership of West End Games
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Role-playing, board and wargaming publisher |
| Founded | 2003 |
| Founder(s) | Eric J. Gibson |
| Headquarters | Coatesville, Pennsylvania, USA |
| Products | D6 System, Torg, Junta |
| Owner(s) | Eric J. Gibson |
| Website | None (formerly www.westendgames.com) |
In November 2003 West End Games was bought by Eric J. Gibson, who moved the company to Downingtown, Pennsylvania, in 2004. Under his tenure, WEG's flagship line was a generic version of the D6 System, which led to a line of irregularly produced supplements and met with general approval from fans. Unfortunately, this approval did not translate into high sales; in a post on the official West End forums in 2008 Eric Gibson announced that none of the D6 products produced since he acquired West End had turned a profit, and West End's other RPG lines were not performing as well as he had expected, leading to losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
West End also expanded back into board games, beginning with a new edition of Junta, which according to Eric was one of the few products that was turning a profit.
West End Games' most recent planned offering, the Septimus roleplaying game, was publicly cancelled by Eric Gibson in March 2008. Eric Gibson announced on the morning of July 16, 2008 that West End Games could not currently afford to provide refunds to customers who pre-ordered the cancelled Septimus product, and indeed could not even afford to pay the postage to ship books to individuals who expressed a willingness to accept a refund in the form of products instead of money.
On Sunday, July 19, 2008, following both an extended discussion of West End's failure to provide refunds for those who had preordered Septimus and the ensuing forum flameout, Eric Gibson announced on the West End Games forums that he was officially through with the company and was selling all of its properties; he revealed that he had already been contacted by interested parties, but felt that he should not make the facts about the offerings public. Eric Gibson later expressed that he was no longer looking to dissolve the company or sell off any of its properties.
Eric Gibson has stated in an interview that he was "perhaps naïvely optimistic" in assuming that distributors would order products produced under his ownership of the company "just because it's West End Games." He further stated that this led him to print more books than he could sell, books which he had to destroy in order to save on storage costs. Towards the end of the company's history, Gibson had plans to release the d6 System under the terms of the Open Gaming License "to save the d6 System from myself," meaning that if the company had to go out of business, the system would still be available to the general public.
Read more about this topic: West End Games
Famous quotes containing the words eric, gibson, ownership, west and/or games:
“...I discovered that I could take a risk and survive. I could march in Philadelphia. I could go out in the street and be gay even in a dress or a skirt without getting shot. Each victory gave me courage for the next one.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)
“They’re semiotic phantoms, bits of deep cultural imagery that have split off and taken on a life of their own, like those Jules Verne airships that those old Kansas farmers were always seeing.... Semiotic ghosts. Fragments of the Mass Dream, whirling past in the wind of my passage.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“They had their fortunes to make, everything to gain and nothing to lose. They were schooled in and anxious for debates; forcible in argument; reckless and brilliant. For them it was but a short and natural step from swaying juries in courtroom battles over the ownership of land to swaying constituents in contests for office. For the lawyer, oratory was the escalator that could lift a political candidate to higher ground.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“In the past, it seemed to make sense for a sportswriter on sabbatical from the playpen to attend the quadrennial hawgkilling when Presidential candidates are chosen, to observe and report upon politicians at play. After all, national conventions are games of a sort, and sports offers few spectacles richer in low comedy.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)