Wizards of the Coast
| Wizards of the Coast | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| Year Established | 1990 | |
| Notable Games | Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons | |
| Website | http://www.wizards.com | |
Wizards of the Coast was founded in a dingy basement in 1990.
History
Wizards started out as a small time publisher, purchasing defunct game systems and releasing them or simply plagiarising other people's stuff (Palladium Books - The Primal Order). Due to being sued, they made a sub-company in a quasi-legal fiscal dodge called Garfield Games to produce a card game they were working on.
Magic
Magic: The Gathering was a damn fine card game, being the first commercially successful Collectible Card Game in the world, (not as good as it sounds, the only other CCG in the world at that time was a baseball card game released in the early 1900s) Still, it started an industry.
More RPGs
Since Wizards of the Coast cannot come up with anything good on their own besides card games, they bought Ars Magica and SLA Industries to shore up their RPG line. They pretty much killed them. One last ditch at making an RPG, called Everway, came out in 1995. It tried to mix something WotC was good at (cards) with something they utterly suck at (RPGs). After that was released they stopped making RPGs and the world rejoiced.
Buy the talent with the money from this patent
In 1997, Wizards patented a lot of card game methodology, and now fucks anyone else who makes a CCG with the inability to turn cards sideways, load a card with counters, or what have you. Although a clear violation of monopoly laws, the lawyers manage to keep WotC in a nice loophole. They bought TSR, then Hasbro bought them.
Same old, same old.
Wizards of the Coast started producing Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition. Staying true to their roots, the game was full of errors and fail and they released a new version in 4 years to fix all the shit they messed up. They managed to fail trying to sell Planescape, Dark Sun and SpellJammer, settings that should have sold themselves. They released another edition 4 years after that to fix all the other shit they fucked up. They did some good shit too, but it was usually someone elses' work The only reason D&D hasn't died as quickly as the other games WotC has touched is because of the strength of the property name, though that's being eroded slowly. They had a chain of retail stores, but they failed at that too.
Today
They enjoy making people rage over what they did to Dungeons and Dragons, and they don't mind taking credit they don't deserve as evidenced at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards when they took TSRs rightful reward for NWN.