Howard Thompson (wargame designer)
Howard Thompson | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Game designer |
Howard M. Thompson is an American
Thompson is most famous for his idea to publish small, low-cost games in what came to be known as the
Career
Howard Thompson founded
In the early 1980s, some speculate that the company started to run into financial trouble, partially because of the generally poor economic situation at that time, and because of the split with one of his main game designers, Steve Jackson.[
Thompson wrote MicroQuest #3 Treasure of the Silver Dragon (1980) and MicroQuest #6 Treasure of Unicorn Gold (1981) for The Fantasy Trip and marketed each of them linked to a real treasure hunt where readers could search the books for clues to receive a prize of $10,000 from Metagaming.[1]: 80 Wanting to publish more products for groups of players for The Fantasy Trip, Thompson signed an agreement in 1982 with publisher Gamelords to design a campaign world for the game, but only two campaign books were published before Thompson ended the agreement.[1]: 80
On 1 January 1982, Thompson created Games Research Group, Inc., which was initially part of Metagaming.[5] Thompson let his two remaining wargame designers go on April 16, 1982, allowing them to work as freelancers for Games Research Group instead of working as employees.[1]: 81 Metagaming ended its operations in April 1983 and Thompson left the games industry; Steve Jackson sought to purchase The Fantasy Trip from Thompson, but Jackson declined the offered price of $250,000.[1]: 81 Thompson promised to come back to the field one day to publish computer games, but by 1984 he stopped returning phone calls and thereafter disappeared completely from the gaming community.[1]: 81
Games designed
- Stellar Conquest (1974)
- Chitin: I (1977)
- WarpWar (1977)
- Treasure of the Silver Dragon (1980) (module for The Fantasy Trip role-playing game)
- Treasure of the Unicorn Gold (1981) (module for The Fantasy Trip)
- Starleader: Assault! (1982)
Illustrations
Thompson also provided illustrations for two of his company's games, Helltank and Monsters! Monsters!
References
- ^ ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7.
- ^ "Where We're Going", Howard Thompson, The Space Gamer, Number 1 (Metagaming, 1975)
- ^ Thompson, Howard (1980-03-31). "Letter addressed to Andy Windes". Retrieved 2007-12-29.
- ^ "Metagaming Report", Howard Thompson, The Space Gamer, Number 27 (SJG, March–April 1980)
- ^ Thompson, Howard (1982-04-01). "Letter addressed to Metagaming employees Kevin Hendryx and Norman Royal". Retrieved 2007-12-29.