As a fan of Bujold I was looking forward to this book. But as a fan of wargame companies I figured it would be late. (One company once published a 2007 promotional calendar and due to publication delays didn’t release it until May of 2007.)
But even with this history in mind, this is a little extreme. Here’s some updates on the progress of the book. (These are from the company’s website.)
July 3, 2000: Steve Jackson games announces it has acquired the rights to produce a game based on Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series.
June 22, 2001: The book’s writer has been assigned and the writing is in progress. Playtesting is “at least a couple of months” away.
November 21, 2001: The playtest version is finished and playtesting began on November 9. “This appears to be the final pre-release version.”
January 2002: The previous announcement is updated. Playtesting is finished but the book is not yet in print.
June 10, 2003: “The manuscript is complete; the pages are laid out.” But there are delays over the art.
December 15, 2003: The publication is announced. It’s scheduled for a January 2005 release.
Why am I bringing this subject up now? Because the book was released - on June 11, 2009. Not the actual book itself - that’s scheduled for release next October. It was released in PDF format. Another three weeks of delay and they could have released it on the ninth anniversary of the original announcement.
And Steve Jackson Games is actually one of the most professional companies in the business. It makes you wonder how it is that the hobby is in such trouble.
I guess what gets me is that their GURPS role-playing system has been around since 1988. The Vorkosigan background had already been created by Bujold. You’d think that they could have gotten this whole project, which is basically a 242 page book, in stores within about six months of the initial licensing. But by their own accounts it took them a year to get started and then two more years to finish the writing. And then six more years to get a completed manuscript published and released. This is evidence of poor management.
There are a lot of small “game” companies (and this applies to computer game software, too) where the staff/writer/devolper/coder positions are filled by people who are taking those as a second job. This slows production way down.
**I don’t know if that’s true in this specific case, though. Just offering a suggestion.
As a member of the game-writing community, I must say that management in general sucks throughout the industry. Many of those roles are filled by long-time writers and developers who have great creative skills, but with the small market size it really doesn’t attract folks who don’t do this for some level of love of the game.
Shit that would get someone canned in a more corporate setting goes on for much longer instead. Payments are late, sometimes not at all. Deadlines are missed, with no reprocussions. Its kind of sad really.
Creativity is nice but you need some business skills too. I got into wargaming back in the seventies, in what was in retrospect the Golden Age of the industry. Avalon Hill, SPI, and TSR were putting products on the shelf.
