Hilarious indeed, but the column cannot be an 1980 original through and through, given that Cecil refers to company happenings in the mid-80’s in it.
Yeah; the passage below suggests that the article was, if not entirely written, at least partially revised, sometime between 1986 (when Gygax formally left TSR), and 1997 (when TSR was bought out by WotC).
Indeed it is revised. I have what may be the original version, or at least just a few years after 1980, on my shelf in the first SD anthology book, copyrighted in 1984; there are many differences. Coming just 6 years after the invention of the game, Cecil’s original writeup comes across as a lot more bemused, and somewhat more disparaging.