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| Two companies more alike than at first glance... |
Growing up outside of Rochester, NY, I heard some variation of this from Kodak and in the media over and over:
- "We have fifty years of film."
- "We have decades of film left."
- "We have 50 years of paper."
- "The world will always need photographic paper."
Whether it came from high-level Kodak executives or somewhere else in the local conversation, it did not matter. They did not have fifty years. They barely had five.
Kodak kept talking about how their bread and butter would continue to power them into the future despite the rise of digital cameras and then ultimately smartphones. This was the same company that had created the first digital camera in 1975. My dad worked at Kodak in 1975 and actually saw that camera back then. They invented the future and then spent the next couple of decades trying to protect the past instead of owning what they had built.
In 1980 one also has to wonder if TSR was thinking along the same lines. There were competitors, sure, but nothing that looked strong enough to knock them off their perch. D&D was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of the RPG world. From the outside it looked permanent.
But in each case they were going to fail. Some of it was their own making. Some of it was not. A good portion was just plain hubris. It is eerie how both companies sat at the absolute pinnacle of their respective markets and then felt like Icarus flying too close to the sun.
So what does this have to do with gaming? A lot, really. I am mainly talking about TSR here, but first a quick overview of Kodak.
Kodak was founded in 1880 in Rochester, New York by George Eastman. In time they came to define photography itself. By their zenith around 1980 they were a world-renowned brand that seemed untouchable. Then came the early 1990s and a series of missteps, ill-advised moves to diversify, and the decision to spin off the parts that would actually prove more valuable later (namely Eastman Chemical). Their fall and shortsightedness were staggering. The company that had once owned the image of everyday life slowly lost the plot.
Then there is TSR. From starting up at Gary’s house and in his basement to produce the first 1,000 wood-grain Basic sets to later revised editions to eventually 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. By the early 1980s TSR and more specfically D&D was a juggernaut with two distinct lines and grossing something like 26 million in 1983 and had risen to the pinnacle of the RPG landscape by the early 1990s. For a while it felt like the hobby revolved around Lake Geneva.
In both cases the 1990s would not be kind. TSR would not make it out alive. They were purchased by Wizards of the Coast and effectively gone thereafter. Check out this "article" from the "ancient years" on the internet!
It is said that hindsight is 20/20, but I am going to pull in another famous quote from none other than Steve Jobs: "If we do not cannibalize our products, someone else will." That certainly describes Kodak. The question is how well it describes TSR.
Even in the 1980s TSR was already attempting to diversify into other hobby areas (needlepoint, anyone?). Meanwhile Kodak spun off the parts that would turn out to be successful later. The situations were not identical, but the type of decision-making feels uncomfortably close. Both companies made choices that protected the old model a little too hard and failed to fully embrace what was coming next (moreseo in Kodak's case). In the end those choices helped doom them.
It is eerie how closely these two stories run parallel to each other. Both companies stood at the absolute peak of their industries in the 1980s. Both failed to fully adapt when the ground started shifting under them. And both saw the 1990s become the decade of their long decline and eventual demise. One was bought out and absorbed. The other never really recovered its former place. Different industries, same basic arc of hubris, missed chances, and a future that arrived faster than either was ready for.
Am I off on this? Lets here from those especially in my neck of the woods, does this sound familiar to you?
