(03-17-2011, 05:01 PM)GrimFinger Wrote: My God, man! You're just oozing at the seams with PBM history. Perhaps the saddest part of what you last wrote, is that I don't even know who Thad Catone is. Clearly, he must have been an individual of some importance in the overall PBM scheme of things. Surely, you will not leave me hanging on a limb, to die of thirst for more knowledge about this icon of which you speak.
I believe that Paul Brown III, formerly of Reality Simulations fame, also got involved in the CCG (collectible card games) craze. I think that the company that he started to pursue that venture ended up going out of business, at some point thereafter.
Thad joined RTG late in its history to run the Beyond The Stellar Empire game. There were so many diehard BSE players that I thought I might name drop him in case it struck a chord with any of them (if they ever read this post). I think Thad was only around at RTG from probably 1995-1998 and he passed away in 1998. Along with Russ (who you know from the RTG website) and Pete and myself he was probably one of the best known GMs at RTG. Gary Hughson also worked at RTG as a Supernova GM for a long time and brought a lot of life to the games there.
RTG was primarily Russ, Pete and myself, but Gary and Thad poured a lot of energy into the company as well. At it's high point there were probably three or four additional GMs at any one time doing data entry for the company, but they got phased out as things became more automated. Russ, Pete, myself, Thad and Gary were the ones that answered the phones, talked to players, attended conventions, etc.
Beyond the Stellar Empire had been running as a game since before even I knew PBM and has now become replaced with Phoenix in the modern era if I am not mistaken. I believe BSE was acquired by another company after RTG couldn't make it work economically without Thad (after he passed away and got replaced by Neal somebody or other), couldn't update to modern equipment/languages and got rewritten and rebooted.
I think you are right in that RSI got involved in the CCG industry. From what I recall they got into the game too late to make any mega money and I think ABM also got pushed out of the industry by bigger dealers, but not before they made a small killing due to their early connections.
I never talked with the RSI folk, so I only know about them from the old Flagships and Paper Mayhem articles. I don't know why I didn't talk since they were one of the big companies back then, but it just never happened. Sometimes I wonder what happened to all the old coders at the companies (Bill Combs who recoded Legends, Jim Landes the original Legends hacker, etc). It is stunning that Loomis is still around after all the dust has settled and outlasted so many that entered the industry years after his games had already been around. Amazing.