Month: June 2017

New Era – End of an Era

PT Games started as a place for my friend and me to post our D&D 3.5 rules compatible game material and make a few bucks. Well, that was the plan. After a couple years we had only released two adventures and some teaser material. Life had moved on and time and interest were no longer on our side. Wizards of the Coast moved onto 4th edition and ended the 3.5 cottage industry.
PT Games website lay dormant for a few years, in fact, the original site has never come down. PT Games. I brought the PT Games brand back out when I acquired all rights to the Faceoff Hockey game, board, and computer version. figured bring back all the lost cardsets and make new sets each year, there were leagues and individuals that love the game and it had been through a rough turn of owners. I added Basketball Bones on a whim and tabletopsports.com posting. I had been tinkering with Statis Pro football for years so I added Football Bones (I still like the Bones name, denotes dice wich are the heart of all of my games).
A few years pass and I wanted to add a baseball game, by far the most popular sport in board gaming. I began to design one with Greg and Box Seat Baseball came across my desk as a possible addition to the lineup. A little back and forth and I’m off designing/updating the game.
Well, that lasted for 10 days and brought the release of two sold copies and quite a bit of loss for BSB and myself. It just didn’t work, we were seeing the market, production, design differently. So bye, bye BSB.
I was sent a message about another baseball game by a person I knew from another venture. That person (Joe Bryan) contacted me about his game Payoff Pitch Baseball. After a few minutes of playtesting, I knew he had a winner. Agreement in place, design work and off we went.
We come to 2016, PPB has been available from PTG for 3 years and sold a few thousand units, but life is intruding.
Since 2005 I had been in college, a late bloomer, by 2013 I had my Bachelor’s degree and moved onto grad school. By 2016 I had my Master’s degree. My interest has been away from games for several years. PPB and Football Bones kept my head in the game but I craved more knowledge and my passion was in my academic pursuits.
I kept Joe aware of my plans at every step and we mutually agreed on a date to end our partnership. It has been bittersweet for me. I miss design but not the mailing.
During the past few years, we had Advanced Title Bout come across my desk. I thought that was the game to launch PTG into a full-time venture, but alas a terrible experience at the hands of an awful company, Superior POD killed the game, my desire in the industry and PTG. Costing me several thousand dollars and goodwill to many people.
Hockey Bones/Faceoff Hockey has been through a lot in its 40+ year history and sadly on my watch it hit troubled waters. We published the first couple seasons, 2010-2012, I think using an excel program and old formatting, a couple more years with a new format that my prnitng company could not deal with and we made big changes. Reached out to many people, Dave Arlington chief amongst them and we rebuilt the card generating program, now written in Python and updated the card format for a cleaner look. Unfortunately, my partner did not build a GUI and so reliance on him for card details has been tough at best. The game came derailed when someone agreed to take over card production and then didn’t bother to communicate for several months, bailing when it was too late to bother on production. Now I try with all the obstacles to keep it going, even as I eye a move overseas for Phd study.
PT Games Sports had a good run. Now I move onto a new chapter, where PDF can still be sold and I don’t have to worry about printing and shipping.
So keep an eye open for us, I released the necessary files to make basketball bones cards and as time permits I will continue to make Football Bones card sets for just passed seasons.