Interview: John Zinser

Recently, I sat down over the phone with John Zinser. Besides being the president of AEG, he is also one heck of a nice guy. Alderac Entertainment Group is responsible for such great games as 7th sea, Legend of the Five Rings, Clan War, and are now owners of Brave New World. Despite my extreme nervousness and the great respect, resembling worship, of AEG, I managed to get a few questions in.

Nick: Let's start with who are you and what do you do?

John Zinser: Well, my name is John Zinser and I am the owner of Alderac Entertainment Group. I started the company six years ago with two partners to produce Shadis Magazine. And we have since grown into the third or fourth largest gaming company that handles core Fantasy gaming products.

http://www.alderac.com This is the URL for Alderac's homepage. It contains an online catalog to order all of their novels, miniatures, and RPG's, as well as a pretty comprehensive history of the RPG industry.

Nick: Jolly Blackburn was the owner Shadis Magazine for a number of years. How did you meet him and come to run Alderac Entertainment Group?

John Zinser: The way Jolly and I met was kind of interesting. I was actually in the Golf business before I was in this business and he lived and worked and published Shadis Magazine in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He worked in a print shop, which is where he published Shadis Magazine originally, and I went in one day because I ran out of business cards or something and I saw a copy of the magazine. I took it back to the hotel, read it, and was definitely intrigued. I used to be a gamer in high school and I always thought that it would be neat to do something in this industry. So I went back and got together with Jolly and we became friends and talked about the magazine and business and things that we could do to make Shadis larger. A few months later he took me up on an offer for myself and my other partner Dave C, to invest money into Shadis and to move him out to California and see if we could make it into a big time gaming Magazine. Well, we went to Gencon our first year and gave away 10,000 issues, and the rest is kind of history. About two or three years into the partnership we started doing a lot more things and accruing a lot of debt in the company. It changed things a little bit for some of the partners. Some of us wanted to grow faster than other ones. Jolly wanted to grow at a very steady slow pace and I was in a hurry to get the company to a larger place basically. And so he decided to move on and he took Knights of the Dinner table and a few other properties that he worked, with him. And we bought him out of his portion of the company and he has gone on to be a great success obviously with Knights of the Dinner Table. It was one of those deals that worked out really well for everybody I think.

Nick: You stated that you yourself are a gamer. As president of AEG how involved do you get with the testing and creation of your products?

John Zinser: I get pretty heavily involved at the beginning of any new project. A number of the things that we have done are based on my original concepts, Legend of the Five Rings being one of them. I get really involved at the beginning of a project to sort of make sure that it is going to be a product that doesn't only have critical acclaim, because a lot of companies make products that are critically acclaimed but don't sell really well. I think the benefit that I bring to this company is that I understand what type of product is going to win awards and that sort of thing but is also going to sell well to the public. Once I know that the design team in on the track to produce a product that I believe will sell well then I just check in on a regular basis to make sure that we're still on that track. Dave Williams, John Wick when he was working with the company, and DJ Trindle-they all really understand what our goals are with products. Once we get the product moving in the right direction they take care of it pretty well.

Errata, more information, and typo corrections for Legend of the Five Rings can be found at the Legend of the Five Rings website. http://l5r.alderac.com/

Nick: What is Alderac Entertainment Group working on at this time?

John Zinser: Alderac is working on a number of different things. Obviously we just released the 7th Sea RPG and the 7th Sea CCG, (No Quarter). We are working on the 7th Sea miniature product, which should come out early next year. We are also trying to do some unique and really exciting things with the fact that it is a pirates miniatures game. We are working on the second edition of Legend of the Five Rings RPG and the Daimyo Edition, which will be the advanced edition of the Clan War game which will be one big color book with pictures of all the miniatures and all the rules in one place. Those are two big summer releases for us. We are working on a couple of projects right now that I can't really speak about (at this time), because we haven't got the completed licenses and contracts signed on them. We have a couple of licensed properties that we are working on and we are in the CCG business again and we are working on a new platform style game sort of like CCG's and/or Diskwars which is a new platform now for releasing games. We are also working on something new in that line to release in 2001, which will be something completely different than any major game company has done before.

Like Clan War? Clan War's website http://www.clanwar.com/ has all of the hints and strategies you need to rule the Rokugan.

Or if you can't find the blister packs you need? Go to their online store and buy it from AEG. You can find all of AEG's products there.

Nick: Pinnacle Entertainment Group and Alderac Entertainment Group are no longer affiliated, correct? What affect, if any, has this had on AEG?

John Zinser: Pinnacle and AEG are no longer affiliated. Two years ago Shane Hensley, Matt Forbeck, and myself decided to partner up. I bought into Pinnacle and AEG took over their business operations while Matt and Shane concentrated on getting their schedule in order and to catching up with some of their product that had fallen a little behind schedule. Our plan was to move the Pinnacle Partners to California, and move the entire operation to California. Over the course of the two years that did not happen, Matt ended up moving to Wisconsin, I believe. Shane's wife is pregnant with her second child and is very happy in Blacksburg and so we decided that the company was in a really good place for everybody that we could all walk away from the deal with a good thing. Matt Forebeck has since come to work for Alderac Entertainment Group and he brought the Brave New World Property with him. Shane is now sole owner of PEG and he owns the Deadlands Property and all the things that are going on there. AEG ended up with the license to do the Doomtown Collectible Card Game. So all three of us ended up with something in the break up, and it was a very friendly breakup. I think that our relationship helped Pinnacle get to a point where they are able to do new things and it also benefited AEG because the guys at Pinnacle were very very good at what they did on the creative end. It certainly helped us keep our products on schedule and learn new ways as well as faster ways for us to do things here.

Nick: Will AEG be trying out new forms of Media? For example: Computer games, Television, or the big screen?

John Zinser: We definitely have designs on that kind of thing. I think that all of our properties, Brave New World, Legend of the Five Rings, which is actually owned by Wizards of the Coast, and the 7th Sea, they all would do well in those types of things. We have talked to a number of computer companies but haven't had the deal that we would like to have come across for any of those properties. We are still talking with a company down in Australia actually about doing a pilot for a television show for 7th Sea. I would expect within the next two to five years that you would see Alderac Entertainment Group grow into at least one of those mediums. Me personally, I would like to be doing movies five years from now if that's possible. We are also really interested in getting into the toy industry with our licenses and our properties and doing things a little outside the core industry by taking some of the great stuff done in the core industry to the masses a little bit in a different way.

7th Sea is one of the best new games to hit the market. Swashbuckling and sorcery never had it so good! You can check out the game's webpage at http://www.7thsea.com/.

Nick: You mentioned this a little bit but, where would you like to see Alderac Entertainment Group in the future?

John Zinser: First and Foremost we would like to keep making really good products and things the core gaming market likes. My goal is to make AEG into the number one customer service company in this or any other industry. We would like to do what Wizards of the Coast and TSR before them were able to do, which is to provide a new platform for delivering our games, as well as the very interesting worlds that we design to players of games around the world. Ultimately we would like to be in the toy business and we would like to be in television and movies. We are taking Baby Steps towards those things and as long as we take care of the stuff we are doing now we don't see any reason why we shouldn't be able to make those goals in five years.

Alderac Entertainment Group also sponsors a radio show called Sore-Eyes. The website for Sore-Eyes has given away 7th Sea secret society memberships as well as 7th Sea's No Quarter CCG starters on occasion. I was the proud winner of a 7th Sea CCG starter! The website for sore eyes is located at http://www.sore-eyes.com/.

Nick: Most of the gamers out there are also writers and designers. What advice would you like to give those aspiring to break into the gaming business?

John Zinser: Well, first off I think my advice for people who are looking to getting into Role-playing and Card games and things is that for most game companies, Alderac Entertainment Group included, there is not a real high profit margin on some of the products we work on and most gaming companies like AEG already have a core staff of people already working on their high end products. Our Collectible Card Games and our miniatures game bring in more dollars to the company than our role-playing games do. If I were a person wanting to get into role-playing I would intern myself to one of the companies and offer to work for them for free to start with to see what they are doing. I know that it sounds kind of extreme, but AEG actually does have an internship program. Pretty much anybody that has an interest in designing games or writing can do a three to six month internship with AEG. Dave Williams, DJ Trindle, John Wick, and Rese Zosby, Rob Vaux, all of these people that are in key employment with Alderac Entertainment Group started off as interns, they came to work for free for the company for a minimum of ten hours a week. They were taught our systems for doing things and they were given projects to work on and basically the goal that we have for any intern that comes to work for the company is make yourself indispensable to the company over the course of the next three to six months. And you will work yourself into a job with the company. It has worked out as a very very good system for us. Probably three quarters of the people who are working on our creative side started in the internship program in one way or another. All of our writers did. Most of our designers did. We have really only hired four or five people based on their past experience working with other companies or designs we have seen them do to come work for our company. We do make most people go through that internship and a lot of companies don't do that but I think if a writer has an interest in a certain property that working on spec is a good way to get into the business. John Wick, one of our key writers used to say quite a bit, I don't remember who he was quoting but, basically he was saying that if you want to be a writer, you have to get up in the morning and write and write and write and write. Every time you need to write some more, and just keep putting your things out in front of people and taking the criticism that is given to you so that you can get better and better at what you do. Role-playing Games and games for writers are a launching point for novels, screenwriting and all of that kind of stuff, much more now than it ever used to be.

Working for free is a little extreme, but you get to work at AEG!

People can call Alderac Entertainment Group if they are interested in the internship program at (909)390-5444

Nick: John Wick has a weekly column on the Gaming Outpost dealing with his game Orkworld as well as his game design theories and techniques. How do you feel about him trying to get out on his own to create and publish his own game?

John Zinser: I think it's great! John was at my house for dinner a couple of weeks ago actually. John and I are still really good friends. We are really proud of the fact that most of the people who have chosen to branch out on their own and leave AEG have been really really successful. Jolly, Matt Wilson, John Wick, these guys have basically felt that it was time to go out and be entrepreneurs and try to do their own thing. John was at my house actually getting information on printers and in my opinion in a very smart way in getting his product launched. I know that there are those of us here in the office that are really looking forward to it. He did an exceptional job working on 7th sea and Legend of the Five Rings. I think that he is always going to be interested in staying in the gaming industry but his dreams actually do lie in being a full-scale novelist, and a screenwriter and working in the movies and television industry. He felt that it was time for him to go out and work on that. We are really happy for him and excited to see if what he is working on strikes gold and does well for him.

If you would like to see what former AEG writers can do, check out Orkworld at http://www.orkworld.com