Once upon a time, I worked for a venture capital firm, performing due diligence and playing games in my off hours. True, I was addicted and had actually been gaming off and on since D&D first arrived in Las Vegas many moons ago. I’d moved on to console and online games as time passed, but when my daughters graduated from high school, I suddenly had a lot more free time. I delved into the world of Play by Email and chat RPGs. I was hooked.

Then one day, a game company I’ll call Game X contacted our venture capital firm. They needed $7.5 million dollars to complete the development of their game, produce it, market it and make billions. Actually, there was a little more to the story. The head guy had previously started a company that developed games for Sega. That firm went public and he sold out his share for a million or so… of course the company went belly up shortly thereafter amid allegations of wrongdoing, but that’s another story. They were also working with one of the premier game developers in the country and had legal access to the names and email addresses of millions of gamers. Their marketing plan was to email these players and allow them to download their game free of charge. After all, much like Wizards of the Coast’s Magic: The Gathering© Online, the real revenue would be generated by the sale of virtual card decks and entry fees. It was a great plan and sounded promising.

After much fast talking and the offer of a great deal of money, I signed on. My job was to assist in getting investment capital from small and large investors. I’m not really a salesperson, but I know a lot about marketing and putting together an attractive portfolio. Game X wasn’t hard to polish up. The hardest part is that the financial community doesn’t game and so you start every discussion at square one, explaining what you do, how you do it and how big the market is. Then we had to explain again exactly how to play.

My boss was too deeply immersed in the game to be able to see potential investors’ confusion and I learned to hush him and back the discussion up to the point where they understood. Fortunately, the boss didn’t mind and let me talk. Finally we’d log on and project live Magic© duels on the wall and explain how the money rolled into Hasbro’s coffers with every tournament entry and every new pack of cards sold. It was generally at that point that the light went on and a greedy gleam shone from eyes around the room. Instead of the $7.5 million we’d come asking for, the partners in this huge investment firm starting discussing the company like a movie production company with multiple projects in the pipeline. It was true – there were, but none of them was anywhere close to being in production and even the first project was at least 18 months from market.

Game X eventually failed in its bid to get the money but my boss went on to partner with a Korean game firm. He licenses their game and hosts it on US servers. The revenue is pouring in and he’s happy. I decided I’d had enough of working 11 hour days and commuting 3 hours a day, even for big bucks. I quit and found something closer to home. But I’ll never forget my brief career in gaming.