Howard M. Thompson

For the journalist and film critic, see Howard Thompson (film critic).

Howard M. Thompson was a wargame designer and founder of Metagaming Concepts. His first game was Stellar Conquest, a popular and well-designed simulation of interstellar warfare.

Thompson is most famous for his idea to publish small, low-cost games in what came to be known as the MicroGame format. For a while, Metagaming dominated this niche wargaming market. In the early 1980s, some speculate that the company started to run into financial trouble, partially because of the generally poor economic situation at that time, and because of the split with one of his main game designers, Steve Jackson. Thompson was not satisfied with the work done on The Fantasy Trip by Jackson.[1] In April 1983, Thompson decided to sell the company's assets and shut the company down. Little is known about his present whereabouts.

On 1 January 1982, Thompson created Games Research Group, Inc., which was initially part of Metagaming.[2]

Contents

Games designed

Illustrations

Thompson also provided illustrations for two of his company's games, Helltank and Monsters! Monsters!

References

  1. ^ Thompson, Howard (1980-03-31). "Letter addressed to Andy Windes". http://micro.brainiac.com/htletter.jpg. Retrieved 2007-12-29. 
  2. ^ Thompson, Howard (1982-04-01). "Letter addressed to Metagaming employees Kevin Hendryx and Norman Royal". http://micro.brainiac.com/mg2grg.jpg. Retrieved 2007-12-29. 

External links