My name is Luke Peterschmidt. I have worked, and made my living, in the hobby game field for 14 years or so. My first job was working with Keith Parkinson as the designer on his “Guardians” CCG for Friedlander Publisher Group. That grew into running their newly started game division. The “division” was small. Besides me, I had my assistant – the very competent and amusing Dave Getzler. We did all the “game” work while we used some shared resources down in the art department for layout and such. While designing add-on sets to Guardians, I also designed an all new game called Dark Age with renown goof ball and artist Brom. Dark Age came out right around the time that most folks realized that the company was doomed due to the shrinking market for art trading cards (their main business). Dark Age live on today as a miniatures game. There were lots of other reasons for the downfall, but mentioning them here wouldn’t be nice to the guilty. My relevant experience to the Juggernaught project at FPG was working with very talented artist as they created their own worlds and then watching those creations get turned into products.

The day I left FPG, I was hired by FRPG (Five Rings Publishing Group). With the simple addition of the “R” I was transported from a wholly dysfunctional company to one that really had it’s shit together. Ryan Dancey and John Zinser were the key guys there. With them, I started as a freelance designer working on the Rage CCG (2nd Edition).  Looking back, it was clear that the product never should have been made as Rage 1st edition, while a totally “broken,” carried such equity with it that it really only appealed to folks who liked that type of game. That said, the Rage 2nd edition game in my opinion is the best solo design of a CCG that I’ve ever done (I had great playtesters, which helped immensely). I someday hope to strip out the mechanics for another appropriate IP… I did have a pretty big advantage here as the product kept getting delayed, which gave me time to make improvements and playtest the game thoroughly (11 completely different combat systems were developed!).

FRPG got bought by Wizards of the Coast (WotC). Ryan Dance then asked me to move to Seattle to help out. His group there was swamped with work and he needed help. I thought I was going there to work on the Rage game as the Brand Manager (gave over development of the product to my playtest groups). I was fairly surprised when I got there as they handed Rage over to Ed Bolme and gave me a new game called Doomtown to work on as Brand Manager. Then I worked on Legend of the Five Rings leading a major renovation of the product. More products came my way, but by now, I was a Brand Manager, not a designer. Eventually, I ran the “Ubercube,” which was composed of 3 Associate and Assistant Brand Managers and me as their fearful guide. We handled all the non-MtG, non-Sports trading card games for WotC. By this time, Ryan Dancey had moved over to lead the relaunch of D&D 3rd Edition. All the members of the Ubercube have gone on to bigger and better things, and I’d like to think I had something to do with that!

Eventually, Pokemon happened. After Pokemon’s bubble started to deflate, the company started to shrink, as is natural after a product with that much of a fad element. At the time, I was running the Ubercube and personally running the next Star Wars CCG, which we had just started working on. For me though, this shrinking was bad news. I was getting bored at WotC and felt like my professional growth had stagnated. There was one job I really wanted at WotC and when the shrinking came, it was pretty clear to me that I would never get it. I wanted to run the game designers, and that kind of job really only comes available when a company is growing. The game designers at WotC were/are amazingly smart folks, but at the time, I felt that they were not managed to their greatest effect.  I had proven to myself at the Ubercube as someone who can help folks reach their potential, and as I spoke the language of the designers and saw the need, I really wanted a shot at that job! When it was clear that the likelihood of getting a shot there was zero, I asked to be laid off in the next round of layoffs. My boss said no – I was too important. Gah! He was hoping to tease me into staying with choice new games to manage. He didn’t listen very well. I ended up quitting there a few months later, totally missing out on the sweet severance deal...

I left to co-found Sabertooth Games with Bob Watts. Ryan Miller (Ubercube member) came along as well. Bob had secured the Warhammer 40K CCG license as well as a bit of funding. I had never been in a start-up company before, and was excited to see if the team had what it takes. Ryan Miller and I designed the game (the best design I ever worked on with another designer, that game was smooth). As we were a small team of 5 or 6 people, we all did a bit of everything. The game launch went well, but man the $ was tight. Luckily, the product released very well, and we got a bit of follow-on luck when Games Workshop decided to buy us. There was good and bad to this of course, the good being I got a big check. Working with GW was pretty solid too. The bad was that they did limit the kind of things we could do, which really hampered our ability to utilize our “smallness” to our best advantage. Looking back with hindsight, the worst things about the buyout was the month we spent in negotiations. The month basically took Bob and I out of doing the work required to keep the game going in order to work up numbers, travel, and have meetings, which in turn caused our follow on set to be more than a month late and probably 10% less great than it should have been.

I stayed with Sabertooth for a fair amount of time, but after a while, it was clear that it was time for me to go. I went on half-time with the company for a while and stepped down to being just a designer. Part of that deal was that I could work from home. I continued to design Warhammer 40K expansions, but had a good amount of free time to explore new projects. Eventually, I left Sabertooth altogether. I still have a very fond attachment to those guys. The person leading the charge there now, Steve Horvath, another ubercube member is perfect for the job. Ryan Miller stayed at Sabertooth for a little longer, then went to WotC where he is their best game designer as far as I’m concerned – the guy knows how to take all the requirements of a brand and wrap it in a game that is not just appropriate, but balls out fun.

On leaving Sabertooth, I rejoined up with Ryan Dancey and we formed The Core Market (TCM). It seemed that without planning it, the two of us were spending untold hours helping other companies with their challenges. For free. Eventually, we realized that this should BE our business. For me, TCM represents the pinnacle of my professional career to date. I have been able to help new small businesses go from nothing to having successful products, while at the same time, working with major fortune 500 companies who want to reach the geek market. Ryan and I are probably the only people doing what we do, at the level we do it. Most people with our experiences are working for individual companies, often their own. By not having our own game company, we get to spend a lot more time in the strategic headspace, while at the same time we have no problem rolling up our sleeves and getting dirty with more tactical help.

TCM is geek focused, but as both Ryan and I have founded and sold companies, so we have solid “business” experience.  After all, a successful game company must be a solid company first (my FPG/FRPG experience taught me that years ago). This led to a very strange job helping a friend out in his Las Vegas based entertainment business. Sort of taking “gaming” to another level for us… Strangely, there isn’t much difference conceptually in creating and marketing a stage show in Las Vegas than there is in helping Mattel create and market a game for 12 year old boys.

Now, our time is split between Vegas business and our gaming/geek customers. If you think you might need help reaching the geek market, feel free to contact us. If you want to get into Vegas with a business, we can help you there as well, just realize that most of the numbers in a Las Vegas business plan have 2 or more zeros at the end...

All Juggernaught materials are (c) Luke Peterschmidt