Nerdbane wrote:Unfortunately, Macfarlane does have one leg to stand on. It is a leg made out of money. Right or wrong, he could have sued Kevin over the name rights because he could afford the lawyers. Kevin probably would have prevailed over time, but would it really be worth it, to be legally vindicated but dang-near financially bankrupted? I shudder to think what would have happened if Kevin had spent a ton of money in his own defense in court, and THEN the Betrayal at Palladium had happened. I think changing the name of the game was the pragmatically correct thing to do.
Just my $.02,
da Nerdbane
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. We thought about going to court, and felt we would win, but you never know and we anticipated costs in the range of $100,000 to $250,000. It was easier and most cost effective to just change the name, so we did.
For me, this is ancient history, and I hope there's not a lot more McFarlane bashing to follow. We may not agree with some of the man's business practices, but he was one heck of an artist and he does some pretty darn cool toys to this very day. I should know, I collected most of them till about 2002. (Check out my ebay store to buy some. I'll be putting up most of my toy collection over the next year. You can contact Alex if you have trouble finding the store -- he manages it for me.)
And yes, I have been creating, writing, drawing and publishing for a long time. At age nine, I announced to my parents that I would be a comic book artist when I grew up, and spent something like the next 13 years working on that goal. I just fell into role-playing games and glad I did.
Megaton Publications was the name of my first company. Alex Marciniszyn was my partner (as he usually was back then and for years to come). We published a fanzine called "Megaton" in 1969 or 1970 (Eighth grade). It was a mimeograph monstrosity. We created an entire second issue but it never went to print. We also did a one-shot Disney/animation fanzine called "B.S. & P.S." followed by two issues of "Nightspawn" followed by 5 issues of A+Plus comics (again, Alex was my partner in all these ventures). I also did inking and coloring for Michael Gustovich's "Justice Machine" and "Cobalt Blue" comic books under the "Noble Comics" label (Gusto's comic company) and did some "ghostwork" pencil and inks on a few Defender comic books (Marvel). Not to mention artwork for Judges Guild (1979-1980, though only for a total of 4-5 months), and one FASA Traveller sourcebook, 3-4 sets of Cardboard Heroes for SJG. I was originally approached by FASA to do the artwork for the original Battletech game (then called Battle Droids, but I wanted too much money per page; $60), did posters, T-Shirts and art for the Detroit Gaming Center (DGC 1980-1983) and other odds and ends, before I was able to devote all my time to Palladium Books.
Hey, I gotta get back to work!
Sincerely,
Kevin Siembieda
Publisher, Toy Collector and yes, Mad Man
(you'd know the latter to be true if you ever saw my toy collection before I started selling it off)
