Avalon Hill Games Inc. is a game company that publishes wargames and strategic board games. It has also published miniature wargaming rules, role-playing games and sports simulations. It is a subsidiary of Hasbro, and operates under the company's "Hasbro Gaming" division.
Avalon Hill introduced many of the concepts of modern recreational wargaming, including the use of a hexagonal grid (a.k.a. hexgrid) overlaid on a flat folding board, zones of control (ZOC), stacking of multiple units at a location, and board games based upon historical events.[1]
History
The Avalon Game Company
Avalon Hill was started in 1952 outside Baltimore in Catonsville, Maryland, by Charles S. Roberts under the name of "The Avalon Game Company" for the publication of his game Tactics. It is considered the first of a new type of war game, consisting of a self-contained printed map, pieces, rules and box designed for the mass-market.[1][2] Other war games published over the prior half-century, from which Roberts drew inspiration, were either not designed for the commercial market and/or used miniatures with self-made maps/terrain.[3] Roberts sold Tactics by mail from his home in the Avalon neighborhood of Catonsville; his house overlooked the Patapsco River valley and B&O Railroad for which Roberts, his father and grandfather worked.[2]
Following the success of Tactics, Roberts changed the name upon incorporation from "The Avalon Game Company" to "Avalon Hill" in 1958 because of a naming dispute with another company, and given the Avalon house was on a hill.[2][1] The number of games released per year was erratic until 1964 as the company released anywhere from 1 to 7 games.[2]5-8
The first game published by the company under the name of "Avalon Hill" was Gettysburg, published in 1958, it was also the first board wargame to simulate a historical battle. AH published two other games that year, the second edition of Tactics, titled Tactics II, and the railroad game Dispatcher.[4]
In 1959, Roberts moved Avalon into an office space on Gay Street in Baltimore and took on its first outside designed game, Verdict, by two corporate lawyers. After another office move, in 1960-8 Thomas N. Shaw, a high school friend of Roberts, was hired to design games.[1][2]6
In 1960, Avalon published the first mostly dice-less sports game in Football Strategy designed by Thomas N. Shaw which was followed by two sister games, Baseball Strategy and Basketball Strategy.[5][6] Of this sports strategy line, the football and baseball versions were previously privately published by Shaw in 1959.[2]7 With a recession occurring, debt began to pile up starting in 1961.[1]
Avalon launched a pre-school children's line in 1963 with four games, Imagination, What Time Is It?, Doll House and Trucks, Trains, Boats & Planes, which flopped. Roberts gave up and planned to file bankruptcy on 1963-12-13.[2]p7 Instead his creditors, Monarch Office Services and J.E. Smith & Co., interceded and took over. Monarch had printed all but the boxes, which were done by J.E. Smith.[7] The company was reorganized by retaining only one staff member, Shaw, moving, cutting costs and appointing J.E. Sparling as president.[2]p7,8 In 1964, AH set a two-game per year release schedule.[2]5-8
Avalon Hill published Blitzkrieg in 1965. This game was an abstract combat game, featuring two sides (red and blue) and some neutral countries. Many rules variants were created for Blitzkrieg. The company also published simulations of actual battles and campaigns, such as Midway, Afrika Korps, and The Battle of the Bulge.
Avalon Hill published PanzerBlitz in 1970, designed for the company by Jim Dunnigan's Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) on a royalty basis from SPI's Tac Force 3 game.[2]p9
Monarch Avalon Division
Monarch bought out J.E. Smith & Co., Avalon Hill's co-owner, on 1971-11-30. Thus the company became a division of a renamed Monarch Office Services, Monarch Avalon.[2]p10 Coinciding with the purchase, an additional warehouse was opened in historic downtown Baltimore at 1501 Guilford Ave., complementing the original building at 4517 Harford Road.[8] Don Greenwood joined in 1972.[8]
The company acquired several successful games including Acquire, TwixT, and Feudal from the purchase of 3M Games in 1976-2.[2]p5,12[9] The Sports Illustrated (SI) line of sports games were purchased in 1976-12. Both lines increased the retail outlets that would take AH games. The Aladdin Industries game line was another acquisition in 1977-3.
Roleplaying games
In 1974, a new game developer attempted to pitch his concept to Avalon Hill. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson had co-developed a new type of co-operative game that used role-playing. But when Gygax pitched Dungeons & Dragons to AH, the largest company in wargaming did not understand the concept of role-playing, and turned down his offer.[17] Gygax responded by founding TSR Inc to self-publish his game. In less than five years, TSR would be the dominant player in the new RPG market.
Avalon Hill entered the role-playing game market a decade later by publishing Powers and Perils in 1983 and Lords of Creation in 1984.[18] The licenses to RuneQuest and the board games White Bear & Red Moon (republished as Dragon Pass) and Elric, were acquired in a complex agreement in 1983 with Chaosium, and Avalon Hill published the 3rd Edition in 1984.[19][20]
Video games
Avalon Hill became an early publisher of computer games in 1980[21] with its video game division Microcomputer Games, adapting some of its boardgame titles to various computer platforms (TRS-80, Vic-20, Commodore 64, Apple II, etc.) on several data formats (cassette tape and 5¼" disk). Sales of these products were decent, but the only outstanding success was Achtung Spitfire!, published relatively late in the company history.
In December 1992, AH hired Jim Rose to lead its computer game division,[22] with the goal of reviving this part of the business in the face of flagging board game sales.[23] AH reentered the computer game market in 1994 with a good review of "Flight Commander 2". The company added Pogs to its game line up in 1995.[24] By June 1995, Rose had left the company to found TalonSoft.
Hasbro subsidiary
Monarch sold Avalon Hill to Hasbro on August 4, 1998, for $6 million.[28] Coinciding with the purchase, Hasbro laid off AH's entire staff.[29] Hasbro, seeking popular board games that could be converted to computer versions, purchased the rights to the Avalon Hill trademarks, copyrights, inventory, tooling and divisions, Avalon Hill Software and Victory Games,[26] and placed them under its video game subsidiary, Hasbro Interactive. Avalon Hill Games, Inc. was incorporated by Hasbro on 1998-3-2.[30]
In 2001, Hasbro Interactive was sold to Infogrames;[31] Avalon Hill was not included in the sale and Hasbro later transferred control of the company to its subsidiary,
Game rights
The rights to many of Avalon Hill's more complex games have been licensed or sold to other game publishers, or have reverted to their original owners and been republished by other companies:
- Multi-Man Publishing acquired a license to Advanced Squad Leader and the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War series, and has since published new materials for these.
- Valley Games published new versions of Titan, Hannibal: Rome versus Carthage, and Republic of Rome.
- GMT Games published new editions of Avalon Hill's early card-driven wargames We the People (retitled Washington's War), Successors, and For the People, and a descendant of Advanced Third Reich/Empire of the Rising Sun named A World at War.
- Mayfair Games now has the rights to 1830 (one of several 18XX games they publish).
Victory Games
One of Avalon Hill's competitors, Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI), produced wargames that were more complex and realistic simulations than those that Avalon Hill published.[37] In 1982, after SPI's assets were acquired by TSR, Avalon Hill hired away some of SPI's design staff and formed them into a subsidiary company, Victory Games. When Victory Games released a line of SPI-style games, it met with critical and commercial acclaim.[38][37][39] In 1989, Victory Games brought on Leonard Quam, a veteran from West End Games, and hired Kevin Boylan as a product developer. Victory Games continued to develop and release new products, including 3rd Fleet, 5th Fleet, Sixth Fleet, and Carrier. The New York office closed in early 1991 after Quam left the company. Victory's final two games, Flashpoint Golan and Across Five Aprils, were developed by Boylan alone, who worked remotely in collaboration with Avalon Hill's art department.[40]
Magazines
The General
Avalon Hill also had its own house organ which promoted sale and play of its games, The General Magazine, which was published regularly between 1964 and 1998. The magazine offered a wide array of features, including articles on both strategies of play and tactics for specific situations, historical analyses, semi-regular features devoted to individual games, columns on sports and computer games by AH, listings of vendors and opponents, answers to questions on game rules, ratings for both games and players, discount coupons for mail orders, and insider information on future AH projects.
All-Star Replay
This magazine was for Avalon Hill's sports games. A total of 19 issues were published quarterly (later bi-monthly) from 1977 to 1981.
Heroes
In early 1984, on the occasion of the release of third edition RuneQuest, Avalon Hill included in all RuneQuest boxes a single advertising flyer announcing the launch of HEROES, its own role-playing magazine. HEROES ran for ten issues from 1984 to 1986[41] and had the main purpose to promote all four of Avalon Hill's role-playing games: James Bond 007,
See also
External links
References
- Greg Rienzi. Baltimore Observed: Encounter The Urbanite Magazine, Urbanite Baltimore, May 2009, retrieved 2009-05-11^
- The General Index and Company History The General Magazine Index and Company History, 1980, retrieved August 5, 2015^
- Matthew B. Caffrey Jr. On Wargaming: How Wargames Have Shaped History and how They May Shape the Future