Stroock to Decision Games: Drop Dead

Well, well, well...look what meandered out of the mists of time:

That's Strategy & Tactics Magazine issue #320, published by Decision Games, available now!

I wrote that piece...god I can't believe I'm about to write these words....I wrote that piece in 2003. Not the first time those...people...have pulled this.

Also they stiffed me for $400 after I designed the Meuse-Argonne Folio Game. Screw them, I'm not linking.

Just a few days after I saw the magazine this arrived in the mail:

Decorum and memories of our past relationship prevent me from unleashing a full-on broadside, but let me just say, yeah, no.

Certainly not at Decision Games' proposed rates (have they seen my fucking CV?) and certainly not after they stiffed me and lied about it. For the record, they claimed they rejected my Meuse-Argonne folio game. No, they published it. Also for the record, I contacted DG in 2015 about backlogged articles and they said everything had been withdrawn, yet still they publish me, which is, I assure readers, typical of DG's disorganization.

Just to recap, George W. Bush was still in his first term when I submitted that article. His first goddamn turn.

Vimied

We have an article in the current issue of Strategy & Tactics Magazine: Canadian Triumph, the Storming of Vimy Ridge.

Decision Games, S&T's parent company has a straaaaange way of doing things. Their articles have a loooooong lead time. We've discussed this matter before, we realize. When did we write Canadian Triumph? Our oldest was a baby. We wrote this piece during nap times. Our oldest is now 11. That's right. We wrote Canadian Triumph during George W. Bush's second term. Other articles we wrote at that time included pieces on current events such as the Army's Transformation and The Surge.

This is one of the reasons why we don't write for Decision Games any more. Also they stiffed us the money they owed us for designing the Meuse-Argonne Folio Game.

Oh Decision Games, don't ever change.

Still Glossy

Last week we discussed Steve Sailer's excellent Takimag article about advertising. He made a great point about print magazines:

Have you noticed that a remarkable number of print magazines are still around in 2017? After the crash of 2008, I expected magazine racks to be empty by now. But apparently, glossies remain a good way to make expensive stuff look glamorous.

Print magazines not only survived 2008, they multiplied. For example my old bosses at Decision Games, publishers of Strategy & Tactics,  have stubbornly expanded. In 2008 they launched World at War. They followed this up in 2010 with Modern War. Now they're launching Strategy & Tactics Quarterly.

Now Decision Games sells a war game with each magazine so their business model is slightly different than say, Cosmo's or Newsweek's.

But has the reader noticed that a copy of Newsweek looks awfully thin?

We can't speak for Cosmo. [Yeah...sure-Ed]

Other history magazines that don't offer games are still printing at the same rate with the same number of pages. Our current bosses at Sovereign Media crank out Military Heritage, Civil War, WWII, and several special issues a year.

Actually to say one outfit is a former boss and one a current boss is a bit misleading.

[You misleading? No-Ed]

All we really mean is we don't write for Decision Games anymore, don't ask [I wasn't going to -Ed] while we still write for Sovereign Media.

The economics of the business haven't changed much in the ten years since the crash. They still rely on a lot of freelancers [that's you, Will-Ed] and the rates for articles haven't changed much.

We advertise our books in those same magazines  and those rates haven't changed much either.

Actually, we thought the shuttering of Borders would strike a major blow to the print magazine business. Borders was where we discovered the above mentioned magazines, after all. Interestingly the publishers have just found other places to sell. Anyone else notice the great expansion of the magazine shelves at the supermarket?

So even after ten years the demand for print magazines seems stable. The question is why.

Sailer notices this:

Paper periodicals will likely take a huge hit in the next economic downturn when luxuries become unaffordable again, but their continued survival today suggests that, despite all the theoretical advantages of personalized onscreen advertising, there’s something still not quite right about online ads.

Perhaps the same is true for digital copy?

We wrote the lead and designed Green Hell