OWNER
: LOUIS ZOCCHI
WEBSITE
:
http://www.dicecollector.com/gamescience.html
http://www.gamescience.com
COMPANY HISTORY : By Louis Zocchi
Gamescience Corp. was started by Phillip E. Orbanes in 1965.[1]
In that year, the company published the wargame Vietnam which was
reviewed in issue #4 of Strategy and Tactics (S&T) magazine. In 1967
the company published another wargame which Mr. Orbanes designed called
Confrontation, which was reviewed in S&T issue #6. In 1968, the
company published the wargame, The Battle of Britain designed by Lou
Zocchi, which was reviewed in S&T #13. The company was sold before
Mr. Orbanes left college.
Gamescience was founded by Phillip E. Orbanes, and I started
using the name after I received delivery of the unsold 20,000 Renwall
Battle of Britain Games in 1973. In 2000 we discovered several other
companies were using the Gamescience name so that is when we officially
trade marked the Gamescience name.
Gamescience published the board game The Battle of Britain
(1968), the wargames Mig Killers (1977), and Strike Team Alpha (1978),
and the role-playing games Star Patrol (1977; originally called Space
Patrol),Superhero: 2044 (1977), the second edition of Empire of the
Petal Throne (1984), and TWERPS (1987).
Gamescience also produces dice, including several types of nonstandard dice.
In 1967 I had designed an air to air combat board game about the Battle
Of Britain. I mailed a test version of the game to Chris Wagner.
Wagner was finishing up his tour in Japan and he was also publishing
Strategy & Tactics magazine. His crew liked my design and he asked
me if he could show it to Phil Orbanes, who was one of his advertisers.
Orbanes had published a Monster game called CONFRONTATION. It had
2,000 counters and came in a tube which opened at both ends and closed
at neither. Every time I lifted it up to play it, I had to spend more
than an hour gathering up all of the counters, etc. I was pleased to
find a publisher, and told Wagner to mail my prototype to Orbanes.
After Orbanes saw my design, he told me all of his spare cash was tied
up in the printing of his Confrontation game. If I would mail him a
check for $2,000, he would print my game, so I sent him the check.
After he published it, he took it to the Chicago Hobby show, where it
was seen by a Mr. Casey. Casey was the C.E.O. of ALLSTATE INVESTORS,
which owned RENWAL MODELS. Casey paid Orbanes $10,000 for my Battle of
Britain game, and told Orbanes to deliver a working copy to Renwal.
While delivering BofB, Orbanes convinced the Renwal people to hire him
as soon as he graduated, which was only a few months away. They agreed
and Orbanes began designing games for Renwal that needed plastic parts.
Because one of Renwal's competitors was having great success with
its plastic, human body, with removeable parts, someone at Renwal
decided that they should make a plastic living pigeon. Unfortunately,
the living pigeon died, when no one bought them and Renwal went out of
business. However, they had printed 20,000 copies of my game, and I
bought them for about $2,500. The games had no boxes, but they sent me
20,000 box lid wrappers, which I took to a box company in Los Angeles,
and had 1000 boxes made.
In l969, the Third Millennia company published my Flying Tigers
board game, and in l970, Avalon Hill published my Luftwaffe game.
Although I thought it was a good game, I could not dismiss the thought
that I might be the only person who thought so. A.H. offered me $600
cash, or a 2 percent royalty for 5 years, or a 1 percent royalty for the
life of the game. I chose the 2 percent for 5 years. Bad Choice.
Luftwaffe went on to stay in the Avalon Hill top 10 best sellers list
for more than 20 years. It sold for $8 in 1970, but near its end, it
was selling for $20,00. The Air Force Air War College bought 7 copies.
In l971 Don Lowery printed my HARDTACK civil war miniatures rules.
In 1972, I violated Paramounts copyright by designing and selling the
Star Trek Battle Manual. After they sent me a cease and desist letter, I
redesigned the game and sold it as Alien Space. I didn't know how to
do paste ups or layouts, but Danny Hoffbrawer, was doing those steps
every month for the Spartain gaming monthly magazine. When he laid out
Alien Space, he asked me, what did I want on the 3 blank pages? Then he
told me that Spartan had 3 games it was selling and I could advertise
those games at no additional cost, in my Alien Space. Furthermore,
everything I had to sell was already in the hands of someone who liked
games, so I could make 3 more sales. As soon as I started selling Alien
Space, I got letters from other self publishers who wanted to know why I
had not listed their games. So i listed them in the next printing,
which caused more self publishers to contact me, and soon, I had no
additional space left, so I started publishing my HEX-O-GRAM, which
listed more and more self published titles, and that is how I became
T.S.R.'s first distributor account.
In those days, Gygax and I were getting cheap polyhedra dice sets
from a school supply company called Creative Publications, in Palo Alto.
Ca. If I failed to order dice immediately after placing an order with
Gary for D&D, I would have to wait extra weeks for the next boatload
of dice to arrive. I asked again and again, how could I get a better
price on the dice and how much did I have to buy to get a more
dependable delivery set up. The owner wrote me that he was tired of my
looking for a better price. I should make my own. ,
While attending High School, I played in a band. John Simkus
played outstanding accordion in the band, but he had majored in shop,
and was now a tool and die maker and running a small molding operation
in his basement. When I showed him the dice, he said that there was no
way to beat down the price because he worked for $20 per hour and the
Taiwanese worked for $20 per week. He said that we could beat them on
quality. The import dice were made from the cheapest plastic and their
edges would change color after limited use. Several people told me that
when they rolled the die, it fell apart. Simkus told me that he knew a
high impact plastic formula which would make dice that could soldier on
for years without showing wear. Because John wanted $2,000 to build
the 20 sided die 0-9 twice tool, I asked Duke Siegfried if he would go
halves with me, and he agreed. I was very relieved to discover that
gamers were willing to pay $1.00@ for high impact dice, when they could
buy the cheap import 5 piece set for $2.50.
In 1973, I designed a Minuteman game, which was given away to
people who bought an Issue of Conflict magazine. In l974 I published
battlewagon Salvo and started making dice. In 1976 I designed Basic
Fighter, which won the 1981 H.G. Wells award as the best air combat game
of all time. In l977 I got a license from Franz Joseph Designs to
manufacture the ships in his Star Trek Technical Manual, and I published
the Star Fleet Battle Manual, which won the British gamers, GAMES DAY
AWARD.
This work was also nominated for an Origins award.
In 1980 I began selling a 10 sided die, designed for me by Cliff
Polite, who was on active duty in the Keesler AFB, art department. I
also began production of 20 sided dice which had 0-9 twice imprints, but
I put a + sign on half of the digits so you could tell the high side
from the low side. Originally, all 20 sided dice were numbered 0-9
twice. Gamers would ink half of the digits black and the other half
Green, so the die could function as a ten or a 20. If you rolled a
green 7, it was treated as seventeen, People who saw the plus sign,
told me that they could not add 10 to the plus numbers which came up.
Two years later, I made 1-20 dice molds.
In June of l986, I began manufacturing my 100 sided die. I had
spent 6 years trying to figure out where each of the digits should be
placed. In l987, I was thrilled to the bone to be inducted into the
Adventure Gaming hall of fame. In l994 I created the D-16, and in 2003 I
created the true 3 sided die, which generated 1, 2 and 3 numbered
outcomes as well as Rock, Paper and Scissors. In 2005 I invented the 24
sided die, and in 2008, Dr. A.F. Simkin and I co designed the D-Total.
Dr. Simkin put in all of the hard work that makes it possible for this
die to roll like 18 other dice shapes, and I suggested that it be laid
out like the face of a clock. In 2016, I redesigned the D-Total so that
instead of l8 different dice faces, it can now generate 23 dice faces.
The original D-Total won an Origins award as the Best Gaming accessory
of the year
DICE
