GMT Games
GMT Games is a California-based wargaming publisher founded in 1990. The current management and creative team includes Tony Curtis, Rodger MacGowan, Mark Simonitch, and Andy Lewis. The company has become well known for graphically attractive games that range from "monster games", of many maps and counters, to quite simple games suitable for introducing new players to wargaming. They also produce card games and family games. "The Washington Post" called GMT "the modern hobby's highest-profile wargame publisher".
Scott Bizar
Scott Bizar, dissatisfied with TSR's "Dungeons & Dragons" (1974) and "Warriors of Mars" (1974), founded his own company, Fantasy Games Unlimited (FGU). The company's first two products were Hugh McGowan's "Gladiators" (1975), a man-to-man miniatures combat system, and "Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age" (1975), a first-of-its kind wargame set in the world of Conan, was co-designed by Bizar's roommate, Lin Carter. At Gen Con IX in 1976, Edward E. Simbalist and Wilf K. Backhaus met Bizar, who was interested in their role-playing game "Chevalier" they had brought with them but decided not to sell to TSR; Bizar and helped guide the game to print over the next year as "Chivalry & Sorcery", the first RPG from FGU. In the late 1970s, Bizar was looking for a new science-fiction roleplaying game to act as one of FGU's flagships, and contacted Simbalist and Phil McGregor to produce the game, which was published in 1980 as "Space Opera". During the process, Bizar never met Simbalist or McGregor, or A. Mark Ratner, and the project was completed over more than two years entirely by correspondence. In the early 1980s, Bizar started picking up product lines from defunct publishers, which brought "Bushido" and "Aftermath!" to FGU in 1981. FGU purchased the rights to "Swordbearer" (1982), and also bought Heritage's old stock, something that Bizar felt was a necessary part of such a deal; FGU published their own edition in 1985. In 1987, Bizar was considering new locations for FGU that could offer him reduced warehousing costs, and decided on Arizona, the home of friend Rick Loomis and his gaming company, Flying Buffalo. Bizar rented office space and warehouse in Tempe, but since FGU was having difficulties Bizar took jobs as first a car salesman and then a school teacher. Bizar was intent on staying in the hobbyist industry, and founded a game shop in Gilbert, Arizona called Waterloo, using stock from his parents, who were running their own Waterloo game stores in New York; the FGU offices and warehouse were soon moved to this new location. After founding a second store in Phoenix, Arizona, Bizar was hit by massive fraud at the Gilbert store, when an employee took out credit cards in Bizar's name, opened fake bank accounts, and fraudulently offered up Bizar's stores as collateral; Bizar lost money due to the fraud and was also forced to fight lawsuits over the next years originating from it, and eventually had to close down the Phoenix store in 1996. Bizar had been getting some older FGU books back into print, while preparing new books for publication, but the fraud put an end to all that.