Transcription

12/3
12/2
11/30
4 Thursday - December 1975
338th day - 27 days to come


Call from Fay Hartog. The French rights to BEYOND TIC TAC TOE are open. Gave her Jean-Jacques Bloch's address and she'll have two copies sent to him.
Visit from Robert E. Horn [address] ((Exchanged cards))
He was primarily interested in learning about the game business from me. Gave him generalized info - such as M.B. [Milton Bradley] is probably the biggest and that they do their own development mostly. Also that the Marvin Glass organization is very powerful. Etc. His idea is to develop a means of combining sales to educational and mass markets. I told him that M.B. had two completely separate operations. Also that the word "educational" is considered the kiss of death in the mass field.
He was looking for games that would be (or could easily be adapted) appropriate for the two markets. The number of players I showed him BAZAAR, ORION - neither of which he felt to be appropriate. He liked HOLIDAY, RAILWAY RIVALS (I gave him David Gwyn Watts's address); FRENCH CHATTER (gave him Steve Brodie's address).
Later we discussed the criteria for such a game. The wide divergence in number of players - 2 to 9 for mass market to more than 30 classrooms - is one problem. Dividing into teams is one answer, and different rules is another possibil- ity.
Another problem that I brought up is that of equipment for classroom games that is sturdy and safe against pilferage.
Another group of games he felt were appropriate for both markets were those of Laymen Allen -- WFF N'PROOF etc. I men- tioned that the company seems to be dorment [sic], not having come out with anything new in several years.
The new genre of non-competative [sic] games came up. He has been trying to lo- cate some of these and I gave him Alice McElhone's address - since she handles the Canadian firm that puts them out.
When I showed him ELECTION X, telling him it was one of the best on this subject, he mentioned that DEMOCRACY is an excellent one. Originally this was put out by Western Publishing but their line of simulations has been taken over by "Bobbs Merrill" - the book publisher.
He noticed the pile of S & Ts and I have him #50 & #53. Bernie DeKoven and his GAMES PRESERVE. Horn said that DeKoven was primarily interested in games for children and other group games. He went to schools as well as having classes come to the preserve. He likes to graft extraneous rules onto games - such as that the player must yell each time he hits the bell at "Ping-Pong."
Horn mentioned that MATH, WRITING, & GAMES IN THE OPEN CLASSROOM was an excellent book. I said that I was ashamed for never having thanked Herbert Kohl for the nice things he said about AGOG and for seeing that I got a copy of his book. Horn promised to
(cont. on 12/3)