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January 4th, 2007 - Keith's first baby . . . . (Page 1/9)

Happy Holidays from 2by3 Games!

The most important news from 2by3 Games in the past 6 months is personal news for one of our founding members. Keith's wife Bonnie is pregnant and due with their first child in March. This is great news, and Gary and I wish them the best of luck. This news was one factor in Keith's decision last summer to take a full time day job (what else, programming games for the mainstream market). There just isn't as much money to be made making wargames as there is working on mainstream pc and video games.

Keith will continue work on 2by3 games in his "spare" time, but this will clearly have an impact on our productivity. Keith started working with Gary back in the mid-1980s providing programming tools that Gary used to produce some of his early Apple II games. He did this part-time while he worked as a programmer for SSI, and it looks like that's where we're headed in the future.

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January 4th, 2007 - Keith's first baby . . . . (Page 2/9)

During the past few years, Keith had not only been the tools programmer, but he also became the lead programmer on World at War, A World Divided, and our upcoming Civil War game. This won't be possible going forward. In fact, Gary has stepped in and taken on that role with Civil War. Keith will continue to help out with patch work on A World Divided (in fact the first patch release has been sent off to Matrix and should appear soon). He'll also be helping Gary out with Civil War since a lot of the code is alien to Gary.

A combination of events has regrettably delayed our Civil War game. First there was the TCP/IP work on WaW which took much longer than we planned (and in hindsight appears to have been a mistake to bother with). Second, the work on A World Divided took a couple of months more of Keith's time than we had hoped.

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January 4th, 2007 - Keith's first baby . . . . (Page 3/9)

The most recent delay has been caused by Keith's new job (and move across country that went with it). Originally we hoped to have Civil War out in early/mid 2006, at which point we would have been the first of the current crop of Civil War game on the market. Unfortunately due to the events detailed above, it now looks like we won't be done until well into 2007 in which case we'll likely be the last of 3 or 4 Civil War games. Not the best position to be in, but that's where we find ourselves. We're determined to get our CW game to market and we'll just have to hope that the market won't be totally saturated when we do. From what I can tell, our game will probably be the least complicated and quickest to play of the CW games. With turned based monthly turns, it's a game ideal for PBEM or reasonably quick play against the computer. Since everyone seems to be touting their thousand leader database for their CW game, I thought I'd give you a sample of the leadership ratings of a few of the generals in our game. The historical ratings are listed, although players can also use various game options to modify/randomize the leader ratings in different ways so as to provide more realism by keeping the knowledge about some of the leader ratings unknown until the leaders show their ability in action.

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January 4th, 2007 - Keith's first baby . . . . (Page 4/9)

	James	John C.	William S.
	Longstreet	Freemont	Rosecrans
Command Pts	7	16	8	(increases with promotions and successes)
Attack	3	2	3	(1-4 min/max)
Defense	4	1	3	(1-4 min/max)
Infantry	4	2	3	(1-4 min/max)
Cavalry	1	1	1	(1-4 min/max)
Artillery	2	1	1	(1-4 min/max)
Naval	1	1	1	(1-4 min/max)
Admin	3	2	3	(1-6 min/max)
Inf Training	3	2	3	(1-4 min/max)
Cav Training	1	1	1	(1-4 min/max)
Army Mod	-1	0	0	(modifier if Army Commander)
Political	3	4	4	(1-6 min/max)
Mortality	2	1	8	(1-9 min/max, higher increases chance of wound/death)

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January 4th, 2007 - Keith's first baby . . . . (Page 5/9)

Freemont begins the game in 1861 as a Union theater commander in the west. He's someone you're likely to remove from command as soon as you find a leader of sufficient rank and ability to replace him. Longstreet is the ideal Confederate Corp Commander, but not necessarily someone you'd want to put in charge of an army. Rosecrans is a competent Union Corps commander and assuming he does well and is promoted will make a reasonable Army commander as well. In the early years he may be the best you can hope for. We're hoping to begin external testing of our game by late January or February, so if you're interested in being a beta tester, be sure to stay tuned at the Matrix Games forums (if there's no Civil War forum at that time, we'll announce it in the World at War and A World Divided forums).

Although Civil War was delayed, we were pleased with how World at War: A World Divided came out. Our goal was to make the game more realistic while adding more options and variability.

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January 4th, 2007 - Keith's first baby . . . . (Page 6/9)

In doing so we still wanted to maintain the basic Axis vs. Allies dynamic of WWII instead of branching off into what-ifs involving other major power conflicts. So far the response indicates we've succeeded at doing what we intended. If you liked WaW, you should really like AWD, and don't forget that WaW owners that purchase AWD by January 7th, 2007 can get a 35% discount (go to http://www.matrixgames.com/discount/ggwaw-aworlddivided.asp for info on the discount).

In other news, Justin Prince (of War Plan Orange fame) has recently taken over management of our Uncommon Valor/Carrier Force project. Working with Mike Wood and Gary, Justin's the ideal guy to get involved and bring this project to fruition. Hopefully I'll have more to report on this next time. Ron Lorence and David Heath report that things are going well on the Gary Grigsby's Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich project.

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January 4th, 2007 - Keith's first baby . . . . (Page 7/9)

David says the new art is basically complete, and although Ron has steadfastly resisted predicting a completion date for the project, it shouldn't be too many months away. Ron's team seems to be making great progress. For those of you that aren't familiar with the original Bombing the Reich and Battle of Britain games, they were in many ways the precursor of Uncommon Valor and War in the Pacific. It's not unreasonable to say, at least to some degree, that this new project is the equivalent to War in the Pacific for the air war in Europe.

For those of you that have been waiting anxiously for our next game covering WWII in Russia, the bad news is you're going to have to wait a little longer. The good news is that this game features prominently in 2by3's future plans. With Keith no longer having time to be a lead programmer for 2by3, Gary and I have to look for projects that we know we can do with limited help from Keith and for which there's a solid market.

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January 4th, 2007 - Keith's first baby . . . . (Page 8/9)

The Russian Front game and those that will follow from that system fit the bill. Our plan is that while we finish Civil War, Keith will put the finishing touches on the toolkit that Gary will need to be able to program Eastern Front. The design and data work was far along when it was shelved several years ago. We had hoped that Mike Wood would be able to get the project going back in 2005, but that didn't work out. Once we have the toolkit from Keith and Civil War completed, our first priority is going to be Russian Front. So what does that mean in terms of timeframes? Realistically it means sometime in 2008. With our luck, they'll probably be 5 new Russian Front games out by then. We're confident though, that even if that is the case, those of you who have enjoyed Gary's previous adventures on the eastern front will enjoy this one.

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January 4th, 2007 - Keith's first baby . . . . (Page 9/9)

On a personal note, this has been a tough year for my family. Both my parents died in 2006, and although they lived long and meaningful lives, it's hard not to be able to talk by phone with them (as I did almost every week for the past 30+ years). My parents supported me when I decided to start SSI (both financially and emotionally), and in the early days they both worked on various SSI projects. My mother edited manuals and was the game developer for our Rails West! game in the early eighties. My father wrote various historical articles that were included in the game manuals. Since my sister had joined SSI as VP of Operations before we published our first product, SSI was truly a family business. Although my father stopped playing wargames when I was 10 (about the time I started beating him), he taught me my first Avalon Hill wargame and kindled my interest in military history. My parents are just two members of the "Greatest Generation" that are now leaving us in large numbers. It is sad to see them go. I will miss them.

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