QuoteDOJ INC. ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF MAJORITY SHARE IN INDIE PRESS REVOLUTION

June 17th, 2010- New York City, NY: DOJ Inc. is proud to announce that they have closed a deal to acquire a majority share of Indie Press Revolution, the industry's leading direct-sales network of high-quality small press game publishers, and will be taking over administrative operations of the company beginning July 1st, 2010. The minority shareholders have all approved the sale and will be retaining their ownership shares in the company.

"I'm delighted to be taking over a sales organization with the brand strength and reputation for quality that IPR has built over the last several years," says Darren Watts, President of DOJ Inc. "IPR has a very strong business model and has done an outstanding job representing its client creator-publishers, and we intend to carry forward with the same philosophy in order to bring great new games to the public from the cutting edge of game design."

"I'm excited to be working with Darren, Jason, and the rest of the DOJ team," said Ryan Macklin, General Manager of IPR, who will be remaining in that position. "They have an excitement about IPR that I relish, and I'm looking forward to the future they'll bring to this company."

"DOJ Logistics has already been providing IPR and its publishers complete shipping and warehousing services since August 2008," said DOJ Logistics Director Jason Walters, "so both the publishers and the customers of IPR should receive the same fine service they've come to expect."

"DOJ Inc has been providing IPR great service and over the years we have developed a close relationship with the warehouse staff. I can't think of any better partner for IPR to help the business grow and thrive in the years to come," said Brennan Taylor, owner of Galileo Games and outgoing President of IPR. Mr. Taylor is retaining a minority share in IPR, as well as remaining a client publisher, and will be assisting DOJ in the transition.

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ABOUT INDIE PRESS REVOLUTION

Indie Press Revolution is a consolidation house and direct-sales network of quality small press game publishers, dedicated to establishing a community in which creator-publishers can flourish and share their ideas and visions together in a cooperative environment. IPR sells exclusively to retailers and the public through their website, at //www.indiepressrevolution.com. They currently represent over ninety outstanding independent small publishers, including such industry standouts as Cubicle 7 Entertainment, Evil Hat Productions, Arc Dream Press, Pelgrane Press, and Galileo Games, to name only a few.

ABOUT DOJ INC.

DOJ Inc. are the owners of Hero Games, publishers of Champions and other roleplaying games using the award-winning Hero System, and of DOJ Logistics, providing warehousing and shipping services to the tabletop gaming industry.

MEDIA CONTACT
Darren Watts
darren (at) herogames (dot) com.

So wait.. these guys are now owned by a corporation that produces major non-indie mainstream RPGs?!

WTF?!

I'm waiting to see how the Swine justify this one...

RPGPundit

The hardcore Forge people never got onboard in the first place, so I don't see IPR as some sort of "swine" endeavor -- it's mostly small press, a good portion of whom don't have anything to do with the Forge.

LOL Sweet irony.

Brennan has done a great job with IPR. He now gets to focus on other priorities in his life and enjoy the fruits of all that work. Good for him, say I. And I say that as a publisher who has enjoyed (and will continue to enjoy) a long and very amicable relationship with IPR.

I'm would have thought, Pundit, that as someone who also has product they have written available through IPR, you'd also be happy with this news of continued prosperity for the company and thus continued sales for your gaming endeavours?

No justification required, I think.

Cheers
Malcolm

Well, it's probably an improvement for everyone involved, but I think that's pretty much the end of the argument that there was ever anything significantly different about the indies than what was happening elsewhere in the community.

The original supremacist argument was that it was the content that made forgies superior, and that quickly morphed into "it's about the ideology", and that eventually became "it's about the distribution itself.."

But games are just games and sort of live and die based on their own merits. There was never any real difference (Malcolm Sheppard pointed that out once, and was shouted down, as I recall); to the extent that there really was a difference it was often an artificial effort based more on conformity to an agreed upon set of trends than anything else. (And simply count the number of forgie games with dice pools, scene framing, and 'conflict resolution' to understand what I mean). It really amounted to a house style. To the extent that there really were people doing something different, they disassociated themselves from the forge.  (and often enough they enjoyed increased success because they had better ideas: witness the Burning Wheel or the Fate guys).

In the end, the indie name was just a name.

Indie...Press...Revolution...

Que eso esto?

DOJ is pretty indie. That Steve S. Long on the covers isn't editorial credit; the guy's a writing maniac.

But that means the most indie sector is the hated OSR...

Huh. I thought IPR was a cooperative. Which one am I thinking of?

EDIT: Never mind. I was thinking of Your Games Now.

Quote from: Age of Fable;388047Huh. I thought IPR was a cooperative. Which one am I thinking of?

IPR has always been a company owned by a small group of individuals. Not sure who you might be thinking of as as regards a cooperative: here in the UK there's the Collective Endeavour, a loose collection of small press publishers. At GenCon Indy you'll find the Play Collective (now defunct, but was another loose collection of small press designers) and Design Matters (still going strong and operating on an extremely cooperative model).

Cheers
Malcolm

QuoteThe "Indie Press Revolution" is No Longer "Indie"?

Isn't that what Edwards said long before, and what led him to sever the ties 20 months ago?

From Pundit's blog: The Indie Revolution Isn't Indie Enough For Edwards?

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;388050Isn't that what Edwards said long before, and what led him to sever the ties 20 months ago?

From Pundit's blog: The Indie Revolution Isn't Indie Enough For Edwards?

I really doubt pundit wanted you to bring logic into this thread.

Quote from: Phantom Black;387962Indie...Press...Revolution...

¿Qué es esto?

Fixed your typos. Otherwise, good Spanish

Shame they could not have called themselves Small Press Revolution because that's what they really have always been.  

I've only dealt with IPR via their convention booths and each time they have done a good job of presentation and salesmanship.

Also, don't let the Swine/Forge taint keep you from visiting their site.   They have an extensive collection of interesting games that aren't any more "anti-trad" than Shadowrun's dice pools.

Malcolm's Cold City is one badass espionage horror RPG.  I've played it three times and its rocked.  You fight Nazi occult leftovers and weird experiments in the back streets of post-war Berlin with a team that you may or may not be able to fully trust.  Truly great stuff and certainly one of the gems of the small press world.

Let's hope that DOJ/Hero will take a page from the "Indies" and make a few games that rock at around 100 pages...like Hero used to do.

Quote from: Spinachcat;388094Malcolm's Cold City is one badass espionage horror RPG.  I've played it three times and its rocked.  You fight Nazi occult leftovers and weird experiments in the back streets of post-war Berlin with a team that you may or may not be able to fully trust.  Truly great stuff and certainly one of the gems of the small press world.

Let's hope that DOJ/Hero will take a page from the "Indies" and make a few games that rock at around 100 pages...like Hero used to do.

Would you start a thread to tell me about Cold City? and/or Hot war?