It’s true. I found out from Mark Simmons himself last week. The official release is below.

It’s a crying shame. Mark’s been one of the industry’s biggest boosters, even from before he started the Games Quarterly Catalog 16 years ago. He turned around the Origins Awards before handing them over to Charles Ryan and then went on to rescue GAMA in the aftermath of the quiet doom that was the Miami GTS.

Matthews Simmons Marketing, which ran Games Quarterly Catalog, Games Quarterly Magazine, National Games Week, and the ill-fated Games Expo 2007 died because of the horrible contraction the tabletop games industry has suffered through the past couple years. MSM runs on ad money, essentially, and when companies hit hard times they cut their ad budgets—and sometimes don’t bother to pay their bills.

Still, it’s good to see that the two Richards (Hartnett and Martin Leep) will pick up GQC‘s torch and continue along Mark’s path. I wish them luck.

For me, this means I successfully wrote an article for every issue of Games Quarterly Magazine. I just wish it had been a longer streak. The magazine had the best pay rate in the entire industry. Still, as I told Mark, I’d have written for him for free if he’d asked.

Here’s to Mark and his crew. I hope they all land on their feet and that we see them again soon. They contributed so much to tabletop games, and I can only hope that MSM’s demise doesn’t prove to be the canary in the industry’s coal mine.
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