Did you know that Monmouth was once home-base for a very successful video game development company? Its name was Magic Lantern Playware and it was co-founded and run by our guest speaker this past Tuesday; current City of Monmouth Economic Development Director Paul Schuytema.

This firm successfully completed and commercialized 20 video game projects and sold over one million units. It pumped roughly $2.5 million into the local economy. Its members published over a dozen books; many on how to best succeed at various video games of the day. Lastly, the firm represented an opportunity for what Paul referred to as “eight nerds to live their dream.”

Sounds like a great success; right?

Well yes; certainly… But then—and ultimately—no.

Paul’s firm no longer exists. It experienced the fate of many entrepreneurial firms; it ultimately failed. But it did so only after a very wild, up and down ride full of what Paul referred to as “grand failures” and “great successes”–and many “landmines” and “best of times” and “worst of times”–along the way.

I now yield to today’s student blogger–Victoria Bance–to tell in more detail the tale of reluctant (former) high-tech entrepreneur Paul Schuytema.

Lastly, THANK YOU Paul for sharing your story and experience with us!! It is understandable that many former entrepreneurs whose companies ultimately failed are reluctant to talk about what happened; it can be very painful. Paul seems to have learned from his experience and to have learned to have fun with it.

Prof. Gabel

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Paul Schuytema was not the regular entrepreneur that planned everything out, the business ended up finding him unintentionally. Mr. Schuytema spoke to our class about his crazy journey on March 21, 2017.

It all began when Paul was a kid in the 70’s. He was very entertained by playing board games. He and family would bond over family game night.

As a child, he was also interested in formalizing rule sets. An example he gave in class was being able to make a playground set into a ship and the ground lava and having there be certain restrictions that made games more fun. There were many games he enjoyed playing such as “Cosmic Impounder”, “Cosmic Blitz”, “Squad Leader” and much more. The one game that he did not like to play was “Monopoly”. In 4th grade, Paul enjoyed ancient Greek and Roman figurine themed games; also he was interested in painting the figurines. Soon he began to formulate his own rules.

At the age of 13 his dad passed away and as a way to distract Paul from this, his mother bought him an HP41C calculator; that kind of looks like a scientific calculator. The HP41C had roughly enough memory space to store one icon that we see on computers today. Not long after that the Atari 800 came out. The Atari 800 had much more memory than the HP41C, more colors and a joystick. It was around this time that Paul started writing letters to Chris Crawford, father of modern computer games on the Atari. Crawford was able to teach Paul some of the secret keys of coding.

In the early 80’s Paul attended Knox College as a Computer Science major but soon found out that it was not what he expected. So he changed his major to something else he enjoyed; storytelling and writing. After graduating, he got a job at Monmouth College. Not long after that he starting creating video games. The first gig he was offered by Atari in early 90’s, they wanted him to help with the game “Mind Drive”. It was a game that you would literally use your thoughts to drive depending on what side of the brain you were using to move the character. This project didn’t turn out as well as they wanted. He said it was too easy to get sidetracked and you would just crash.

Later Paul got a second gig working for 3D Realms in Texas to be a designer for the game called “Prey”. At the same time, within the same company, there was another group of designer’s creating the MechWarrior game which was supposed to compete with “Prey”. The goal for “Prey” was to be the most violent game on the market. Paul had come to work one day to find out that the president terminated the game immediately. After that Paul did what anyone would do and left the company. From this experience, he learned the right and wrong way to run a business.

Paul then moved back to Monmouth, at the time he had a wife and two kids. The only internet they had in Monmouth around 1999 was dial up. He decided he wanted to make a game himself but needed to pay the bills at the same time. He started writing video game strategy guides during the day for money and at night he worked on his games. He made a couple games during this time. One was called “Second Genesis” and the other was “Gen Fusion.” Both were what he called “grand failures” because they didn’t have that popular name that people know such as “Star Trek” or “Rugrats”. The next game took him a little farther. The game was called “Forts-A Magic Lantern Game”. Paul went to a trade show to show off his work and got to meet Ed Fries, which at the time was head of all Microsoft games. Fries turned down his game disrespectfully.

After that, he did a pitch to Red Storm Entertainment. He made a demo to try to capture their interest in his work. He had to create all the technology on his own because he didn’t have much to work with. A while later they called and told him they wanted to send a team to Monmouth to make sure that he had a real company. At the time it was only him and a few other people; not really much of a company in any way. He had to make it look like the company existed, so he borrowed a few things from his mom bought some tables and chairs and made his space look like a business. A few months later the company sent him an okay a big advance check in the mail to get started on the project.

“Rainbow Six Covert Ops Essential Game” was a success. At the same time, Magic Lantern Playware wrote the largest existing encyclopedia on counter-terrorism. An interviewee predicted 9/11 exactly as it would happen. Because of the details and the accuracy of this, their show tech engine was used to provide tactical police training programs. Paul’s next game “Combat” was a success. He received $40,000 from Rainbow Six Game.

The next game he was offered to create was “Survivor” which he knew was not going to be good because they were rushing him and his team to make a deadline. But before the game came out they offered him the next game “Survivor Ultimate”, which was a little bit better in picture quality. But when it came out it was popular to a target market they didn’t expect to hit; younger to middle age women. The games sold a lot but were, according to Paul, not all that good.

After that one of his own employees stole the equipment used to make the games and then crashed a car that Paul co-singed leave Paul with the bill. He learned never to co-sign and not to trust everyone. After that Paul continued to make games but more along the lines of “Foosball”, “Mahjong”, “Front Runner” and “Video Game Tycoon”. Some were better than others. Not long after the company went bankrupt.

Why?… Industry change that was not taken seriously and failure to adapt.

The video game industry started to take a new route. When the console Xbox came out it pretty much put wiped PC gaming off the competitive map. It was impossible to compete with console games because there would have been a bigger need for employees to work on a game than what he had and the technology was much different. Paul at first thought console gaming was a joke and would never succeed. He was wrong. It all happened—and ended—very fast.

Today Paul is the Director of Economic Development for the city of Monmouth. His wife Susan is the owner of Market Alley Wines in town and he helps with web development. He continues to use what he learned from his experiences—from the grand failures and the great successes–to better the company that the two own.

Victoria Bance