Reply to another post follows this post.
As for any potential bias, a look at his LiveJournal and esp. at his "Out of the Box" column (previous articles were hosted at Gamers’ Realm) should be enough to dismiss that. He writes about games from the smallest Forge-brewed independent to Wizards of the Coast. His "State of the Industry" and convention reports are IMO the closest thing the RPG industry has to a clear (and entertaining) view of the overall picture.
Considering that he was the line developer (and an author) for both LUG and Decipher Trek, helped with Unknown Armies, books for White Wolf, and books for Chaosium to paint him as just an author for SJG and with a financial stake in GT is a bit of a disservice. He’s a freelancer first and foremost and a fine one at that who has earned my respect. Also see a partial listing for Keneneth Hite at pen-paper.net, Trek Nation interview, Otherworld Excursions writeup (the roleplaying aspect uses Call of Cthulhu, not any SJG game), and finally the writeup for him at the Gamemastering Secrets support site.
So if Ken Hite has something to say, I usually read it, even if I wouldn’t agree with his conclusion. Yes he is not a Traveller writer but he’s good at analyzing games and knows his stuff. I personally enjoy his writing style but that's a matter of personal opinion. I’m not sure an article written by an uber-fan of Traveller who only knows about Traveller would be any better written or informative to the magazine’s audience.
I think your main beef should be with the editors of the magazine, not with Ken Hite. I have not read the article but from the description of it, it sounds like it had some errors in editing and Ken Hite’s bio is certainly worth printing. That they did not include it is their fault as much, if not more than his. From the sample articles it looks like the magazine is in the habit of not printing bios, at least in their articles themselves. For example the article written by Greg Schloesser did not mention that he regularly reviews board games for boardgamegeek.com or anything else about him and the article by James Ernest does not mention Cheapass Games or the other work Ernest has done in gaming. I would suggest contacting them about your concerns and seeing if they can put a correction in a later issue, which I see as being more helpful than cross-posting your views on two web forums.
As for "[m]any of the readers of Games Quarterly do not play or sell rpgs at all" a skim of the magazine’s website listing of one of their magazines has articles by or about several games/companies I regularly see at the Origins convention alongside RPG companies. If they show at Origins they more than likely show at GenCon and GAMA the "Big Two" of the RPG shows. James Ernest of Cheapass Games, the German creator and the US seller (Mayfair Games) of Settlers of Catan, both makers of Pokemon card games (WotC and Nintendo), and both companies mentioned in the ACW & WWII boardgames article (WotC and Eagle Games). You are correct that many of the readers of this magazine likely do not have anything to do with RPGs but there is a lot of crossover between the types of non-RPGs mentioned and RPGs both at the professional interest and FLGS level.
As for my personal bias, I used to subscribe to both SJG's Pyramid and JTAS ‘zines (no longer) and have several SJG games and GURPS books, including GT. Just a gamer though and I roleplay a lot more than SJG games (never actually run or played a GURPS game) and board, miniature, and war game more than I roleplay. I have CT to T20 and have played and/or run several of them, as well as many other RPGs, starting with Holmes Basic back in the early 1980s.
As always, HTH and YMMV.
Correction, Ken Hite compiled Infinite Worlds and updated it from earlier material, some of which he had written. As per the page for IW, "Written by Kenneth Hite, Steve Jackson, and John M. Ford". Since it’s a collection of Alternate/Time Travel worlds as a setting for GURPS 4e core I’m not sure what it has to do with GT. He’s good at writing "What If?" ideas, a large part of the attraction to the "Suppressed Transmission" column, which while they often mentioned GURPS products (due to being in a SJG ‘zine and because GURPS is a universal game system) were stat-less and useful for any game system. Pyramid does not exclusively include articles only for SJG games for that matter.
As for any potential bias, a look at his LiveJournal and esp. at his "Out of the Box" column (previous articles were hosted at Gamers’ Realm) should be enough to dismiss that. He writes about games from the smallest Forge-brewed independent to Wizards of the Coast. His "State of the Industry" and convention reports are IMO the closest thing the RPG industry has to a clear (and entertaining) view of the overall picture.
Considering that he was the line developer (and an author) for both LUG and Decipher Trek, helped with Unknown Armies, books for White Wolf, and books for Chaosium to paint him as just an author for SJG and with a financial stake in GT is a bit of a disservice. He’s a freelancer first and foremost and a fine one at that who has earned my respect. Also see a partial listing for Keneneth Hite at pen-paper.net, Trek Nation interview, Otherworld Excursions writeup (the roleplaying aspect uses Call of Cthulhu, not any SJG game), and finally the writeup for him at the Gamemastering Secrets support site.
So if Ken Hite has something to say, I usually read it, even if I wouldn’t agree with his conclusion. Yes he is not a Traveller writer but he’s good at analyzing games and knows his stuff. I personally enjoy his writing style but that's a matter of personal opinion. I’m not sure an article written by an uber-fan of Traveller who only knows about Traveller would be any better written or informative to the magazine’s audience.
I think your main beef should be with the editors of the magazine, not with Ken Hite. I have not read the article but from the description of it, it sounds like it had some errors in editing and Ken Hite’s bio is certainly worth printing. That they did not include it is their fault as much, if not more than his. From the sample articles it looks like the magazine is in the habit of not printing bios, at least in their articles themselves. For example the article written by Greg Schloesser did not mention that he regularly reviews board games for boardgamegeek.com or anything else about him and the article by James Ernest does not mention Cheapass Games or the other work Ernest has done in gaming. I would suggest contacting them about your concerns and seeing if they can put a correction in a later issue, which I see as being more helpful than cross-posting your views on two web forums.
As for "[m]any of the readers of Games Quarterly do not play or sell rpgs at all" a skim of the magazine’s website listing of one of their magazines has articles by or about several games/companies I regularly see at the Origins convention alongside RPG companies. If they show at Origins they more than likely show at GenCon and GAMA the "Big Two" of the RPG shows. James Ernest of Cheapass Games, the German creator and the US seller (Mayfair Games) of Settlers of Catan, both makers of Pokemon card games (WotC and Nintendo), and both companies mentioned in the ACW & WWII boardgames article (WotC and Eagle Games). You are correct that many of the readers of this magazine likely do not have anything to do with RPGs but there is a lot of crossover between the types of non-RPGs mentioned and RPGs both at the professional interest and FLGS level.
As for my personal bias, I used to subscribe to both SJG's Pyramid and JTAS ‘zines (no longer) and have several SJG games and GURPS books, including GT. Just a gamer though and I roleplay a lot more than SJG games (never actually run or played a GURPS game) and board, miniature, and war game more than I roleplay. I have CT to T20 and have played and/or run several of them, as well as many other RPGs, starting with Holmes Basic back in the early 1980s.
As always, HTH and YMMV.
