Interview with Byron "Neal" Massey

by Jens Kreutzer

Byron, as the author of "Neal's Last Words", you are quite famous among Netrunners. Could you please tell our readers a bit about yourself?

A lot of this is probably boring, but here it is. I live in Coos Bay, on the West Coast of the U. S. in the state of Oregon. The town is actually on most maps, it has a really good port, the only decent one between Seattle and San Francisco. I just turned 33 and I have a 4-year-old daughter, whom I regrettably do not live with. My brother is a professor of Computer Science at Portland State University, and my sister takes care of her three children. My cousin is Rob, of Rob's Netrunner Node. He's the whole reason I started playing Netrunner, and I want to thank him for the good times. My main profession now is running my game store, The Game Hen. My Bachelor's degree is Physics and my Masters is Education, and I taught high school for five years, and a little junior college. I still do some tutoring, and I've also done some computer work.

What is the status of Netrunner in the area you're living in?

Completely, totally dead. I can't get any starter decks for the store, and that's an impossible barrier for any game to overcome. I get an occasional pick-up game from customers, but that's it. I do miss the game a lot. Near the end, the only real ground to cover was designing constructed decks, but that's an intellectual exercise, not a game. I enjoyed it, but I really miss those desperate runs and diabolic defenses that come in face-to-face, interactive matches.

Your "Last Words" are among the best essays ever written on Netrunner, in my humble opinion. Though some of them can still be found in the Net, is there any chance to conserve the rest for posterity as well?

Thanks! Frisco is still the Content King, in my opinion. Part of that is his deep perception, part his writing style, and part because he did his work when the game was still fresh. I've got them all on hard disk here at home. My original intention was to reformat the HTML and put them up on The Game Hen's web pages. After reading them, though, I realized how much had changed since they had been written. There are rants about the DCI, strategy articles written soon after Proteus(tm) was released, etc. I did put up a few of the old columns that were less technical. Tournament reports, stuff like that. My suggestions for tourney scoring, new variants, and the rest are essentially obsolete. I should say that I've never really lost my enthusiasm for the preprogrammed stack variant. You can build your deck however you want, then put your cards in any order you want before you start the game. I've played it a little (not recently) and I really like it a lot. There are some problem cards that shouldn't be used, but you discover them quickly when playing this variant. If Netrunner has finally left you bored stiff, this is a great way to get more good gaming from your cards.

Though you've announced that you have ended your personal history of Netrunner authorship, is there any chance of you returning to the flock as a writer?

I had such a bad experience with the French Black Ops magazine. I won't go into a lot of detail, but I did make significant contributions to their early issues and have never received a penny for them. Having that background, I'd write for anyone who agreed to front some money or had a good history of payment. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone like that exists. I tried to get a piece in Inquest when Classic was about to be released, but they weren't interested at all. There's just no market for Netrunner writing, because there's so little Netrunner being played. I get all gloomy whenever I think about it. Next question. :-)

If I understand it right, this sad incident was at least in part responsible for your skepticism and at times (pardon me) somewhat aloof attitude toward Netrunner activities. Did I get this right, and would you like to elaborate on this?

At any point, if they had just said, "We're broke right now," it would have been okay. Instead, they kept telling me, "The check is in the mail." A year later, I got a little upset about it. There's no shame in trying a good idea (Black Ops) and having it fail. But there is a lot of shame in breaking promises and lying.

In retrospective, much of your skepticism seems entirely justified-is there anything you would like to say about the "sad story of a fine game" in general terms?

Netrunner, like so many other CCGs of its time, died due to massive expectations in a collapsing market. In most companies, protecting a large investment of time and money would be a priority. Sadly for Netrunner, WotC could just watch it die while enjoying the income from Magic(R). With a lot of work, Netrunner could still be a popular, viable game. But why would WotC do that work when the Magic dollars come in so easily? That's the sad truth, as I see it. The Hasbro buyout was just the final step along a road that was essentially predetermined when the CCG market collapsed. WotC has been unable to produce any successful new products since Magic first hit the market. A game company has a hard time growing, or even surviving, without a successful effort every 2 to 3 years. The new Dungeons and Dragons(R) material is very popular, and it shows what new capital can do after acquiring a debt-ridden company (TSR). Between the ongoing Magic sales and the new D&D(R) material, WotC will be a productive part of Hasbro for a long time. Unfortunately, tiny niche games like Netrunner won't ever be part of their vast strategic plans. This is a good time to point out the monumental effort of Jennifer Clarke Wilkes. I have no idea how she got Classic published in that environment. Despite the zero-marketing, poorly-named effort (beyond even her influence), it was a remarkable accomplishment.

What is your favourite recollection when you think about the time you dedicated to Netrunner?

The year I held the Northwest Championships was a great one. I didn't play at all, since I was running the tournament, and that sucked, but I did get pick-up games of sealed-deck against Jim McCoy and Frisco Del Rosario. I beat them both! That was a great feeling, only because I hold their play in such high regard. Of course, they were probably very tired after a long day at the tournament . . .. Scott Dickie came out and visited on vacation, it was great to spend real time with a player like him. That was several years ago, but those are the kind of experiences that tend to stick with me. Basically, I remember the people and the fun more than the actual sequences of cards I played. Working with my brother, Dennis Duncan, and cousin Rob was a fantastic experience. Visiting Frisco in San Francisco. Playing Byron Bailey in sealed deck and realizing just how good he really was.

Any favourite strategies/decks?

I'm still partial to the Poisoned Water Supply/Preying Mantis deck for Constructed play. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to make it work, although it's not interactive at all, which sucks. I think I like it because you can crush an opponent, but it's not all that easy. You'll kill yourself if you're careless. I also miss Greyhound Demolition Derby. That idea was spawned after Northwest Champion Chris Phillips beat the field to pieces with a now-illegal Precision Bribery/Time to Collect stack. It was fun to show a guy that taking deck lists off the net wasn't as important as designing your own. My favorite Corporations are all designed by Erwin Wagner, of The TRAP ! He can do more with Pacifica Regional AI than anyone on the planet. His decks take some planning and strategy, too. If played correctly, you often finish the game with an infinite turn (paradox?). That's pretty incredible.

How do you see the Constructed tourney environment at the time?

I wish I had more good things to say about Classic. There are some very interesting, useful cards in the set - just not enough. The three-year delay between the design of the set and its release was fatal. The game changed so much during that time. No one could have expected those old cards to make sense after such a long incubation. Learning to be a successful Runner is a really hard job. The personal satisfaction makes it a worthwhile effort, though. Starting with Proteus, I think it's easy to see the design team working toward making it easier for the Runner. That might have been a smart marketing move, but it hurt the best part of the game. Classic made this problem worse, in many ways. All the old debates about banning cards, restricting them, or new limitations on duplicates, were spawned by the more basic problem of trying to make the Runner's job easier. The original edition of Netrunner, v1.0, is a pinnacle of game design. It's just about perfect. Everything after it was a step down, although that isn't the reason the game died. This is so gloomy. Next.

At various times, there have been people who claimed that "Netrunner was solved"; i. e., the "strongest" or "most broken" strategies had been found. Do you think that such a state has been reached by now (the Preying Mantis/Poisoned Water Supply stack comes to mind), or do you believe that such as state is indeed possible?

Oh, it's impossible, but you can get close enough to ruin the fun. I think that cards like Loan from Chiba, etc., force Corporations to play with very specific countermeasures, which, in turn force stacks to include certain defenses, which, in turn, force Corps to take . . . etc., etc., etc. Over the years, I've proposed all kinds of solutions to this problem. No solution is bulletproof, though. Magic is finally escaping this problem by releasing very good sets of new cards. Of course, this is happening after five years or so. Netrunner never had a chance to reach that critical mass of card choices. For me, there are two solutions. One is to play sealed-deck, which ruins the fun of deck design, but gives a great experience across the table. The other is to play a variant, like the one I described above. I might change my mind on this tomorrow. I waver from day-to-day on the best way to enjoy my Netrunner collection.

Do you see any chance of a non-WotC entity buying the rights of and reprinting Netrunner? The cards in stock finally seem to be running low at Wizard's, and they are actually becoming scarce, it seems.

None. Hasbro has essentially achieved a monopoly on CCGs. All the other companies, together, are a tiny fraction of their sales. The selling price of Netrunner would be pitiful, by the budget standards of Hasbro. They really don't need the money. And there would be that tiny, tiny risk of another company turning Netrunner into a major competitor. The risk to Hasbro is bigger than the reward. It's too bad that a great designer like Richard Garfield ended up in this situation. As far as I know, being a hardball capitalist is not his nature. Nonetheless, his company ended up being a branch of a giant corporation. Unlike Richard, they aren't looking for beauty in game design. They're looking for large profits.

Is there still Netrunner action to be had at your game store, The Game Hen? Do you still have cards for sale?

As I mentioned, the game is more-or-less deceased. I still have a Netrunner logo hanging above the cash register. And I still have a huge pile of cards that would undoubtedly be a great thing for someone else to enjoy. If anyone is interested in getting specific cards, they should go to gamehen.com and call toll-free number, or email me. I still have some Classic and v1.0 boosters, too. We need rulebooks, we need starter decks, we need mild amounts of advertising. I don't see those things on the horizon.

One more thing: I know lots of people are capable of playing Netrunner on Apprentice. I can't run Apprentice on my Macintosh (nor is there a Linux version). I think Netrunner would still be played frequently if there was a cross-platform method for playing on computers. Obviously, no one is going to be paid to write this code. But it should be written, just the same. NetNetrunner was a good first effort, and a modern, well-written version would be a great thing. I see this is as the only realistic way for Netrunner to survive in any form. But it requires a hero, someone willing to code the thing for free.

Any last words? :-)

A huge number of people have tolerated my sharpness for many years, in conjunction with Netrunner. Thanks to all of them, and to each and every opponent, correspondent, and confidant that I met in Wilderspace. Netrunner was something special. It brought some of the best minds in gaming together, and gave them a challenge. Despite my sadness at the demise of this great game, I'll always value those memories and the people who I shared them with.

Thank you very much for your time.