Gary Gygax

"In many ways I still resent the wretched yellow journalism that was clearly evident in (the medias) treatment of the game — 60 Minutes in particular. Ive never watched that show after Ed Bradleys interview with me because they rearranged my answers. When I sent some copies of letters from mothers of those two children who had committed suicide who said the game had nothing to do with it, they refused to do a retraction or even mention it on air. What bothered me is that I was getting death threats, telephone calls, and letters. I was a little nervous. I had a bodyguard for a while."

"Games give you a chance to excel, and if youre playing in good company you dont even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game."

"I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else."

"The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience. There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things."

"There is no intimacy; it’s not live. [he said of online games] It’s being translated through a computer, and your imagination is not there the same way it is when you’re actually together with a group of people. It reminds me of one time where I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, "Because the pictures are so much better."

"The idea that a game is anything more than a game… You know, there are people who are basically unbalanced who are going to misuse a game and have bad results. If a golfer who insists on playing during a lightning storm gets hit by a stroke of lightning and is killed nobody says, Theres golfers dying by the droves being hit by lightning! You can overdo what you really like, and if youre unbalanced you go overboard."