As I said things were a lot different back then. We had little money to invest in our company. What little we had went to buy a printer and comb binding equipment. Our first run of books had no artwork and consisted of comb bound books with laminated covers (hand made and shipped out by us). Eventually we were able to contract some artwork and ungraded to more professional binding. We attended Gen Con several times and managed to attract a small but loyal following. Sadly, Lasalion Games would not last. I left the company in 2003 and it went out of business in 2004.
By now you're probably asking what this has to do with Point of Insanity Game Studio. Like I said we had a small but loyal following. After the company folded I had a thought: since the company was no longer in operation some of our fans might have books and characters they can't use. That is when I had an idea: why not create a system that would allow people to take a character from any system and convert them to a similar format so they could adventure together? I developed the MADS system and put an early version of it up on a Geocities page and made it available to the fans of Demon's Lair (and anyone else who came across it).
Over the next couple of years I continued developing the MADS system before venturing again into the small press industry. Three things made this possible: print on demand, royalty free stock art, and online pdf sales. No more would I have to pay for a shipment of books I might not be able to sell! Royalty free stock art is certainly helpful as well. Back in the days of Lasalion Games we would pay anywhere from $25-75 per image. Now it is possible for small press publishers to buy several images for less than that.
A reoccurring problem I ran into while getting ready to publish was finding a name for my company. Every time I came up with a name I liked I searched the internet and found there was already a company with a similar name. I thought "coming up with a name is driving me to the point of insanity!" The rest is history.