MagicCarrot.com interviews Creative Team Alpha about their Ultimate Odyssey

Part 1

MagicCarrot.com sat down with Creative Team Alpha in April and talked about the Ultimate Odyssey, Killer Bunnies, and other games. Creative Team Alpha’s fearless leader Jeff Bellinger, Creative Director Jonathan Young, and Product Development Specialist A.J. Pfeifer answer fans’ questions and give tantalizing answers to our Odyssey questions.

MagicCarrot 1: If each of you could introduce yourselves and describe your roles within Creative Team Alpha, so people can know what each of you do.

Jeff Bellinger: Since I’m the most important person, I’m going to go first! Hi, I’m Jeff Bellinger and I like sesame rolls and poppy seed.

MagicCarrot 2: [Laughs]

JB: Were we talking about rolls? We were talking about rolls, right?

MC1: Yes, we were!

MC2: [Laughs]

JB: Most rolls are good. I like Onion rolls, actually—that’s my favorite.

MC2: There’s a reason you get along with him, Glenn.

JB: I guess I’m in charge of coming up with the raw ideas for the games and the funny names and the pop-culture references. It is certainly not a one-man job. Almost every aspect of what each of us does is a team effort. And here’s Jonathan...

Jonathan Young: I’m Jonathan and I guess you can call me the Creative Director, or the Art Director, or whatever fancy, fun title you want to give me. I make what Jeff does look good.

MC1: Because otherwise it wouldn’t?

JY: I’m just going to sit here quietly now.

MC1: [Laughs]

JY: He [indistinct] me a lot. You should put that in there!

MC1: Okay, we’ll do.

JY: I’m the logical Spock to his frenzied Kirk.

MC1: Ah.

JY: Although he looks a lot more like Janeway than Kirk.

JB: Although. I. Don’t. Know. What. He’s. Talking. About.

MC1: Oh, very good Shatner!

JB: Thank you, thank you. I’m finished now.

JY: I take what he does and add the graphics parts to it. Everything from the card mechanic to the look of the game and even the artwork. Sometimes Jeff gives me a lot of creative freedom and sometimes he give me a very specific direction and we meet somewhere halfway in between.

MC1: That is wonderful. What does A.J. add to the mix?

A.J. Pfeifer: I do a lot of playtesting and basically with our newest game, [Killer Bunnies and the Ultimate] Odyssey. I do a lot of rules checking. I make sure there’s a good continuity going on, that nothing clashes and that rules changes are correct and in place, uh, correctly.

JB: He’s also an avid Magic player and he makes sure that whatever we do is creative but not duplicating any of their universe. Which is cool, because I’m certainly not a Magic player. He’s like an expert.

MC1: Is that why we’re getting a lot more Magic-like play in Odyssey?

JB: I like to think Odyssey is a lot more like [Killer] Bunnies than it is like Magic. I’d say the number one thing that they share is that there’s “card cost” on each card. But really, after that, you’d say that this is a Bunny game. It’s got Run, Special, Very Special cards. It’s got the five-card in your hand, two-down mechanic. Well, a ton of Bunnies. It has all the condition bars on the left side, like you need a Bunny in The Bunny Circle, etcetera, etcetera. So anyone who’s played either [Killer Bunnies and the] Quest [for the Magic Carrot] or [Killer Bunnies and the Journey to] Jupiter would find playing Odyssey very simple.

AJ: Another note on that is any type of game where you have players constructing their own ideas and putting together their own decks, the resource system or card cost. It’s pretty much impossible to get around it. So I guess Magic was the first game to have that, and that a lot of people will relate that and think its Magic-like, but it’s really it’s really hard to break that mold of card cost and still have an effective game.

MC1: Interesting. I have never played Magic myself. I’m kind of a casual gamer. Kathy, have you ever played Magic?

MC2: No, I haven’t.

AJ: It’s very complicated!

JB: Bunnies is nowhere near, and [to AJ] you correct me if I’m wrong, but Bunnies is nowhere near as complicated as Magic.

AJ: Not in the slightest. I’m mean, what’s our rule page on the first set of Odyssey? How many pages is that?

JB: How many pages, Jonathan?

JY: Four.

JB: Four!

AJ: I believe that Magic, when I first started playing in 1995, the little booklet was about 30 or 40 pages in six-point font, so yeah, it is nowhere near as complex as Magic is.

JB: We’re hoping that will work to our advantage!

MC1: Good! Now, we’ve got some questions prepared and I’m going to try to ask them as the conversation flows, but I’d like to start with some Creative Team Alpha questions. So, admittedly, according to your new web site—nice job on that by the way—many Creative Team Alpha games have gone unpublished. What are your favorite unpublished games and we welcome any speculation as to why they remain unpublished today.

JB: AJ’s going to start this one.

AJ: Wonderful. My personal favorite out of the games we haven’t published yet is probably a game called “Where the Buffalo Roam.” It’s exceptionally fun and every time you play it it seems to be a blast. Its a great party game, which is kind of unusual for us because there’s no seriousness involved, not that there’s much in Killer Bunnies! It’s very fun and games don’t traditionally last very long so its good for a crowd that is not looking to spend a whole afternoon or evening on a game.

JB: Jonathan?

JY: What?

JB: We’re going counter-clockwise now.

JY: Well, we have so many that … I’ve never been asked that question.

JB: I’ve never been asked that question, either! [Laughs]

JY: There’s a game that we have that is a combination of board game and cards and it’s called “Solar Flare.” And, it’s interesting. I like the game mechanics, and its fun to play, and I did the graphic design for it, but I actually didn’t do the illustrations for it. But its still a very fun game to play.

JB: I’m going to go with “Slots of Fun”. [Laughs] “Slots of Fun” was one of the worst games that I ever made. It was a really good idea at the time, but ... wow. I would have to say that my favorite is, yeah, I’m going to have to go with “Arch Thirteen”, which is kind of a relatively new game that I did this year and its got a lot of promise. We haven’t showed to a lot of publishers yet. We’re kind of negotiating right now with one. Again, a simple game, but it’s kind of different every time and you don’t really need a whole lot of instructions to play. One of the things with Bunnies is that, especially with the boosters and expansions, it can get pretty complex. I almost like to take a break from thinking about Bunnies and try something light and “Arch Thirteen” was definitely something I enjoyed working on. Although I will say “Where the Buffalo Roam” is roaming in as a close second.

MC1: We really like party games that are easy to teach to a group of people that probably aren’t going to hang around all night. Will those every be published?

JB: Well, from your mouth to God’s ears! We pitch to publishers every year and we keep our fingers crossed. You never know what any particular publisher is going to like or dislike. There’s been interest in all three, but times are tough right now and so I think everybody’s kind of being very conservative and if they don’t see anything that’s like, unbelievably unique or an über-hit, they’re kind of holding back. They’ll all be kind of shelved for now and we’ll continue to push and pitch those. I’m hoping to see all three out eventually. Nothing for sure, yet. Only in the works. I don’t know how much of this you know, so I’ll make this brief, but there’s not a lot of game companies that we can pitch to. I mean, there are a lot of game companies out there. You go to GenCon or Origins and there are hundreds and hundreds of game companies but I classify them in three different categories: there’s the Mattel and Parker Brothers, and Hasbro and [indistinct] of the Code, the big huge companies that we can’t even get our foot in the door; there are the smaller companies that they made their company because they have a game that they made and they only publish games that they make; and then there’s the people like Playroom that are kind of in the middle, that work with people like us to develop the games. But that’s the smallest group of the three.

AJ: Yeah, by far, by far.

JY: So even though there are a lot of game companies out there, there’s not a lot for us to work with as independent designers. And we don’t have the finances to go to this full-time.

MC1: Things are tough out there. As I mentioned in a couple of my emails, a number of our local gaming stores have closed and we’ve been quite disappointed in that. This year, have you seen a great drop-off in sales, or is it fear on the publisher’s part of the unknown game? An established title might be a safe be, but an unknown game might not be.

JB: I do all of the finances for the company and I can tell you exactly. We saw a relatively low drop in our sales. This was the first year that we actually had a drop since we’ve been around, but it was not unexpected. Our drop was considerably lower than most people. So overall, I’m not disappointed. So far this year, Playroom is getting ready to release fifteen new products, just by us, all Killer Bunnies—but in fifteen different packages, which is really good for us. We have one game coming out by another publisher, I can’t, unfortunately, I can’t tell you what it is, because they have not finished development yet. They’re looking for kind of a Christmas release. They’ve not given us the “okay” to release any information. So overall, our personal company, CTA, is putting out sixteen products this year, which is more than we’ve put out in the last five or six years. So several different types of package. All I can say is “fingers crossed.” With the economy as it is, I believe we have a great business model for selling it in small, inexpensive packages. And hopefully that will draw in new players as well as entice our old fans to come back and try something new.

JY: Also, to put that into perspective, the drop may have been the economy, it may have been the sales, but its pretty possible that its drop may have been that we haven’t had as many releases in the last year, as in previous years. It’s been two years since [the] Onyx [expansion] came out and the only game that we’ve published since then has been Jupiter and that’s a tough sell because the higher-priced game. We just haven’t had as many releases in the last year, so that may also affect our bottom dollar.

JB: We always knew that Jupiter sales would not match Quest, but what we always wanted to emphasize to our fans was that whatever you buy, you’re going to get your money’s worth, and I think by far, Jupiter is the more intense, more thought-provoking, more of a gamer’s game.

AJ: Absolutely.

JB: Which is what the public was asking for, and we did about five or six year’s worth of play-testing before before we released it. I’m extremely proud of it and I think “the test of time.” I think in time, when people take a chance on Jupiter, they will definitely see that its the more intense game. I’m not going to say better. It depends on what you’re doing. If you’ve got, like a party situation and people just want to hang out, and kinda not think to much, and just play a game to be entertained, Quest is definitely the ticket. But if you’ve got an afternoon, and you’re with a bunch of gamers who are up for something a little bit more challenging, then Jupiter is the ticket. A.J., you have something to say about Jupiter.

AJ: We’ve had many a day—many a days—of intense games of Jupiter that, well, their lifespan has well-surpassed the afternoon. Jupiter just seems to be a blast. Every time we play it is a great game. Everything I hear from it is just a remarkable experience. Whenever I’m with any of my other gamer friends, they absolutely love Jupiter and they always ask me to play it. It’s definitely my favorite out of Quest and Jupiter. I really, really think Jupiter is...

JB: There may not be as many Jupiter fans, but the ones that play it intensely love it.

AJ: Right.

JB: I mean, we’ve got plenty of Bunnies fans, but... wow. The Jupiter fans are actual fanatics. So, there you go.

MC1: Thank you for that very good answer. Speaking of competition, …

JB: I forgot what the question was!

MC1: [Laughs]

JB: [Laughs] It was so long ago, I’m in a different time zone now! I’m sorry, I tend to be a little long-winded.

MC1: That’s okay. Then we can move onto the next one.

Part 2 of the CTA Interview

Very Intelligent Penguins

One of the prominent features of Killer Bunnies are the penguins, which appear on many of the cards. At one time, these were called “V.I.P.”’s or Very Intelligent Penguins. Are the penguins the aliens from Jupiter? Are they on a nefarious mission?