MagicCarrot.com interviews Creative Team Alpha about their Ultimate Odyssey

Part 2

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.

If you missed it, be sure to catch Part 1.

MC1: Certain entertainment sectors, like cable television, are feeling pressure from the Internet and I imagine board games are feeling a lot of pressure from video games. Can you describe what you do to create a game that is interesting to the set of fans that grew up with video games, like those who are younger than we are?

JB: Everyone’s younger than we are! [Laughs]

MC1: [Laughs]

AJ: Well, not me!

JB: [Laughs] No, no, not him. We should say that AJ is the baby here. He’s 23. He’s 23.

MC1: Oh, my word.

JB: Jonathan is in this thirties, so....

JY: Jeff’s in his forties ... almost 50.

JB: Almost.

AJ: Right. There was a question there.

JB: There was a question there? Oh, right. I’ll start this one, but chime in. I don’t have television or Internet. That’s my answer.

AJ: He’s got dial-up! Make sure you’ve got that loud and clear. There is someone with dial-up in these United States!

JB: I’m going on record that I’m switching over to WiFi, I swear, sometime this year. I’ll tell you what. I’ve played my fair share of video games and I’ve played my fair share of Internet games, and TV, whether you get it on cable or you have the discs, or you NetFlick, or whatever the case may be, I have to say that I think for the most part, even the video games that you can play with other people but they’re somewhere else, they’re all lacking something. Whether you play the computer or you play somebody who lives in a different city, they lack a personal interaction. They lack camaraderie. They lack a social aspect of it that I think only being in the same room with somebody else can provide. Now, if you’ve got five guys all with control panels and sitting playing a video game, even that interaction, which is all virtual, cannot compare to a few bowls of pretzels, some candy, some root beer, some good folks, good food, good friends. And that’s where I see Killer Bunnies. As like in all the match to that. When you’ve got good folks, good food, good friends, you’ve got good times, whether you’re playing a board game or out doing some other activity. And I think that there will definitely be a swing back to more social interaction. People miss it and I think people crave it. People are not, in general, lonely creatures. We like being around other people. We like interacting. And that’s how I... I know that’s for me. I mean, there are plenty of nights I’ll be sitting around watching a movie and I’d rather be with a crowd of people. But that’s just me. [To AJ] You’re a gamer.

AJ: I have a little bit more experience. I’m definitely a gamer. I own an X-Box. I play on-line pretty much every night with my friends, especially those who, you know, move away for school. I can say, that pretty much as far as being a gamer is concerned, I would much rather, a hundred percent of the time, I’d much rather sit for an afternoon with my friends and play a game, you know a card game, whether it be Bunnies or Magic or whatever, I would much rather do that than sit and play a video game. I think you have a unique interaction when you’re there when you’re with other people. Not only that, I think something that is lost that people don’t really think about, is I tend to remember a lot more afternoons of a good games of Bunnies, and who won that Bunnies game, and what happened in that Bunnies game, than I did in the last 12 or 13 games of Call of Duty or Halo or anything along those lines. So I think they’re a lasting impression when it comes to gaming as well. Also, the physical attributes, you actually have something that’s texture, and you can do something with it, instead of just sitting there staring at a screen. So I think there’s a lot of subtle differences, and I don’t think many people stop and think about it, but it does seem to be a more fun and entertaining experience when you actually have a live presence there and a live audience to interact with, rather than nameless and faceless people over a TV screen.

JB: Boy, you sure have to pull those answers out of us, don’t you?

MC1: Yes, you’re all so reserved.

MC2: [Laughs]

AJ: They don’t let us out much.

JB: [Laughs] No, we don’t get out much. Jonathan, do you have anything to add to that one?

AJ: He Passed.

MC1: You’re taking a “pass”?

JB: He’s taking a pass.

MC1: Okay, then I’ll direct the next question at Jonathan.

JY: Wa-hoo!

JB: I’ll take “Stump Jonathan” for five hundred, please.

MC1: For the aspiring artists out there, which artwork elements were the hardest to develop within each of the games and what did you do to master them?

JY: Which element?

MC1: What parts of the artwork were hardest to create? If you had a particular vision or Jeff had a particular idea that you wanted to put down and make it a card, what were some of the things that were really challenging and what did you do to overcome those challenges?

JY: You’re opening up can of worms here. Barrel of monkeys.

JB: I’d better leave the room. [Laughs]

AJ: We’ll be back in about an hour?

JY: Oh, geez. Where do I begin with that one?

JB: Think Jonathan, think!

JY: The game development is—When we develop a game there is a lot of work at the beginning developing the mechanics of it, you know, how big is the text going to be, what icons are going to be where, you know, we have different size icons, we’ve got from icons to the run and the special and all of these things we have to develop. But once that’s done, everything else is the images. If we’re going to talk about images, oh my. When Jeff develops a game, its fully play-tested before I get it. So all the text is done and all the images... the cards are done, but there’s no image on them. And Jeff gives me “Here’s what I want for this card, or what I’m envisioning” and sometimes its very, very, very specific and very detailed and its referencing a specific pop-culture reference, or it has some sort of mathematical equation to it, or its very loose. I remember one card, I asked him what he wanted from this and he said “I don’t know. I just thought the title was cute.” And then I have to come up with an image for that. I don’t know if it would be difficult. I just think its fun to come up with different ideas to match what he has in the playability of the card. And its fun talking with the fans because they catch a lot of the things I throw in there to a point where they try to catch things that aren’t there. The things that we throw in there, from planet Jupiter being in Quest before they even knew we were doing the Jupiter game, to characters that show up, to things in the background, to “Viva Las Vegas,” which has references to 21 other cards. So they’re just kinda fun to throw in there.

MC1: That was a particularly good scene, incidentally.

JY: [Laughs] That one was fun. It’s just fun to create characters, unique and original characters. They all have ears and tails, but they’re all different, unique characters. Bellinger’s a character in the game, and I’m a character in the game, but I don’t appear as often as he does.

AJ: And I’m finally getting my first card in Odyssey!

JY: And AJ has a card.

JB: He’s a robot. He’s going to be robot.

AJ: If anybody knows Robocop, keep your eyes...

MC1: Oh, sure. So, we won’t really be able to tell its you?

AJ: Well, no.

JY: Yes.

AJ: I didn’t say Robocop himself, but anybody familiar with the Robocop universe and the characters, yeah. That’s about it.

JY: Sometimes Jeff will give me a card that I look at and think “How am I going to make this funny?” Or “How am I going to make this fun or artistic?” Some of them are a little challenging. But I’ve also gone back to him and convinced him “Let’s change this card,” either by title or by mechanic to make it... to kind of match the artwork.

MC2: Hmmm.

JY: For example, he gave me a card called the “Mach 3 Staple Gun”?

JB: “Mach 1 Staple Gun”

JY: “Mach 1 Staple Gun”.

JB: It kinds of rhymes. Kind of.

JY: Mach one, staple gun. Okay. I can see. I sat there and couldn’t figure out how to make a staple gun look like its going mach 1. As I was drawing it, I said “Well, why don’t we change this to a “Cylon Staple Gun?” and that’s how that card came about.

JB: It’s not like I’m a big fan of science fiction or anything, but I let him go with it.

Everybody: [Laughs]

JY: I put things in the cards that Jeff doesn’t even know about.

JB: Sometimes.

MC1: Do you have an example, like on 23 Skidoo, what that little thing hanging from the building is?

JB: You don’t know?

MC1: Is that Spiderbunny?

JB: Yes!

JY: Yes, it is Spiderbunny. [Laughs]

JB: Do you know why he’s there?

MC1: Nope.

JB: Because that building in that card is where “The Daily Bugle” is at in the movie.

MC1: A-ha, okay. I’ve been to New York, but I kind of missed that. [Laughs]

JB: It’s on Broadway and Fifth, isn’t it?

JY: Twenty-three isn’t it?

JB: Yeah, Broadway and Twenty-third.

MC1: Next time I get to New York, I’ll have to look for it.

JB: [Laughs] Let us know if you see the Spiderbunny!

MC1: I will, because then I’m on some serious chemicals!

AJ: I heard you can get serious cash getting pictures of him.

Everybody: [Laughs]

AJ: Like Peter Parker.

MC1: Yes, that is how he got his big break.

Part 3 of the CTA Interview

Bunny’s Eleven

Bunny’s Eleven was the first of the promotional cards released in the Omega series of cards.

Inspired by the movie “Ocean’s Eleven,” Bunny’s Eleven is replicated here.