On the first night of Gencon for most masses, I had a chance to sit down with Stephen Horvath and ask him a few questions. The following is a hesitation noise and stuttering free version of that conversation! I hope you enjoy it!

On the first night of Gencon for most masses, I had a chance to sit down with Stephen Horvath and ask him a few questions. The following is a hesitation noise and stuttering free version of that conversation! I hope you enjoy it!

A: Do you have any comments before we start the interview?

S: Not at this point <laughs>

A: Some people want to know, what is your favorite food?

S: Pizza

A: Good answer, pizza. Any particular kind?

S: Pepperoni and black olives.

A: Strong Choice. What is lunch like at FFG for you? Not necessarily food, but, what you do, who you hang out with?

S: Actually a lot of games get played at lunch there... I don't get to play as many as I'd like to, cause, like, I've got a lot of meetings and stuff, but yeah, yeah, I play some games, but a lot of the guys play games, uh, many times I'm at my desk eating while working...

A: Good to eat while you work. Good way to get ahead. People want to know what you rock out to.

S: Man-O-War.

A: Man-O-War excellent

S: Probably will surprise a lot of people, but yeah

A: Interesting. ... some Bolt-Thrower? No?

S: No

A: Are there any thoughts about having a “win a date with Steve Horvath” contest?

S: No. Heh... we want players.

A: Oh we want players, ok... right. What was the first awesome game that you played, perhaps something significant to your gaming future?

S: Risk. And then Dungeons and Dragons.

A: The old school box set of dungeon's and dragons?

S: Well. I'm an old school guy.

A: What is your favorite UFS resource?

S: Fire.

A: Excellent. How has or how will the LCG affect the UFS environment or design in the future?

S: That's a completely different design initiative that we're doing, but UFS is firmly established in the CCG format and there's no reason to change it.

A: Do you want to talk a bit how licensing works and how you decide what you will choose and how the formalization of how you secure a license actually works out, if you are able to talk about any of that...Tricky?

S: Its kind of a convoluted process, but we look at properties, that we think are very very strong and try to find things that I think are a really good fit to UFS. The original properties I chose were all for very specific reasons, they are some of the hottest fighting games out there and now we look at things that would be a good support with that. Things that would potentially expand the player base as well as exciting the current players, so that's what we really look for I mean... its so far been limited to fighter games only but we have looked at some action adventure games, we've had a few talks on that so we'll see if those go anywhere...

A: What sort of seals the deal with any given company?

S: What do you mean by that?

A: Well I'm sure you've explored other fighting game's before ... what sort of finalizes the process with them in general?

S: There are different things for different companies. There are a few companies out there that... well I don't want to name any names... but there are some companies out there that don't want their IP mixing with other companies I.P.s the way we do, you know mixing and matching the cards, and quite frankly some of them just don't see the benefit of it, they've just not interested in having a collectible card game.

A: Sort of a moot question but... I mean you actually pay for these licenses quite a bit...

S: Oh yeah we pay a pretty substantially amount for these...

A: So speaking of these licenses and these hot games, SFIV and SCIV have been (yeah) or will be released (yeah) are there any thoughts of cross promotions as when what you did with the Warhammer Online?

S: sure yeah I'd love to do that, I think there's going to be, with some releases down the road, you'll see that with some of the games, but those are really difficult to plan out because their release dates they work years in advance on those games and then we need to know probably nine to ten months out what that release is going to be, to get that properly, and that's really tough to know nine to ten months away...

A: sure... if you hadn't noticed we've had no battle packs

S: yeah

A: why... comments?

S: <sigh> there's a couple reasons. part of it is that the last battle pack didn't do as well as we thought it would do, part of it comes down to the number of cards in the card pool, and especially with the transition, with set nine being late, I think that trying to get a battle pack out this year would have kind of over loaded the player-base, and I don't think... Its funny,,, people kinda' panicked “oh no battle pack no battle pack!” and people also said “oh god please don't do the living card game fixed format for UFS!”. Well that's the only fixed format product we have the battle packs <chuckle> so we canceled those and people are like “oh god but don't do that!” so yeah that was kind of funny but

A: Sort of a lose lose situation

S: Yeah yeah... I just don't think its a product skew that we need right now

A: yeah. So.., there's been rumors of a new lead designer and you had mentioned a new designer being announced sometime after July 14^th, and... that didn't happen so... either comment on why, or if we're going to be announcing a new one...

S: Well now we have a new new designer to announce on Saturday. He's actually playing in the event Saturday... so when he's eliminated on Saturday I'll announce who he is.

A: Well... what if he wins?

S: Well then I'll announce that when he gets his trophy.

A: Sort of like a double win! Quick question, moving along to organized play. We're kind of demanding more fliers and promotional material, any comments?

S: You're going to get more fliers and posters the whole organized play system is going to get a complete overhaul over the next year.

A: which leads in to my next question. Changes to the OP program any comments on how?

S: Well we're going to institute a full blown regionals program for the next year... I'm not ready to give you details on that today and we're gonna revisit how leagues and standard events will work and all that stuff, so we're going to completely rebuild it.

A: Well we're also kind of intimidated on the large banners that some of the other game companies have in gaming stores could be a money issue a promotion concept issue...

S: you're gonna see more of that, You know the transition took a long time... I think it went a lot better than it COULD have, but there's still a lot of details in there and there were some staffing issues, getting a new designer, all that kind of stuff. But now the teams in place and getting up and running there will be a lot of cool stuff over the next year.

A: We've been seeing a lot of promo foundations in the form of Amy's Assistance and Revenant's Calling... will we be continuing the promotional product other than character cards in the future?

S: Yeah there's going to be less promo characters and more promo foundations and assets.

A: Well I would be bad to the playgroup if I didn't ask if you'll consider the unique keyword to some of those... there are concerns about many of those cards needed in four times quantity

S: Well that's going to be addressed to how we're going to change organized play... the promo cards need to be good... but the very best cards in the game should come out of packs

A: Not organized play?

S: For that very reason...

A: We'll get to that more a bit later on the hard-ball questions. We are going to have more regional type events and next years worlds are going to work in lieu with those regionals I presume

S: Yeah those regionals will filter into nationals... which will filter in to worlds.

A: Typically the previous companies line with money as the top prizes was a no-no. I'm presuming this will follow line with Fantasy Flight Games

S: No money no cash

A: and then there's the hard question of... if I have 500 copies of my own character card in my sole possession equates to money...

S: It can if you want it to

A: Good answer... So what's with the original philosophy of no money no cash, I just want to get it on record again.

S: I think cash is bad for games. And you see... The only one that has been successful with that is magic and I would argue whether that that's still applicable... the track record shows that it hurts most games in the long run... and at the end of the day games are supposed to be fun. You enter cash in to the situation and it takes a lot of the fun out of the game.

A: Silly question... the rare card go moved to the center of the pack. Any ideas why?

S: Yeah just... uh...

A: Good place to have it?

S: Its some collation stuff thats not really that big of a deal...

A: we were just wondering why that had happened.

S: Its just some behind the scenes stuff.

A: Yeah we're not.. thinking conspiracy, we just want to know. So... anything you can say about the path of the master's end game?

S: Its going to be really cool.

A: Ok cool... Any comment on future thing of power events?

S: <pause> we've probably... think we've done enough of the 'something of power' for a while... we'll probably do something else next.

A: Yeah... we've had enough power. Time for some awesome, right?

S: Heh.

A: Kind of a silly question... do you have a plan for maximizing the numbers of characters that are going to legal at any given time? For instance right now... T Hawk... is on the verge of not being around anymore,..

S: We're not going to be able to keep everybody legal in every block... its just not going to be possible... especially with the new characters starting with set 12. So starting with set 12, its a base set, starting every year in February where we have our base sets in February, there's going to be eight characters in each set. Instead of like, what was there, like 16 in the last one

A: One character nine cards.

S: Yeah. Now its going to be one character ...17 support cards. And expansion sets, so the other three sets a year that are 99 card sets will have five characters. And only one version of each, not two versions of each.

A: So stacking characters on top of each other, will be mitigated in the new...

S: I don't know if its going to be mitigated, I'd like to see more of it happen, but not within sets I think its been... pretty clear from from talking to retailers and players that you're pulling too many characters out of a set. And the other issue that addresses is that you can't get enough of a theme of a character in to a 9 card spread to build a really good deck out of that characters set, or as cool of a deck as you'd wanted.

A: Are there any thoughts about having 2007 and 2008 cards watermarked, as was done with last years cards, such as widow maker.

S: Yeap.

A; These will be a part of the new organized play program I suppose?

S: Yeap

A: There were a couple of mechanics that were introduced in set 8, such as checking 6+ to have an ability happen or BLAH resource character only abilities... any plans on continuing that or comments on why that was absent in release 9 and completely from what we've seen of release 10?

S: We'll do some more of it. We're just experimenting with a lot of different stuff. I'm sure you'll see some more of that in some other sets too...

A: Any plans for new mechanics in the future?

S: .... <big pause> maybe. Just... I'm not trying to be evasive... it just depends on what the games needs...

A: So small question here... I have some small questions and some serious questions. A bit of a mix... Control values 1-6. Why?

S: <Pause>.... there were some design reasons for it.. it came from some of the design philosophies that we had at that time.

A: Warcry and the others from the other company...

S: Yeah...

A: So here's sort of the harder questions... Why was evil so strong?

S: <long pause> I'd like to say that's because it was evil. <pause> I think its definitely gone too far. Its a balance right I mean void... people probably a year ago probably asked “why is void so strong” right or there was a brief period there where fire was dominating (then people wised up), and its a process right? And during that process sometimes, some of these symbols get pretty strong.

A: Sorry, its just people wanted me to ask that question.

S: No that's ok. I will say that I think there will be a lot better symbol balancing going forward with how we're changing some of the collation a little bit with the less characters. When we do a base set for the collation purposes every card has to have one of two symbols one of two symbols to make the collation work with the starter decks. So we're going to work... we've got some systems in place that I think will work a lot better to make sure there's a lot better spread of symbols in even those two sets though those sets will be heavy towards those two symbols. With the expansion sets though, you're going to see a kind of departure from that where its not going to be featuring two symbols in the expansion sets, Its going to be a better spread of symbols... we also want to be sure that there's enough synergy within the sets so that.. you're playing a character, whatever symbol's on that card, that theres enough cool cards in that set with those symbols in that set to play.

A: Chester's Backing. Has the designer of that card been sacked?

S: At the end of the day... anything that you guys don't like about the game is my fault. Cause... I've got the final say so...

A: We'll leave that up to your other CEOs and board members to decide if they want to sack you or not then... And FAQ and the rules forums... seems like quite a big mess... any plans on cleaning that up in the future?

S: Now that we've got a full team back on board, and the transition is over, we're going to completely rewrite the tournament rules document the FAQ will get a similar treatment... you're going to see a lot of changes over the next few months.

A: Shadowar was announced at gencon last year,... why did you announce it then as it wasn't released until... well... not yet, but tentatively 2009ish?

S: Original I.P.s take a lot of time to build a lot of work to get right. And we announced last year that we wouldn't see it until 2009, and we saw the first promo cards in January 08, and there's new promos cards released throughout the year for it. so... we kind of easing people in to it, we've released a decent amount of character backgrounds and bios now. We're going to see some more fiction about the world over the next few months leading up to the base set... so we just wanted to introduce it in a kinda... measured manner to get people excited about it. And we've very very response its been... awesome. I'm looking forward to the set in in February. We've got some other big plans for other big categories for the game like we announced last year, we're not ready to talk about this yet, its going to be a major property for us in a lot of different areas.

A: Would you like to comment again about the Warhammer demo decks?

S: The Warhammer demo decks was something that we did when we were STG, owned by GW and it was part of that structure, they were a lot of fun to work on... EA Mythic is a great company. And we thought it was a really good promotion for them... and hopefully it'll bring some more people to UFS... the reason I know a lot of people ask “why isn't it tournament legal”?

A: I think we know

S: Well yeah. I'm not going to ask people to go buy a 65 dollar game to get a bunch of cards that... there are some powerful cards in that deck... they were meant to be big swing cards to have a lot of fun with... and they were never meant to be tournament legal. You can even see in the promotion that EA Mythic talks about is two demo decks included right... so they even included... they understood that... so they were meant to be demo decks from the beginning... we didn't put the demo stamps on them just because we wanted them to look as cool as possible for the people that saw them for the first time

A: What about the other 40 cards in the collector ID numbers for the Warhammer Online cards... will we be seeing those cards some time? The collector numbers.. they go 1-56.

S: Do they? Heheh. Yeah No.. there were some other plans for some stuff before that's not going to happen with that... No you won't see anymore Warhammer in UFS. You can look for that definitely in some other place.

A: Well.... do you have any last comments before we complete this?

S: No. Not really... We want to thank everyone for their support. Gencon is awesome again this year and you're going to see some really kick ass stuff from UFS this year!