- [suspenseful video game music]

- We're really proud of Star Control.

- We couldn't have done it alone. 

- So we're gonna tell you a little about the people who helped us make the game.

[suspenseful video game music] I met Erol Otus in the 10th grade at Berkeley High School and we played D and D everyday for about three years. During that time we began making our own D and D books, and then we both moved out to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to work at TSR Hobbies on Dungeons and Dragons. He worked here at Toys For Bob for 15 years, and he's now doing freelance illustration on Hackmasters and other paper role playing games. His illustrations for Star Control were some of the most evocative and original. I think my favorite is the Zoq-Fot-Pik.

- I met Erol Otus before I came to work with Paul, he was working at a graphics company in San Rafael. He was one of the people who introduced me to Paul. Erol was one of the original Dungeons and Dragons artists. His style is unlike any of the other artists. If you mention Erol Otus to someone who played D and D back in the late 70's and early 80's, they'll know it. And I play D and D with him a few times a year, and I love it.

- He always wears shorts, and he owns the same car he's had for, since 1984. He has a Honda CRX.

- I think he's most famous, in terms of his work at TSR on D and D, for the cover of Deities and Demigods, and also the Cthulhu-ian illustrations that are included inside, or at least were, until it was discovered that TSR did not have rights to Cthulhu.

- Kyle Balda was just a teenage guy that we hired. He worked at LucasArts, and he came in to do some animation for our alien conversations.

- He was going to Cal Arts, and that's an expensive school, even back then. And so he was trying to make money over the summer. At night, he would just show up at our office, and do animation. Many many years later, I was Illuminations, the company that makes Despicable Me and Minions, and I saw a poster for Minions, and I noticed under the director's name was Kyle Balda.

- I met Greg Johnson in 1984. We were both working with Electronic Arts. I was making mail order monsters, and he was making Starflight. He has invented alternate phone ringing technology, he did Orly's Draw-A-Story, in which when children draw pictures it automatically appears in the game. He's done a TV show for Disney involving trains and hip hop. Starflight was a huge inspiration to Star Control, he tries things that no one else has ever done before. He worked with us, and he worked adjacent to us for many year on games like ToeJam and Earl, and Caveman Ugh-Lympics, and Greg has recently done a Kickstarter for ToeJam and Earl, and he's doing a FIG program for Starflight 3.

- Iain McCaig went to Glasgow School of Arts in the late 70's. And he actually ended up doing a lot of art for early role playing games, most famously Casket of Souls. And his illustrations are classic, they're beautiful. And when he came to the United States, he worked at LucasArts, working on games like Monkey Island.

-  He's a very great artist, he did Darth Maul in the Star Wars franchise, among many other concepts.

- Including Hook, and Interview With A Vampire, doing concepts as well as story boards. So Iain McCaig wanted to help out on Star Control, but surprisingly, he didn't wanna do art. He wanted to do creative writing. And he provided us writing, it was hand illustrated in the most beautiful calligraphy. We've still got a sheet saved.

- Perfectly kerned.

- Perfectly kerned! [laughing]

- Currently Iain is directing independent movies.

- The way that I ended up working with Accolade, was through Shelly Day, who had been my producer at Electronic Arts, and became I believe an executive producer at Accolade. She was the one who worked out a three game deal for me at Accolade. Working with us after Shelly was Pam Levins, another producer, and she had worked on Star Control 1 as a lead tester, and then was our producer on Star Control 2, both extremely hard working and extremely creative people who helped make those games into what they were.

- Tommy Dunbar is the lead guitarist for the Rubinoos, whose hit "I Think We're Alone Now" hit somewhere in the charts in the late 70's. I've known Tommy Dunbar for a long time because he dated my sister, and when I was looking for someone to do the music for Archon, he was the only musician I knew, and I loved him, so I went and he did the initial music for Archon on his electric guitar. [video game music]

- He later did the music for Mail Order Monsters, and World Tour Golf, and then when we began Star Control, he created the music for all of what we called the victory ditties. So when one ship would defeat another, it's little victory ditty would play. [grim video game music]

- [Fred] Robert and I first met with Erol, we were all at the same company, and he was an engineer, and I was an engineer, and he actually left the company before I did to start making games, so perhaps he led me out.

- Robert actually created a game called Dragon's Eye, and I believe should be credited with the first use of persistent corpses in a game.

- I had set up a system in Star Control 1, where I could plug in ships and powers pretty quickly, and I let him do the Mmrnmhrm. He did a lot of the coding on the Sega Genesis port, and I think he helped on ToeJam and Earl too actually. So he was part of a little conclave of developers we had sitting next door to each other.

- [Peter] I met Mat Genser in 1977, he was part of the same D and D group as Erol Otus. Together the three of us created several fantasy role-playing game supplements. Booty and the Beast, and the Necromican. I went on the work at TSR Hobbies, and Mat wrote for us on Star Control 2. Later on he went to be the lead producer on Star Trek A Final Unity at MicroProse.

- And I met Mat in my here, in the same way I met Erol and Robert at a software company in the mid 80's. And he too convinced Paul and me to work together.

- Something key about Mat is his last name. Genser means goose herder. Whenever you meet him, remind him of that. I first met George Barr in the early 70's, late 60's through his artwork. I knew his artwork long before I knew him. George had been a popular science fiction artist in 60's and 70's, and the first piece of art I owned of his was the poster for Flesh Gordon, a science fiction R plus rated movie. Robert Leland's game, Dragon's Eye had a cover and I recognized the artist, George Barr.

- And it turned out that our mutual friend John Freeman had met George Barr years before and used him on his games at Automated Simulations games like Crush, Crumble, and Chomp. George Barr was an artist that we sought out when we were working on Star Control 2 to help us define this new pulp look, something that hearkened back to the science fiction illustrations of the 30's and 40's, and yet was fresh enough to work in a modern game.

- You know sometimes in business, you're instructed never to work with family or friends, for us that is definitely not the root to success. There is a certain security, you trust them, and you can be a little bit more vulnerable about your creative ideas in front of them, and ultimately I think that offers a much greater chance of you finding a great idea.

- In many cases we both knew them in different venues before we had met so they served, to a large extent, to connect us together, and then after we were connected, we called upon them to help us at our work. Paul and I have been friends for 29 years and we go to lunch every single day together.

- It's not creepy guys, promise. [laughing]

- Well, maybe a little.