One of the cool things that’s happened as a result of the announcement is getting back in touch with the original team. There’s been some fond reminiscing, and talk of a reunion at some point. It’d certainly be nice to see everyone again.
Meanwhile, though, I wanted to talk about a couple of people who are very relevant to the new production.
First of all, Sian, the Art Director behind the new logo, website, and concept art, who has been absolutely critical in helping us get to this point.
Sian has a long and distinguished career in the games industry, working for EA Europe’s internal advertising team back in the mid-90s, and subsequently EA’s ad agency OWNP. She’s now the Senior Partner at MDM Creative, the design agency she co-founded in 2000.
Sian’s worked on a huge number of AAA campaigns, creating packaging and advertising at the highest level, such as this award-winning poster for the Alien franchise, which graced Times Square. We’re very, very happy she’s onboard.
Delnar Ersike, on the other hand, is the creator of the unofficial patch for the original game, published nearly three years after launch, by which time the dev team had long since disbanded.
His work addressed some significant unresolved issues with the original, particularly in terms of visibility and feedback on what various cards do. It’s no exaggeration to say he’s one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about the original game.
Right now, we’re talking with him on e-mail, working out how he might be able to fit into the new team. He seems like a very smart, very capable individual, and we’d love to have his input as we reactivate and reimplement the core game systems.
In the meantime, there’s a huge pile of admin tasks to take care of, e-mails to answer, and relationships to rekindle. More interestingly, Klaude and I have been discussing the product vision at length… I hope to share some of our thoughts with you on the next blog.