by Our legendary member Kurgan, performed time ago an great live interview with Patrick O'Rourke, better known as "Intergalactic Patrick" in social media, performed during GenCon 2024 event in Indianapolis. At the time of interview, Patrick was the Director of Project Management/Marketing of HeroQuest remake's products.
The interview with Patrick O'Rourke can be found in Kurgan's YouTube channel XSC3-HeroQuestFans here, however, he gave me permission to transcript it on this post for eternity. Nevertheless, of course I encourage you to watch the full video if you are interested in listening to Patrick.
On behalf of all members of Ye Olde Inn, Thanks a lot to Kurgan for generating this great valuable piece of history!
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INTERVIEW WITH PATRICK O'ROURKE "INTERGALACTIC PATRICK" by our Ye Olde Inn member Kurgan, performed the 7th of August 2024 for his YouTube channel, @HeroQuestFans
- Kurgan from HeroQuestFans (K): All right, what's your name?
Patrick O'Rourke "IntergalacticPatrick" (POR): Patrick O'Rourke.
K: All right, we interviewed Patrick last year, we had a great time, he great to sit down with us, answer some questions, and really appreciate it, so congratulations on the new Hero Quest stuff that we came here to see and Talisman.
POR: Thank you, lot of work and love went into this.
K: All right. We're here at Gen Con 2024, we're sitting down with Patrick O'Rourke. Thank you for agreeing to sit down for an interview, and maybe just a quick introduction, what's your role at Avalon Hill Hasbro?
POR: Yeah, so I'm a Director of Product Management. I lead the cross functional Avalon Hill team to get the products out and figure out where they're going in the marketplace, all that stuff, so II'm fortunate enough to lead the team and help us decide and make the next things we make, it's a big part of what I'm doing.
K: Very nice, and I suppose now that Doug Hopkins is here, I've got to grill him on a lot of things, so if you say "ask Doug", I understand but I do have a few questions I kind of want to get your perspective on.
POR: Of course!
K: Okay, so people have been pressing me hard on this one... the Rogue Heir of Elethorn expansion has sold out very quickly at Hasbro Pulse, it's kind of hard to find and now I see The Path of the Wandering Monk, which is in many more markets, has also started to sell out and it's gotten to the point... I did hear from somebody on Reddit who claimed that they heard from Avalon Hill, you know very vague, that you guys aren't going to make those anymore, and I also personally have checked it out, and heard that you do have some still in stock, what I'm asking is this long question, are you eventually going to stop producing those two figures? and if so, will it appear in another form? should we be worried is this FOMO again?
POR: Oh man, that's a really complicated question. I'll say this: the print runs are running out, or have run out, depending on where you are. We have things like factory constraints, like minimum order quantities, and tooling refreshes, and a lot of really like functional manufacturing things that go into making these, and those won't get fired up again until we think we could hit that minimum order quantity, which may or may not happen in the future. I really don't know we seeing a lot of demand being here, at Gen we're hearing a lot of people say like "I can't get my monk", so I really don't know what the future brings at all, it really depends on what the players want and what the players want to play with, and ultimately what our retailers are asking for, right? so I think there is no reason for those two in particular that we can't, it's just a matter if it is responsible to do it from a financial perspective, and I'm that's not to say that there's not some alternative solutions that we can come up with, and that's sometimes decisions that we make is because we want to get things to that the people are asking for, so we will tuck a Knight into a certain Quest Pack, things like that because that's what we're allowed to and capable of doing.
K: I still to this day so appreciative of how that went with the Guardian Knight because I know you guys had something special, and it's like "okay, this was", I felt bad that you had to apologize for it, but I was like "man, they said it was coming back and then it was in Rise of the Dread Moon", and I thought it was improved, and I think a lot of people would be happy if they saw like, yeah, Wizards of Morcar, let's say, you know...
POR: [Laughs]
K: And it includes The Wandering Monk and the Rogue Heir, you know? why not even if they have nothing to do with the adventure? it's extra value and it's not going to run out in the sense that, yeah, you do have people that'll say "it doesn't matter, I'm going to buy the Mythic Tier, and I'm going to buy Spirit Queen's Torment because I have to own every box", but that's just a small fraction, the collector mentality, so I guess the second part of that question was...
POR: Other than backwards from the way "oh, there is one".
K: My other question was this person was saying, and I know things get misunder misinterpreted... [NOISE] Okay, yeah, technical organizational issues, okay, okay what was I saying...?
POR: Sometimes things misunderstood.
K: Oh, yeah, so I've probably misunderstood things. You guys have said before, and I appreciate the clarifications, I think it was easier on the Discord at one time because we could just ask and Chris or Bill, would just jump in with the answer, and now like Doug is having to do it, and he still seemed pretty cool with like we're not taking him away from something else, he'll either answer, or he'll say I'll pass it along, so we appreciate that too, but what this person was saying on Reddit was that the Wandering Monk was not selling well, can you confirm or deny that?
POR: I mean what is "well" mean? it sold to expectations, but it did not those expectations weren't like exceptionally high. Our Avalon Hill's business did not depend on the success or failure of Monk, but it did it fine, it did fine, it moved a little slower I think than we first expected, but over time people discovered it found.
K: Yeah, people take time to find out about this stuff. I mean we're a fan forum, but we do our best to like tell people "hey, Hero Quest is back and there are more things", but I regularly run into people even on like Twitch where they're like "oh, really, there's a new expansion" like "I didn't know that, what's in it?", it's like you don't know.
POR: Yeah, exactly, and that's something that we're working on improving frankly, and Gen Con for us is a big event for that, that's where we're able to show off what's in the box and everything, and get it to the right people, who hopefully people like you help tell others to get the word out for us.
K: And I mean some of us are highly critical of the product too, we'll say "oh, man, like you probably heard all the Wandering Monk it's totally overpowered, this guy doesn't work, what's the fun in playing this character", I disagree now that I've actually played him in many quests like as soon as you guys put out the photos of the cards, we just homebrewed it until the real thing came out, and I bought it and then I gave it away to a friend, and I bought another copy, so I still have one for myself, so we've done that, but the public playtesting I think is really important, so is that going to continue that sort of like putting the things out early, so people can like test it out and spread the word?
POR: Yeah, when we can, it will, yeah, and again that's why Hero Quest First Light is here today, we released some images and some things, so we could understand what we were at with the player community and the fans, and that is a big part of what we're trying to do because again, Hero Quest is nothing without its players, so what we want to do is not we want to do, what's right for Hero Quest, but we also want to have our eyes open and be actively listening to how we can improve and do better.
K: And I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this, but can you give me a quick spoil about Talisman fifth edition, because I know we've got fans that want to hear about that too.
POR: Yeah, Talisman fifth edition has it much like Hero Quest, it has been in the works for many years before it came out, it's something that Doug, myself, the whole team extremely passionate about. What's great about fifth edition is that if you logged a lot of hours playing fourth edition, like myself, the one thing about it that I think is the most challenging is sometimes that game can take seven hours to play, heard that, yeah, and forth edition is very fun but you don't often have seven hours to sit and rock out a game play, so that was a big focus of hours, is like how do we introduce some modern game mechanics that don't take away from the Talisman experience, it still feels very Talisman, is very Talisman, but gives you a little more player agency that allows the game to move a bit quicker, so now we're finding game plays closer to 90 minutes, 2 hours, somewhere in that range, depending on how many players you have, and it allows you the ability to take it out and play it more, but there's also the older rules within the game as well, so if you want to go back to that really long play session, that's totally something you can do with the new balance mechanics, with everything that we've done elsewhere to help improve the game and around some of those edges I...
K: I really appreciate that because there's definitely some games that I find very intimidating, like when I was 8 years old that would have been the time to get me into Axis and Allies, but now as a grownup, I'm like "no way, am I playing an 8 Hour game", but when I see "oh, here's a 4 hour, and a 3 hour, and a 2 hour, and a 1 hour", maybe I'll try it.
POR: Yeah, that's the hope because we love that game, Doug and I have fought so much playing that game in the best way possible, and the fact that we were able to work on it, work with Games Workshop is really a privilege of my career, and to get to where it is today, I'm just so happy and proud of it.
K: Speaking of your neighbors, Games Workshop, I had a blast playing Kill Team, and I actually survived, we actually got to the end, yeah, and I was like wow because last year we just were killed every single time squad was wiped out, and then it was the reverse playing Hero Quest with you guys, Doug man, that we had such a great time, I mean, the way he tells it, he gets piled on whenever he's playing with you guys, and so this was his time to shine and he was like doing victory laps, destroying us with his amazing roles, it was so great.
POR: They think about Doug he is the nicest man in the world, extremely good game player, and he will smile at you, be helping you, and be destroying you at a game, all at the same time, and so as you, I've known Doug for many years, played many many many hours of games with Doug, you learn to not trust him because he's going to beat you, so I guess getting wailed on ultimately happens because we all like look at each other, like he's going to win if we don't make some choice quickly.
K: And I think he outright deceived somebody, like they were like "oh, there's no traps here, right?" yeah, and yep you landed on a trap like was some moment like that, I was like that is like I play Zargon a lot. and I was like "this guy, I underestimated him".
POR: Oh, yeah, he's a very good Zargon, he's very captivating, yeah. I compliment him too much, that's what I tell him all the time, I'm always giving you too many compliments, sir.
K: So I diverged into a Doug thing, but anyway, Games Workshop, so I keep hearing about these collaborative projects, so Talisman and what was the other? there was there another Games Workshop collaboration that happened recently?
POR: Not on my team. There's one with Magic the Gathering, but not with us, but I will say they're really good folks over there at Games Workshop, and I love our partnership, and I'm looking forward to it continuing to grow.
K: So Hasbro in Games Workshop, sometimes Avalon Hill in Games Workshop?
POR: I would say Wizards of the Coast in Avalon Hill have worked with Games Workshop in the past, yeah, yeah, and hopefully we'll continue to, I mean we have a lot of projects that we're discussing and working on.
K: So new question for me, since I don't follow Talisman and maybe I should, is the new Talisman... did anybody from Games Workshop like come in to work with you, or is they just said you have permission to?
POR: No, it was a partnership, yeah, so they... we like industry terms, we licensed it from them, so we were the lead on it. Doug was the lead designer on it to talk about him some more, but we were the lead, but we worked in partnership with them every rule set, we had every tests, we show them run it through them, they played it consistently with us, provided feedback, it was totally a joint effort.
K: That's awesome, yeah, because I assume if at any point you guys decided to do something radically against what they thought, like they would object?
POR: Yeah, they wouldn't it wouldn't happen, yeah, it's a classic Games Workshop brand and we're their partner to bring it back to life.
K: Yeah, and it sounds like it's being well received, we do have a few fans, seekhashem I'll shout him out on the Discord, he regularly posts pictures, he'll have a party at his house like "oh, we played for eight hours and we played with every single expansion", but then he's been posting about fifth edition it's like "oh, it only took us 2 hours".
POR: Exactly, that was the goal we...
K: Then you play another round.
POR: Yeah, exactly, or you can get it out more often, really that's the thing and I don't know I don't know if it's because now I'm like a father, and game play is like harder and harder to come across, but that's just been a... I just really appreciate that I have a giant closet of games, and I look at them sometimes and I'm like "I don't know if I'll ever play, you brought up a I don't know if I'll ever play that box again" because I can't get it on the table, I don't have the time to sit and play it, so to give the option for that, that's something that really speaks to me and I think to a lot of players.
K: And I have had to explain to friends of mine, who I've gotten into sucked into Hero Quest games, it's like it doesn't always take that long like it's just because certain combinations of people we're playing and certain Quests we played, so I've tried to say "oh, look, we could play a Quest in 45 minutes", like it is possible, my brother who is a big player, we grew up playing Hero Quest together, great imagination, he was like "oh, the sessions are only 2 hours, you guys better go fast", like you're not going to get done, but we did.
POR: That's fun, great, I play with my brothers as well. I have two of them, I have a sister as well, but she didn't really play as much Hero Quest with us. When I play with my brothers, they are so systematic about room clearing, they're like an Army Force, we fly through that game at this point, and so I even have to like think of curveballs sometimes, to throw them on the map, because they're just like clearing rooms like you wouldn't believe because they're like have a whole system, yeah, system down that they know works, they've minmaxed the heck out of that game.
K: I've run into similar issues as Zargon because I play virtually on Hero Quest Fans, and we get people from all corners of the globe, but they start to work together, and they start to coordinate, and I think Stephen Baker said something like that too, which was like "once people have that well oiled machine, the game's kind of easy".
POR: Yeah, it gets a little... again what the outcome's going to be? so you have to get more clever as Zargon, I think for players like that with traps or unexpected things that happen with treasure, or whatever, you have to start throwing them curve balls because it's a room full of creatures, isn't going to stop them sometimes.
K: Yeah, and not to toot my own horn, but we do have interactivity, so we have people that come in and go "what this is looks like, it's too easy, let's add a bunch of monsters", and so they cash those in and I'm supposed to like creatively, put them into the game, and I enjoy that because it's like a challenge or they'll say "okay, here's a bunch of potions", okay, so how do I negate the effects of these bonuses that they've got, without looking like I'm just cheating?
POR: Yeah, that's awesome, so are they your own Quests?
K: So far we haven't played any originals, we've only played official, but I never got to play Mage of the Mirror or Frozen Horror back in the day, so I was like "let's just play those" and I think each Quest in both of those took like four sessions, four 2 hour sessions, they were long and some of it's because we're playing online, so people have to like take a minute to catch up, and then we roll virtual dice that Ribby designed for us, and we have a way that it goes to a website, and so it shows like 3D dice rolling on top of the screen, so we've improved it, but yeah, eventually we would like to do some original stuff, but it's going to be like three years from now at our current rate of speed.
POR: Yeah, and we're going to keep coming out with expansion so...
K: Yeah, what is the plan for that? I think there was a Star Wars miniatures game where there was 14 expansions before it ended, and that's kind of a cool thing, but it's also kind of overwhelming for people because like Talisman, they think "well, to play it the right way, I've got to buy all these boxes, and put them all together, or I don't have the complete game..." how do you educate people on that sort of thing? is that what First Light is about?
POR: Yeah, I think there's a future pipeline plan, again I don't know what the future will bring, everything I say can change, if I'm talking about the future Hero Quest itself, can't continue to grow and flourish if all we did were standard expansion packs, to your point it gets overwhelming, you start to get too many out there, and people don't know which ones to pick up whenh there's not a clear starting and ending point, and you actually start to see a bit of downturn in the success of the brand after a while.
K: Unless you start opening Hero Quest stores, next door to the Warhammer store...
POR: Yeah, right, well, Warhammer is Warhammer, they've got a very long history of polishing their steel, so for us we definitely I'm not saying that there's, expansions are still a very big part of what we plan to do in the future, but we do have to do more in addition to that to keep the player base healthy and growing, and First Light. that's the point of it. is to give people a very... because we again, we are very actively watching the community, and listening, and trying to do what's best, and a lot of questions we receive are around "where do I start? how do I get into this?" and they're a bit intimidated by that big core set, so what we wanted to do is provide an easy entry in, that gave something to players currently, so internally we were calling it an expand alone game, so it works basically as an expansion if you have the full set, but if you need to start somewhere, and you don't know what to do, it's a great place to get.
K: Is the comparison to Gloom Haven Jaws of the Lion, which I know is not your game, is that comparison fair?
POR: I think it's a very fair comparison as as far as like intent, right? I would say gameplay and what we put in there, very different, and I think a big difference as well is that First Light does work with the expansions, it's not just like a separate thing, all by itself it's meant to be part of it, could be the start of somebody's collection, or it could just be a game they buy and they put on their shelves and never continue to explore.
K: Much easier when it's 50 bucks versus 135...
POR: Well, exactly, and then a lot of folks who love all the miniatures, some folks find that a bit intimidating as well, so a more finite set of those.
K: You mean I got to paint all these before I can play.
POR: Yeah, well we got to ask that question as well, and again we want new players to feel comfortable, and that's really the intent.
K: Very good, and I will say that a lot of people was skeptical about First Light, and what it was going to be about, and whether it was going to be something, I would be interested in, and how logistically it was going to work like, we were imagining like youd have to assemble a bunch of room tiles to form the board, and but then sashem once again, he's big Talisman guy, he's like well just fold the board more and it fits in there, and then we were like "well, I wonder if they could put something on the other side", so here's the question, so since First Light has the extra stuff on the back of the board, the Mines of Moria or whatever they are, I just made that up or the caverns, yeah, and the Dragon, does this mean that there is like now a separate line of continuity, where you're going to release stuff that's compatible with First Light, but not with the regular Game System?
POR: Ah no, that would never... I shouldn't say no, I don't know what the future brings, but that would not be, that would be pretty far from what we're trying to do, what we want, the bigger goal is to make sure that everybody can have a big sandbox to play in, and that sandbox can be as big as they want it to be, and we wouldn't want any product to be exclusionary of the others, it's really against our philosophy around here.
K: Okay, so I'm by no means a marketing genius, so we probably laugh at this, but here's my pitch to you the Hero Quest Essential Elements box, and it comes with a Monk a Rogue a set of dice, caverns and a Dragon.
POR: Hey man, not a bad idea, I like that idea a lot and...
K: And an extra pad of character sheets.
POR: Yeah, I'll tell you we're working on a lot of different next items that have a lot of different ways of approaching it, similar to what you're talking about, that aren't necessarily an expansion pack but they expand your collection, or again they grow that sandbox, but maybe not necessarily Quests, and we haven't landed on quite what that looks like and provides enough value to the players, but that is something that we're absolutely exploring.
K: Well, I saw that you can buy for example a Betrayal box that's just some extra characters and some dice.
POR: Yeah, and that's, yeah, it's logical, yeah.
K: Well, and there is precedent for this in the Hero Quest realm because you had the Adventure Design Kit and I did see a pad of Adventure Design Kit, in except this the icons were properly scaled this time here at the convention, can you say more about that? because I have a sneaking suspicion that we're going to see those being scalped online, and I'm not happy about it, so here come the hard questions...
POR: Yeah, no, that's fine, I don't think we brought enough pads this year. The problem is that boxes are big and heavy with those pads in them to give them away, and we had to bring dice and a bunch of other stuff, should have brought more pads, so that's in our notes for next year, I will say...
K: You wouldn't give away individual sheets of them, not enough?
POR: I don't know, I guess we could have, we didn't live learn, I suppose I don't know, but right now I can't really talk about the pipeline in any sort of like tangible detail, but if the players want a Design Kit let us know.
K: Okay, yeah, because I have a feeling somebody's going to just scan it and put it online, I mean.
POR: Yeah, and really if it gets these... that's why we're giving them away as well, and not selling them because that's exactly what it's there for, is everybody go play.
K: Yeah, creates and play fun.
POR: It's similar to Talisman. For me I feel like it's the more I know a lot like I work for this big company, and you talk about selling items, and all that kind of stuff, but for me it's like what's almost more important than that is how many times after you buy it you take it out and play it again, because that means you love it and that means if there's a new thing you might buy that as well, right? and you know the capitalism corporate part of it aside, if the more you play it, the more love that this game receives.
K: Yeah, I just think about somebody like Craig or Steven and them being able to look back and say "well, even if I'm not the one running the show, still my game so to speak is continuing on" and how good that must make them feel.
POR: Oh, yeah, and both those guys are like absolute legends, Craig's too modest for me to say stuff like that, but yeah, absolutely amazing guys to work with, so clever, smart caring, yeah, it's again a privilege to work with them.
K: I was disappointed to find out that Craig wasn't PR cleared for an interview, but I did have talk to Craig, yes I had a nice chat with him and that was almost more meaningful to me.
POR: Yeah, we have to go through a little bit of training before we're allowed to talk, yeah.
K: Tess the same way, like I chatted with her, but I couldn't do an official interview.
POR: Yeah, yeah, big company, yeah.
K: And I get it like there's only a small number of us who want to like interview everybody, like I wanted to talk to the guy that redesigned the trays in the box, so Adam Glick, like we just had a few words with him, and I was like "thank you, that's what we needed", that little bit makes so much because I'm always taking the game out of the box, and putting it away again because I have a small apartment and I can't just leave the game out for weeks at a time, so I got to clear my desk off and get get back to work, I was just like it's so much easier if you don't have to like push the air out of it every single time, and snap the things out of the plastic, so we appreciate stuff like that.
POR: Yeah, and Glick's amazing engineer himself, but kind of usually engineers don't go through the training, yeah, they got other stuff to do.
K: Yeah, sure, good... or do you want to talk?
POR: Anything, let's see, I'm fine, yeah, do you have any other questions for me?
K: I'll probably think of more as soon as I walk away, but this was very helpful, very enlightening, but when Space Crusade coming back?
POR: I have that same question, that one is for reasons I'm sure you could understand.
K: I'm going to ask it every year.
POR: Yeah, but for that is a very complicated project with a lot of various IPS that make that one difficult.
K: So harder than getting Hero Quest off the ground, yes much harder, we've talked about it but we have not made, it's not in the near-term view.
POR: I wish!
K: I wish too, what about Wizards of Morcar?
POR: Oh, man, that one's easier. I can tell you that one's ours, that's up to us, yeah, we have much more control over that.
K: So is it still going to be "Wizards of Morcar"? or is it going to be "Wizards of Zargon"? Wizards of somebody else?
POR: This is where that PR training kicks in, I can't really talk about that right now.
K: Ah, come on...
POR: It's like again future pipeline gets weird because it changes things, move a lot of that's outside of our control, like we work on stuff, and Craig was kind of talking to you about this as well, we work on stuff, and it gets done, and then necessarily when it's released I do have a lot of like impact over, but that what the retailers are asking for, and that it moves things around, so speaking to dates specifically, especially when it's not something we've already announced, that date could move at any moment, and so it's not something that we can really commit to, if it's like two years in the out or or less, we just can't.
K: Yeah, Chris helped me understand that about the time frames that you guys are working with as a board game company, as opposed to like a video game company, or some other type of company, you have a much this whole like cycle that you got to go through of creation and stuff is in the fire and stuff's in the planning stage.
POR: And it tends to be about an from Green Light it's like an 18 month cycle, but that doesn't even necessarily, it could be done and then it could be sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting to be printed for various other reasons that have nothing to do with the completion of the game, but have to do with as I said before what the distributors, retailers, everybody else, how they want to, when they want it, and how they want to prioritize it.
K: Okay, in the last two minutes here, so will First Light replace the official Game System.
POR: No, no, as I said we called it standalone, internally was kind of like our mindset around it and that's what it's meant to serve as good.
K: Because I like them both.
POR: Yeah, me too, again we wouldn't want to take anything away that we can keep.
K: I appreciate that philosophy also if First Light is a success and let's say we can wander into our favorite big box retail store, and just see it on the Shelf next to Monopoly or whatever does, that mean does that open the door for the expansions that are already out to come to regular stores on a regular basis.
POR: Yes, I would be lying if I didn't say that would be something I would love to happen, and trying to happen, but it all really does depend on how First Light does and who and those big box stores have very different needs.
K: Shelf space.
POR: It's a very different environment and it's very competitive and the shelf space changes frequently, yeah.
K: Because when I saw Hero Quest at Ollie's and Fleet Farm, I thought you guys had did it, but then I realized "oh, that was just like a Christmas sale, or a rummage sale" I mean, it wasn't a regular thing, so you still have to go to the friendly local game shop or go online to find Hero Quest which does limit it, so can you tell me I heard that Jaws of the Lion for Gloom Haven that started out as a Target exclusive, then it moved to other stores, so like I've seen it in like Walmart and stuff, so his First Light going to have something similar, or what can you say?
POR: Yeah, I would say off that's often the course that these things go. We don't really know where what's going to happen after launch, like I don't think any design team or manufacturers could tell you what happened, could tell like Jaws of the Lion? I don't know, Isaac I don't know those guys, but I would say they didn't know what was going to happen to Jaws of the Lion after that first launch, but our goal would be to get it to as many people as we possibly can.
K: I keep thinking of new questions, but I know you got to go.
POR: Is okay.
K: Okay, I'll ask Doug as well, can you tell me about the First Light cover controversy, if there was a controversy?
POR: Oh, I think the question might need to be a little more specific.
K: Okay, so a guy online posted a picture of the First Light cover and then the name Clark Mitchell came up because there was an Instagram post saying, basically fans are seeing and saying "oh, this looks AI generated", this is wrong, there was actually a real artist that did this, and he has his own style and maybe people don't like it, but we're committed to all the pleasantries, and it's like "okay, but there were a lot of people that were, including myself, I was like did you guys get fooled by this was? why is there a new cover?" which I think looks better, but I'm kind of curious was this correction or was it that wasn't never meant to be the final cover or can you tell us?
POR: Yeah, it that was meant to be the cover and then we gauged the reaction to it and decided to do the update. I will say as far as the AI stuff goes, it's a very complicated subject because we don't use AI in any completed work, and we do not want our vendors and partners to either and they will say they don't use it in the completed work as well, but the way the community reacted to it, it's almost just like well, regardless if it's AI or not, which it should not be as far as we are aware, right? it should not be, it's a corporate policy, it's a whole like we would get in like I would get in trouble if it was the reaction to it alone accusing it and like the whole thing we were just kind of like, it's just not worth it to keep like pushing this thing forward if people aren't impressed by it, if they don't love it, if it missed the mark, and let's learn from that, and luckily for us we hadn't got a print yet, and we're able to make that change, so we updated it and we wanted to make something that the players were excited and happy to see, that's always our goal, and when I have never seen a reaction like that from our community ever, and that really we all had like a kind of moment, where're like look we have some of the greatest players, like the nicest friendliest community that I've been able to work with, and this is the reaction, we should really take a hard look at it and not to say we're gonna always do that or always be able to do that or like answer like everybody's complaint like that's not realistic, but in this case we were in a position where we could do something, so we did it.
K: Thank you, yeah, because even myself I was kind of surprised like how upset I was, and I was just like it's just a cover, yeah, but I guess there was just so much in that and other people who have been more positive than I have been about Hero Quest, like everything's going to be perfect, and I'm like "well, I don't know, we'll see" like even they were like an AshQuest, like AmalgamAsh, he was like wow if even he is having some criticism of this, it is something, and I was not expecting to see that cover in there, and so I was pleasantly surprised, so can you tell me this? so this new one is definitely not AI generated either?
POR: Again, as far as we know, it is not. Again, no completed work is meant to be AI generated and we have verification from our vendors, and our partners, and our artists that they're not doing it, it's against our view, it's not what we're looking to do either, so I know I can tell you who made that, that was Yellow Fly, an agency that was amazing, we've worked with on many projects, and I watch the artist sitting there working, so I'm in great confidence, but again, our goal is to support creators.
K: And thank you, and when I say thank you, it's not just me, lots of people are grateful for that, so that's really great, and I guess when it comes to AI like, I don't want to sound like a Luddite and say "oh, this is not a tool you can use for prototyping", I always think of like fans who create stuff, it's like "oh, I have no artistic talent, I can't afford to pay an artist, so I'll use AI to make my little fan thing", but it's like well Hasbro they should be giving you guys the best, all the resources you need, which I realize, I suppose you have to fight for every inch that you take in creating this stuff, but we really appreciate the turnaround, the reversal, and I think it looks way better.
POR: Thanks.
K: So no offense to Clark Mitchell, but yeah it sounded like he was the wrong person for the product.
POR: Yeah, I think that's what we learned, not really it was the wrong output, it was the wrong cover, it didn't convey what we wanted it to convey, and so we changed it.
K: Excellent, and I guess the rest of the questions I can ask Doug, so I'll let you get back to work, thank you so much.
POR: All right, awesome, so great to see you, thank you.
End of interview.
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Links to many other relevant interviews about HeroQuest are compiled in thread.
