For the most part, gamers know Visual Concepts because of their excellent sports series on the Dreamcast, where they have gone from a relatively unknown developer to one of Sega's most treasured teams. Ooga Booga is part of Visual Concepts' attempt to branch out into genres other than sports, and based upon the time we have spent with the multiplayer-oriented title, Visual Concepts is quickly on their way to being one of the most well-rounded American development teams.

Gaming Age had the exciting opportunity to chat with John Race, the producer of Ooga Booga over at Visual Concepts, where he told us about the challenges of developing the game, where the team might head next, the possibility of Ooga Booga appearing on other platforms and much more.

Look for our review of the game to appear very soon - but take our word for it: it's definitely worth picking up!

Gaming Age: Could you, first off, explain your position at Visual Concepts, how long you have been there, and what has been your primary involvement in Ooga Booga?
John Race: I'm the producer of Ooga Booga at VC and I've been here since about April 2000. At Visual Concepts the producer is responsible for guiding and facilitating the development of a project. This can mean everything from helping to establish and document the production pathway for getting art into the engine to getting dinner for the team when they're working late. In the case of Ooga Booga it also consisted of a lot of design work.

Most of the core design for Ooga Booga came from the team itself, so a lot of the time you're trying to guide the discussions about how to solve design problems and identify different approaches, not necessarily proposing all the solutions yourself. Another big part of my job is trying to keep an eye on the overall priorities. Game development takes so long that it's easy to get caught up working on a particular set of tasks and to keep working and reworking a game system after the point where you really need to let it go. Keeping an eye on the master task list and trying to constantly evaluate when people should be moving on to the next thing is very important.

GA: How long ago was the idea for Ooga Booga conceived, and how did it come about?
John: Like most games, Ooga Booga went through an evolution from its first conception to its final implementation. The first prototypes were developed about a year and a half ago, but we've really only been working on the final concept for a little over a year. Initially Ooga Booga was intended to be a strategy game with some action elements. We prototyped about three distinct types of gameplay that were more strategy-based. The first couple versions were much more about floating above the battlefield and watching your forces fight and then guiding them in an indirect fashion.

As we refined the concept we began to push it more and more towards action-oriented gameplay with some strategic elements and that's when the project really began to come to life for us. The team plays a lot of Super Smash Bros. for the N64, and although Ooga Booga is very different, we wanted to capture certain elements of Smash Bros. gameplay. For instance, Smash Bros. gives players an arena and a set of props and then encourages them to experiment to see what effects they can create by combining different props and attacks. I think Ooga Booga shares this characteristic. Also, we wanted to have the same sense of frantic gameplay where every round seems to go right down to the final seconds.

GA: Ooga Booga is a multiplayer-centered title, but was there ever a time when there were plans for a more story-driven single-player campaign?
John: Not really, although it would be fun to open up the single-player side of the game even more. Ooga Booga was conceived from the start to be a game that showcased Online multiplayer gaming on the Dreamcast and that really dictated our final direction. We had talked about incorporating a bit more story into the single player experience, and in fact we had a plot, but it wouldn't have changed the basic experience very much and would have taken a lot of time to implement correctly so we had to set it aside. The plot involved the attempt by an evil Kahuna (not one of the Kahunas who made it into the game) to try to steal the power of the Volcano Goddess, Ooga Booga.

We did actually have a larger vision for the multiplayer side back when we were early into development with persistent rewards for winning matches that would have allowed players to trade with each other, power up their stats, and eventually create their own persistent tribes online. This proved to be too ambitious for our time table and we had to set most of these ideas aside. But it would be fun to try to work them into a future project...

GA: The game's options are fairly bare bone when first playing Ooga Booga. What sorts of secrets can players expect to unlock, without spoiling too much?
John: We didn't want the number of spells, kahunas and animals to be too overwhelming when you first started playing, so we limit the number of items available at the start and they are unlocked one by one through playing the single-player Tribal Trial. It doesn't take very long to unlock most of the items and it gives you a better understanding of how to use spells together for maximum effect.

You can unlock spells which are our basic attack types. These range in strength from the fairly straightforward Fireball to the powerful Tornado, which requires more strategic thinking for maximum effect. You also unlock new Kahunas which add a lot of enjoyment to the game, particularly in multiplayer, since each Kahuna has their own voice over responses and some of these are really funny. Some of the Kahunas have unlockable masks as well, to help further distinguish them from each other. Most importantly you can unlock our two other game types, Rodeo and Boar Polo which each add their own twist to the game.

For instance in Smakahuna you're just trying to inflict as much hurt on each other as possible to score points. But in Boar Polo you only score by getting the ball through the goal. So you can cast spells like a freak and drive the other team crazy, but you're not necessarily helping your team to win. Boar Polo really favors a bit more strategic thinking, like agreeing that one of you will be offensive and use a boar to drive the ball while the other runs around on foot, gathering spells and using them to keep the other team away from your goal and to support the offensive player.

GA: What was the most challenging and most enjoyable aspect of developing Ooga Booga?
John: The most enjoyable for me was working with the team, beyond a doubt. We had a great mix of people and we all really enjoyed working together. Almost all of the best things about the game bubbled out of a shared vision, rather than being one person's idea. Also, Visual Concepts is an amazing place and it was an amazing experience to have the kind of company support you need to do your best work. Also, the culture here is such that you really feel pushed to create excellence. Both these things are far too rare in my experience.

The most challenging thing is harder, but I'd probably say our network model was the toughest in terms of how it influenced all of our design and engineering decisions. If you play our game online, you'll see that it has almost no lag in terms of how the game responds to controller input. Nate Bamberger, Evan Harsha and Mark Roberts, our engineers, achieved this by basically hiding a quarter second of lag in the way the game and network code were implemented. The upside of this was the immediacy of the controls in an online game. The downside is that it required us to make a lot of design decisions to accommodate this model and it was very tough to debug.

GA: If you could pinpoint a single favorite feature of the game, what would you choose?
John: The replayability that comes out of experimenting with the different game elements and seeing what crazy stuff you can get to happen. We still have moments where we're totally surprised by the stuff we see occur.

GA: What is the most popular Ooga Booga game mode at the office, and what do you predict will be the gamers' favorite?
John: We play more Smakahuna, but Boar Polo is probably the favorite overall. It's just so crazy when the ball is inching closer and closer to the goal and both teams are throwing everything they've got at each other. I hope that people enjoy all the games, but if people could only play one, I'd guess they'd choose Boar Polo.

GA: Was the inclusion of Internet support part of the game design from the get-go, or tossed in once it was realized how popular it was with gamers?
John: Ooga Booga was designed from the ground up to be an Internet multiplayer game.

GA: What do you wish was included in the game, but was ultimately cut out?
John: I actually think we're all pretty happy with the way things ended up. Almost everything from my personal wish list made it into the final version. I do wish we could have supported a couple more game types. We had one game called Tikis Wars where the goal was to claim as many tikis as possible while preventing opponents from doing the same. Also some of the persistent elements of the online game had to be dropped. We had planned a Tribal Warfare mode, where players could join a tribe and then fight other tribes to try to become dominant over the course of a month. It would have been fun but it was just too complex.

GA: If Ooga Booga is a success, might there be a sequel on another platform, or at least a port with new features? The Dreamcast would seem to be rather out of the question.
John: A port, a sequel or an enhanced version isn't out of the question, but it will really depend on how well received the Dreamcast version is.

GA: What are your feelings on Sega deciding to phase out the Dreamcast in favor of a multi-platform strategy? Have the teams found a new machine that they prefer over the others?
John: Well, the Ooga Booga team hasn't begun working with the next gen machines yet, so I can't really speak to the ease-of-development issues, although I think the word is already on the street as far as the strengths and weaknesses of the new systems. As far as the phasing out of the Dreamcast, I think we all feel it's bittersweet. On the one hand it's a shame to see a system that delivered on so much of what it promised never reach its full potential in terms of the marketplace. There are so many theories on why this was the case and they've all been heard before so I won't restate them here. Suffice it to say that the Dreamcast is a great piece of hardware and we've developed a lot of respect and affection for it.

On the other hand, it's going to be liberating to try to reach a larger audience. Whatever the reasons, the reality is that the Dreamcast never had the penetration to let you reach as many people as you would have liked. It was not just hard from a business perspective (i.e. you weren't able to sell as many units as you'd like to) but also hard from the developer's perspective in that if you spend 18 months of your life making a game, you want to get it into the hands of as many gamers as you can. The pay off is to see people enjoying your game, and if your market is limited this is much tougher. So moving to new consoles is very exciting. There's a great deal of energy internally right now. People are getting psyched up to get out there and compete on a more open playing field.

GA: The GameCube and the Xbox go head-to-head this fall. What's your prediction?
John: Hah. Not a loaded question here. They both look really strong in different ways. I think Nintendo surprised a lot of people at E3. Their games looked better than many of us expected. And they've always had a great library of internal titles. It'll be interesting to see what happens with 3rd party development.

On the other hand XBox was always expected to look great and the question was what kind of content would they have. They didn't blow people out of the water with what was on display at E3 but you'd have to be pretty naive to think that they're not going to have some incredible content by the time they ship. Both machines are obviously powerful and we on the Ooga Booga team would be really excited about exploring the potential of either. But those decisions are a ways off. First we have to determine what our next project will be.

GA: What game(s) are you working on after Ooga Booga's release?
John: It hasn't been decided yet. Everyone needs a bit of time off and then we'll be sitting down together to begin trying to figure out what seems to resonate with the team. You really need to have everyone excited about the concept before you start, since game development takes so long these days. People need to be onboard from the start if they're going to keep their energy and passion over the course of 18 months.

Thanks for all of your time, John, and good luck to Ooga Booga, your team, as well as the rest of Visual Concepts!