Welcome to the ninth installment of the Faces of Apolyton interview series. This time Chris 62 has made an interview with Jay Bee Bee, webmaster of the Spanish Civ 2 site, and a well known Civ 2 scenario maker.
Next time, for the milestone tenth interview, you'll read a conversation with Daniel "DanQ" Quick, the co-owner of Apolyton site.
Chris 62: Let's start will a little family background, tell us a bit about your wife and children
Jay Bee: Met my wife-to-be in grad school in the early nineties
Chris 62: What is your profession?
Jay Bee: I'm a professor of Biochemistry and Immunology
Chris 62: How long have you been married?
Jay Bee: 9 years now, we got married, moved to the States and had two daughters.
Chris 62: How did you meet?
Jay Bee: Not the usual boy-meets-girl story. She came one day to my institute to learn something (boring scientific stuff). I was there, we went out after work and that started it all, as friends.
Then one day you change the way you look at that person, and then invite her to go out in weekends as well.
Chris 62: How long after that did you marry?
Jay Bee: 2 years exactly
Chris 62: You have 2 daughters, tell us about them
Jay Bee: Monica, who is now playing in front of me, is almost as old as Apolyton, she was born only a few days after Apolyton
Chris 62: Almost 4?
Jay Bee : When joking I always refer to her as the "apple of my eye" (Zeppelinesque reference), yes, almost 4
The other one is almost 1. She was born in Spain during my current leave-of-absence period. Sofia. Big trouble to pick a name for her. I liked Alicia better.
Chris 62: But you gave in to the wife, eh?
Jay Bee: Me, you, everybody ;) She also picked the name Monica for Monica. Nice election, This was short before the Miss Lewinsky scandal. Lots of jokes about that.
They girls are both beautiful, of course. They are both blonde, I say that because many of my American friends also like to make jokes about that
Chris 62: What kind of jokes?
Jay Bee: You know the stereotype. Spaniards always have to be dark skinned, black eyed, and above all, black haired....
Chris 62: Tell us how you feel about such stereotypes.
Jay Bee: It mostly depends on the intention I guess. Whether you intend to hurt with them or not. I myself make a lot of jokes about how pale some Americans are ;-). The problem is when you start classifying people by these characteristics, that’s sad.
Chris 62: I have a problem with a lot of stereotyping at apolyton, especially towards Spanish people. Do you see that also?
Jay Bee: Yes, definitely. What is worse is that it's all a product of ignorance. But it could be worse, just look at the French :) What can you do about that? Ignore or fight back? Most of the times I ignore it.
Chris 62: Most of the time, it seems Apolyton posters are looking to "blame" Spain for perceived evils in history, and trying to diminish Spain's accomplishments. What do you think about that?
Jay Bee: That's utter ignorance I guess. Like everything is a matter of opinion. You can think whatever you want of course. What you can't (shouldn't ) do is to smuggle blatant lies to prove your point, like some people do, with the only seemingly purpose to hurt others. That's exactly what I've been fighting against lately. People call that 'trolling'. Maybe, but sometimes it gets highly offensive. Fortunately, most people are not like that. Most people are friendly or at least try not to offend gratuitously.
Chris 62: I have also seen it. They seem to enjoy hurting people's feelings, especially the non-english speaking Spanish posters.
Jay Bee: Right. But as I said before, it's not only the Spanish. After all, the overwhelming majority of the people of this site come from the anglosaxon world. Thus it’s somewhat natural they ignore many things about other cultures. That’s okay, what I don’t like is people offending just for the sake of it or assuming that just because they don’t know something, that something never happened.
Chris 62: It's a shame that they seem to be degraded in people's minds. Let's talk a bit about your scenario work. How did you discover civ-2?
Jay Bee: A friend of mine, Richard (a great guy), introduced me to it. He also introduced me to the Civ2 internet world. That was mid 96. I had played Civ1 at that time. but only a bit. Rich sucked me me into Civ2. I remember that the first Civ2 page I saw was Steve Strayer's Fascist Mod page. That hooked me up even more.
Chris 62: Why is that?
Jay Bee: Because it taught me the first lessons on modding . Steve has done a superb job in this area. By studying his work I learned the essentials of the game. At that time I was prety illiterate computer-wise. I even emailed him asking for advice. How many similar emails have I received ever since !
Chris 62: Your fine body of scenario work is considered among the best in the hobby, tell us about your first effort, "Spanish Pride"
Jay Bee: Thanks.. That was intended for personal use. Actually I did not release it for a long time.
Chris 62: Why is that?
Jay Bee: Two main reasons. First, it was only for me. Second, I did not think people might be interested. The subject topic was too narrow. To my surprise people enjoyed it. SP.... Years after, I did something identical but for Latin America, Bolivar’s Dream. I wish others had followed the example and created mods dedicated to their countries. That did not happen.
Chris 62: Why do you think people avoided "National Modpacks"?
Jay Bee: I do not know. I have received quite a few e-mails from people wanting to do similar things. But I never saw any. I was bugging Stefan Hartel for some time to do a German mod. He seemed interested at first. maybe he's working on that right now . ;)
Chris 62: What was your first released scenario?
Jay Bee: Visigoths I think. Spanish Civil War followed a few weeks later.
Chris 62: Were you happy with it? I thought it played rather long.
Jay Bee: Yes, I was happy... at that time. But it's true, it's too slow
Chris 62: You have often expressed to me some dismay about the direction scenarios have been taking. Could you give us a feeling about your "design philosophy?"
Jay Bee: IMHO there are two main schools in scenario designing. Those who remain faithful to the Civ2 concepts and those who just focus on the war aspect.
Chris 62: Tell us about each direction.
Jay Bee: I like the first tendency. I enjoy empire-building scenarios. That means not only war but also trade, city planning, science, etc...
Chris 62: As do I.
Jay Bee: The second direction is also called WW2 scenarios ;) Many people love them, but they are not my cup of tea. I seem to perceive that currently, the second tendency prevails and I don' like that. But hey, it's been 7 years since the game was born.
Chris 62: What exactly is the problem with WWII scenarios? I think it has to do with far to many units.
Jay Bee: Absolutely correct. No one has explained to me yet why 40-min turns are necessary.
Chris 62: You have made a number of scenarios, what is your favorite scenario, and why?
Jay Bee: My personal fave is Alba de America. Why? Well, perhaps because I enjoyed immensely doing it, and was able to get many people involved. Those were the days. I also cherish Eldorado, but for other reasons.
Chris 62: What reasons?
Jay Bee: It was something completely new. I was afraid it might not work, but it did.
Chris 62: It's the first scenario where you have no cities at start. How was it received by the civ community?
Jay Bee: Shocked? yeah, probably. A few new ideas in there. The scenario is simple, yet very complex. Gotta say, much much much merit goes to Dan Scheltema, creator of Slash and Burn. We both discussed and discovered many things working together on these scenarios. BTW, for those who think that one was easy, I had to significantly tame it. No one was able to win the playtest version.
