I want to talk a little about the limited options and features in the game, because I think this was a point many game publications and Web sites touched on (including GameCritics.com). For instance, injuries—a common occurrence in the NHL—were left out of NHL2K. I felt this was a big loss considering the punishing body checks in the game and the amount of reserve players available to each team. Considering the game shipped ahead of schedule, could you comment on the things that didn't make it into the game?

First of all, I'll explain what happened with the ship date. We were originally talking to Sega about shipping the game in March 2000, but that date was moved to February to coincide with the All-Star Game. Thus, it was shipped ahead of the original schedule.

However, this reduced our production time by one month in an already tight schedule, and some features we just did not have time to implement. We had to concentrate on areas which were the most important—primarily gameplay issues. We think you'll agree that sacrificing gameplay to put in a "career" option or even injuries is a bad decision. The most important thing is to make the game fun—that's what we focused on and what we accomplished. I wish we had time, but we didn't.

Visual Concepts had more time and money for their Dreamcast sports games. Do you think Black Box got a raw deal by Sega as far as development time and budget for NHL2K? Or was this expected since hockey generally falls below football and basketball in terms of popularity here in the States?

We are thankful to Sega for our deal. By developing NHL2K in half the time of Visual Concept's NFL2K, it puts the question into people's minds "I wonder what those guys at Black Box could have done with the same development time as Visual Concepts had?" It's made us a very popular company.

You are correct that Sega concentrated on the larger NFL and NBA markets first. Thus, NHL took longer to get signed and the development time was reduced.