Hidden Role: Ted Alspach and the Emergence of Bezier Games

Eurogames in the early 2000s

- Jesse Tannous

At 52 years-old, creator and CEO of Bezier Games Ted Alspach admits that he has been a gamer and has been designing games all his life. Yet, most of his early designs he considers to be “junk.”

“It was really playing a lot of Eurogames in the early 2000s that got me thinking about making these types of games,” Alspach said.

The types of games Alspach wanted to publish include the likes of Ultimate Werewolf, Silver, Suburbia, and Castles of Mad King Ludwig.

Alspach previously worked with Adobe as a Product Manager for the Creative Suite software and was very comfortable using graphics tools like Illustrator and InDesign. In fact, he is considered one of the world’s leading experts on Illustrator, and he put these skills to good use. He spent much of his time using his graphic design expertise to make player aids for various games, like a specialized board for the game Liar’s Dice.

Season of the Werewolf

Around this time, Alspach was playing a lot of Werewolf with friends and family and had access to a high-quality, commercial-grade graphic arts printer, which he would use to print some custom-made decks with his personalized house rules for the game. Eventually, after having printed more than 20 decks with their own boxes and rule sheets, Alspach and his family decided to call it Ultimate Werewolf. The project was mostly just a friend and family blueprint at the time. But by the mid2000s he decided to post his creation for sale online and after several months sold more than 800 copies.