Alan Moon talks to the Game Cabinet about winning Germany's coveted Game of the Year award.
Interview by Jocelyn Becker, September 1998
Just as every actor aspires to win an Oscar, so every games designer yearns to win Germany’s Spiel des Jahres award, for the best German language game of the year. Wining this award is more than just a boost to the ego; it’s a big boost to the wallet, too. It means you get the “Spiel des Jahres” logo printed on your game box, and you can sit back and watch the sales rise.
Alan Moon, the designer of Elfenland, this year’s winner, says, “When a game wins Spiel des Jahres, it increases the game company’s market share by 3 percent.”
For several years, ending in 1996, Alan ran his own game publishing company, White Wind. Under the auspices of White Wind, he published a series of limited-edition, blue-boxed games each with a run of about 2000. The 1992 game was Elfenroads, a playable saga of young elves who are required to visit as many elf villages in the land as possible, using various means of transport ranging from giant pigs to magic clouds. It’s a very enthralling, if somewhat time-consuming, game, and it is still very much sought after by the aficionado – the current market price for a used copy is several hundred dollars.
His goal with White Wind Games was to get his games published without having to wait until someone else decided to publish them. He hoped other companies would then buy the rights to these games and republish them in much larger print runs. He effectively closed White Wind in 1996, selling off his remaining inventory at discount prices at his very busy booth in Essen that year. Despite the demise of White Wind, his goal in starting it came to fruition with Elfenroads, after it evolved into Elfenland and was acquired by Amigo.
I asked Alan how Elfenroads turned into Elfenland. “Elfenroads is a good example of a game that has a small but avid following. I knew I had to simplify the game,” he said, “Amigo seemed interested in it, but they wanted it to be simpler. I looked hard at it and tried to figure out how to turn it into a one hour game.”
“I play tested the game with Uwe Moelter, Amigo’s R and D director, in 1995. After Essen, I went to his house. We played a really great game -- the guy who went last had the best possible move, he visited 7 or 8 cities in the last round to win the game. It was everything you wanted a game to be. It was exciting, tense, close. I knew then that the game was sold. It was the best game presentation I ever made.”
That was in 1995, and in Essen 1997 Alan Moon gave the Game Cabinet a sneak preview of the new board, but the game still wasn't in production. Amigo finished production and published the game in early 1998, in good time for consideration for Game of the Year. For a review of the game, see the Elfenland review by Mike Siggins, and for a translation from the German rules to English, see Alan Moon's Elfenland translation. (Alan doesn't know much German but he knows how to play the game).
The beautiful artwork for the board is done by Doris Matthäus, and the board portrays a map of Elfenland, with villages, mountains, deserts, rivers, and two lakes. The board underwent a few changes between leaving Alan’s head and arriving at the printers. Rumor has it that one of the lakes was originally named after the editor of this online magazine and the other was named after the editor of Sumo. Although Alan will not confirm these specific details, he says, “In the original board, all the lakes and cities were named with names of my friends. They got changed. If I have it published in America, I’ll do a new board and put the names back.”
The Spiel des Jahres jury looks at all the games published in the preceding year, and whittles the list down to a shortlist of nominated games. All the designers whose games have been nominated, plus everyone who’s interested in games, wait with bated breath for the announcement of the results in the summer, and there is much anticipation about who the winner will be.
Alan says, “The jury phoned Amigo on June 24 and said they’d won with Elfenland, but they didn’t want the news to get out then. I didn’t tell anyone, well, I may have told my mother and father. People in Germany are nuts about this. People kept bluffing me to try and get the information. They’d call and say “congratulations” and I’d say ‘for what?’ Even people I don’t know that well would call and say congratulations.”
The awards ceremony was held in Berlin in July. Ask Alan about his trip for the award ceremony and a glazed look of rapture comes into his face. “The night before the award ceremony, Uwe Pauli, the President of Amigo Spiele, took all the members of the Game Of The Year (GOTY) Jury, Doris Matthaus and her husband Frank Nestel, other people from Amigo including Uwe Moelter, some other guests, and myself to a special dinner at the Schlosshotel Vier Jahreszeiten (The Four Seasons), designed by Karl Lagerfeld. The hotel and restaurant is in the former mansion of a German noble and it is truly magnificent. The meal was the most luxurious I've ever had. The eight courses featured several types of food I'd never eaten before.”
“The next day, I was interviewed in my room from 9-9:30. At 9:30, I went downstairs and media people started taking my pictures, including someone from the Associated Press. At 10:00, the Press Conference started. As soon as I sat down, the camera flashes began and continued for several minutes. I felt surprisingly calm at this point. Although words cannot describe it, it was a feeling of glowing, as much as anything else. On stage with me were Uwe Pauli, the head of the Jury Dr. Synes Erst, and one of the founders of the GOTY Dr. Bernward Thole.”
“The next half hour after the press conference was spent having my picture taken and giving interviews for television stations, newspapers, and magazines. After that, everyone crossed the street and embarked on a boat, where we spent the next four hours cruising the River Spree in a big circle around Berlin. The actual presentation of the award took place on the boat. Each member of the Jury gave a short speech about one of the nominated games and presented a folder with the official Certificate (sort of like a diploma) to the company representative and the designer. Uwe Pauli and I were presented with certificates and the Poppel, which is a large wooden version of the Game of the Year logo you've seen on the boxes.”
Alan is currently Director of Game Development for FX Schmid. This company has been publishing jigsaw puzzles in the States since 1989 and last year it opened up a North American game division with Alan at the helm. Since then however, Ravensburger bought FX Schmid and FXS no longer exists in Germany. Alan explained that Ravensburger already has an exclusive distributor in the US, but after that contract finishes at the end of this year, FX Schmid USA will be distributing Ravensburger games in the US. Alan’s side of the company is already doing the production work for Ravensburger games for the US market.
As director of Game Development, he decides which games to publish. “I’m being very fair,” he says when asked if he considers his own games. Alan has many friends who have developed game prototypes, and I wondered if his friends ask him to publish their games.
“I get more strangers asking to show me games than my friends. People will send me email or write letters. For all companies, there are always an incredible number of people trying to submit games. We are willing to listen to a brief description. If it sounds good and is appropriate, we will take a look.”
“All our games so far except one are by established game designers. That’s a good indication of what the odds are of getting your game published. The game from the newcomer is a kid’s game. It’s a really good idea. When we saw it, our reaction was ‘why didn’t we think of this?’ The basic idea is really strong, and it will be a new Ravensburger game for next year.”
Alan is in the strange situation of being the games procurer for one company while being the designer of the Game of the Year for another company, thus being responsible for increased revenues for a competitor. He seems reluctant to talk about this dilemma since it’s a bit of a tricky situation. However, he does say “Anything that I published with another company before I started here is OK, including Elfenland expansions.”
Is he saying there will be an Elfenland expansion? His non-committal but all revealing reply is “It has become the norm for the Game of the Year to have an expansion set.” No kidding – how many expansions to Die Siedler are there now? And for another Game of the Year winner, El Grande, there will be expansions to the expansions out at Essen this year.
When asked if he will be getting more of his own games published, Alan says, “Yes, some will be from FX Ravensburger. We already have one product going forward for publication in 2000.”
“Airlines 2 will be coming out, but it won’t be published by Abacus which published the original Airlines, and it won’t be about airlines,” I guess it won’t be called Airlines 2 then. He also says that the game that was originally intended as the new White Wind Game for 1996 will be out next year. “It has a chance to be the best game I’ve ever done.”
He didn’t publish it in 1996 because he closed White Wind down that year. He knows what the theme will be and who will be publishing it, but he doesn’t want to say. The one small nugget of information that he is willing to reveal is that it won’t have a green dragon to indicate first player – “that was a White Winds thing only.”
When asked what it means to him as a game designer to have won the Spiel des Jahre award, he says, “Companies are more willing to look at my games now. For me, it’s the end of the struggle phase, and the beginning of the success phase. I would need to publish 100 games like Elfenroads a year to make a living out of it, but I only need one Elfenland. ”