15 juin 2008
7
15
/06
/juin
/2008
15:33
The subject line is a question that I've seen asked a bit on Boardgamegeek lately, so I thought I would do up a brief post on it here during this lull in playtesting. I can obviously not speak for the other designers, even Alban on this point, but I can give you the inside scoop on what is going on with me, Montreal, and my future expansions at this point:
1) The Age of Steam name license is currently a matter of dispute between the game designer, Martin Wallace who wants to use the name for a new, related game published by Mayfair and the developer, John Bohrer, who wants to use it for a reprint of the original game. The US court case will not be finalized until December of 2008 at the earliest. Until that point, expansion designers like myself are put between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Until the court case is finalized, I do not want to print anything AoS related.
2) Print run reality / Exhaustion of the existing user base: Age of Steam, for all its wild popularity, has had a relatively small print run. 6000 English copies, 3000 Korean ones, that's it as far as I know. If you take that many base games and then look and see how many expansions have been printed you'll see where the problems start to creep in. The same owners are essentially being tapped into again and again by expansion designers. While this worked for a while, the sheer number of expansions has exhausted many of the owners and has made releasing each future expansion more risky. I can actually empathize with this because as a player I am still one map away from being caught up, and I think most people would consider me a fairly hardcore AoS player. Granted, part of that is the group scale I usually have to work with, but still, the point remains: if I'm getting burnt out on buying the huge pile of expansions that were being released each year, who wouldn't be?
3) Which editions will exist with the AoS name? This is related to point 1 above, but it deserves a separate discussion. Without going into any real details that aren't already public, the new Mayfair version of the game system has some very significant changes to the game system. If Mayfair wins the right to use the AoS name, then as a "Classic AoS" designer / player I will be put in a tough spot. I am only interested in playing the original game, and any expansions that I design and publish will be for that original game. However, if the Mayfair game comes out with the AoS name there will likely be marketplace confusion. At the very least, expansion designing is soon going to involve releasing patches to the rules to turn the Mayfair game back into the original system, at least for those of us who are purists. This is all fairly important when it comes to releasing future expansions though: if Mayfair uses the AoS name, there are instantly going to be more games using that title than currently exist with a different base rule set. This can be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing if I can patch my rules to fit the new game, a curse if people decide that playing with the different, newer variation of the rules is more desirable.
In short, there are a number of things holding up expansion releases for me, and I imagine many of these considerations are also there for other designers. On a final, related note, I also fear that the solution of the trademark case in either direction will lead to another expansion avalanche like there was last year, which could also glut the marketplace to a dangerous extent. I am certainly interested in doing another small run of Montreal when the trademark case is finished, but my future releases are going to be very dependent on who wins the case, and what the state of the original system is. At the very least I'll probably end up releasing a couple of more maps somewhere down the line (as I currently have 2 working prototypes and the mechanics for 2 more brewing, one of which I am sure would be wildly popular if I can get it to work right), but I will be taking a rather cautious line, and I could potentially end up with a pre-order and Essen release only policy depending on how things pan out.
1) The Age of Steam name license is currently a matter of dispute between the game designer, Martin Wallace who wants to use the name for a new, related game published by Mayfair and the developer, John Bohrer, who wants to use it for a reprint of the original game. The US court case will not be finalized until December of 2008 at the earliest. Until that point, expansion designers like myself are put between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Until the court case is finalized, I do not want to print anything AoS related.
2) Print run reality / Exhaustion of the existing user base: Age of Steam, for all its wild popularity, has had a relatively small print run. 6000 English copies, 3000 Korean ones, that's it as far as I know. If you take that many base games and then look and see how many expansions have been printed you'll see where the problems start to creep in. The same owners are essentially being tapped into again and again by expansion designers. While this worked for a while, the sheer number of expansions has exhausted many of the owners and has made releasing each future expansion more risky. I can actually empathize with this because as a player I am still one map away from being caught up, and I think most people would consider me a fairly hardcore AoS player. Granted, part of that is the group scale I usually have to work with, but still, the point remains: if I'm getting burnt out on buying the huge pile of expansions that were being released each year, who wouldn't be?
3) Which editions will exist with the AoS name? This is related to point 1 above, but it deserves a separate discussion. Without going into any real details that aren't already public, the new Mayfair version of the game system has some very significant changes to the game system. If Mayfair wins the right to use the AoS name, then as a "Classic AoS" designer / player I will be put in a tough spot. I am only interested in playing the original game, and any expansions that I design and publish will be for that original game. However, if the Mayfair game comes out with the AoS name there will likely be marketplace confusion. At the very least, expansion designing is soon going to involve releasing patches to the rules to turn the Mayfair game back into the original system, at least for those of us who are purists. This is all fairly important when it comes to releasing future expansions though: if Mayfair uses the AoS name, there are instantly going to be more games using that title than currently exist with a different base rule set. This can be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing if I can patch my rules to fit the new game, a curse if people decide that playing with the different, newer variation of the rules is more desirable.
In short, there are a number of things holding up expansion releases for me, and I imagine many of these considerations are also there for other designers. On a final, related note, I also fear that the solution of the trademark case in either direction will lead to another expansion avalanche like there was last year, which could also glut the marketplace to a dangerous extent. I am certainly interested in doing another small run of Montreal when the trademark case is finished, but my future releases are going to be very dependent on who wins the case, and what the state of the original system is. At the very least I'll probably end up releasing a couple of more maps somewhere down the line (as I currently have 2 working prototypes and the mechanics for 2 more brewing, one of which I am sure would be wildly popular if I can get it to work right), but I will be taking a rather cautious line, and I could potentially end up with a pre-order and Essen release only policy depending on how things pan out.
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