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There is also a special satisfaction I get when I'm playing a game with good friends, we're all having fun, and it's a game I designed.
But I think the single biggest dose of positive feedback a designer can receive is to have a game accepted by a well-known and respected publisher, have them take the expensive risk of getting it printed up, put their reputation at risk by putting their own label on the box, and put the game in the distribution pipeline. That's exactly what
Rio Grande Games has done with Credit Mobilier, and I'm very pleased to see it scheduled for a June 2012 release.
Those brave few that bought the original white box version from us at StrataMax Games will be pleased to know the artwork has been completely and professionally reworked (of course). Jay Tummelson kindly granted me a sneak peek at the new board and stocks, and I couldn't be more pleased with them. Granted, anything would have been an improvement over our rudimentary graphics, but the new look is everything I could have hoped for.
Credit Mobilier's beginning is about as full of unexpected twists and turns as the game play itself. First of all, I set out to make a train game. There's a lot of discussion about what is and is not a "real" train game. Most folks would seem to agree that a "real" train game should have something to do with one or more of the following elements: building routes, moving goods, buying stock, and paying dividends. For many fans of the genre, the more of these elements the better.
Also, for many train gamers time is of no consequence. Games lasting four, six, eight hours or more are just fine, and to some the duration of the game is part of what defines it. Well, I guess I fail that test. I wanted a train game that had all of the elements – track-building, goods-moving, stock-buying – but took only an hour or so to play.
I committed the further heresy of introducing dice into the mix. The shocked feedback I got from the first group to see the prototype nearly convinced me to give up on the design getting produced.
Yes, that's "colors rolled". Credit Mobilier features color dice. For a while all of our StrataMax designs used color dice in a variety of ways. (Our logo is a stylized version of such a die.)
The funny thing about those dice is that they have six sides. The game was working fine with four railroad companies, and there really wasn't room for more. Reserving one side of the dice for paying dividends left one side open that needed filling.
As it turns out, I had been reading Nothing Like It In The World by Stephen Ambrose. His account of how railroad company executives set up a shadow company – The Crédit Mobilier – to funnel money to build their own railroad provided the answer: a fifth company, specifically a track construction company, in which players could buy stock. This idea had real appeal. In train games, players or companies usually pay the bank to construct track. In Credit Mobilier the money spent for building track is paid by the bank (in this case the bank is the U.S. Congress – some things never change) into the Credit Mobilier and ultimately into the players who own shares in it. In other words, a complete reversal of the normal cash flow.
Now we had something: Build Track, Move Goods, Buy Stocks, and an action just the opposite from the norm, Get Paid for Building Track. All in about an hour.
The bare bones first edition
Fast forward to Gen Con of the same year. I was having a pretty uneventful time until my friends Randy and Connie asked me to go to the Rio Grande booth to try out a game. They needed a third and I was handy.
To keep the string of events in perspective I knew Connie and Randy only because my daughter was taking piano lessons from Connie – and we heard about Connie only via a referral from a friend. Also, I almost didn't wear my StrataMax shirt that day. So there we are, the "six degrees of separation" friends and RGG demo guy Ken Hill walks up and starts explaining the game we were interested in. Okay, I admit it, the game Randy and Connie were interested in. I really didn't want to go but they needed a third. They had waited all con for this moment, and Ken was well into his second or third sentence of explanation when he abruptly stopped, looked at the shirt I almost hadn't worn, and said something like, "Hey, you're that StrataMax guy. I bought your game at Origins. It's really good." Then he called over another RGG demo guy Scott Tepper (now of Ascora Games, by the way) and said something like, "Hey, Scott, this is the Credit Mobilier guy. You know that game we really like."
Scott said something like, "Yes, that is a really good game. We should tell Jay about it. Come with us, Max."
Well, I didn't want to play the game Randy and Connie picked out anyway, so I went with Ken and Scott to see Jay. Saying I "ditched" them may be a bit harsh, but I'm not sure Randy and Connie ever did get that game explained to them.
Next I did a very rare thing for me while Ken and Scott took turns telling Jay what a good game Credit Mobilier was and how he should make it. I stayed quiet. Didn't utter a sound. Ask anyone. Very rare occurrence. All I did was smile, shake hands and agree to a time later in the day for a demo.
The appointed time came, and I was there. A few minutes passed. A few more. A friend stopped by to ask me to dinner and asked whether I planned to wait all night. I told him I was prepared to wait until Sunday night. Thankfully, there was no need to pitch a tent as the RGG playtest group and Jay turned up while we were chatting – not more than ten or fifteen minutes late to be sure, but it was a very long few minutes for some of us.
So Credit Mobilier almost didn't make it into a white box based on some early feedback. It took Aaron and Doug looking at it from a broader viewpoint to convince me to make it. And I almost didn't wear my StrataMax shirt that day at Gen Con, and I almost didn't let Randy and Connie talk me into going to that game demo. Good thing my daughter wanted to take piano lessons.
Max Michael
StrataMax Games
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