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Since I started playing Eurogames, I had the idea of creating a game related to the oil industry. In 2011, I started developing Oilfield. The initial concept was intended to focus on a Venezuelan or Saudi scenario, but later on, I changed my mind to base the game in a more unusual location. What about if we discovered a huge oilfield in Europe? In Spain? What about if it's in the Canary Islands? After that, I began working on it and everything started to flow.
The idea was simple: Big oil tycoons compete in order to get even richer by exploiting brand new territory.
Gradually I start to define the whole process in order to construct the gameplay — bidding for oilfield rights, building the derricks to drill the oil, supplying the domestic market, and exporting the crude oil.
At this stage, I had the essence of the game, and when that was defined, the mechanisms followed quite easily.
As in life itself, it's always better when your competitors don't know much about your plans. I wanted to bring this into the game one way or the other, and that's when lightning struck. The solution was simple: Splitting the main core actions in two turn/actions. Players will have both a public action and a secret action.
This way, most of the common steps that these oil giants take are translated into actions within the game, allowing the players to simulate the oil business.
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First Changes
I have to say that when I started testing the game, based on a graphic design created by myself, it wasn't beautiful but it was at least functional.
In the beginning, the game had different combinations to score points, but it was all based on the oil itself as this was the only resource. Later, I introduced gas into the game, and this created a brand new dynamic that would help improve several aspects of the game. This brought new ways to score points, more derricks coming up, and new ways to manage the market.
In the first version, the export was based on the capacity of the oil tankers. These were later removed from the game, and that's when the supply and demand table came about. This gave the export portion of the game a more authentic feel to it.
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Midway Changes
Public actions were available on the board and secret actions were selected from a personal board hidden behind a screen. I replaced these screens with cards (one per action). Although the goal is the same, the dynamic seems to be a lot more fun with the cards.
Bonds are the victory points in the game. In the early prototype, they were represented by cards that players bought along the way. Then, another change came when these cards were removed and replaced by the investment table. This brought into it the whole concept of bonds, an inflation feeling that fit quite nicely with the game.
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After these changes, I went out and tested the game with all sorts of players, from beginners to hardcore gamers.
I used to take it to all boardgaming events in Madrid and anywhere else I could; I started to visit different conventions around the country, which was really great, but then, I wanted to go beyond; I decided that SPIEL would be the best place to show my game. In 2014 I went to SPIEL and attended the warm-up day, a cool event that takes place in Essen the day before SPIEL starts. Here you can meet gamers, designers and publishers from around the world.
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From experiences such as this, I got invaluable feedback from many people who showed interest in the game. Playing with hardcore gamers and professionals who would raise questions and challenge the game helped me mature the concept and adjust it accordingly, making it as strong and stable as possible, but at the same time I tried to keep the original flow of the theme in order to keep it intuitive and fun from the first turn.
Final Changes
During 2015, I kept demoing and testing the latest adjustments. I went back to SPIEL and once again attended the warm-up day. It was great to see people from the previous year who wanted to play the game again. It was not until the end of 2015 when talks started with ABBA Games, and finally we had an agreement to be published in 2016.
And here we are at the end, when pretty much all that was left were changes to the graphic design. Although these did not change the game per se, for some it may have been the most significant ones. Along with the publisher, we decided to give the game a brand new face, and we changed the setting of the game, with Oilfield now taking place during the Texas oil boom of the early 20th century. This is how Oilfield looks today:
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I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the testers, family and friends for their huge support throughout these long years and hundreds of kilometers to make Oilfield happen. I can't wait for SPIEL 2016 when it's finally released. Thanks for reading, and cheers!
Paco Yanez
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