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In 2007 my life took a different direction when I found out about the Origins convention in Columbus, Ohio. I had never been, and I wanted to give it a try. I booked a room at the Hyatt, then headed down for my first experience. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed! Tons of people playing board games, vendors selling all kinds of cool tchotchkes...I was in nerd nirvana!
Since it was my first time there, I didn't know what to do or try, so the majority of my trip was spent shopping and playing two-player games with a friend who had come with me. I mostly played Magic: The Gathering and didn't know much about Eurogames – but while at that convention I got a chance to see and experience a whole world of games that I did not know about.
I returned to Origins in 2009. I had booked my room at the Hyatt, bought my board room pass, and had money to pick up some new games. I sat down with my convention book and looked into sessions that would teach me how to play games in which I was interested. The three games I decided on were: Battlestar Galactica, Android (which had been given to me as a gift) and Race for the Galaxy. After playing these games, I had a new appreciation and fascination for all the different types of mechanisms employed in these games. I wanted to learn more and see what I could do on my own.
After returning from Origins I decided that I wanted to try my hand at designing a game. I had always loved games and puzzles, and wanted to stretch myself to see whether I could make one myself. I told a few friends that I was going to do it, and I heard the obligatory "Oh, that's cool" comments.
What was my game going to be about? How would it play? I had no idea – I just knew that I wanted to design a game.
I had always heard that you should write about what you know. Would that same philosophy work for game design? I was about to find out. At that time I was working as a retail manager for GameStop, so I decided to make a game about retail and businesses ownership. After deciding the design would be a card game, I came up with a series of businesses that could be purchased. There was also a stack of action cards. Five businesses were laid out, and you had your choice of three actions: You could purchase a business, play an action card, or take an action card. The action cards allowed you do something beneficial for your businesses or harmful to your opponent's businesses. (This is where my Magic: The Gathering background influenced the design.) I called it Entrepreneur.
The businesses produced income, which then in turn allowed you to purchase more businesses. The game ended when someone had built 12 businesses, and whoever had the most VPs won. After producing my cards in Excel, it was time to give it a playtest. I played with two friends, and the game lasted about 25 minutes as my friend Mike broke the game within the first ten minutes. He was able to see card combinations that produced a lot of money, which in turn allowed him to buy the most expensive businesses and use the action cards to get even more businesses. He won by a large margin.
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Examples of the original Entrepreneur cards
He was very kind in his critique, but I knew that some things were fundamentally flawed. I put the cards back in their tuck boxes and set them on a shelf, thinking "I'll get back to this when I have time."
Well, as you may have guessed, those tuck boxes gathered a lot of dust. I was working two jobs (a second job delivering pizzas, then a second job working for Apple retail). I was still playing the occasional game, but didn't have as much time to play as I wanted. I remember listening to the radio and hearing about this website called Meetup.com, so I checked it out. It was pretty cool! I decided to start a board game group and see who would show up. I contacted a local retailer (Fun 4 All in Ypsilanti, MI; give it a try if you haven't) and the owner Rich said we could host the group at his place on Wednesday nights. (All the other nights were filled with D&D or Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh!). I agreed, and the Ann Arbor Board Game Group was born. Our first meetup was attended by seven people, and we played Ticket to Ride and Bohnanza. We've been running for over two years now, and we have over 185 members. I have met a lot of great people through this group that I game with on a regular basis. One day, a friend and member, Andres, brought a protoype of a game he was working on. I remember playing it and thinking how cool it was he had done all this. It inspired me to bring out Entrepreneur and rework it.
At this point I had experienced a lot of new games through my board game group. We played a lot of Rosenberg (Agricola, Le Havre, At the Gates of Loyang) and a lot of Wallace (Brass, Steam, Automobile) plus many other games that exposed me to a variety of different mechanisms and ideas. So I sat down and came up with a list what I would like in a game: Worker placement, resource management, and auctions. I was ready to implement these in my newest version of Entrepreneur.
Back to work I went. How could I make worker placement work in a card-based environment? It became clear that I would need some type of board in addition to the cards. Where would the resources come from? I didn't want them to all come from the board; perhaps the cards could produce goods? Yes, that was it! It then dawned on me to have Factories that produce goods, and Businesses that buy those goods. Each player would have a set of Factories and Businesses that would be available for any player to use. The catch? If you used an opponent's business or factory, they would get a victory point. But how to make it so that an opponenent would use my Factory or Business so that I got a victory point? Offer an incentive! If you placed a research and development cube on your factory, it produced an extra good. I also had For Sale cards; these cards gave victory points by filling the requirements on the cards.
Things were starting to fall into place – now to work on the board. I needed spaces to place workers that were not placed on the businesses and factories, but also we integral to game play, so I came up with twelve spaces that were available to workers. Now how to deal with player position and the auction? Each round businesses and factories would come up for auction. But how to make it so that the person with the most money wasn't also the person who had first position, the best factories, and the ability to place workers first? The idea I used was borrowed from Brass: the person who spent the least amount of money at the auction got to place his worker first, with the person who spent the most on the auctions going last. With all of the details worked out, my calculations in place for money and victory points, and my cards and board ready, I subjected my friends to a playtest of the new and improved Entrepreneur.
My first play was with my friend Dave and his wife Natalie. We ended up playing two games of it that night, with those initial plays going fairly smoothly. Dave commented that he found the game pretty balanced, but that people could abuse the Corporate Strategy cards. (Corporate Strategy cards were secret agenda cards that allowed you to score VPs by fullfilling the requirements of the cards.) Dave (and later his wife) discovered that you could get massive amounts of points by using those cards. I took that feedback and tweaked the cards, then gathered three more friends to playtest a four-player game of Entrepreneur. One concern – and one that I addressed in later versions – was game length; with four players it took about two hours and 45 minutes. I subjected my friends to several more playtests over the next few weeks. I didn't change any major mechanisms because I wanted more feedback on the original design. At this point it was time to bring it out into the wild. I was heading to Origins and felt it was a good time to get fresh input.
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Revised Industrialist cards
While at Origins in 2010, I had the pleasure of meeting two budding game designers: Lance Semen and Jeremy Kalgreen. I saw them and told them about my new game, which I had retitled Industrialist. (I felt like this title better reflected the idea of the game.) Lance was more than gracious and offered to playtest my new game. His feedback was great; I made a few minor changes to the cards and was ready to playtest it more. Jeremy (who is also an incredible graphic artist) offered to work on artwork for a prototype, and I could not resist. (Remember, I was currently working with Word and Excel documents.)
While in the board room area of the convention, I was playtesting yet again when a gentleman stopped by and asked what we were playing. He stood and watched, asked questions, and seemed genuinely interested. He introduced himself as Matthew Duhan from Gozer Games, an independent publisher from Chicago. At the end of the game he expressed his interest in the game and asked me to stop by his booth the next day. I did, and little did I know how fortuitous this meeting would be.
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One of many game boards during playtesting
A few days before Protospiel in Ann Arbor, MI – if you aren't aware of this conference, you should definitely check it out! – I received an email from Matt asking whether I would be interested in sending a prototype of my game for evaluation. I said that I was, but I needed time to make some tweaks. I was heading to Protospiel and wanted to get more feedback before I submitted.
Protospiel was a great experience. I think I got five playtests in, one including Seth Jaffee from Tasty Minstrel Games (he had some great feedback) and one with Minion Games, which also had some very relevant feedback. Over three days I tried three different versions of the game – removing things, adding things... It was at this convention that I decided to remove the auction mechanism, and even though I love auctions, it was a good move because it shortened the game time considerably.
After these changes, I submitted my game to Gozer Games and waited. After a few weeks I received an email from Matt asking whether I would be interested in having his company publish my game. I was excited and scared at the same time. I think all game designers have grandiose dreams of getting picked up by a major publisher, but let's be realistic – that does not happen very often. So after some negotiations, I signed a contract with Gozer Games.
The game had been signed. Now what? Yep, you guessed it, more playtests! After many playtests and numerous amounts of feedback, we finally tweaked the game to a point where we felt it was ready for publication.
As for the title of the game, Entrepreneur was ruled out because we felt it was too generic. I tried Industrialist, but that didn't roll off the tongue and wasn't memorable. The next title we decided on was Mogul. We liked that and that was the working title as we ironed out the kinks, but there was a problem when we went to submit the title to BGG: Rio Grande Games was releasing a new version of Michael Schacht's game of the same title in 2012. It was back to the drawing board. After some brainstorming, we decided upon Titans of Industry.
Here are some of the changes made from Industrialist:
• We now had cards for three-, four-, and five-player games. (Originally I had the same number of cards, no matter how many players.)
• We introduced more Corporate Strategy cards for more variety in which cards people would get at the beginning of the game.
• We removed the auction mechanism, and Businesses and Factories would now be purchased in player order, with each building costing the amount of the current level. (Level 1 cards cost $1, level 2 cost $2, etc.)
• The original "Train a worker" space was opened up so that everyone could train as opposed to one player per turn.
• Originally, Research & Development chits were used only on factories for producing an extra good. Now they can be used on businesses to sell goods for extra money or VPs.
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Factory and Business cards with new artwork
Our Kickstarter campaign is now active, and to give you a better feel for how it plays, Cartrunk Entertainment is hosting a live playing of the game on Thursday, April 19 at 8:30 p.m. EDT (GMT -4). If Titans of Industry turns out to be your kind of game, please consider supporting it and helping out the small indie publishers that are taking risks to bring games like this to the gaming community.
Thanks for taking the time to read this diary. If you plan to be at Origins, I'd love to game with you. Drop me a Geekmail!
Brian Lewis
Final game board for Titans of Industry
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