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Hi, my name is Johnny Ebsen, the designer of Urbanization. This is my first published game, but by far not my first design ever. I started designing games as a kid, together with friends. These were wargames and they were not good by any means, but we had a lot of fun. Many years later I got in touch with German Games like Primordial Soup and it got me hooked on game design again. I made a lot of different games but did not succeed with publishers. I had to realize that there is a lot to learn to have success in the business and it would last 10 years of trial and error before Queen Games agreed to publish Urbanization.
Inspiration
Urbanization is an optimization game with limited resources. It takes you through the part of history spanning from the beginning of the industrial revolution to modern day. The story of Urbanization begins back in the 1980’s. I was 14 or 15 and had just bought my first Stereo. I did not really have any money left for buying records, so I borrowed a few from a friend. He was really into RUSH and Dire Straits so that was the major part of the records I borrowed. At first I did not really like them and thought it sounded strange, but one afternoon when it was raining outside and I had nothing else to do, I put on the “Love Over Gold” album by Dire Straits and listened to the song "Telegraph Road".
I got caught by the lyrics of the song and I played it over and over again. This was the first time I got this very special feeling about a piece of music, so it stays in my memory as something very special. We now fast forward to 2006. Once again I had nothing to do as the kids were all outside with my wife. I grabbed the opportunity and looked through my old record collection and stumbled over the “Love Over Gold” album again. I sat down and listened to "Telegraph Road" once again after all these years. The song is 14 minutes long and it is about how a rural area gets settled and it grows to a big city. I knew at this point that city building had to be the theme for my next game and I would call it "Telegraph Road". What I wanted to do right from the beginning was to catch a bit of the atmosphere from the song, so I started to dissect it into sections and started thinking about how to implement these into a game. I got very little sleep that night...
"A long time ago came a man on a track
Walkin' thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
Made a home in the wilderness."
Walkin' thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
Made a home in the wilderness."
At first I thought about starting the game with each player having a meeple and moving it around the board to find a good place, but after some thinking I decided that a good place to start my story would be to have each player have just settled (one house), and the rest of the board was free open land, ready to be built upon. I quickly realized that I would not be able to accommodate all the things described in the song and decided to keep it lean and simple, but at the same time I wanted to put a feel for the time passing into the game. I think the most important decision I made was to make the citizens of the settlements the center of the game. It should be about creating a city that would attract more citizens than the settlements of the opponents. The next consideration was what to include to attract citizens.
I came up with food, housing and work as the basic things needed to have a growing city. At this point I also decided to exclude random events. I wanted the game to follow a timeline that would not vary too much and at the end of the game the deck of factories should be nearly depleted, with just small variations possible. The song spans around 100 years and the game would have to represent this. This led to the inclusion of industrialization as a major theme of the game, which led to factories being an absolute must. I just love the way Mark Knopfler describes how the settlement becomes a city:
“My radio says, tonight it's gonna freeze
People drivin' home from the factories
There's six lanes of traffic
Three lanes moving slow.”
People drivin' home from the factories
There's six lanes of traffic
Three lanes moving slow.”
I called the game “Telegraph Road” as a tribute to the song and I started to have a very good idea of what the game should be like and what to focus on. It was time to create the first prototype.
Creating the First Prototype
The first prototype was hand drawn, and I decided to split the game board into small parts. I did not want to redo everything if I wanted to change certain areas. The first drafts were really nothing but sketches but it helped me get everything in the right place.
I created a common board for administrating the resources and keeping track of the rounds.
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The building area where the players would let the cities emerge was made as its board and I also wanted to give each player a development board to track food, work and population.
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Play Testing
Initially I did the playtesting myself. I went through 20 rounds of testing and adjusting before I had the guts to show it to anyone. I invited a good friend over for the first "real" testing. It quickly became apparent that there was something to this game and made it worthwhile pursuing. The first tests had us so engaged that I forgot to look for flaws. We played a few extra games to work out the problems. For example: The game had eight rounds with the last two having the city deteriorating.
"I used to like to go to work but they shut it down
I've got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found
Yes and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed
We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed."
I've got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found
Yes and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed
We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed."
It was frustrating to see all the things you built vanish. This was just too much reality!
I had a feeling that something was missing, both in gameplay and theme. I shelved the game for a couple months. The term "citizens" was too abstract and you did not get the feeling of real people living in the settlements, even though I had decided to make them the most valuable resource.
One night I woke up with the idea of adding people to the game. Not just regular people, but important characters that could add some extra spice to the story and the gameplay. I quickly created a new prototype, and again Andreas came over. I really enjoyed that evening as the gameplay was just lovely. We both agreed it was time to test the game in our normal gaming group, so with a computer I created a new game board and all the parts. I went through a couple of iterations and I was confident there would not be significant changes from now on.
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I invited my game group, explained the rules, answered a few questions, made a few notes, and we were ready to go. I know these players well and I observed them play a lot of games. I can tell when they like a game and when they don't. Observing them play is the biggest indicator for me if the game is basically OK - believe me I have had them play a lot of prototypes they did not like. For the entire game they barely exchanged words and nearly no questions to the rules were asked. The game just flowed and I enjoyed watching them. In the last round all four players were very close and the final actions decided who won the game. Afterwards we talked about their experience and what they thought about playing it. Most comments were made about the prototype and how to optimize the layout, not much was mentioned about the gameplay. I was a happy man...
Presenting the Game
After another year or so and many tests in my gaming group I signed up for a prototype test weekend. I arrived with only one goal - getting a fresh, unbiased group to look at the game. This gave me a reality check which was really important to me at this point. I thought the game was finished, but experience has taught me that my own gut feeling does not always match the feeling of other players.
You often lose objectivity because a group has played so often and knows the history and previous revisions of the game. They might make decisions during play based on these previous versions of the game, so it is important to get new input. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that a game scout from Queen Games was attending the convention and looking for a gamer's game. I had no intention of showing the game to a publisher at that point, despite "Telegraph Road" falling into this category.
There were a lot of other game developers with gamer's games, so he was busy playing all weekend. I wasn't sure if Telegraph Road was ready, so I didn't push too hard to show it, except dropping a comment that I might have a game that might interest them. On the final day the scout had an opening in his schedule, so we set up a game of "Telegraph Road". I set up the game, explained the rules, and the group started playing. The game flowed exactly as it had in my gaming group and all the players were engaged as I had witnessed before. What a lovely feeling. It is one of those moments when you just love designing games.
After finishing the game, the scout took the game to show Queen Games. Two weeks later the CEO of Queen Games sent me a confirmation by email, that he would like to publish the game. I received the email late at night, when my family had already gone to bed, so I sat down with a cold beer and celebrated on my own being the happiest man on the planet.
The Publishing Process
I signed a contract, got an editor, and the first thing we needed to do was name the game. I always felt that it would not be called "Telegraph Road" because it did not have much do with telegraphs or roads. We couldn't come up with a satisfactory name until the editor suggested "Urbanization". It took me a while to get used to it, but I started liking it more and more and at some point the game simply became "Urbanization" to me.
Marko Fiedler was selected as the artist. For a while I did not hear anything and this was the most frustrating period in the entire development. One day the editor sent me an email asking if I would like to see the first illustrations. You can guess how I answered! I opened the email and there was the box cover right in front of me. My only thought was WOW! Looking at all the graphics I was overwhelmed. There is a big difference between what an amateur like me and what a professional like Marko can do.
What I like the most about Marko's work is that it does not look like any other game I've seen and is still beautiful. Thank you Marko! We are now fine tuning the rules and the components are being made. We are working on the final details to take the next step to being a great game. I’m looking very much forward to getting feedback from players around the world. I know all the reactions will not be positive, it was never my intention to make a mass market game. I had a story that I wanted to tell, and I hope some of you out there will like it as much as I do. The idea of people in the U.S. or Korea sitting around a table playing my game and having a good time is the biggest reward I could ever have.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully you will get the opportunity to play Urbanization soon.
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