The Making of Opera II

By Hans van Tol
October 13, 2009

Designer: Hans van Tol
Publisher: The Game Master

Players: 2-4
Ages: 12+
Playing time: 90-150 minutes
Release date: October 2009
Languages: English, German and Dutch
Price: €40
Links:

[Editor’s note: Part 1 of this series, published Oct. 12, covered the inspiration for Opera.]

In October 2006 I got support from André Grekhov, a student for Design Technology at the University of Eindhoven, for work on two, rather new joint projects: the harbor game Rotterdam and Opera. André was a great support to me in the creative process. In fact, I prefer to work out the development of a game in a team of two people as this works best in my experience – and young people tend to have the capability of creating new things more easily because they are not bound by structure and patterns based on experience. In my head were the rules, and when André came onto the project, he forced me to tell everything I knew about the game, what had been going around in my brains for months.

One very important basic rule in Opera is variability. You will find in the final rules that the audience does not want to see several performances of the same composer at the same time in the same city. The rules don’t appreciate such boredom either, so we created five kinds of performances, with “Opera” being one of the five. In the game we started developing that October, the players could put on a Play, a Concert – with classic music, of course, not a rock version – a Ballet, an Operetta, and an Opera.

While Opera was just one of five performances, it had the highest value in “appeal” to the audience, with a Play being worth 1 star, a Concert 2 stars, and so on up to the 5 star Opera. Of course you can debate this order we took, but it just felt right because opera combines several of the other “lower valued” performances and therefore could be classified as the ultimate art form.

The fixed order in value had one big disadvantage: It was fixed! The players were not able to change it, and during the game their value did not change. Even though the variance as explained below could break this rigidity a little bit and shifts in the planning.

How Diversity Earns You Money

Players earned money on performances based on variability – how many kinds of performances were present in a city. In prototype 1, for example, Paris has a maximum capacity of five podia. (Note that all players shared the theaters in this version; in the final game, each player has his own imperium of buildings with several numbers of halls.) Each player owned the same number of podia (in their own color), but they had to build them on the gameboard. On the table at the bottom of the picture of prototype 1 (from part 1), you can see these “podium squares” that we “borrowed” from one of the Settlers of Catan expansions. Building a podium in a city would give you the change to perform there later.

So we’re in Paris: Red has built two podia, with a Ballet (3 stars) on one of them, Green has a podium with a Play (1 star), and Blue has a podium with a Ballet (3 stars). With only two kinds of performance, only two visitors – okay, let’s say 2,000 – come to Paris. Since Red and Blue have the most interesting (most valuable) performances, each of these players receives two gold pieces, while Green gets nothing.

Players planned their performances secretly, which was logical because the influence on each other’s income was very high. The performance cards were placed face down on the podium squares on the gameboard, so you would never know whether you were competing with an Opera or a Ballet, in case you have a nice Operetta.

Planning was an important part of the way Opera was working because you were limited in the number of music pieces / performances you were allowed to shift.

Now you did not have to invest in podia, but were just allowed to place a podium for free. Money became a non-issue in the game with the players earning victory points (VPs) just by scoring the number of visitors in a city. In the Paris example above, Red and Blue both earned two gold pieces, investing this income to build new podia. Now both players would receive 2 VPs during the scoring round, with players being allowed to place a few podia for free – but how?

Each player received five cards in his hand with the name of a location on them. Now each player would secretly choose three cards, place them face down on the table, then reveal them. If two players chose the same location, only the player with the most cards of this location would build a (now free) podium in that city; if players tied, then no one could build anything in this city. Of course, if you were the only one who selected a city, maybe a small city that nobody else wanted, you could build a podium without any competition. The surprise in this method was a nice fun factor as well as the stress factor for players who might risk not being able to build in a round if they had put all their cards on one big city and were faced with a draw. Real fun!

The game felt easy this way, and it was okay, but when we started our first test play with one of our test teams – we have about seventy testers of all ages ready to play a game – we discovered that while the game itself worked fine, there was a mismatch with its positioning. We were making an opera game for families only to find out – logically – that younger players (12-18 years) were not interested in a game about opera. Opera was boring to most of them.

I felt so incredibly stupid! How could I ever have thought that a game called Opera would be accepted and well-targeted for a FAMILY??? Later, though, I would understand why this phase was just part of the development.

Next up: The heaviest form of Opera will present itself – for gamers only…

If you’re curious about some of the details of the gameboard and the game play in prototype #2, here’s a closer look:

1. Building locations – place three location cards, then fill your hand to five again.
2. Get one performance card or one “Behind the Stage” (special action) card.
3. Plan up to three performances.
4. Play Mozart or Salieri (last).
5. Reveal performances and earn VPs.

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