The Making of Opera III

By Hans van Tol
October 15, 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 covered the inspiration for Opera, and part II detailed a sidetrack in the realm of family games.]

I know it is ridiculous, but I have promised Eric that I would be sending in a part every day until the moment I have to pack my things for Essen. A promise is a promise, so besides taking all the other preparations, designing new games in between, and making sure our opera singers will show up at the Novelty Show in great costumes and with their voices warmed up for the performance, I will be writing my report on the creation of Opera.

Mozart and Salieri

In the last part I showed you this nice detail at the bottom of the board of prototype II. Who are these guys, Mozart and Salieri? Where did they come from, and did they survive the (sometimes) destructive path of creation and development?

Mozart and Salieri are the two main characters in the movie Amadeus, which I saw in my younger days. Mozart was the good guy, of course, and Salieri was the “bad guy,” but also a secret admirer of the fabulous work of the very talented composer.

In the family version of Opera, the presence of Mozart in a city would maximize (based on the capacity of the city) the number of visitors. Later, when I read much more about opera and the classical names, Mozart would change into Koormeester (Choir Master), an important character in making sure the performance of the opera is perfect. In 1613, Monteverdi was elected to be the Choir Master of the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, just next to the Doge’s Palace. Venice was a leading cultural city in those days. In the final version of the game, we have changed all the characters into typical Italian titles, which means Mozart became the Maestro. I think you can already guess the final name of the Salieri character – the Critico, of course. So the first two characters of Opera were created.

The function of both characters changed during the development of the game, but in essence they stayed the same. For example, in this second prototype of the game – I’d rather not count the number of versions of rules of the game because these would be at least one hundred different, but slowly evolving rules; let’s stick to the milestones instead – the Salieri kept a city from providing income. In the final version of Opera this strong character would be more balanced because in the final rules the Critico could have a negative or a positive review on the work of a composer, changing his position (and others) on the fame ladder.

The Vatican Made Sure Rome Was Out!

We also had to make a change in the cities in the game, due to the ongoing research. Rome had to be removed from the game because the Pope was against (public) opera for a long time. In 1610 Claudio Monteverdi even composed “Vespro della Beata Vergine” and dedicated it to Pope Paulus V to improve his relationship – all in vain, though, as the Vatican thought opera would have been bad for the people. In Venice at that time the people lived freely, a bit too freely according to the Pope. The Vatican banned opera and wanted to keep it outside as long as possible, so it wasn’t until the second half of the seventeenth century that the first public opera was performed in Rome.

In comparison, the liberal city (and country at that time) of Venice was a free haven for artists. Art and culture flourished in Venice at that time, so my research made it clear: Let’s get rid of Rome! (Apologies to the Italians who live there, but Milan and Venice are still in the game in the final version, so for the Italians there is enough joy, I hope, including two Italian composers!)

A Real Gamers’ Opera

Since I concluded that Opera was not for the family, I decided to make the game heavier, and in November 2007 we picked up the development of Opera once again. This time Florine de With assisted me in creating a more complex version of the game. (I developed Skyline of the World with Florine in 2005 when she was a student at the Design Academy in Utrecht.) Now we created some new elements, which are clearly visible in the picture below of prototype III from January 2008:

New Elements & Changes in the Game

The following new elements were developed in this version of Opera:

1. Six composers: Instead of having five kinds of performances, six different composers emerged in the game – Wagner, Verdi, Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi and Monteverdi – although one of these composers did not make it through to the end! So the ballet and other kinds of performances were deleted from the game. Sorry about that for all ballet lovers…

2. Investing in composer shares: With the only type of performance being the opera, players now invested in the composers and in this way increased the value of the composers. The players thus became members of aristocratic families, each with its own “family sign,” with the players buying a sort of “shares” in the talented composers, supporting them financially, and profiting from the great music pieces the composers created;

3. Bidding process: On the left side of the gameboard below you can see the first set up of the budget table, which has survived in the final version of the game. At that time the budget table had a maximum of 20. On the bottom side you can find a row indicating the amount of money the players had (which is comparable to the way this works in Die Saulen der Erde – we just borrowed this game element to make it easier in playtesting the game), and we used bidding cards for the bidding process.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Central structure: While this process started in prototype II, now the gameboard transformed to include a round central area. This round form did not survive the final development phase of the game, but it did result in one very important basic structure of Opera: the episodes! These episodes – Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism – gave us the opportunity to slowly build up the complexity of the game, introducing new cities and more possibilities.

You can also see for the first time the game rounds. At that time, there were only six rounds, which provided the game a quick entrance so that non-experienced players could also step in easily.

Adding Heavy Stuff to the Game

Unfortunately, though, we added quite a few heavy elements to the game. By doing this, the game became quite complex and the number of choices became enormous. For a gamers’ game, that’s no problem, of course, but it eliminated the chances for a broader audience completely. Two of the problems these players faced:

1. Many, many characters: Since we thought it might be nice to have a lot of possibilities and alternative strategies, we added a lot of different characters. Each round new characters could be hired for specific actions. You could upgrade your characters/roles each round, but you would be paying more for them. At a certain moment we had about fifty different characters, each with different skills. I’d rather not go into detail, but I can tell you that we bundled the most important functions of all these characters and combined them in the final version into six main characters who do the works in Opera. It’s now one compact game machine, although it took us about five months to develop it.

2. Many, many buildings: During the process of grading up the game, we had also thought of a lot of nice buildings with specific qualities. About twenty different kinds of buildings passed by. This gave players a lot of things to think about and surely a game with a lot of different strategies, but because of all this luxury, it also felt a bit too much. I will not give away which buildings we developed because we might be developing an expansion of the game. Most of them were really nice indeed.

When we played the game in January 2008, the game experience was great. But there was one problem: Each round took about 30 minutes, which was a bit too long. When playing the game, you had so many things to validate that playing the game felt like turning a very heavy wheel. The fun experience was completely gone, and everybody needed a lot of time to choose their actions, upgrade their characters and buildings, and improve their power at the different talented composers.

We playtested the game with good willing people, who really wanted to enjoy the game – but especially with five players, this game was “way too much.” It felt as if we were back at square 1 – yet I did not know then that we had already made huge steps and were closer to the final result than we could imagine….

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