The Making of Opera VI
By Hans van Tol
November 18, 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 I of this series covered the inspiration for Opera, part II detailed a sidetrack in the realm of family games, part III examined an overload of strategic possibilities, part IV started pulling everything together, and part V brought us into the final testing phase. Hans van Tol submitted this write-up on November 1, but I’ve been busy.]
The SPIEL Effect
One week after Essen I am getting a little bit organized. What a fair, with all the chaos, noise, excitement and inspiration that SPIEL always brings to all of us! Each year it is a great experience to find almost ten halls filled with 150,000 people who just want to play games. When I was sitting in the bus on the way back to Holland it occurred to me: SPIEL’09 was over and I have to wait for almost 12 months before SPIEL’10 will be there. Such a long time! But this year (my sixth) I was very satisfied with the result. No nightmares for me anymore about what could have gone wrong. We did all we could to make it a SPIEL to never forget. I will just give you a short report before I go back to the last and decisive phase of development of the Opera board game.
Novelty Show
The novelty show – the press day on Wednesday – with the two opera singers was a great success. Many journalists, TV cameras, etc. followed the great performance of the Cantarte couple on the first day.
Restaurant l’Opera
We played Opera throughout the entire day, with the tables fully booked for the full four days. In fact, it felt like running a restaurant because each day we had to reserve tables. On Thursday and Friday we were high on the rankings of Fairplay (2nd and 6th), playing the game for six rounds. The problem was that there so many people who wanted to play Opera that we had to decide to demo only three rounds of play. This was of course a pity because the game gets better and better each round. Most of the time, the last three rounds of Opera are the most exciting ones, although the build-up phase (round 1-3) and the “pick up” phase (4-6) are also very nice. I will come back later to what I mean with these phases in the game play.
Of course I want to thank all the demo players who really worked hard to make it possible to bring Opera to the public. During the fair the game was played or explained about 100 times!
The presentation of the game during the novelty show, the stage in our stand in hall 12 and the game itself, of course, drew a lot of attention from publishers and distributors throughout the world. The coming weeks we will work hard to get all the partners in about eight different countries together for a reprint in 2010 because we run out of copies very fast. This project has already taken much of my time – as a result this report comes a week after SPIEL.
Prototype VI: Getting to the Final Game
Overview
The assignment now was to break the Money Strategy, as discussed in Part V. Also we wanted to make sure that a number of strategies gave satisfying results, but none of them would dominate the others. In fact the main thing to do in the coming five months was to balance the game further and further. The basic structure of the game was perfect. The strategic players enjoyed themselves very much in two sessions of two hours of play. None of them got bored with the game, and all wanted to play the game again and again. But still, we were sure that the game was not good enough. It is the last 2% of a game – like adding the salt and herbs to give it the right flavour. So now this was what we did.
What did we do to break the Money Strategy?
Sometimes things are very difficult, but most of the times they are very logical. The only thing is that you have to see them first. What we did was decrease the maximum capacity of the opera houses in the start of the game. The fifth prototype allowed the players to build a “money machine” in each city. When a player could extend an opera house to six halls within three rounds of play, the last six rounds would be abundant. A player having six halls filled with operas would allow him to grab so much money that he did not need to get any victory points in the beginning and could just focus on money. After half of the game he could switch his strategy radically towards power and VPs; he would be dominating the budget table and buy all valuable peaces and transfer them later into VPs.
Smooth build-up of Opera
In the final version we adjusted the maximum capacity of the opera houses in the earlier stages of the game, so there is now a smooth build-up. During the first episode (round 1-3) the biggest opera house has a maximum capacity of only four halls (Statsoper in Wien). This maximum increases to five halls in the second Episode (L’Opera in Paris) and only in the last three rounds of play can a player manage to invest in the biggest opera house of all (La Scala in Milan) with six halls. Aside from breaking the one winning strategy, the other advantages of this change are that:
- The slow build-up gives new players the chance to learn to play the game, and
- When you make mistakes in the beginning, the effect on the final score will be less, so the chance of having one leader in the beginning who also wins the game is very limited, especially because of the high interaction and competition throughout the game which also decreases differences in power in case they were substantial.
Besides breaking the Money Strategy, we had to do a lot of other things to improve the rules. The last ingredients to get a well-working and exciting game:
- Cutting out buildings: The Architetto became more important due to our adjustment of the maximum capacity to break the money strategy. We then cut even more buildings to make buildings a more scarce resource. As a result, getting the initiative to play the role of the Architetto became more important, especially in rounds 4 and 7 when new buildings are added to the game. A player must want to play all six of the roles simultaneously, but of course this is never possible.
- Limiting the roles: Since we want to make sure that the game cannot be dominated by one or two players, each player may initiate a role only three times (for 2 players: a maximum of 4 roles).
- Helping the player with the fewest VP: We added the rule that the player who chooses the Esperto must give his best piece to the player with the fewest number of Victory Points. This added balancing rule keeps the scores in an acceptable range in order to keep the tension in the game high.
- Breaking power through movement: If a player wants to activate the role of a character, he must move its piece. This way the strong role of the Esperto cannot be played in the same city twice! The players cannot concentrate on only one city (for example, Paris or Milano) and score several times in the same city, winning many VPs in a row. This change makes the game play more dynamic.
- Adding blocking possibilities: In the cities of the second and third Episode, mainly the bigger cities in which more money or points can be gained, only one position is available for a Character. This way a strong player is unable to play, for example, the Maestro and the Esperto in Paris or Milano and this way make much money and many VP in one turn!
- Breaking the power: The Critico may upgrade the popularity of a Composer and bring him down, both with a maximum of 2 levels. In an earlier prototype the Critico was only “the bad guy”. Later he became only good. But we found out that if we did not give him (or the player who activates him) the chance to choose + or -, it would be very hard to stop somebody who is doing really well.
We had quite a lot of discussion about this rule. My co-designers Hjalmar and Ruud were convinced that the Critico should be able to be used in both ways. I was not convinced, until we played a game with the three of us. I was really doing very well in the game, but even with joined forces they could not really do enough to stop me from scoring my VPs at the end of the game. It was clear after this specific game that we had to give the Critico more credit. His character has become more important due to this rule change. Also, the very nice side effect of this rule is that the ladder of fame can be influenced in many subtle ways, with many different effects – which you may notice after you have played Opera a few times.
- Helping the poor: As another way to help players who have a hard time catching up with others, if you end up at the lowest level on the budget table at the end of a round, you will receive a bonus of 1 ducat. For some smart players who have enough money, they can plan their actions carefully and end up with a nice bonus.
- Developing special rules for two players: After I had played a two-player game with Hjalmar, I found out that because I was a bit careless in the beginning, he managed to dominate the game completely. Because I hate to lose :), I changed the rules – and the change worked out very well. He won the game, but playing Opera with two players became much more fun. The first “playing along” action does not cost you any budget level; this way the players’ budget markers literally ‘stick’ together. We also decreased the risk of domination in a two-player game significantly.
Here are three really new things we added in the period from January to June 2009:
- The Composer of the Century: This came in April or May when Ruud had played the game with a few friends. A very nice feature of the game, it gives more alternatives for strategic game play.
- The home composer!!! Where did he come from? In fact it was Christian Hildenbrand from Hutter Trade, our German partner for Opera, who advised us to put a little bit more money in the game in the beginning, in case players made mistakes or the distribution of music pieces is a bit unfortunate. We introduced the home composer, whose fame is 0, but he always “fills the halls nicely” and therefore creates standard income. We also did a very nice thing with the home composer graphically, which some of you might even have noticed already. The images of the house composers refer to real people:)
- The Signora changes her role: First the Signora was there only to try to seduce the players to cash in on one of their most valuable assets: the operas. But we observed that in the last four rounds her role normally diminished because the players would rather play the Maestro to get extra money. Also, as the result of a comment from a publisher who tested the game, we found out that it would be great to give the Signora a second role to score VP. This way the Signora is tempting for the players to use throughout the game, giving double value of a music piece in money or transferring the value of a piece directly into VP.
Most of the changes in the last development phase I have now mentioned here. I am sorry that it took a lot of words, but the last phase was quite a long one. Most of the changes and new things really added flavour to the game. The only thing we’ve cut out were the number of buildings. Now we came to the stage in which I said (around July 1st), “We cannot get anything out of the game anymore, neither can we put anything in it. Now it must be finished!”
Expansion?
We know there is still much we could add to the game, but to make sure the game is not too heavy and we are able to bring Opera to a broad audience we have decided to keep the game compact. As a result we have limited the number of roles and composers and eliminated very nice buildings with special functions. For an expansion we have too many ideas, out of which we will definitely have to choose again, but I am sure we could make the game even more interesting.
Suggestions?
If there are game lovers or opera lovers out there who have good suggestions for what they would like to add to the game, I am inviting you to send in your suggestions. Some discussions have been started on the composers which were chosen for the game. We do not mind because as designers we have to make decisions based on numerous factors of which not all consumers can be aware of. In case you would like to add Puccini, Bizet or other famous writers of operas, please send in your suggestions. To make it clear: Opera has been made to be performed for the public, to share it with many people.
Please send in any suggestions, ideas or other questions to ontwerp@thegamemaster.nl
Hans van Tol
Posted by W. Eric Martin on Nov 18, 2009 at 10:00 PM in Columnists, Articles, Etc., Game Designer Diaries / 1326
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I’ve enjoyed reading this entire series. Now all I want is the game on my table. And it’s worth mentioning I don’t think I would be this eager to buy it without having read these articles. Posted by Jacob Lee on Nov 18, 2009 at 11:17 PM | #
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