JESS: Roberto Goes to a Spanish Toy Shop

After our last Spanish flagios gaming tale, this next history will be another walk on the dark side of the Spanish traditional game industry.

Our main character is the game author Roberto Fraga. Roberto has a strongly imaginative mind. Surely you know some of his fun games (Dancing Eggs, Dragon Delta, Squad 7…)?

What strange event happened to him in a Toys “R” Us shop in a city in the north of Spain?

Once upon a time…

Roberto Fraga is one of my really favourite game designers, not only because of his published games, but also because of his unpublished games and prototypes. He has a wonderful mind for thinking of new ideas to play. Every moment can be the seed of a new idea and everything around can be a game. He has games in different styles. He has published many games for children and adults, mainly in the French and German game markets. His games are always very fun to play, but he has also some serious games. He is famous because of his imaginative and original designs. He is a kind of unusual creative author, who thinks that a game is something to play—and to play it must be fun most of the time. He can make a new game using cards, cardboard and the usual components, but he also can make a game using a water-face-mask or yellow eggs.

He has many funny anecdotes about his meetings with game companies when he’s showing them his new designs. He told me about a game with a fart-hassock you must to put on your chair and on which you must sit. To play this game, you need to jump on your bottom to blow air through the connection to other game components on the table—while everybody is listening the noise your hassock is making. Now try to imagine this with necktied or coquettish executives at some important game company… We will have more of Roberto Fraga’s games in the next years, we can be sure.

I am very lucky because I can meet Roberto Fraga for a couple of days every year. Roberto and his wife Florence are very kind and lovely persons, and my time with them has always been perfect.

Roberto, the man

Roberto Fraga was born in La Coruña, in northern Spain, but his family had to move to France when he was a child. (These weren’t democratic times here in Spain.) His life and his career as a game designer have been developed in France—but he has part of his family in Spain, and sometimes he comes back to this country…

Once upon a time, Robero Fraga was in La Coruña, visiting his family during his 2003 summer holidays. He loves games, and he likes to visit game shops, so he went to the Toys “R” Us shop in La Coruña to take a look around. (Note: Traditional game shops here in Spain are very poor, and they are apart of the new wave of modern boardgames. In the Spanish Toys “R” Us shops there is more baby stuff than board games.) Roberto was taking a quick glance at the board games there when suddenly he found a game called “¿CÓMO SER BILLONARIO EN 60 SEGUNDOS” (How to Be a Billionaire in 60 Seconds?). Roberto was very surprised and very angry… Why?

Front box (Spanish & Portuguese edition)

In 2001, a couple of years before, he had finished a new game that he called “Millionaire in 60 seconds”, co-designed with his friend Lucien Geelhoed. They had signed a contract with Bar David, a very prestigious Israeli licensing agency in the toy and game world. (For example, big successes like Mastermind or Villa Paletti were under its responsibility.)

The prototype

The commercial agent of Bar David showed the prototype to different companies, and most of them liked the game a lot. Bar David asked Roberto to make 10 prototypes and send them to different game companies, including Ravensburger and Popular de Juguetes, a Spanish toy company.

Some months later, Popular de Juguetes sent back the prototype, explaining that in the end the game was not fully satisfactory for them. This wasn’t a problem because later Bar David signed a worldwide contract with Ravensburger—congratulations, Roberto!

In 2003, the game was published by Ravensburger with its name changed from the old “Millionaire in 60 Seconds” to the new “Time Is Money.” The game was presented at Essen Fair, and it still is a successful game.

Time is money at Essen

So, one year later, when Roberto Fraga found in the Toys “R” Us of La Coruña this game called “Billionaire in 60 Seconds”, he took it in his hands, thinking it a strange coincidence. The front of the box was horrible, then he looked at the back. This was the worst moment…

Back box

In the picture on the back of the box, he saw pictures of an awful stopwatch, ugly money bills, and dice—exactly the same dice he had used in his own prototype, which he had made using Boggle dice. Of course, he was amazed and looked for the company on the box… It was Popular de Juguetes, which had published the game in Spain and in Portugal. Roberto bought some of these games to show to his co-designer Lucien and to their commercial agent, Bar David.

Inside the game...

The year before, Popular de Juguetes had said they don’t want the game, but that was not true. They took pictures of Roberto’s prototype before sending it back, then they quickly produced an awful game, changing only one letter of the title—from Millionaire to Billionaire. Maybe due to some mistake, the picture of the dice on the box was of the prototype, not of the real dice inside the box! The components inside the box were as awful as what was shown on the outside of the box, and some of the components were taken from other games this company produced. The money bills, for example, didn’t match with the money denomination in the rules!

And there was no mention of the game designer anywhere.

Of course, Roberto Fraga fought for his rights, and finally Popular de Juguetes had to pay an important amount of money—but the game “¿Cómo ser Billionario en 60 segundos?” was sold many time in Spanish shops.

This was also the last time Roberto Fraga worked with Bar David Licensing Agency.

Roberto Fraga & Lucien Geelhoed, co-authors of Time Is Money

How could Popular de Juguetes do this awful business, stealing a game?  I have an idea about it. I have already said that the traditional Spanish market has been disconnected from the gaming world until a few years ago. When Popular de Juguetes received the prototype from Bar David, a Israeli company, they liked the game. They thought they could sell the game in Spain without the permission of the actual Israeli owner; he was from a far away country and would never notice that his game being published in Spain. They took pictures of the prototype then sent it back to Israel. Then they worked on an (illegal) edition, using components from other of their games (dice, bills…), making a horrible box and changing only one letter from the title. That their edition is so horrible and that the picture on the back of the box is from Roberto’s prototype are more examples which tell us about the bad job this company did. Maybe in the end they found out about the Ravensburger edition, and they hurried to publish the game before it appeared…

They never imagined that the game author would be in Spain some day in person and would find his faked game on sale at a toy shop.

That’s a not funny example about how a company can work. Fortunately, times are changing, and new Spanish boardgame companies know much better how the gaming world must work.

Epilogue: In the beginning of 2006, Popular de Juguetes went bankrupt, giving unemployment to thousand of workers (in the old-time-before prosperous land of toy industries in Valencia). It was a traditional toy and game company—what a pity that they went the wrong way.

¡Nos jugamos!

© 2008 Jesús Torres Castro

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Wow!  That is a crazy scary story. Posted by Dominic on Feb 4, 2008 at 05:45 PM | #

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