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Larry Levy: Designer of the Year for 2005
For the past several weeks, I’ve been detailing my choices for an “award” I’ve created called Designer of the Year (you can find the first two articles here and here). The idea is to honor the designer with the most impressive body of work (excluding classic wargames) for a calendar year. This week, I’ll discuss the candidates for 2005 and choose the winner for the year.
2005 was kind of an unusual year. Not that there weren’t plenty of good games and many designers with sizeable portfolios, but there really wasn’t one designer that stood out. Last year, my selection of Alan Moon was a reasonably easy one, but that would not be the case in 2005. Complicating matters was that there were about twice as many qualified candidates as usual. So the process of winnowing these down was not a short one. But hey, Rick lets me use as much bandwidth as I want! So let’s get started.
Here are the designers I considered for the award, in alphabetical order. I’ve also listed their notable designs for the year (italicized titles indicate that the game is a redesign or based heavily on an earlier game). The letters in parentheses following some of the games give the awards and nominations they’ve received (check one of the earlier articles if you don’t remember what the letters stand for). Obviously, the games released in the latter part of 2005 will only eligible for next year’s awards, so these are not yet complete. But I’ve taken likely nominations into account, so I don’t foresee these honors changing my final selection.
William Attia – Caylus
I have no idea how the gaming awards will go next year, but Caylus is clearly the biggest thing in gaming at this time, as its #2 ranking on the Geek attests. It’s a remarkable achievement for a first-time designer (and its very young publisher Ystari). However, it’s been a long while since a single game was enough to win the award and it won’t happen in 2005 either. Still, the impact of this one game is enough to put Attia among the finalists.
By the way, I’ve mentioned that Joe Huber usually makes his own Designer of the Year selection. He also concurrently announces his choice as best Rookie Designer of the Year. I’ve got to believe that Attia will be a shoo-in for that award, but with Joe, you never know!
Bruno Cathala – Shadows Over Camelot(di), Mission: Planète Rouge, Les Fils de Samarande
A very good year for the “other” Bruno. Shadows has to be considered one of the top games of the year and the early buzz on Mission has been good. (Samarande, by the way, is a redesign of Lawless in an Arabian Nights setting.) His candidacy would have been helped considerably if Shadows had actually snared one of the major awards (it finished second in the IGA by one vote), but he still has to be considered one of the leading designers of the year.
Leo Colovini – Go West, Carcassonne: The Discovery
Both of these games have been reasonably well received, but not spectacularly so. Colovini has had better years and falls out of the running fairly quickly this year.
Franz-Benno Delonge – Manila(d), Fjords(i), TransEuropa
Delonge continues to establish himself as one of the leading designers of light to middleweight German games. Manila’s inability to grab an SdJ nomination hurts, but TransEuropa’s selection as Game of the Year by Austria’s Spiel des Spiele is at least partial compensation (it would have meant more except that the game is basically TransAmerica with a new map). It’s a nice year, but it may not be enough to merit consideration at the finish.
Rüdiger Dorn – Louis XIV(Di), Raub Ritter
Louis XIV is one of the leading designs of the year and finally wins Dorn his first major award. Raub Ritter didn’t make a good first impression, but is starting to gain support. Only two games, but their quality and the DSP award means he’s a contender.
Stefan Dorra – Kreta, Amazonas, For Sale
Dorra’s best year in quite a while. Amazonas got the big publicity at Nuremburg, but Kreta is the one that people are praising today. Still, with neither game managing a nomination, and with For Sale being mostly the same as the 1997 original, there’s not enough here to compete for the big prize. It is nice, though, to see Dorra continue to crank out quality games.
Bruno Faidutti – Diamant(i), Mission: Planète Rouge, Key Largo, The Hollywood Card Game
The original Bruno had a pretty good year as well. Unfortunately, most of these designs wound up having a little more sizzle than steak. Diamant delivered as a good push-your-luck filler, but missing out on the German awards was a disappointment. Key Largo has turned out to be ultra-light and not too highly regarded. And no one has gotten too excited about Hollywood. Certainly none of the games are stinkers, but the sum may not be quite enough to compete.
Reiner Knizia – Tower of Babel, Euphrat & Tigris: Contest of Kings, Palazzo, Beowulf, Pickomino, Poison, Double or Nothing, Head-to-Head Poker, King Arthur Kartenspiel
First of all, this is a lot of games, even by Knizia’s standards (and I left out a few marginal designs). There are two problems, however. First, is the complete lack of nominations (and that very well might still be the case after the 2006 awards are made). The second is the games’ mediocre ratings. Tower of Babel and the E&T card game have ratings of about 7.1 on the Geek, followed by Palazzo at just under 7. The rest are grouped at around 6.5 or worse. Based on these ratings and the nominations shutout, you’d have to say that in spite of the large output, Knizia didn’t produce any really topflight games in 2005.
However...it’s a funny thing, but a lot of those seemingly ho-hum games have a goodly number of folks very excited. I can think of at least half a dozen gamers who feel that Tower of Babel is right up there for their Game of the Year. Chris Farrell is rather famously a huge proponent of Beowulf, but he’s not alone. Several people, including myself, feel that Pickomino is the best dice game released in years. Rick Thornquist is one of several big fans of Poison. And so on. That’s a lot of buzz for what seems like a very quiet collection of games. Unusually for him, Knizia’s 2005 output seems to be very polarizing and the people who like the games really like them. I’m not quite sure what to make of all that, but it does make me think that these games might include hidden depths not immediately apparent upon first playings. Since this is something Knizia is noted for, it does seem to add some shine to his output for the year.
So is this enough to counteract the ratings and the nominations drought? It’s hard to say, but Knizia is certainly one of the leading designers of the year, if only for sheer volume.
Wolfgang Kramer – Hacienda, Australia(G), Verflixxt(sd)
Three solid designs from this ageless veteran. The early buzz on Hacienda has been quite good and it wouldn’t surprise me to see it pick up a nomination or two next year. Australia has been reasonably well received for a middleweight design and its selection as Games Magazine’s Game of the Year (a pretty good choice, in my opinion) definitely gives it luster. Verflixxt was pretty much unknown before it got an SdJ nomination, but it’s a fine family game. Kramer’s been designing games for over 30 years, but he’s still one of the best in the business and these games definitely put him in the running for Designer of the Year.
Michael Kiesling – Australia(G), Verflixxt(sd)
I’m including Kiesling just to be complete, since, though this is a pretty good output, it’s obviously superseded by Kramer’s. The talented Kiesling has never won a Designer of the Year award, since it’s his misfortune to exclusively work with a designer who always releases additional games each year.
Thomas Liesching – Niagara(Sd), Dschamál
Thomas Liesching is a first-time designer who had two ultra-light designs released by Zoch last year, one of which happened to win the SdJ. It’s easy to take both the award and Liesching’s candidacy with a grain of salt, but both games have pretty good ratings and Niagara also finished second in the DSP, so that really wouldn’t be fair. I’d probably give him more consideration if Dschamál (which features two players simultaneously trying to find a specified piece in a cloth bag) hadn’t flown completely under my radar. Still, Bruno Faidutti describes it as “violently erotic�?, so that’s something at least.
Alan Moon – Ticket to Ride: Europe(I), Diamant(i), Gracias, Walk the Dogs
Moon has a nice follow-up to his award winning 2004, highlighted by his IGA award for TtR:E. However, his candidacy is hurt by the fact that the well regarded game is a redesign (albeit one with some significant changes). Gracias is a pleasant filler, but Walk the Dogs is light enough to be blown away with a pooch’s pant. It’s another good year for the Man in Black, but probably not enough for him to repeat.
Michael Schacht – China, Architekton, Drive, Rat Hot, The Hollywood Card Game, Sushi Express, Coloretto Amazonas, Frankenstein
Schacht’s year is the perfect counterpoint to Knizia’s. While both have a long list of designs without any nominated games, Knizia’s have inspired buzz, while Schacht’s have inspired pretty much nothing. China is unquestionably the highlight, but it’s awfully close to a straight remake of Web of Power (and most players seem to prefer the earlier game). Architekton has had a mixed reaction, but mostly it’s been ignored. The rest have barely raised a glimmer of interest.
Schacht is a talented designer, but since his breakout year in 2003 (and resulting Designer of the Year award), the only significant original game he’s released has been 2004’s Hansa. Hopefully, he’ll soon return to his ’03 form, but this won’t be the year.
Martin Wallace – Railroad Tycoon, Byzantium, Conquest of the Empire, Runebound, 2nd Edition
If ever a designer had the right to curse a publisher’s inability to release a game on time, it would be Martin Wallace. Tempus was originally slated for Essen, but Pro Ludo experienced production problems and it is now due out this month or next. If the game had been released before the end of the year and if it had been as good as advertised (remember, six months ago, the game we were all anticipating, due to its fabulous early reviews, was Tempus, not Caylus), Wallace could have won Designer of the Year in a walk. As it is, he still has some very strong qualifications, strong enough for Tom Vasel to pick Wallace as his designer of the year (what is this—competition?). The problem is that most of his releases are reworks of some earlier designs and even though they’ve all been very well received, he still loses points in my book for that. Railroad Tycoon has gotten the most acclaim and may very well wind up being the accessible version of Wallace’s brilliant Age of Steam, just like Power Grid has become the accessible Funkenschlag. Even though this is a redesign, the changes are reasonably extensive, so he gets pretty good credit for this one. Conquest is closer in nature to its predecessor, Struggle of Empires, but there are still some sizable differences. A bigger problem with this design is that it’s two games in one (with the first being based on Larry Harris’ original design), so it’s not immediately clear which half is getting rated. The second edition of Runebound is just a tweaking of the original, so not much credit there, even though most gamers feel the changes are all for the better. The one original design, Byzantium, follows in the Wallace tradition of a heavy, strongly themed game with German-style mechanics and is highly ranked. It wouldn’t surprise me if one or more of these games picks up a nomination next year, or even snags a major award. In a stronger year, the lack of original work would be fatal, but in 2005, the new versions are enough to warrant serious consideration.
Klaus-Jürgen Wrede – Mesopotamia, Dragonriders, Carcassonne: The Discovery
Finally a year from Wrede with more than one non-Carcassonne release. People have been saying mostly good things about Mesopotamia and mostly bad things about Dragonriders. Wrede’s contribution to The Discovery was once again just a licensing of the basic Carcassonne design. It’s nice to see Wrede branch out more, but there’s still not enough here to compete with the big boys.
Whew! Fifteen different designers!! And no obvious winner! Trust me, it usually isn’t this hard to come up with a frontrunner. The number of designers with multiple notable games last year is a very good sign to me, but it does make the job harder.
But enough of this dilly-dallying! It’s time to come to a decision! The winner of the Designer of the Year for 2005 is...Reiner Knizia!!!
In the final analysis, there was just too much there there. Nine good to very good designs, including half a dozen that continue to be active topics of discussion and with sizable fan groups. If anything, support for the more controversial titles, such as Tower of Babel and Beowulf, is growing, not receding. One concern with making choices like this is the inability to look into the future: how many of these games will we still be playing in five years time? Collectively, the news might not be good; it wouldn’t surprise me if none of the ’05 Knizia’s are ranked in the Top 500 games on the Geek in 2010. But I also bet that many gamers will have their favorites that will survive. I fully anticipate regularly playing both Palazzo and Pickomino for years to come and I’d expect quite a few folks will have their own pair of games that will continue to get table time. How many of the other designers on this list will have more than two games live on past this year or next? Very possibly none.
I am a little uneasy with the fact that Reiner produced no blockbuster designs. In a stronger year, he could have lost out, nine games or not. If Tempus comes out on time, Wallace could have easily overtaken him. But with the good games spread out so evenly, the margin between Knizia and second place is actually reasonably large in my mind.
If you’re still undecided, note that I’m not even including the highly ranked additional expansions to Blue Moon Knizia released last year. I don’t include game expansions in my consideration of Designer of the Year, for a variety of reasons. But if you need another data point, that might be it.
How did the rest of the group finish in the competition? I’ll include six other designers as runners-up when I summarize 2005 in my write-up. They were all very closely grouped together. I put them in this order: Kramer, Dorn, Wallace, Cathala, Attia, and Moon. Reasonably closely behind them are Faidutti and Delonge.
One final note. Even though Kramer had a way to go to catch Knizia this year, he was first runner-up, a familiar position for him. In fact, he’s finished in second place in my awards no fewer than nine times! Combine that with his three victories and you realize just how dominant a place in recent gaming history this man has had! Knizia has four second place finishes and no one else really has enough to speak about.
So congratulations to Reiner Knizia for his sixth Designer of the Year award! This places him one behind all-time leader Sid Sackson’s total. I look forward to doing it again next year, as we see which designer releases the best games in 2006!
© 2006 Larry Levy
Posted by Larry Levy on Jan 7, 2006 at 03:00 AM in Columnists, Larry Levy / 2361
Comments:
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Hazienda didn’t impress me much. Like Through the Desert but with a twist of luck with the cards, that reminds of Ticket to Ride. Verflixxt is not fun after the first couple of playing rounds. I haven’t played Australia because it looks just like another one of these everboring area influence games. Likewise I find Rüdiger Dorn to have had a much better 2004, with Goa and Jambo, two very different but interesting games. Lois XIV was perhaps the greatest disappointment in 2005. I am reaaaly looking forward to Tempus. I played the prototype in Essen and I was hooked. So simple and still deceptive. The only concern is kingmaking in the end, which might show after more rounds. Strömer, from Sweden Posted by Patrik Strömer on Jan 7, 2006 at 03:38 AM | #
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I really like your analysis. If you decide that a one game man can not win (excluding William Atta, so) then my choice would also be between Knizia and Kramer ... and as almost always I’d take Knizia.
I must say this is unfair : I have not played Hacienda but I am sure this is rock solid - from the rules and watching other guys - I have not played Verflixxt either and I have only tried Australia once. While it did not grab me, I think this is a really solid design.
Posted by Olivier Reix on Jan 7, 2006 at 08:13 AM | #
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As a side note on Bruno Cathala, I would like to mention other design out this year : * Hogar was release in mai inside the french Boardgame Magazine “Jeux sur un Plateau” , * Shangai Rami was released in November inside the french magazine “Tangeante jeux & Stratégie” (designed with Serge Laget)
* Murder in Whitechappel (designed with Ludovic “Ca$h & Gun$” Maublanc is beautifull looking 2 player games released in late December in a micro edition (250 ex - sold out) by Neuroludic. I have not tried it for the moment but the review are very very good
And 2 other design are expected in january :
* Paparazzi (designed with Ludovic Maublanc) should also be released by Eclipse Vis Comica in january.
Posted by Olivier Reix on Jan 7, 2006 at 08:24 AM | #
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I haven’t had the chance to play Hacienda yet, Patrick, but it is winging its way toward me even as I speak. I hope I wind up enjoying it more than you did. I had hopes that Verflixxt might have enough meat to work as a light game for my group, but I felt the endgame was a bit disappointing. Still, I think it’s a perfect fit for its intended audience. As for Australia, it’s a little bit unusual for an area influence game because it’s so tactical--it’s very much about finding the best move each turn. The fact that each piece controls multiple areas (as in Kreta) and that each area is scored twice make it different. Still, if you truly dislike area control games, I doubt this one is going to change your mind. But again, my selections have much less to do with my personal game opinions than with how I view the designs being judged by the rest of the gaming community. I agree, Dorn had a better year last year, as Goa and Jambo are two of my all-time favorites. However, 2004 was also a stronger year overall, plus he didn’t capture any major awards last year. I’m almost as fond of Louis as I am of Goa, so I have no problem with the DSP vote. Then again, I AM a major Dorn groupie! Like you, I am very much looking forward to Tempus. I was disappointed that I didn’t get to play the prototype at last year’s Gathering, but I have friends who have played it and they have heaped much extravagent praise on it. I really hope it lives up to my expectations. Posted by Larry Levy on Jan 7, 2006 at 10:42 AM | #
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I’m glad you liked the analysis, Olivier, particularly since we seem to have similar thoughts on this subject. I’ve yet to become a member of the Tower of Babel fan club. It’s a solid design, but it doesn’t excite me at all. I want to give it at least one more shot (preferably with less than five), but it may just wind up being a game that sits on the shelf after this year. By the way, “desequilibrated” is very much NOT an english word! :-) I think the word you were looking for is “unbalanced”. Palazzo works for me as well, in spite of containing many elements I usually dislike in games (particularly its luck level). But it plays very fast, has lots of decisions, and has constant involvement. Plus, it’s just fun to play. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised--it comes from Knizia and Bruck! Pickomino has turned out to be surprisingly polarizing. If your first impression was poor, I’d recommend trying it with three or four players to reduce the downtime. I love the decisions with the dice, but most people find it lighter than I do. It just may not be your kind of game. Thanks for the heads up about Cathala’s 2006 games. I don’t consider magazine games (or “free” games of any sort), but the other three look interesting. I saw Bruno F’s preview of Whitechapel and, as a deduction game lover, I have high hopes for it. The “other” Bruno really seems to be coming into his own! Posted by Larry Levy on Jan 7, 2006 at 10:58 AM | #
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I played “A Murder in Whitechapel” in prototype form and found it an interesting two-player deduction game. I wasn’t aware of the mini-edition, but hope a larger publisher decides to release it at some point. Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jan 7, 2006 at 04:17 PM | #
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You can add the new game released by Days of Wonder (Cleopatra) to Bruno Cathala’s 2006 list (this one with Ludovic Maublanc, just like Whitechapel). Posted by Olivier Reix on Jan 30, 2006 at 08:22 AM | #
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Lary Although Attia and Caylus most likely trump it, but you did ?omit? the splotter team of wiersinga & doumen with Indonesia. Their work is often overlooked due to small print runs and limited distributions for awards, yet they have amassed a pretty impressive run of games between them. the highlights being Roads & Boats, Bus, Antiquity & Indonesia. And to follow the 2004 masterpiece Antiquity one year later with Indonesia their accomplishment should be considered. Posted by Marc Magnera on Jan 15, 2008 at 07:32 PM | #
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It is impressive, Marc, but it’s also only one game, which won no awards. You usually need more than that to get a nomination. Posted by Larry Levy on Jan 15, 2008 at 10:22 PM | #
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