Larry Levy:  The Truth Is Out There

Last week, as expected, Thurn und Taxis won the SdJ Game of the Year award.  Congratulations to Karen and Andreas Seyfarth and to Hans im Gluck for a well deserved victory.

The win means that yet again, Reiner Knizia is left standing at the chapel (this time with Blue Moon City).  Knizia has now had 15 different adult games get a nomination or some other mention from the Jury over the years, but not one of these games has captured the big prize.  Once again, you hear whispers of SdJ bias or even some sort of conspiracy to deprive the Good Doctor of gaming’s biggest honor.

Well, I’m a big fan of Knizia, but not of conspiracy theories, so I’m trying to approach this with an open mind.  0 for 15 is indeed a bit hard to swallow, particularly for a man widely considered to be one of the best (if not the best) designer in the world.  But is it just bad luck?  Something more sinister?  More to the point, how many games of Knizia’s can truly be said to have been “robbedâ€? of a victory by the whims of the SdJ Jury?

Off the top of my head, I can’t say.  So, like any good gamer, I’ll take a look at the relevant data and try to form conclusions.  Let’s consider all of Knizia’s SdJ nominated games (and a few that maybe should have been nominated) and decide how many really did have a good chance of winning the award.

1990-1991
Knizia’s first published games appeared in 1990.  He had no games nominated for the first two SdJ’s he would have been eligible for and none that really deserved mention.  His most notable game from these two years was Res Publica, which won the first à la carte award as Best Card Game.  But a card game has never won the SdJ, so there’s no reason to think that game would have been an exception.

1992
Reiner’s first nominated game is Quo Vadis, which loses to the bicycle racing game Um Reifenbreite.  For some reason, you rarely hear complaints from Reiner lovers about his ’92 loss, but I have to feel he had a pretty good shot with Quo Vadis.  It’s a very short, very elegant game that can be appreciated by families and gamers alike.  Probably its biggest barrier to the award is that the game is a bit nasty; I can see little Johnny tearing up when his big sister refuses to let him to advance his Senator.  Um Reifenbreite is far from a classic SdJ winner (it was first published a decade earlier, but many of the copies were lost in a fire), but it has a good reputation among racing lovers and I’ve rarely heard the choice criticized.  My guess is that other nominated games from that year were probably given a stronger shot, including designs from veterans like Sackson (Gold Connection) and Randolph (Die Verbotene Stadt, kind of an early Ricochet Robot).  So no real conspiracy evidence here.

1993
This is Exhibit #1 for the SdJ bias camp:  Knizia designs Modern Art, one of the all-time great games, and it loses out to Bluff, the only filler and only dice game ever to win the SdJ.  No one’s denying that Modern Art is the better game, but I see no evidence of bias.  Quite simply, Modern Art is in no way a family game.  It’s pretty abstract and its theme, though clever and sly, is not the sort that children (or many adults) will appreciate.  More to the point, it’s the poster child for games that don’t work well if all the participants aren’t equally skilled, making it problematic for parents and kids.  That, combined with a significant learning curve, seems to put it well outside the purview of the SdJ’s.

Bluff is indeed an unusual award winner, particularly since it was based on a traditional game that had appeared in stores in one form or another for a couple of decades.  But Richard Borg’s twist on the design seems to have struck a nerve with the gaming community and it continues to be a very popular game.  It’s hard to say that the Jury’s choice was a bad one.  The principal competition for Bluff was probably Rudi Hoffman’s Spiel der Türme and Knizia’s own Tutanchamun, which I’m pretty sure had a better chance of winning than Modern Art.

1994
No Knizia game was nominated.  Seyfarth’s Manhattan was the popular winner.

1995
Medici is nominated and this is an excellent game that continues to get widespread play.  It may not be an ideal family game, but it isn’t too complex and I’m sure would have gotten serious consideration from the Jury in a normal year.  But this was 1995 and nothing was going to keep Settlers of Catan from winning.  Possibly a bit of bad luck for Knizia and, as we will see, this won’t be the last time that occurs.

1996-1997
No nominations in either year and El Grande and Mississippi Queen win.  ’97 seems to be more bad timing for Knizia, as it was considered a off year for family games and MQ isn’t regarded as the strongest winner.  But none of his designs were serious contenders.

1998
More outrage from the Knizia fans, as his insanely great design Euphrat & Tigris loses out to Elfenland.  I could make the same speech about family friendly games that I made for Modern Art, but there’s more to consider this time.  The SdJ’s were in the midst of a six-year period where they seemed much more receptive to gamer’s games.  The conspiracy theorists ask, with some justification, if Torres could win an SdJ, why not E&T?

This is a reasonable question and deserves consideration.  First of all, the Jury was not handing out awards to heavy designs left and right.  The only real aberrations during the period were El Grande and Torres.  True, Settlers was a little more complex than the previous winners, but it was also a once-in-a-lifetime gaming phenomenon, played and enjoyed by countless families in spite of its complexity.  It didn’t belong to gamers—it belonged to the world.  Mississippi Queen and Elfenland were standard SdJ-type games, the latter perhaps on the heavier side, but really not much more complex than Thurn und Taxis.  Tikal is indeed a gamer’s game, but in 1999 it was also very popular with families.  The game is very easy to learn—just follow the player aid cards—and can be successfully played at whatever level the participants desire.  El Grande, on the other hand, was a somewhat surprising pick in ’96, as many thought it too heavy for an SdJ award.  And Torres is probably the least family friendly game to win the prize.

Okay, so gamer’s games were the exception rather than the rule.  Still, why couldn’t the exception also extend to 1998?  Was Euphrat & Tigris that much more of an unreasonable pick than El Grande or Torres?

The answer is yes.  Again, I’m not talking about the quality of the games—I think E&T is a considerably better design than either of the other two games.  But it’s also one of the most extreme gamer’s games we have.  It is abstract, studious, and requires considerable thought; it may be the closest thing to a classic game like Chess or Go that Germany has produced.  It’s not easy to learn; even experienced gamers have problems absorbing the rules about internal and external conflicts.  The very basis of the game—players aren’t identified by a color, but by a symbol—can be a bit off-putting for a less experienced player.  The celebrated victory conditions take some getting used to.  Plus, it’s just plain hard.  You begin the game with an empty canvas and not the slightest idea of what might succeed.  E&T has one of the steepest learning curves of any game I’ve ever played—that’s one of the reasons it’s so highly rated.  It’s a tough challenge for most casual gamers and totally unsuitable for most children.  It also isn’t a game that works well with players of mixed abilities, like most families.  Sadly, E&T is just too much game for an SdJ award.

The irony is that just as the Jury began raising their sights for game complexity, Knizia’s designs jumped up in difficulty as well.  Probably it isn’t a coincidence; publishers were clearly more open to heavier games at the time, so it makes sense that the higher end of Knizia’s creations would get consideration during this period.  Unfortunately, this effectively kept the SdJ’s out of reach.

There was another very good Reiner design nominated in 1998 and that was Durch die Wüste.  It’s more or less a pure abstract, but it plays very quickly and was and continues to be very popular.  The focus was on E&T, but DdW probably had a better chance of capturing the award.  Its abstract nature, along with its somewhat convoluted scoring system probably doomed it.  Besides, Elfenland was a very popular game, quite family friendly, and was the expected choice of most industry insiders.

1999
It’s around this time that I began to think there might be something to the claims of SdJ bias.  Not because of the winner—Tikal was an obvious choice—but because of the nomination list.  Neither Ra nor Samurai received a nomination, which seemed like an amazing snub to much of the gaming world.  I can kind of see Samurai missing out—if for no other reason than its controversial winning conditions—but Ra should have easily made the list.  I can only think of two possible reasons for its exclusion.  One, it was the first of the Alea designs, which was widely perceived to be a line of gamer’s games.  Maybe the Jury just assumed that the game would be too hard for families.  The other possibility is that there were a ton of great games eligible that year.  Maybe Ra was just the victim of a numbers game.

The one Knizia game that did get nominated that year was Money and if anything, that seemed to enrage his fans even more.  What, you leave out the other two games of the great tile-laying trilogy and you nominate this piece of fluff?  Actually, given that the Jury used to like to include one or two filler games in their list each year, I think this was a pretty good choice.  Money’s an excellent short filler and one that continues to get play.  I’m not saying that Money was a better choice than Ra, simply that it’s nomination wasn’t particularly out of place compared to other light games from previous years.

The whole controversy really didn’t matter in the end, because no game was going to beat Tikal and, even if the Jury had decided to vote against it, it had a strong second choice in Union Pacific.  But as I mentioned earlier, Tikal was clearly getting lots of family play in 1999.  It was receiving rave reviews and the whispers about excessive downtime were only just beginning to be heard (the fact that it took that long for this so-called deficiency to be discovered only strengthens my assertion that analysis paralysis is quite unnecessary in Tikal—it’s almost as if it didn’t become an issue until players started looking for it).  Tikal remains the only game to receive all three major gaming awards:  the SdJ, the DSP, and the IGA (which was called the Gamer’s Choice Award back then).  It was quite the gaming phenomenon and a fairly obvious choice for the SdJ award.

2000
More controversy, as Taj Mahal loses out to Torres.  For years, the standard reason given for Knizia’s inability to win the SdJ was that his games were dry, abstract, and only loosely associated with their themes.  So what does the Jury do in 2000 but give the award to a game that, while very good, is dry, abstract, and pretty much has no theme.  Not only did this make Torres one of the most atypical SdJ choices, but perhaps the most disastrous.  Its sales were remarkable poor by SdJ standards, which directly led to the replacement of several Jury members and the end of the “gamer’s gameâ€? era of the award.

So once more the question is, why choose Torres and not Taj Mahal?  Given the mood of the Jury that year, I guess a Taj victory wasn’t out of the question.  But there were still a number of things which made Torres a more likely winner than the Knizia game.  There’s a lot of stuff going on in Taj, much more so than in Torres.  There’s the six simultaneous auctions, the special cards, five different ways to score points, the card draft, castles and commodities—all kinds of things.  The scoring rules take some getting used to.  And while Torres provides introductory rules, you have no choice but to play the whole Taj and nothing but the Taj.  Once again, the Knizia game was just harder and less family friendly than the eventual winner (which, evidently, wasn’t too family friendly to begin with).  It was a matter of degree, but again, Knizia was on the wrong end of it.

Taj was just one of several brilliant Knizia designs eligible to be nominated that year.  Both Stephenson’s Rocket and Merchants of Amsterdam got Gamer’s Choice nominations, but both seemed too gamerly for the SdJ’s.  Great games all, but nothing that was really SdJ material, even given the more liberal mood of the Jury.

I don’t think any of the Knizia games were considered favorites for the 2000 award.  My recollection is that Torres actually got better early reviews than Taj.  Torres was also viewed as the logical successor to the still popular Tikal and was therefore considered a favorite by many.  Other strong contenders were Ohne Furcht und Adel (Citadels), Carolus Magnus, and Kardinal und König.  Among gamers, a Citadels victory might have been the most popular result.  So while it was galling that Knizia had nothing to show from his incredibly lush period, there are still no years where it seems he was the favorite to win the award.

2001
You know those comic book characters that walk around with a black cloud over their heads?  Sometimes, that seems to be the way Knizia is with the SdJ’s.  In 2001, unlike previous years, Reiner’s best games truly were family friendly.  The most notable one was Royal Turf and this would have made a fine SdJ choice.  Despite its small box (supposedly, the Jury prefers big box games with a higher profit margin), it’s a great family game with plenty of luck and excitement to go around.  Gamers loved it too.  Then there was Africa, a solid family game in a nice big box.  Traumfabrik was delighting gamers all over the world and proving that a great Knizia game could also have a great theme.  And then there was the brilliant Lord of the Rings, as Reiner achieved one of the great gaming accomplishments by creating a cooperative game that was both challenging and fun (and also tied to a highly popular movie).  What more could one game designer do?

Pick a better year, for starters.  Nothing was going to stop the Carcassonne bandwagon in 2001.  So it was yet another empty year for RK.

More bad luck for the good doctor, although if Carc hadn’t been around, his victory was far from assured.  Royal Turf was the only one of his games to get nominated that year and was not one of the three finalists; the small box (and relatively low price point) might have been an issue.  Africa sold quite poorly at first and was probably never seriously considered; its deserved status as a good family game represents revisionist history.  Traumfabrik has always been more popular in the English speaking world than in Germany, probably due to the closer association with the movies and stars in the game.  It also had the typical Knizia convoluted scoring system, always a negative for a family game.  And thanks to a substandard rulebook, Lord of the Rings is actually quite a hard game to learn.  The Jury gave it a special award, showing that they appreciated its innovation, but at the end of the day, that’s more like a Miss Congeniality award.  I still think that Royal Turf would have had a great shot in an ordinary year, but with a game like Carcassonne around, it was DOA.

2002
More evidence of Knizia bad timing.  Suppose Royal Turf had come out a year later?  The three finalists in 2002 were Puerto Rico (which despite its brilliance was never going to win), TransAmerica (considered the early favorite), and eventual winner Villa Paletti (otherwise known as Villa Pa-WHAT?-i following its shocking selection).  I’d give Royal Turf good odds in a shoot-out with that group, but who really knows?  Knizia did have one nominated game that year, The Fellowship of the Ring, which is quite a good and innovative card game, but card games never win the SdJ, remember?  What if it had been originally made as a tile game, like its remake, King’s Gate?  Would that have made a difference?  Again, mere speculation.  Knizia’s continuing SdJ shutout is starting to feel more like the Hand of Fate.

2003
Amun-Re is Knizia’s meatiest game in years, which naturally means it’s good enough for a nomination, but has no chance of winning.  Alhambra takes the award instead.

2004
The black cloud is back.  I don’t know how good a chance Einfach Genial would have had in a normal gaming year.  It’s a pure abstract, usually not a big selling point for families.  But the rules are simple and elegant and the design has proven its appeal with gamers of all stripes.  Plus, it seems to have genuine depth.  Could it have won in ’02, ’03, or ’05?  Maybe.  But it came out in ’04 and that was the Year of Ticket to Ride, a quintessential SdJ game if ever there was one.  It was fun speculating after the nominations were announced if this could be the year that the Curse finally ended, but most people thought the race ended the day that Days of Wonder shipped their first box.  Once again, no champaign for Reiner.  (By the way, the other Knizia game that got mentioned that year was Carcassonne: The Castle, which made the recommended list.  It was a much praised Carc spinoff, but no pure two-player game has ever won the SdJ and this didn’t prove to be the exception.)

2005
No Knizia nominations this year, as Niagara takes the prize.  For some reason, there is no hue and cry over the omission of Palazzo from either the nominated or recommended list.  Despite less than elegant rules, I think this would have made quite a good award winner.  Still, I don’t recall anyone (including me) mentioning it as one of their favorites, so this adds no evidence to the conspiracy theory.

2006
And finally we come to this year, in which Blue Moon City loses out to Thurn und Taxis.  Knizia fans will also point to the fact that neither Tower of Babel or Beowulf made any of the SdJ lists.  With opinion widely split among gamers on these last two designs, I’m not surprised about their omission.  And though I think BMC would have made a fine SdJ winner, I think Thurn und Taxis is the more appropriate game for the award.  One thing you can’t overlook is how compelling T&T’s theme is for many Germans.  I’ve seen complaints from some American gamers that the game would be much better if it were themed around the Pony Express or something like that.  I don’t want to make too much of this, but that strikes me as just a teeny bit of Ugly Americanism.  Rather than hope for a theme that’s been used before, why not do a five minute Google search and find out what the actual theme is about?  It’s a pretty interesting story and makes for quite a good theme.  At any rate, the Seyfarths’ game was considered the solid favorite by most observers (including the SdJ Virtual Stock Market, where it was a 2:1 favorite over BMC), so a Knizia win would have been at least a mild upset.

So after 15 years of results, what can we conclude?  Knizia has had some bad luck, some bad timing, and a bunch of great games that really weren’t appropriate for the SdJ’s.  But despite all those nominations and award-winning games (other awards, that is), I see no compelling evidence that there’s any consistent bias at work.  There has never been a year in which a Knizia game would have been considered the favorite to win the award by people who closely follow the SdJ’s.  It wouldn’t have been surprising if he had won at least once, and if things had been slightly rearranged, maybe he would have grabbed multiple awards.  And it very well may happen yet (Reiner’s games seem to be approaching the SdJ ideal more and more each year).  But a claim of this kind of bias requires solid evidence and I don’t think we have it.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes Fate and the games themselves combine to keep a world-class designer out of the winner’s circle.

Hopefully, this analysis will put this issue to rest for some of you.  I may not have convinced the more rabid Knizia lovers out there, but with any luck I made the Great Shutout a little less of a bitter pill to swallow.  Remember, The Truth Is Out There, as the X-Files told us so many times, but we also know, from a more spiritual source, that The Truth Will Set You Free.

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