Ward Batty: The Life & Times of Alan R. Moon

By Ward Batty

An extremely-edited version of this appeared in Knucklebones magazine #2 almost a year ago. I’ve wanted to do something with the full version of this for some time, so I’ve decided to offer it up to Boardgamenews.com readers as a holiday gift, as it were. I hope you enjoy it.

Alan R. Moon has the unique distinction of being the top non-German designer of German boardgames. He’s had seventy games published and won the Spiel des Jahres ("Game of the Year” in Germany) twice for Elfenland and Ticket to Ride. Moon’s career in games began in the early 1979 and has blossomed along with designer boardgames. He began tinkering with games in college. “I was reading the Avalon-Hill magazine The General and seeing people doing variants for games and starting to think about doing variants for things and, ultimately, designing my own games.” says Moon. “It seems that at some point, almost everybody who plays a lot of games gets interested in creating their own.”

Moon’s first job in the game business was with Avalon-Hill. He started after graduating college in 1979 and remained with them until 1983. This was an eventful period for the company. ”Dungeons & Dragons was a huge hit, which also helped Avalon-Hill a lot.” Moon explains, “That gave them exposure, and Avalon-Hill was in Toys R Us and stores like Sears and other department stores. They were really mass-market and they could bring out a new game and sell 15,000-20,000 copies of that game right away through that distribution. The turning point for that was one day Toys R Us called up Tom Shaw and said they’d take any Avalon-Hill games he wanted to give them. Instead of giving them games that traditionally had gone to Toys R Us like Outdoor Survival and boardgames like Acquire, he gave them Third Reich and Squad Leader and a whole bunch of the really complex games. So people would go into Toys R Us and buy those games and take them home and then not be able to figure out how to play them, or not really be interested in playing them, and bring them back. So they had such large returns on those games that Toys R Us dropped Avalon-Hill after that. That was really the beginning of the end.”

Moon designed three games for Avalon-Hill, Pacific Theatre Via Midway, War At Sea II and Black Spy. ”Black Spy was a fun experience,” says Moon, “I’d had it in my head for a long time to do something like that. I’d never done any research on this, but up until then I don’t remember too many card games that were other than 52 or 54-card decks. So when I decided to do Black Spy, I did a 60-card deck, because it was the lowest number that was divisible by 3, 4, 5, and 6 players. I know there’s been a bunch of games since then that have used 60 cards in the deck, but I’ve always wondered if Black Spy was the first that did that.”

Moon says he took some lessons from his time at A-H. “I learned to write rules in the Avalon-Hill tradition of 3.2.5 and that was something that took me a long time to get out of. When I started designing my own games, I really had to learn to write rules again, to go back to a simpler way. I don’t think I ever got good at that until I started using the Ravensburger system. What I mean by that is looking at some Ravensburger rules and using that format to write my rules. I learned a lot about developing games and I made a lot of mistakes at Avalon-Hill. I overcomplicated some games and sort of changed things too much which as a designer now sometimes I hate when developers do that to my games but I did exactly that as a developer. Like anything, it’s experience. You do something, you make a lot of mistakes, and hopefully you get better at it over time.”

Being tired of the low wages A-H paid, and ready to advance in his chosen career, Moon moved to Parker Brothers in 1983. He says that while he enjoyed the people and environment at Avalon-Hill; he was making very little money. He interviewed with Parker Bros and accepted a position at twice his A-H salary. “I thought that was going to be the dream job for anybody interested in games. Unfortunately, it wasn’t,” Moon says. He was part of a design team for electronic games, but Parker Bros never used any of their ideas and he left within two years. He later did the design work for two electronic sports games for Parker Bros, Starting Lineup Talking Baseball (and Football).

Moon first became aware of German boardgames while he was with Avalon-Hill. A coworker named Bruce Shelley first exposed Moon to the 18XX system with 1829. Through Bruce, he started reading Cut and Thrust magazine, edited by Derek Wilson. “We were all looking at that and it was talking about all these games that were available in Germany.” Moon says, “So I wrote to Derek, but he said, I’m not the guy you should talk to, you should talk to Brian Walker, who is now the editor of Games International. He got me turned to all kinds of people in Germany who I could trade games with and that’s how I got games like Kremlin, Formula One and Wildlife Adventure. That was really the start of it for me.”

Moon’s next games, all published in Germany in 1990, were Airlines by Abacus, Gespenster by Hexgames and Wer Hat Mehr? by Piatnik. Moon explains that ”Airlines really existed after I left PB in 1984, it was one of the games I was working on for a while. It wasn’t really designed for the German market at all. Wer Hat Mehr? is an Oh Hell! game that became Where’s Bob’s Hat. Gespenster was a reissue of Black Spy.”

For Moon, the move to designing games for the German boardgame market was a simple matter of going to where the business was. “In the late 80s and 90s there was such a better market over there.” Moon explains that, at that time, the German companies were interested in what was inside the box, while the American companies only cared about what was on the outside of the box. The American market was license-driven and the games were meant to tie in to these short-term fads. The emphasis wasn’t on the game inside. With the German publishers, says Moon. “It was nice to be able to design a game and have somebody look at the game and play it and decide if they were going to publish it or not for that reason.”

It was also a pleasure to be able to design games for a more sophisticated audience. “When I started corresponding with people in Germany, it was incredible to me how interested they were in games. I was corresponding and trading games with a lot of people. The first time I went to Essen, it was amazing. I knew 100-200 people. I met them all in those four days. It was pretty overwhelming. It was a revelation for me that there were so many people interesting in games and boardgames in particular.”

In 1991 Moon started his own company, White Wind. “White Wind basically came out of my frustration about not selling my game designs. I’d been talking to my friend Peter Gehrmann in Germany and he said ‘you should start your own company’ and I said ‘oh man I don’t want to do that.’ But the final straw was when Mattel Germany had had Airlines for a year and a half and kept telling me they were going to publish it and suddenly I just got it back in the mail. And I was so bummed about that, even though I did turn around and sell that to Abacus pretty quickly. That kind of experience was just so frustrating that eventually I said, ‘Peter, OK, let’s give it a try.’ So he coordinated the production of the games and the sales in Germany.”

Moon estimates that 80-90% of the White Wind games were sold in Germany. In those pre–Settlers of Catan days, the market for designer games was not yet established in North America. The plan for White Wind was to bring out limited editions of the games and then try to sell them to bigger companies in a couple of years. Although the plan worked with Elfenroads when Amigo picked it up and eventually published it in simplified form as Elfenland, that breakthrough didn’t occur until after six years and a number of game releases. Looking back on White Wind, Moon says, “I think if I started White Wind today, it would do so much better and the difference is the Internet. So many more people are aware of games and there are some many ways to reach them that just didn’t exist in the early 1990s. I think I had the right idea back then, it was just the wrong time.”

Elfenland was a huge breakthrough for Moon. “Amigo liked Elfenroads and said we just need you to make a simple version, which I was all too willing to do, because that was the first game a big company was interested in. So I looked at it and I tried to take what I thought was the heart of the game and make a simple version. The first time I ever played the simple version I said ‘Oh yeah this is great.’ It played in like an hour and I was really happy with the result.”

After some lean years working as a waiter, Moon began working for FX Schmid in 1997. Moon’s job was to establish a line of games for the US market, starting with some of the company’s German releases. “I picked out what I thought was a good spread of games, mostly children’s games and low-end family games and then did the productions. I was there for maybe a year or so, when Ravensburger bought FX Schmidt. At that point, I became the director of games for Ravensburger USA as well. I got to go Germany all the time and pick which of their games we were going to do in the American line. I was still producing our own games for Ravensurger USA too, which almost none of the other branches of Ravensburger were allowed to do, which was cool.”

Unfortunately, Ravensburger USA did not become a major game publisher in North America. Moon believes that part of the problem was the sales reps sold puzzles and needed time to learn how to sell games. Moon says, “I thought we had really good products and a wide selection, but just weren’t able to do it. I believe it also had to do with the price. Ravensburger games tend to be higher-priced, and that’s a big obstacle to overcome in gift stores sometimes.”

Moon no longer self-publishes his own games, but feels the experience from White Wind and Ravensberger was hugely beneficial to him as a designer. “It helps me a lot to know the procedures the company goes through, particularly Ravensburger. They’re very structured. They have a great system that works really well. But it was also interesting to see lots of other designers come in and do their presentations. That was a learning process. Some of them were good and some of them were not so good and I tried to learn from both. Also with production, just knowing the reality of costs, how much it costs to produce a game, what the steps are, all kinds of things I never would have considered before that.”

Alan R. Moon is one of the few designers to win the Spiel des Jahres twice. When asked to compare the two experiences, he says, “They were both great. It was amazing to win the first time. Elfenland was such a breakthrough. I had been struggling so much up until that point. It was the beginning of being successful. I always tell people Elfenland got me back to zero. I was tremendously in debt when I did Elfenland. When I won for Ticket to Ride, it was more a case of I was pretty much almost back to zero. If TtR hadn’t won game of the year, I probably would have had to get a job this year. That’s where I was. I’d sort of been struggling a little bit, but I felt like I was close. After Elfenland I was able to sell my games a little easier and was able to have a better chance of winning again. So when Ticket To Ride won, that was just awesome. I went from zero to wherever I am now. What’s really cool is that the game is continuing to sell in its second year and it looks like it’s going to be an ongoing seller, which I’ve never had before.”

In addition to selling over 300,000 copies to date, Ticket to Ride has also been an online hit with thousands games played daily. Moon is amazed by it. “Anytime you go up on the site during the day, there’s 50-150 games going on at once. It’s just incredible. The latest number I heard was seven or eight thousand games a day and that number is growing. You can play the game really quickly online. If you play a 2-player game you can play in like 10 or 15 minutes, so it’s very addictive. You end one game and you want to play again. It’s easier to play it online. Days of Wonder has done such a good job with the game in every aspect--marketing and the online version. There are a couple of things coming out that people don’t know about yet that will add to that.

Diamant is a light and fun game about exploring diamond mines that Moon co-designed with Bruno Faidutti. It has been a hit in Germany and with those lucky fans here who have the chance to play it but many are awaiting an English-language version. “Both Mattel and Hasbro are looking at it.” says Moon, “Nothing’s happening at the moment, but they’re both considering it. Lots of little companies are very interested, and I could sell it to them today, but I wanted to see if one of the biggies would buy it. It could be changed a lot or a little I’m not sure. There’s a huge difference in sales if one of the biggies pick it up, so it’s worth waiting for.”

For inspiration, Moon says he takes a lot of walks, and on his walks he always thinks about games. Moon explains, “Ideas come from different places. I was at a flea market last week, and there was tons of crap and I was wandering around and it was like being in a parts factory. It was cool. I was looking for stuff to buy to get ideas from that. Sometimes I just throw pieces on the table and see if that gets anything going. Sometimes I think about theme and sometimes I think about other games. A lot of times I think about mechanics or things I like in other games, my own or someone else’s, and try to develop or expand on those ideas. I don’t ever try to limit myself to one way. The cool thing about creativity is once in a while you have an idea, and you’re not sure where it came from, it’s just there and you run with it.”

Unlike some designers, Moon tries to play as many games out there as possible. “I can’t imagine not playing games. What I tell someone who wants to be a game designer is, the number one thing you have to do is play as many games as possible. I don’t see how you can be a designer without doing that. I’m intensely interested in games and other people’s ideas. One of the great feelings for me as a designer is to play a game and think ‘Oh man why didn’t I think of that?’ I think most designers feel that way.” Moon says a great game is one that you can explain in a minute or two and then want to play it over and over. “I spend a lot of time thinking about tile-laying games, says Moon, ”Carcassone came out and I thought there’s never going to be a better tile-laying game. And then Alhambra came out and it was pretty close, a little more complicated but a terrific game. So there’s always room for that next great game or neat mechanic or system.”

Moon says one of his most satisfying moments was when Elfenland won Spiele des Jahres. At the Amigo games booth at the Essen game fair, there were between fifty and hundred games of Elfenland being played at the same time. Every table was covered with the game. People were playing in the aisles on the floor. “Uwe Pauli from Amigo and I stood there watching, and I said, ‘What do you think about this?’ and he said, ‘It gives me shivers.’ When Ticket to Ride won, it was the same thing. I was standing in the Days of Wonder booth and just watching hundreds of people play the game. It was awesome.” But even more satisfying was when Moon said he saw two different postings online that said they had taken Ticket to Ride to their grandmothers and they played the game with the grandmother and kids, and the next day, in both cases, the grandmothers called and said, ‘You bring that train game the next time you come!’ Moon says he thought, “Wow, that’s really great. Whoever had the game was able to enjoy it with his kids and his grandmother, that’s awesome.”

One of Moon’s most popular games is the now out-of-print: Union Pacific. For fans awaiting a re-release, he has good news. “I’m currently working on the new version of Union Pacific, which will be called Baltimore & Ohio. There are quite a few changes to the system. I play tested a few previous versions, but they didn’t work that well, so I’ve gone away from the more drastic changes and tried to do more refinements. That’ll be in play testing for the next few months and I hope will come out next year sometime. Beyond that, I’m working on a couple games with Richard Borg and a couple game of my own. They are all Ticket to Ride level or slightly more complicated than that. But they’re all what I’d call low-end family games, the games that have a chance to have more broad appeal than just to gamers.”

The world wide web and Settlers of Catan both hit the US in 1994 and in many ways the growth of designer boardgames and the ‘net are entwined. Moon agrees, “I didn’t even have email until 1997, I can’t even imagine my life without email now. If I had to write letters to all the people I email back and forth with I’d go crazy. It’s a different lifestyle now, going online everyday to look at boardgamegeek.com., which is great for feedback. I try to keep it in perspective because it’s still a pretty small representation of people, but it’s still important and its fun to read that stuff and know what people are reacting to. There’s so much information, that’s the great thing. And the other big change, it’s so much easier to make a prototype now with Photoshop and Illustrator and all the online resources. I can make a pretty nice prototype in a couple of hours that would have taken me a week to make back in the 1980s. The thing that hasn’t changed is the people. Most of the people that I was starting out with in the early 1990s are still working on games. They are now just more successful and in higher positions.”

Moon remains optimistic about the future. “I think the American market is slowly expanding and I think there is a good chance Japan will become a significant market for designer games in the coming years. So the future is bright. I plan on designing games forever. Since I love what I do, there is no point in retiring and giving up what I love.”

© 2006 Ward Batty

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