If you have ever played board games in the last twenty years (and we are not referring to ‘Monopoly’, of course, but to new classic games) it is almost certain that you have spent a few hours connecting cities using small train-shaped tokens in, precisely, ‘Ticket to Ride!’. Alan R. Moon’s masterpiece is already twenty years old and has as many versions as you can imagine: Europe, Amsterdam, London… and even one set in 1912. But how did the game come about? When did someone come up with the idea?
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It’s not like the ideas came out of nowhere: Moon had been working his whole life as a game designer for Parker Brothers or Avalon Hill, and since the 2000s he has been working as a freelancer. This gives him the freedom to go at his own pace and wander between game and game. And there he was, walking along the boardwalk in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 2003, thinking about a game he had halfway done that was, precisely, about trains. The problem was that the tests with people weren’t going well and he didn’t know exactly how to change the designs. And suddenly, a new structure appeared in his head.
Upon arriving home, he set aside that train game: he had a whole new one created in his head. He made a prototype of a map, wrote the rules on a sheet of paper, and shortly after he was already testing it with friends. It worked so well that he hardly had to make any changes, other than improving the routes on the board. Immediately, Days of Wonder became interested in the prototype. One year later, he was receiving the Spiel des Jahres, which is the award for the best board game of the year. And it’s because life is a game, yes, but some know how to bet better than others.
