The Alan Moon Interview

In September 2005, I sat with Alan R. Moon in Peabody, Massachusetts for a short interview. Alan has been designing games since the 1970s and has created some of the most popular German-style boardgames played today. Alan has designed such gems as Union Pacific, New England, San Marco, Oasis, Ticket to Ride and Diamant (just to name a few). I hope you enjoy the interview.
 

Bryan: To start with, where are you originally from?
Alan Moon: I was born in South Hampton, England. When I was a kid we moved to Newfoundland, and then we moved to the United States when I was 7. Then we lived in New York and I was raised in New Jersey before moving to New England.
 
Bryan: What was your first game published, and when was it published?
Alan Moon: The first game was called Black Spy. It was a simple card game that was based on Hearts, the traditional game of Hearts. It was published by Avalon Hill in either 1979 or 1980, 1981... something like that.
 
Bryan: Now was that co-designed with someone?
Alan Moon: No. No, it was just a card game idea I had in my head for a long time.
 
Bryan: Your Ticket to Ride games are hugely popular right now. What is on the horizon for the Ticket to Ride type of games?
Alan Moon: There’s going to be sort of a surprise appearance here in the next couple of weeks, it hasn’t been announced, but there will be something in the next couple of weeks and then hopefully the next big game will be in Nuremburg in February of next year (2006). And I’m just working on other ones. There’s lots of possibilities in the works, but nothing besides those two right now.
 
Bryan: So is there a set number of Ticket to Ride games that you plan to release?
Alan Moon: Well, it’s not me obviously, it’s Days of Wonder. I think at the moment, as they keep selling, we’ll probably bring one out every year at Nuremburg in February. But you know, they all depend on how the sales of each one are. Beyond that, there’s lots of possibilities, but nothing as of yet.
 
Bryan: What is your favorite game of your own design?
Alan Moon: (pauses) Yeah... it’s interesting. I mean, for a long time my favorite game was Wer Hat Mehr?, which became Where’s Bob’s Hat?, but I haven’t played that in a while. So in terms of like, if someone asked me what game of mine I would like to play right now, I guess I’d like to go back and play Capitol. The point of that too is because I’m thinking about doing another version of it. So I don’t know... it’s hard because I would rather play games that aren’t mine. I have my favorite games...
 
Bryan: Right, and I know you typically DON’T like to play your own games. Is that because you get tired of playing them during playtesting, or is there some other reason?
Alan Moon: It’s not so much you get tired. I think it’s like when you first have the idea it’s really fun and it’s exciting to playtest it. I should speak for me, but as I playtest, it becomes... it’s more work. And then it’s really trying to refine it. It’s not that I don’t enjoy my games, but I associate it more with work, where as if I’m playing something else, it’s fun for me. When I play my own games, alot of times I just look at it and I see the mistakes or things I would like to do different... people ask me questions about the rules, sometimes I can’t remember the rules that great. And I really don’t learn anything from my own games. I mean, I learn stuff from playing other peoples’ games, you know, you get ideas from it. So it’s just a different experience. Sometimes after awhile, it’s fun to go back and play one of my games. I sometimes wind up doing that at conventions and stuff. That’s often really fun and it makes me remember why I designed the game in the first place. I have to say I really still enjoy playing Ticket to Ride because I’m constantly working on other games and it’s really fun for me right now to try and come up with real simple changes to the system, so I’m really enjoying that.
 
Bryan: Do you feel that the different Ticket to Ride games that you’re coming out with are just more improvements on the original, or do you look at it more like an entirely different game altogether?
Alan Moon: Yeah, I don’t see them as improvements. What I’m just trying to do is to create a different feeling when you play each game. Again, it’s like the one I’m playing at the time is usually my favorite but I think with Ticket to Ride: Europe - with very simple rules, changed the feel of the game quite a bit. I think the next couple, whenever they come out, will do the same thing. It will basically take the system and with a few changes, it will give the game a different feel. And there’s the third one that I did - is really my favorite, and I hope it will come out soon. I think it’s even simpler than the original and I like it because of that. It’s really fast and it’s real simple.
 
Bryan: Which of your games do you feel is the most underrated?
Alan Moon: Underrated... oh man (laughs). There’s been a number of games that haven’t done very well when I expected them to. In particular, Capitol was one. I think New England was another I really expected to sell a lot better and get more favorable acclaim. It’s always disappointing as a designer when you work a lot on a game and it comes out and it sells 5000 copies or something like that. It’s pretty disappointing and it makes you understand that no matter how many games you do, you’re really just looking for the big hit.
 
Bryan: Who’s your favorite game designer and why?
Alan Moon: Klaus Teuber is somebody that I don’t know at all, but I really admire him as a designer because he was able to win Spiel des Jahres with four really different games... Barbarossa, Drunter und Druber, Settlers of Catan and Adel Verpflichtet. Really four totally different games. There’s just no similarities with them at all. Since Settlers of Catan though, he seems to be a little bit stuck. He hasn’t been able to produce that next big game, but I really admire what he does. I don’t know him personally at all. There’s a lot of designers who I know personally, so I’m sort of prejudice towards them... some people like Andrea Meyer, Richard Borg, Mike Fitzgerald. There’s a lot of people. One of the guys I really admire too is Karl-Heinz Schmiel but he hasn’t done anything in a while, so for me it’s kinda sad to see he hasn’t done new games because his games were always really clever. Even when I didn’t think they were that great, I thought the idea behind them, what he was trying to do, was just really clever.
 
Bryan: Is there a designer that you have not yet worked with that you would like to work with?
Alan Moon: Well, (laughs) for a while I was really enjoying working with other people a lot. Now I’m sort of enjoying working by myself as much as I’ve enjoyed working with other people, so I haven’t made as much effort. I still enjoy working with Bruno (Faidutti) and Richard Borg. I’ve tried working with a bunch of other people and with mixed results. Sometimes we just don’t create good games together. I don’t know if there’s anybody in particular I’d really like to work with. Karl-Heinz Schmiel would be somebody, but his English isn’t very good, and my German isn’t that good so it would be really hard to do. But he is somebody that I’d love to have an exchange of ideas with.
 
Bryan: Any more compilations with Aaron (Weissblum)?
Alan Moon: No. Aaron and I are finished. We sort of had a falling out. It’s no big deal, but it’s just... that’s done.
 
Bryan: I didn’t know that.
Alan Moon: It’s kind of like a divorce. I tell everybody, “It‘s kind of like a divorce... you know, some divorces..."
 
Bryan: Some are messier than others...
Alan Moon: Well, you know, after the divorce is over, you just don’t see each other anymore (laughing).
 
Bryan: When you’re designing a new game, is it usually the idea of a theme that you build on or do you start with the main mechanic of the game and then add the theme later?
Alan Moon: I start in all sorts of different ways. Sometimes with a theme, sometimes with a mechanic, sometimes with just bits. One of the things that I love to do is just throw stuff on the table, like cards or pieces and stuff and just see what happens. It’s amazingly effective. I buy bits at flea markets and stuff and that’s really fun for me and sometimes that turns into a game. But for me, I think most of my ideas come from other games. When I play something, and I’m thinking about that experience and sometimes there’s a good idea in the game, and it wasn’t that great of a game or sometimes it’s a good game and there’s a good idea in there. I just take that and sometimes that just inspires a lot of other things. Now I have enough of my own games I actually can go back and look at them too and think about what I can do differently, how can I take that and make it into something.

Bryan: Borrow a mechanic, improve on it, rename it, retheme it...
Alan Moon: Yeah, and sometimes I can just look at something and say, “Oh, I remember how I started, and it was sort of different than the result.” Then I go back and look at that as another possible way of taking that game and making it more what I had in mind at the start.
 
Bryan: Your gaming convention, The Gathering of Friends. How did you start that and where is it held?
Alan Moon: It’s been in Columbus, Ohio for quite a few years. I think this is our seventh year next year in Columbus. Before that, it was always in western Massachusetts. It actually was in western Massachusetts originally because Mike Gray, who works at Hasbro, used to give tours of the Hasboro plant the first few years. So that’s kind of why I went out to western Mass. The first year we had 23 people. It started because Bill Cleary and a few people said to me, “You know, we should have a game weekend sometime.” I said, “Yeah, that would be great.” He said, “Well you should organize it because you’re good at doing that stuff.” I said, “That’s okay Bill, I don’t need more work.” And so for like a year or two I just didn’t think about it too much and then I thought, “Oh, why not?” and that’s why I started. I don’t know how many people I invited that first year, but like 23 people came. It was very small. I think was just Thursday night through Sunday. Over the years it’s just grown. It never took a huge jump where it doubled or anything. Sometimes it would just grow a little one year, then a little more the next year. It just sort of has a life of its own at this point.
 
Bryan: Is there anything new you can talk about outside of the Ticket to Ride games? Anything new and exciting?
Alan Moon: There’s supposed to be a game coming out in Japan. It’s supposed to be out already but I think it’s coming out in the next couple of weeks. Just a real simple card game called Happy Dog. It’s interesting for me because the Japanese company approached me to do a game for them and I’m interested to see what happens because I think the Japanese market has huge potential. They have 180 million people versus like 80 million in Germany. The company is producing a pretty big print run of the game so I’m real curious to see what’s going to happen with that. I hope it’s going to be out in the next couple of weeks.
 
Bryan: Are there any new themes that you would like to explore that you haven’t yet?
Alan Moon: I have several themes that I don’t want to talk about because I don’t think there’s ever been a game done on them, or a good game done on them and I always come back to them and think about trying to do a game on them. I can tell you one that I actually have seen recently, and that’s ski jumping. I thought that would make a great theme for a game. And there were actually 2 prototypes when I was at the Gameszines conference in Germany this year and I was really fascinated because they were totally different ideas than what I had been thinking about. I thought neither of them really captured theme well though. It was just sort of like... this is the theme and they just added it onto the mechanic. I’ve been trying to create something that would actually capture and give you that feel. Of course, I don’t really know the feel of a ski jumper.
 
Bryan: So you don’t always go with what you know.
Alan Moon: Right. There’s a whole bunch of themes for games, where there have been a lot of games...
 
Bryan: Trains...
Alan Moon: Yeah true, but for me, car racing... there’s been a whole bunch of car racing games that were fun, but I don’t think there’s been the ultimate one yet. There’s a lot of themes like that. Like horse racing might be the same. There’s a whole bunch of horse racing games I think are pretty good but I don’t think there’s really been the ultimate one yet. So I think about stuff like that.
 
Bryan: Is there any advice you can give to amateur game designers?
Alan Moon: I usually give them the same advice all the time. It depends if you’re going to be a professional designer or if you’re going to do it in your spare time. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a professional, but it really matters if you’re going to try and make a living out of it. It’s really hard. It takes a long time to build up a reputation unless you’re really lucky with one of your first games. But the skills you need... you need to be good at rejection because you get a lot of rejection, you get a lot of frustration. You need to be able to deal with that. You need to be able to remain confident about your work. I think the biggest thing of all is you need to play games as often as possible just to know what’s out there, and I think that’s where ideas come from. It’s like any job. The more experience you have, the better you get. Just playing games is part of practicing as a game designer. I think the other thing that most game designers don’t do well is they don’t handle the business of being a game designer. Game design is more than just sitting at home and having ideas and making prototypes and testing. You must also be able to go out and promote yourself and really know how to negotiate and build your reputation. You can’t do that just by designing games. You have to be a good businessman as well. To make a living out of it, you have to be organized, you have to have some business sense, you have to be good at networking and just work at it really hard. It's just like anything else.
 
Bryan: Thanks.
Alan Moon: You’re welcome. Good luck.