Knizia & Asimov
Posted by Rob Herman at August 29th, 2006
I was having a discussion about Reiner Knizia the other day and, upon reflection, I think of him as the Isaac Asimov of board gaming. I hope he would not object to such a comparison! By it I mean:
- Both are vastly prolific, each producing output at a startling pace.
- The love of creation is readily apparent in both.
- Both have produced masterpieces (among them: Foundation and I, Robot; Tigris & Euphrates and Taj Majal) that are widely regarded and will be remembered as enduring classics.
- Both might be criticized for publishing material that isn’t necessarily first-rate; material that might not be picked up if it came from a lesser-known author.
As someone who would like to be one of these lesser-known authors, this at first seems unfair! On the other hand, I understand the phenomenon of having all these ideas running around in one’s head. If you can write it down, that helps. If people want to buy it… so much the better! To say that it’s being phoned in for a paycheck would be an injustice. The ideas are there! The only difference is that the ideas that you or I might put on a shelf thinking “this will take too much effort to make truly exceptional” can be released as “this can be made good and worthwhile quickly enough, while I wait for my next truly magical idea to come along.”
Here’s the question, though - if you’re one of the few who knows they set the standard, do you have an obligation to raise it?
I actually liken Reiner Knizia to Martin Scorcese: “For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 3-6 Mafia, 1 Oscar. Martin Scorcese, 0.” - John Stewart.
Reiner has yet to win a Spiel award, despite more nominations than you can shake a stick at (including Blue Moon City, this year).
The thing is that an artist is generally judged according to their whole body of work. But Reiner is so prolific that this is nearly impossible - it’s very difficult to believe that the same brain that created Gold Digger also created Taj Mahal and Ra. So what happens is that he gets renown for his games that catch on, and the ones that don’t (for whatever reason) get swept under the rug as “yet more Knizia filler.”
I would say that yes, you have an obligation to pour all of your energy into a single work at least sometimes and make that one The Best You Can. I can’t see anyone ever becoming one of the trendsetters without doing it at first, so I know it’s in them; and I think the desire to create great works is in every artist. How often is often enough? That’s a question for the artist to think about when balancing the thoughts of what you want to create, how you wants to be remembered, and how often you want to get paid.
Well, I’d have to say that Knizia is at least partially justified in the mixed quality of his repetoire. Rumour has it that he pitches suitcases of games at a time, and whichever ones happen to catch the eye of the publisher are printed. The publisher must be fully aware that they are accepting and printing filler, and if that makes them money, it’s hard to say that they’re wrong. Although it offends the sensibilities of games connoisseurs like Rob and myself, there is a market for `bad’ games. Someone is buying all those copies of Flux, Killer Bunnies, and presumably, Gold Digger.
One could hypothesize also that the mediocre reception of his magnum opus, Tigris and Euphrates, which he worked on for an extended period of time, might have pushed him towards his current volume-oriented method. Although I think T&E is a work of godlike brilliance, it doesn’t seem to have done very well in the US.
The upshot, of course, is that after some uninispiring purchases like Gold Digger and Knights of Charlemagne, I no longer automatically assume that the Knizia name means the game is golden, and the damage to his reputation in this regard is a bit dissapointing.
I totally have an article kicking around in my head dealing with Fluxx and Killer Bunnies as what I might call “beer, pretzels, and hell, some more beer” games.
T&E frustrated me because the connection between my plays and what happened afterwards didn’t seem very clear. Also the difference between internal and external conflicts, I remember being confusing. Maybe now with some more Euro-game experience I should give it another shot.