Alan’s Story: Ticket to Ride came into existence in the spring of 2003 during my morning walk along the Atlantic shore in Beverly, Massachusetts. The night before, I had played a railroad prototype called Thunder on the Tracks, which is what I call all my railroad prototypes. This particular one was a gamer's game and the playtest had not gone well. I was thinking about how to change it when a new idea suddenly popped into my head. The coastline and scenery disappeared during the rest of the walk, as this new idea formed into an entire game. I began playing it in my head and couldn't wait to get home.

When I arrived, I wrote down an outline of the rules and started on a map. I playtested the game by myself that same day and it seemed to work extremely well. Several days later, the first playtest with friends was a huge success - everyone wanted to play it again. That's the best reaction a game designer can get. I changed some routes on the board, a few rules, and some of the Tickets during the next few weeks of development, but 80-90% of the published game was the same as that first prototype.

There was a strange, but memorable, moment during one playtest. As I got up from the table, I felt a sharp jab in my leg. I looked down and found a hole in my pant leg. I went into the bedroom to investigate. What I saw amazed me as I could see both ends of a large splinter sticking out of my leg. It had gone completely through about four inches of my thigh. I put my pants back on and finished the game. I told my playtesters I had to go to the hospital to get the splinter out. They seemed unfazed and began another game as I left, and they were still playing when I got back. I kept the splinter as a souvenir, since most of it came out in one piece!

After more weeks of testing, in July I sent the game to two publishers. A week or two after that, I went to WBC (the World Boardgaming Championships) in Hunt Valley, just outside of Baltimore. I took the game, which I had renamed Station to Station, with me, as well as a few other prototypes, as I knew there would be people to show them to, like Jay Tummelson from Rio Grande.

I had only met Days of Wonder CEO, Eric Hautemont, once before, when Richard Borg had introduced us at Origins the previous year. So I was surprised when I bumped into Eric and Mark Kaufmann at WBC. I told them I had some prototypes and we set up an appointment to play them. We met in the lounge/bar area on the first floor. My friend Pitt Crandlemire was the fourth for our game of Station to Station. My wife Janet was also there, but she just observed.

The game was about three quarters over when Pitt announced that he had to leave to play in a tournament. At that point, I swept the pieces off the board, assuming Eric & Mark had seen enough to get the idea of the game. Their reaction was total surprise, mixed with quite a bit of disappointment, as they had wanted to finish the game. After the game we talked, and Eric told me he was very interested in the game. He said he was going to France right after WBC and wanted to take the prototype to play with the rest of the Days Of Wonder staff. He said he would have a decision for me in a week or two at most.

True to his word, Eric called me less than two weeks later and said he wanted to publish the game. I then asked the other two companies who had the prototypes to return them. Later, after Ticket to Ride won the Spiel des Jahres (SdJ), both of those publishers told me how bummed they were they hadn't taken the time to play the prototype.

Ticket to Ride was the exception, rather than rule, in many ways. It's rare to sell a game after showing it to just one publisher. Selling a prototype can often take months or years, and many prototypes go unsold. People often ask me if I knew Ticket to Ride was going to be a big hit. Of course, the answer is that no one can never know. If I had the ability to know what would be a hit, I would have designed Ticket to Ride many years before and designed lots of other hits since!

Success as a game designer does not come easily. There is a huge amount of luck involved. I feel like I did most of the things I could control to put myself in a situation to be successful. Things like networking, thoroughly playtesting and developing my prototypes, keeping up with the current market trends, etc. But in the end, luck played a huge part. What if I hadn't gone to WBC that year? What if one of the other companies had published the game? What if Days Of Wonder hadn't done such a great job promoting and marketing Ticket to Ride? What if Carcassone had been published the same year and won SdJ instead of Ticket to Ride? What if that splinter had caused a massive infection and put me in the hospital for months?

Days Of Wonder did many things to make Ticket to Ride successful. But if I had to pick my favorite thing, it would be the titles they came up with for the game. In German the game is called Zug um Zug. Zug means train. Zug also means "to pull" or "to move." Finally, Zug um Zug is a saying that means "give and take" or "exchange" or "performance or counter-performance." It's the perfect name for the game in German. In English, the meaning of Ticket to Ride is obvious and coupled with the art on the box, tells prospective buyers a lot about the game before they even pick it up.

Days of Wonder’s Mark Kaufmann picks up the story... Eric and I really were ticked off that Alan didn’t let us finish that very first game of Station to Station at WBC. But as soon as we walked away from the table, we excitedly started talking about the game and immediately agreed that we wanted to publish it.

As we readied the game for publication, there was nothing to change in the game play, but we had a couple of ideas on how best to present the game. Alan had given no specific historical time for the game, but the early 1900’s was an easy choice. Train travel was dynamic and romantic and this was a peak era of expansion for trains across the US. It also provided an evocative period for illustrations in the game.

We spent a lot of time thinking about the name. Station to Station was descriptive, but we wanted something more emotional – a name that would immediately put a picture in your mind. Ideas got bounced around, but nothing really grabbed us and we grew frustrated. Eric and I were actually on the Paris Metro when Ticket to Ride as a name first came to us. It tied one of the key aspects of the game, Destination Tickets, to the feel of riding the rails. And it was memorable. Our European partners felt that the English title might not be well-accepted in other languages, so in French it became the very romantic sounding Les Aventuriers du Rail, and in German, Zug um Zug.

The very first sale went to our German distributor. 600 units shipped on February 27, 2004, with French and English sales coming soon after. Almost immediately the buzz began to grow. By May, the game was nominated for the German Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) award, the world’s most prestigious game prize.

We didn’t really know if we had a chance to win. Many told us that it was the best game, but just as many told us that the German jury would never give the prize to an American/French company that had only been in business for two years. The SDJ even checked on us to see if we were able to produce the quantities of games needed if we won. While we assured them we could, we were secretly worried that we wouldn’t be able to churn out enough plastic trains. With only one train mold, we would be woefully short of trains if we were lucky enough to win the SDJ. We took the plunge and ordered five more metal train molds. If we didn’t win, we would be the proud owners of some very expensive metal paperweights!

The night of June 28, on a stage in Berlin with over 400 journalists and game industry heavyweights watching, Zug um Zug / Ticket to Ride was named the 2004 Spiel des Jahres winner. Within minutes, our European Director, who was still onstage as Alan accepted the award, was receiving text messages from large German retail stores wanting to order 50,000 or more copies of the game! Our original hope to sell 10,000 copies in the first year flew out the window as we frantically ramped up production to meet demand from the SDJ win. 12 months later, over 300,000 copies had gone out the door.

Fortunately, that first year proved to be more than a one-shot deal. 10 years later we can look back at the easy-to-learn and fun-to-play game that has continued to grow in popularity each year. To date, over 3-Million Ticket to Ride games have been sold and it’s now available in 20 different languages with over 15 expansions, plus popular digital versions for the PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. To date, over 500-million Ticket to Ride trains have been produced. That’s a lot of plastic in just 10 years! And the new 10th Anniversary Edition of Ticket to Ride arrives this year to lay the tracks onto the next billion!