BLOG: What happened in Alton?

Where to start? This time I guess I need to take you to Alton in Hamshire, England. That’s where it all began. I was sitting in Asmodee UK offices meeting with their sales team and presenting Detective. It was spring 2018, a few months before the release of the game and as always I was doing my magic tricks. Everybody in the room was very excited about the game and when I finished one of the guys sitting left to me said something like: ‘This all sounds awesome. I’d die for a case in X-Files setting!’

‘Be careful what you wish for’ I said. He smiled. He knew what’s coming.

OK, let’s be honest. Nothing was coming. We were on our way to the hotel with Marcin, Portal Games Sales Director and my brain was working like crazy.

‘Did you hear what the guy said?’ I asked with the excitement.

‘Which guy?’

‘The guy sitting left to me!’ I was so excited that people on the street looked at us. ‘The X-File guy!’

‘What?’

‘X-Files. He wants X-Files! That’s brilliant. I can do this!’

‘X-Files?’

‘No! I can do different settings! I can do Stranger Things. I can do Miami Vice. I can do Beverly Hills Cop. I can pull off a dozen expansions, and every single of them may be unique. Fans will love that!’

Marcin smiled. That’s the reaction of a good Director of Sales when his brain starts to work like crazy…

It was Alton in Hampshire where I understood that I designed a system, a portal to new worlds. As with Robinson Crusoe which is sophisticated machinery to tell different stories, from Swiss Family to King Kong, from Time Traveling to rescuing Colonel Fawcett, from escaping Volcano Island to fighting with Cannibals, here with Detective I managed to do it again. Detective was a well-designed system to tell great crime stories.

Since Alton, I changed the way I thought about the game. Since the ‘X-Files guy’ I looked at Detective from a different perspective and higher level.

A few months later when I met with Rob Daviou and talked about his Case for Detective, he told me he has this story that takes place on a space ship heading towards Mars, and there is a murder – one of the crew members is found dead. I knew that with Detective the possibilities are endless.

We made it official at Essen. I held the keynotes, and I precisely remember the faces of people in the audience when the teaser for L.A. Crimes dropped.

‘How?’
‘What? Beverly Hills Cop?!’
‘OMG’
‘L.A.! That’s neat!’

We opened their eyes. They understood what I discovered in Alton. Detective is a system to tell stories. We all smiled.

Ignacy Trzewiczek

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