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Who Decides What a Game Is About?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
At first glance, the popular board game Ticket to Ride seemsto be another link in the great chain of rail baron games, such asAge of Steam, Eurorails, and the1830 series. During the game, the player draws uniqueroute challenges to connect certain pairs of cities – New York to SanFrancisco, Miami to Chicago, and so on.
To complete them, the player must claim a series of tracks that connectadjacent cities while also trying to block opponents from finishing theirown challenges. There are subgoals too, such as having the longestcontiguous rail line and completing one’s network first, which endsthe game for everyone.
Thus most players would describe Ticket to Ride as a gameabout building the best rail service by grabbing choice routes and cuttingoff the competition. However, the Introduction in the rules tells adifferent story:
On a blustery autumn evening i ve old friends met in the backroom of oneof the city’s oldest and most private clubs. Each had traveled along distance – from all corners of the world – to meet on this veryspecific day . . . October 2, 1900 – twenty-eight years to the day thatLondon eccentric Phileas Fogg accepted and then won a £20,000 bet thathe could travel Around the World in 80 Days.
Each succeeding year, they met to celebrate the anniversary and paytribute to Fogg. And each year a new expedition (always more difi cult)was proposed. Now at the dawn of the century it was time for a newimpossible journey. The stakes: $1 million in a winner-takes-allcompetition. The objective: to see which of them could travel by rail tothe most cities in North America – in just seven days.
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