It adheres to all the best standards of the German format: preference for strategy over randomization (there are no dice), an artificial time limit, no player elimination, and continuous engagement (what players do on their turns affects you, so you pay attention). The game challenges players to complete as many train trips between US cities (or in later editions of the game, in Europe, Africa and Scandinavia) as possible. Intricately illustrated and colored, with a luxurious matte-finished board (the majority of the pieces, though, are plastic, shouldn’t $50 buy you wooden ones?). While many of their competitors publish more than ten games a year – hoping that at least one sticks, Days of Wonder never publishes more than one lovingly-crafted game annually. Even Days of Wonder’s flops have sold 25,000 copies. For now, the game still lags well behind Mayfair-published Settlers of Catan, which won the Spiel des Jahres in 1995 and has sold more than 30 million copies (the success appears to have gone to Mayfair’s head, new editions of the game come with a bumper sticker that reads “the game of our generation”).įor comparison, the strategy board game industry considers any game that sells more than 10,000 copies a hit. You can now find Ticket to Ride in Target and Barnes and Noble, snugly piled between Risk and Monopoly. That’s roughly four times as many sales as Days of Wonder’s next two best-selling games, Small World and Memoir ’44, combined.

Nine years later, Days of Wonder has sold more than 2 million physical copies of the game at a hefty $50, and nearly that many copies of the game for iPhone and iPad at $6.99. His second win was for Ticket to Ride, published in 2004 by Days of Wonder, making the company the youngest ever to claim the prize. “I’m always working on things,” he tells me over the phone from Pennsylvania, where he’s on an 11-day game-playing retreat with friends, “If I don’t think it has any chance to be a big seller, I put it in the file and move on.” And Moon knows a thing or two about hits. He drops that fee in exchange for a higher percentage of sales, because if the game is a hit, that’s where the money is. Now 61, the seasoned game author doesn’t take cash up front for his board game designs. And like a Hollywood actor waiting for his big break, he waited tables for 20 years prior to becoming board game famous. Anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 new board games are published annually, meaning it’s a big deal that Moon’s name keeps popping up. To date, he’s won two Spiel des Jahres awards (think Oscar Best Picture for board games), and has been nominated for the world’s top board gaming honor five other times. Moon, a British-born American transplant who authors and designs board games. Many independent factors have come together to make Days of Wonder’s success possible: the growing international appeal of German-style board games like now-ubiquitous Settlers of Catan, the proliferation of forums devoted to discussing and reviewing board games, and the internet-gaming revolution.īut mostly, it’s thanks to Alan R.

The company has only 15 full-time employees, meaning its revenue/employee figures crush those of larger competitors Hasbro and Mattel. Days of Wonder was profitable within twelve months, and now generates $10 to $20 million in revenue annually. It was the only funding round they ever raised.

The founders raised a $600,000 in seed funding between themselves and VC friends (strategy games are popular among the tech-set) to create Days of Wonder.

Days of wonder ticket to ride