This week we’re launching the first of several designer diaries for An Infamous Traffic. We’ll be releasing these diaries weekly (usually on Mondays) until the campaign begins in early October. You can sign up to be notified of the campaign's launch here.
A few weeks before John Company was set to begin mass production, I got an email from our manufacturing partner asking if we could have a quick meeting as soon as possible. At that stage in the process, this wasn’t unusual. There are all sorts of little decisions that need to be made, and it could have been any number of things with a game as complex as John Company. I happened to have some time that evening, and to my surprise, within an hour or two I was sitting in a meeting with not only my production support team but also key members of the factory’s ownership and a handful of folks I had never met. It was clear something was up.
They got right to the point: elements of John Company had been flagged as potentially controversial. Someone had noticed that I discussed the opium trade in the design and the game featured an image of a poppy in regions in India associated with opium production. I had to make a choice: I could submit the game for a review by the Chinese government or I could remove the offending graphical elements.
It took me a moment to realize the severity of the situation. I had been so diligent and was immensely proud of the research that had gone into the game. I was more than happy to subject the game to any level of review. One of the folks on the call looked at me like I was out-of-my-mind. They calmly explained the consequences of that course of action: if government censors found the game incendiary, which was likely, the whole print run may need to be destroyed.
At that point basically every penny in Wehrlegig had been invested into this run of John Company. The game had taken a long time to complete and the production ended up being about 50% more expensive than we had initially forecast. Shipping costs had gone through the rough thanks to COVID-era bottlenecks. Losing this run would surely mean the end of our fledgling company. Pamir’s sales were strong, but not that strong.
It was clear that they were worried too. I imagine no business in China wants to receive that kind of notice, to say nothing of the damage that might be done to their reputation with their partners in other parts of the world. I shifted my thinking to John Company itself. While the opium trade is certainly an important chapter in the company’s history—whole books have and will continue to be written about it—in the context of the wider project, I didn’t think of it as a fundamental element to the game. Players might play many games of John Company and never see it come up. With a little work, I could paper over things without compromising the core arguments of the game or its economic model. So, the poppy icon was replaced by a bundled crate and opium became “China exports.” It would take a day or two of work to go through the files at this stage, carefully remove things the offending elements, and reexport the files for production. I could move around my weekend plans and get it done quickly. Immediately the tension of the call dissipated.
However, I was already thinking about a much bigger challenge. I knew that soon we would be starting work on An Infamous Traffic. How on earth was I going to get that thing produced? At the time it was made, I had no idea that there were restrictions on such things. The first edition of the game was made in the United States, and so I hadn’t experienced any restrictions in its production. Before signing off for the night, I broached the subject. Was there any way An Infamous Traffic might be able to be produced in China? I got my answer in the nervous silence that followed. It was plain that Drew and I were going to have to find another path forward.
Thinking back on this now, years later, I am still not exactly sure what exactly had happened. Are all files at Chinese factories under constant review? Do they use some kind of internal or external consultant or insurance to review things and preempt official sanction? Would the game have survived the review? Can a game about the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the complicity western imperialism really upset that many party officials? Do they really care about a board game?
While I’m not happy about the compromises I had to make, I am thankful that they let the new edition of John Company come into existence. Life is full of these kinds of hard decisions and trade-offs. But, I also knew that the new edition of An Infamous Traffic would not afford me those same options. This was a game about the opium wars. There was no hiding it.
This image would form the basis for the revised "China Export" icon.
All of this was compounded by my own aesthetic ambitions for the game. I wanted Traffic to have either wooden or plastic tiles (like Azul). Those tiles would need printed on in some way and potentially molded. Even before we got into whatever new demands of the second edition might require, we were talking about a production ever bit as complex as Pamir’s or John Company’s.
And, of course, I wanted to make sure that this production matched our other games. I wanted players to be able to line these games up on the shelf and have their box sizes and styling match. This may seem like a small thing, but, often, when you work with factories outside of China, they will often have more limited box-making capabilities and require steep tooling costs if you want to introduce a new box size.
There was also the issue of cost. Drew and I priced our games pretty aggressively. Because Wehrlegig relies mostly on direct sales, we soak up additional production cost and keep our prices close to the market rate. A game like Pamir, if priced according to Root or Arc’s margins should have an MSRP of $120. John Company would easily be $160 or more. This business strategy has served us really well over the past decade, but it doesn’t leave us with a lot of wiggle room to experiment with anything that could increase the price of production.
The confluence of these elements paralyzed An Infamous Traffic’s development for years. Whenever I would make progress on a core system or bit of the game’s argumentation, I would be reminded of the central, unsolved puzzle of the second edition: could we actually produce it?
Whereas most printed game elements can be produced around the world, certain things, like wooden tiles or those use in Azul, are significantly more expensive in certain regions.
None of this stopped me from working on the game though. Eventually, as the design started to come together, and I wondered if I could find a more dramatic solution. Perhaps the game should be produced fully in the United States. Anyone who wanted it could pay a +$250 price tag and the rest of us could build our own homemade copies using print-and-play files. Maybe the game should just be fully digital. This was not the future I had imagined for the game, but anything was better than nothing.
At the start 2026, Drew and I asked our friend, the brilliant Cardner Babakitis, if she wanted to help us find a path forward. We outlined four basic strategies for production: East Asia (Vietnam, Taiwan, maybe some bold factory in China), Europe, India, or a hybrid approach. Cardner jumped at the challenge with a characteristic alacrity. She had worked for Panda for years and knew game production inside-and-out. Each strategy offered interesting possibilities. The East Asia approach might allow us to work with similar capabilities (logistical and otherwise). Europe would save a bundle on shipping and time and push us towards more environmentally-friendly productions. India would be historically resonate and allow us to learn about a wholly new production region. And, the hybrid approach might allow us to borrow elements from each.
We spent months in consolations with a variety of potential partners. We started by quoting the project in the US and Europe. As expected, it was simply far too expensive to be viable. This was especially the case in the United States, where the costs would demand a game that would require an MSRP in the hundreds of dollars. Things were better in Europe, but certain hard components (like the dice and tiles) caused the costs to balloon. India was also a mixed bag. Things were very promising, but it was hard to find one factory or agent that could handle all of the elements with the speed and oversight that we required. I’m still committed to exploring an Indian production for a game someday, but it was clear that Traffic was not the right project. At least, not for now.
We found many eager partners in China and other countries in the far east. But, generally speaking, as they learned more about the project, they pulled themselves from consideration. Many said that they would be able to produce some of the components, but did not want to handle the printed materials.
All of this suggested a hybrid approach. The components that were the most expensive and difficult to manufacture in Europe were also those that had the least to do with the game’s theme. So, we could safely produce those in or around China. The games printed materials could be made in Europe, which is also where we would be doing the game’s final assemble. We are still ironing out the details, but have built in several fall-backs and contingencies. I feel confident that we’ll be able to get this game to you and that it will meet our quality standards. I’ll be writing more about the details of our plan within a few months, as well lock in our final production quotes, but for now the matter has been largely settled.
Here is a snippet of the game's component spec sheet. None of the art here is final, but it should give you an idea of how the tiles will look.
The experience of shopping this project around really reminded me how wonderful our friends are in the industry. Drew and I have been going to conventions for years and meeting people from all around the world. Now, we needed help and folks came out of the woodwork with useful ideas or critical contacts. I’m especially thankfully for the work done by Jordi Samaniego in helping us navigate possible hybrid solutions.
If you’ve followed any of our previous projects, you might be surprised that we are so close to locking in those quotes. Usually, when we crowdfund game, we are content to present a workable proof-of-concept to backers and then to build the game alongside our community. I love working this way. I think it produces better games and is healthier for the studio to have such close contact with our players. However, Traffic simply couldn’t support the amount of chaos that process produces. With a regular game, it’s pretty easy for me to ask a factory to run a different sample or re-quote a major element of the game. We leave a lot of flexibility in our budgets and product plans for changes like this.
But, because Traffic would likely demand a complex, multi-partner production, the game needs to be stable. This requirement had huge implications for the game’s development schedule. In most situations, we would wait until after the crowdfunding campaign (sometimes, as in the case of New Foundations, months after the crowdfunding!) to get this testing underway. In contrast, Traffic’s remote testing began months ago and it’s very far along in the development process and is probably more mature than any game I’ve worked on at this stage in the process with the possible exception of Pax Pamir.
For the next diary, we’ll be going back in time and talking about the years of design work and the many false starts that set the stage for the new edition of An Infamous Traffic.
