Over the last few weeks there’s been a bit of a ruckus about Martin Wallace’s Age of Steam. It started when Mayfair Games announced that they’d be publishing a new, third edition of the game. There was some confusion over why Winsome Games, who helped bring Age of Steam to market, wasn’t involved in the new edition. Eventually it was revealed that Martin Wallace (the designer) and John Bohrer (of Winsome) had decided to go their own ways, and that Wallace was thus reclaiming his premiere game for publication as he saw fit.
The most disturbing — and for the purposes of this article, thought-provoking —element of the whole split was John Bohrer’s post to BoardGameGeek, discussing what would be included in Mayfair’s third edition of Age of Steam:
It will not have the original Winsome ruleset, nor any other Winsome development work, like the Rust Belt map, point-to-point links, selected actions, etc. Essentially, it will be a different game, just as Railroad Tycoon was a different game. But I am sure that it will sell well with nice bits, just as Railroad Tycoon did.