The Art of Design: interviews to game designers #6 – Reiner Knizia
Today I’m going to interview Reiner Knizia, probably one of the most prolific game designers and one of the icons of “german style” design. Reiner, like Martin Wallace interviewed recently (insert the link to the interview) made of his art of design his full-time job. Now (actually from 4th of April), you can also follow Knizia also on Twitter. You will discover that for Reiner “designing games is an art, not a science” but later also says “I am certainly a scientist who reduces redundancy by condensing the game into a few fundamental core principles” that could really well identify the style of Knizia production. The interview will end with a really nice parallel with the Platonic ideas theory … here we are!
[Liga] Hi Reiner, it is really nice to have the possibility to interview you for Opinionated Gamers. Like Emiliano Sciarra wrote in the book “L’Arte del Gioco” (The Art of Game), designing a game is a form of art not less than writing books or casting movies. The ambitious aim of this series of interviews is to point out the “style” of each designer, going through his production, trying to find a sort of personal “sign”.You designed really an huge amount of games: according to BGG your designer career start back in 1982 with Tor, a light soccer card games. That’s was fun since 1982 was the year that Italy won the World Championship against Germany!
