I still remember some Christmas around 1980, when one of the gifts I received from my parents was "Sagaland" by Ravensburger (the name of the English version is "Enchanted Forest"), Germany's Game of the Year in that year. I was about 8 years old, and it was the first real boardgame I possessed (well, apart from the almost standardised "Mensch Ärger Dich Nicht !" (="Don't Worry"), which seemingly could be found in almost every German household). I loved Sagaland dearly, and I played it very often with my parents, and perhaps this was the initial spark for my later fascination with boardgames. Not much later, I think it was around 1985, I discovered that we also had an annual games convention coming to life at Essen, the "SPIEL". With my grandfather living virtually next to the Convention entrance, I was allowed to enter the convention-area on my own to explore the world of games available at that time. Being remarkably smaller than the modern "SPIEL", the games presented at that convention still led me into a totally new world of gaming. German games were at their start, but already some small publishers like Jean Du Poël (later author of "Carrabande" and "Wettstreit der Baumeister") were presenting their new games at the convention (I remember begging my mother for nearly a day to get her allowance to buy a copy of Jean's "Goldrush 1849" game...). Also, a few imports from the much more developed U.S. gaming scene were available at second hand booths, and this allowed an interesting comparison how much different the gaming culture in both countries was...

The German gaming scene of the 80's was mainly focused on producing family games which were suitable for playing with children. Also, the games-market was rather mainstreamed, with only very few games ever being published which offered new ideas or concepts (most of these were becoming the early winners of the "Spiel des Jahres" (=Game of the Year) award). If you compare the games available from German publishers at that time to the games published by foreign publishers like MB, Waddingtons, Games Workshop (the 80's were GW's "Golden" boardgames age) and others, you could only draw the conclusion that the German games market was rather poor and certainly lacked entrepreneurial spirit. Seeing the much more roaming foreign markets, in the later part of the 80's some foreign titles like "Talisman", "Dungeonquest" or "Wizard's Quest" where reproduced by Schmidt Spiele and other German publishers to enrich the German games market.

Drawing from my own experiences, I did not own many more German games in the period from 1980 to 1995. With English being introduced at school, I was able to buy me a copy of MB's "Axis & Allies", and I also had a German version of "Junta", but otherwise my games shelves were still rather empty. Instead, I went for a much more developed kind of gaming: Fantasy Role-Playing. "Das Schwarze Auge" was a far-developed role-playing system published by "Schmidt Spiele", and during that period I accumulated quite a collection of modules and rulebooks for that gaming-system (I guess it can be pretty much compared to the American "AD&D".)

However, finally the coming of the year 1995 meant a radical change to the German gaming sphere. In this year Klaus Teuber published his all-time evergreen "Die Siedler von Catan" (=The Settlers of Catan), which was not only awarded with both German boardgames awards, but it also received major attention in the USA. It became the best-sold German boardgame ever published, and it was so successful that it was even published by Mayfair Games in the U.S..

It seems that the Settlers were an incredible booster for the German gaming scene, since shortly after their initial release other new publishers started to produce much more games than ever in the 15 years before. These were well-received by the public, and the whole gaming sphere started to pick up more and more speed. But how can this phenomenon be explained ? The answer can only be found in a number of factors:

First off, the German society was "invisibly" hungry for some new kind of past time activity. With nobody knowing anything about good boardgames (apart from the odd collector who already knew about English / American games long before the Internet age) , everybody was happy and contend with their usual hobbies. But when the Settlers came, people all of a sudden discovered a totally new past-time. When meeting with friends, you could get this game out and have a go, while chatting with your friends and having a nice drink at the same time. Settlers was a game which kept a perfect balance between playing time, strategy, player-interaction, complexity, luck and fun, so that it was suitable as a family game as well as it was suitable for a nice relaxing evening between adult gamers. Most important, it was not a fantasy game, since these kinds of games (predominantly role-playing games) were eyed with much scepticism by German adults.

Another important factor which greatly enhanced the popularity of these new German boardgames was the overall design of these games and its components. The producers gave special care for creating games with an outstanding graphical design and which would become attractive for the quality of their components. Plastic parts were replaced for wood whenever possible, and star-designers like Doris Matthäus were hired to give the games a perfect outer appeal. For German gamers, these games seemed to be of a much higher quality than the sometimes very fragile plastic games which were predominantly produced by MB.

But this kind of games was not only an innovation for the German society, but for foreign gaming communities as well. The mid 90's were a time when the Anglo-American gaming companies where somewhat declining, especially in the area of these kinds of family-and-friends games. Traditional branches which were still preserved were tactical games at a high level of complexity by companies like Avalon Hill or SPI and the children's games produced by MB. However, a gap opened up between these two kinds of games - the US and UK gaming spheres lacked exactly the kind of easy and fast going family-and-friends boardgames for which Settlers stood. This could be felt especially in the UK, since Games Workshop started to specialise in Warhammer wargames and Waddington didn't produce many games anymore. Having discovered the fascination of Settlers, not only the Germans but also international gamers became eager for more.

The impetus Settlers had given German gaming was clearly reflected at the Essen games conventions of the following years. Young producers like Goldsieber or Hans im Glück started to produce games bearing the spirit of Settlers, being suitable to be played by adults as a short evening past-time: "El Grande", "Löwenherz", "Missisippi Queen" and others are just examples of this boom. As a result, more and more German games were exported, and today quite a few specialist and mailorder stores in the UK and the US and even Australia carry these games.

However, due to these different categories into which German and Anglo-American boardgames fall, it cannot truly be stated that German games are superior or inferior to other games. German games serve their own group of customers, which exists worldwide like the customer-groups for American-style games. Thus, Collectible Card Games like "Magic" have also been very successful in Germany, but mostly with teenage gamers.

A question which may be asked is whether the games-market as a whole is somewhat declining in the year 2000. The German publishers are still releasing quite a lot of games this year, most of them perfectly playable and offering good fun for the players. But it feels that good ideas are getting less common. Some ideas are consequently repeated, and the question may be asked whether the gaming boom might come to a stop in a couple of years. The same decline can also be observed in the US, where Hasbro was able to "swallow" quite a few traditional companies in recent times, with Avalon Hill being on top of this list.

However, although there might be a cloud on the horizon, the future still looks bright for gamers. New gaming-ideas can still be found among the more streamlined games (like "Elchfest" by Kosmos or "Diskwars" by Fantasy Flight Games / Amigo), so that the releases coming in the next couple of years can still be awaited with a high degree of expectation. Also, there is at least a possibility that some companies could decide to revive products which were taken from the shelves long ago. One of the best examples is Games Workshop's "Talisman", which is - despite it being printed in high numbers in the UK, Germany and the US - getting a highly collectible item which fetches incredible prices at online auctions. On a longer time-scale, companies cannot ignore the growing demand for their past classics, so that, once the vaults have been re-opened, an ongoing variety of games can be guaranteed. Especially the Anglo-American companies will be able to draw from their lists of classics, but this will be counterbalanced by the somewhat broader demand for family-and-friends boardgames which the German companies have cultivated and learned to serve.

Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, 2001

Copyright © 2006 Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, Essen, Germany