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Klaus Teuber made Catan, and it changed the world’s expectations for board games
- morelisp 4y agoTeuber deserves massive accolades, but this article does a huge disservice to everyone else in the industry he worked in. It advances the myth nothing of note happened between Monopoly and Catan. But German-style games didn't spring ex nihilo from Teuber's head but begins with Sid Sackson in the US in the 1960s and comes into force as a conscious movement not in 1995, but in the late 80s (c.f. the famous Beer Coaster Proclamation). (It is also a bit unfair to The Landlord's Game and Monopoly - "going in circles" may be cliche now but is one of the critical differences which sets it apart from the many pachisi-descendent boardgames focused on "getting to the end" which came before.) Catan is a remarkable game, but what changed in 1995 wasn't the games, but the context - German economic growth, easier communication, global product distribution. And what changed in 2008-2009 was a bunch of nerds being in one place and having just unbearable amounts of money.