The History of Modern Board Games, from Catan to Wingspan

For a long time, the words "board game" made most people think of Monopoly-style games where you roll dice and move a token around the board. Over the past 30 years, though, board games have changed dramatically. Games where planning matters more than luck, where nobody gets knocked out early, and where a session wraps up in an hour or two have filled living rooms and board game cafés around the world.

In this post, we look at where that change began. We follow how the "Eurogame," which grew up in Germany, spread around the world after Catan in 1995; the Spiel des Jahres award that guided that movement; new formats like cooperative and legacy games; and how crowdfunding and digital platforms have reshaped board games.

What Is a Eurogame?

A Eurogame, also called a German-style board game, is one branch of board games. The name came about as German games flowed into English-speaking markets; in Europe they are often just called "board games."

Eurogames usually share these traits:

• Indirect interaction: Rather than attacking each other's pieces directly, players affect one another by competing for the same resources or spaces.
• No player elimination: It is rare for anyone to drop out mid-game. The design keeps everyone involved until the end.
• Multiple paths to victory: There are several ways to score, so different players pursue different strategies in the same game.
• Low reliance on luck: Even when there are dice or card draws, they have limited influence on the outcome; planning and judgment matter more.
• A fixed end condition: A target score, a set number of rounds, or a depleted resource ends the game on a predictable schedule. A session usually runs from 30 minutes to a couple of hours.

Compared with chess or Go, they have clearer themes (trade, farming, building, and so on), and their rules tend to be simpler than those of wargames.

Roots: German Family Games and the Spiel des Jahres

There is a social background to why Eurogames grew up in Germany. After World War II, Germany had a strong aversion to products that glorified war. As a result, peaceful games about economics and resource management became more popular than games about moving armies to conquer an opponent.

From the late 1970s into the early 1980s, a movement of family board game design took hold in Germany. These games were shorter than their American counterparts, and their rules were refined so that no one would be eliminated early.

In 1983, the international games fair "Spiel," commonly known as Essen Spiel, began in Essen, Germany. Today it is the largest non-digital game convention in the world and the place where the most new Eurogames are released each year. In 2024, about 204,000 people attended.

One factor often credited with raising the quality of German board games is the Spiel des Jahres ("Game of the Year") award. Created in 1978, it is judged by a jury of German-speaking board game critics from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, who review games released in Germany over the previous twelve months.

From the start, the award focused on games families can enjoy together. Wargames, role-playing games, collectible card games, and other overly complex or hobbyist games are outside its scope. The stated criteria include the originality of the game concept, the clarity of the rules, the layout of the box, board, and rules, and the quality of the components.

The first winner, in 1979, was Hare and Tortoise by British designer David Parlett. The award's influence grew from there. According to English Wikipedia, a nomination can lift a game's typical sales from a few thousand copies to around 10,000, and a winner can sell as many as 500,000 copies.

The award's structure has changed over time. A separate category for children's games was added, and the jury sometimes gave special prizes to complex games, such as the one Agricola received in 2008. In 2011, this was formalized as the Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoisseur's Game of the Year). With separate awards for family games and for more experienced players, light games and deep games could each be recognized on their own terms.

1995: Catan Opens the Door

The year most often cited in modern board game history is 1995. That year, the German publisher Kosmos released Die Siedler von Catan (The Settlers of Catan), designed by Klaus Teuber and known today simply as Catan.

In Catan, players build an island out of hexagonal tiles, collect resources such as wood, brick, sheep, wheat, and ore from each region according to the dice, and build settlements and roads. Its signature feature is trading between players. Because you have to bargain with others for the resources you need, you stay engaged in the conversation even when it isn't your turn. The dice add luck, but where you settle and whom you trade with, and how, are up to you.

Catan won the 1995 Spiel des Jahres as well as the Deutscher Spielepreis (German Game Prize), which tends to reward more complex games. Above all, it became one of the first Eurogames to achieve major success outside Europe. Catan was not the first Eurogame, but it spread further than anything before it and drew attention and investment to the whole genre. According to English Wikipedia, more than 32 million sets had been sold in 40 languages as of 2020.

The 2000s: A Golden Age for Eurogames

After Catan's success, a string of games appeared that still sell steadily today. Here are the major ones:

Carcassonne is a tile-laying game named after a medieval French city. Each turn you draw a tile and connect it to the map to form cities, roads, and monasteries, then place workers (meeples) on them to score points.

Ticket to Ride is a railway game designed by Alan R. Moon and published by Days of Wonder. You collect cards of matching colors to claim train routes between cities, and score points by connecting the cities on your destination tickets. It won the Spiel des Jahres in its release year and later grew into a series with many follow-ups.

The same period also saw more in-depth "gamer's games." Puerto Rico held the top spot on the board game site BoardGameGeek for over five years, and the game that took its place was Agricola.

Dominion (2008) opened a new genre. Every player starts with a small set of cards and buys more during the game to grow their own deck, a style known as deck-building. Dominion is regarded as the first deck-building game, and it has influenced countless card games and video games since.

Eurogames vs. Ameritrash

As Eurogames spread, a term emerged for the American-style board games they were contrasted with: Ameritrash. It combines "America" and "trash" and is a pejorative label. More neutral terms are "Amerigame" or simply "American-style board game."

The differences between the two styles can be summarized roughly like this:

That said, the line between them has been blurring. "Hybrid" games have become common, adding story and direct confrontation to Eurogames, or bringing Eurogame-style rule design to American-style games.

Cooperative and Legacy Games: New Formats

Pandemic, released by Z-Man Games in 2008, pointed board games in another direction. Four diseases are spreading across the world, and two to four players each take a role such as medic or scientist and work together to find the cures. Instead of competing with each other, everyone wins or loses together against the game itself. It was nominated for the 2009 Spiel des Jahres.

In October 2015 came Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, co-designed by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau. In a "legacy" game, the game itself changes permanently after each session, with stickers placed on the board or cards torn up. Sealed boxes and cards are opened when certain events happen, and a year-long story unfolds over many sessions. It was seen as an attempt to turn a board game from "the same game you replay" into "a campaign you play through to the end."

Wingspan, released in 2019, was designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by the American company Stonemaier Games. Players attract birds to their wildlife preserves, building an "engine" in which the birds' abilities chain together. The designer built the cards from her own bird-watching records and biological databases, so the real-life traits of the birds are reflected in their abilities. It won the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres and also supports a solo mode.

Crowdfunding: Making Games Without a Publisher

In the 2010s, crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter became a major pillar of the board game market. Designers could now raise money from players first and produce a game without going through a publisher.

• Exploding Kittens: A card game created by Matthew Inman of the webcomic The Oatmeal and others. It launched on Kickstarter in 2015 with a goal of $10,000 and passed it in eight minutes. It ultimately raised about $8.78 million from 219,382 backers, setting the record at the time for the most backers in Kickstarter history.
• Gloomhaven: A campaign-based cooperative dungeon crawler created by Isaac Childres. Its first campaign in 2015 raised about $386,000; after strong reviews, a second campaign in 2017 raised about $4 million from more than 40,000 backers. It reached No. 1 on BoardGameGeek in 2017 and held that spot until February 2023.

Crowdfunding made it possible for small teams to build big games, and it also made "stretch goals," where extra components are added each time funding passes a new target, a common practice.

Digital Board Games: The Table Moves onto the Screen

Smartphones and tablets turned out to be a good fit for bringing board games to digital form. Catan and Zooloretto came to the iPhone in 2009, and Carcassonne arrived on the App Store in June 2010. Later, the iPhone and iPad versions of Ticket to Ride are credited with significantly boosting sales of the physical board game.

The advantages of digital versions are clear. The computer handles rule enforcement and scoring, and you can start a game right away against AI or online opponents even without anyone at the table. For Wingspan, the small startup Monster Couch handled the digital version, first releasing it on Steam in September 2020 before bringing it to Nintendo Switch, Xbox, mobile, and PlayStation.

There is also an approach that doesn't automate the rules at all. Tabletop Simulator, released in June 2015, places a table in a physics sandbox where players pick up and move cards and pieces by hand. Users can also create and upload their own games. Meanwhile, BoardGameGeek, with information and user ratings for more than 150,000 games, has become the most-used site among board game fans since the 2000s.

Closing: What Modern Board Games Changed

Looking back over 30 years, board games have shifted from "family entertainment left to luck" to "play where people sit together and share their thinking." Catan showed the fun of trading and negotiation, Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride lowered the barrier to entry, and Pandemic and Wingspan expanded the possibilities of non-competitive play and new themes. Crowdfunding and digital platforms have brought the people who make games and the people who play them closer together.

Meanwhile, traditional games like chess, Go, and janggi (Korean chess) are still widely loved. If modern board games have focused on "designs where everyone stays involved until the end," traditional games show the depth of simple rules refined over centuries.

References

• Eurogame - Wikipedia
• Spiel des Jahres - Wikipedia
• Spiel des Jahres official site
• Catan - Wikipedia
• Pandemic (board game) - Wikipedia
• Wingspan (board game) - Wikipedia
• Gloomhaven - Wikipedia
• Exploding Kittens - Wikipedia