The US’s thriving board game industry continues to grow

In the basement of Leder Games in St. Paul, a power struggle was fought during a game night testing the studio’s latest board games.

On one side of the packed hall Wednesday night, space regents staged warship battles and built starports and cities in “Arcs.” On the other side, exiles attempted to outdo their rulers, while chancellors fought to secure their legacies in new expansions of “Oath.”

Board games, including table games, card games, dice games, and role-playing games, have continued to evolve, growing from a niche hobby industry to a large business with a larger, more mainstream following. The number of increasingly diverse game offerings continues to grow, as crowdfunding and cheaper production have made game creation more accessible to both beginners and larger publishers.

“Is it about vampires? Is it about cyberpunks?… If you’ve ever imagined it, there’s a game for it,” said John Nephew, CEO and co-owner of Atlas Games, a Duluth-area game publisher. “It’s a wild and wonderful world.”

Game sales surged during the pandemic as people looked for ways to have fun at home. The North American board game market was valued at around $5.4 billion in 2023, or more than 41% of the global market. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global board game market is expected to reach $32 billion by 2032.

“You’re chatting, you’re laughing, you’re competing with each other, but you’re having fun,” said Julien Sharp, manager of the U.S. office of French gaming house Asmodee. “So our year-over-year growth reflects this increased interest in board games or tabletop games, (which) certainly brought a lot more people out of the pandemic, but I think it was a natural growth anyway.”

Asmodee, which leads the global tabletop gaming market with games like “Catan,” is the parent company of Roseville-based Fantasy Flight Games. The sales and distribution center for North American operations is in Lino Lakes.

MN at the centre of innovation

From “Dungeons & Dragons,” which was created with the help of St. Paul game designer David Arneson, and “Sequence,” the brainchild of former Minnesota House Rep. Doug Reuter, to newer titles like “Root” and “Arcs,” both of which were designed by Leder Games’ Cole Wehrle, Minnesota inventors and publishers have a history of helping families and friends gather in their living rooms to play board games.

“Arcs,” one of the most anticipated board games of the year, will make its official debut next week at Gen Con, the largest board game trade show in North America.

There’s also no shortage of places to buy games in the Twin Cities, with stores like Source Comics & Games in Roseville and Dreamers Vault Games, which has six locations. Enthusiasts can also test out new games at events like Protospiel Minnesota and the recently added Protospiel Twin Cities.

“I think it just comes down to, ‘If it’s minus 20 degrees outside, we’d rather stay inside and play board games,’” said Jacob Thull, chief buyer for Twin Cities-based game chain Games by James, of Minnesota’s rich history of hobby games.

The world of tabletop games has entered “a golden age,” Nephew said. Digital printing and print-on-demand services, as well as Chinese manufacturers making multiple, high-quality components at a low price, have made it possible to create a wider variety of games without having to place massive orders, Nephew said. In the 1990s, when Nephew founded Atlas, it might take as many as five suppliers to produce the various components needed for a single board game.

The public interest supports the need for capital for growth

As crowdfunding has become a more popular funding model for game developers, tabletop titles have become more in depth. In 2015, after attempting to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter, the makers of the card game “Exploding Kittens” raised $8.7 million in one month from 219,000 backers.

Games is now the most funded category on Kickstarter.

“This campaign showed the general market that the tabletop market was much bigger than expected,” Victor Shiu, director of games and co-founder of crowdfunding marketing strategy firm LaunchBoom, said in an email. “And it also showed a lot of people that they too can make a game and build a strong business out of it. … Stores like Target and Barnes and Nobles took notice and started dedicating entire sections of their stores to tabletop games.”

A Kickstarter campaign allows a game developer to quickly test a concept and get the product to fans, Leder said.

In June, Leder Games closed a successful Kickstarter campaign with over 10,500 backers pledging over $900,000 for an expansion to their popular “Oath” game. Other successful Minnesota-based game Kickstarters include Atlas Games’ “CatStronauts: The Board Game,” which is based on the graphic novels, and “Vicious Gardens,” a gardening game created by Ross Bruggink, who also designed Minnesota’s new state seal.

“Now you can make anything you want work and I think you’ll see a lot more diversification,” Leder said.

Liam Clift, 18, made cardboard games and played intense games of Jenga with his family as a child. As part of an independent study during his senior year at St. Paul’s Cretin-Derham Hall, Clift used the school’s 3-D printer to create a prototype for a balancing pipe game he called “Bad Plumbing.”

Positive feedback from professional game designers during a youth league and later at Protospiel Minnesota motivated Clift to start a Kickstarter with the help of his father. The campaign raised almost $5,000. Clift, who will study computer and game design at the University of Augsburg, will use the money to buy a 3D printer, contract a graphic designer and produce the game.

“That’s my greatest joy…making people happy with my games,” Clift said.

Interested in buying a new board game? Here are some helpful tips on what to look for:

• Aesthetically pleasing games to try: Root, Oath, Everdell Farshore, Harmonies, Flourish, Wingspan, Botany, Park, Radlands.
• Sustainable and nature-related games to try: Dice Miner (with recycled plastic), Forest Shuffle (FSC-certified paper), Photosynthesis (recycled paper), Daybreak, Catan New Energies.
• Solo game or games with solo modes to try: Final Girl, For Northwood!, Arkham Horror Third Edition, One Deck Dungeon, Cascadia.
• Games with various characters to try: Artisans of Splendent Vale, Star Wars: Unlimited, Sleeping Gods, HerStory, Altered.