‘It’s a wild and delightful world’: Minnesota’s board game industry sees no slowdown in sight

In the St. Paul basement of Leder Games, power struggles play out during a game night “playtest” of the studio’s latest board game releases.

On one side of a packed room, space regents staged warship battles and built star-ports and cities in the “Arcs” game Wednesday night. On the other side, exiles tried to usurp their rulers as chancellors fought to secure their legacies in a new “Oath” expansion.

Tabletop games, which include board, card, dice and role-playing games, have continued to evolve, growing from a more niche hobby industry to big business with larger and more mainstream followings. The number of increasingly diverse games continues to expand as crowdfunding and less costly production has made game creation more accessible for novices as well as larger publishing houses.

“Is it about vampires? Is it about cyber punks?… If you have ever imagined it, there’s a game for it,” said John Nephew, chief executive and co-owner of Atlas Games, a Duluth-area games publisher. “It’s a wild and delightful world.”

Games sales climbed during the pandemic as people searched for ways to have fun at home. The North American board game market was valued at about $5.4 billion, or more than 41% of the global market, in 2023. By 2032, the global board games market is projected to climb to $32 billion, according to Fortune Business Insights.

“You’re chatting, you’re laughing, you’re competing against each other, but you are having fun while you are doing it,” said Julien Sharp, U.S. country manager for the French game powerhouse Asmodee. “That’s why our growth year-over-year reflects this increasing interest in board games or tabletop games, [which] has certainly got a lot more people from the pandemic. But I think was a natural growth anyway.”

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

Minnesota inventors and publishers have a history of helping families and friends gather around their living rooms to play board games, ranging from ”Dungeons & Dragons,” 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,” which were designed by Leder Games’ Cole Wehrle.

“Arcs,” one of the most highly anticipated tabletop games of the year, officially will debut next week at Gen Con, the largest tabletop game convention in North America.

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

“I do think it might just come down to, ‘If it’s negative 20 degrees outside, we are more likely to stay inside and play board games,’” said Jacob Thull, the lead buyer for Twin Cities mall-based games chain Games by James, about Minnesota’s strong hobby game history.

The tabletop gaming world has entered a golden age, Nephew said. Digital printing and print on demand services, as well as Chinese manufacturers that make multiple, high-quality components inexpensively, have made it possible for a wider range of games to be created without having to place huge orders, he said. In the 1990s, when Nephew started Atlas, it might have taken up to five suppliers to produce the different pieces needed for one board game.

As crowdfunding became a more popular funding model for game developers, the depth of tabletop titles has widened. In 2015, after seeking to raise $10,000 through Kickstarter, the creators of the “Exploding Kittens” card game raised $8.7 million in a month from 219,000 supporters.

The games category is now the most funded on Kickstarter.

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

Through a Kickstarter campaign, a game developer quickly can test a concept and get the product into the hands of fans, Leder said.

In June, Leder Games closed a successful Kickstarter campaign with more than 10,500 backers pledging more than $900,000 for an expansion of its popular “Oath” game. Other successful Minnesota-based game Kickstarters include Atlas Games’ “CatStronauts: The Board Game” 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 are going to see a lot more diversification,” Leder said.

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

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

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

Interested in buying a new board game? Here’s some helpful hints on what to look for: