Families Stuck At Home Turn To Board Game Catan, Sending Sales Skyrocketing

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Klaus Teuber, creator of the popular board game Settlers of Catan, with his son Benjamin Teuber, managing director of Catan Inc. As families shelter in place, the game’s sales have skyrocketed. Celebrates the 25th anniversary since launch, the elder Teuber has released an autobiography, My Way to Catan.

Patrick Liste

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Patrick Liste

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A Teuber Family photo from 1994 shows Klaus (left), Benjamin and Guido Teuber, playing a test version of The Settlers of Catan. Catan creator Klaus Teuber says the family still plays together and admits he usually loses.

Teuber Family

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Teuber Family

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A 1994 test version of The Settlers of Catan before it was released a year later in Germany. When it was released, the game was an instant hit, winning the coveted Spiel des Jahre award. When it was released in the United States in 1996, sales surged. Today, Catan has sold more than 32 million units, one of the best-selling board games of all time.

Teuber Family

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Teuber Family

A 1994 test version of The Settlers of Catan before it was released a year later in Germany. When it was released, the game was an instant hit, winning the coveted Spiel des Jahre award. When it was released in the United States in 1996, sales surged. Today, Catan has sold more than 32 million units, one of the best-selling board games of all time.

Teuber Family

Teuber is now 68 and has just released his autobiography My Way to Catan to mark the game’s 25th anniversary.

He was a dental technician who was bored out of his mind by his job when he began creating games in his basement in the 1980s. «I had a lot of frustration, Teuber says. «It was, for me, a little bit like a holiday to be at home and to develop games, and, for me, to create my own worlds.

His first games did well: He won three Spiel des Jahre awards, a coveted prize in the board game industry. Then, in the early 1990s, inspired by the history of the Vikings and the age of discovery. «I was fascinated that they sailed the open sea and explored new lands like Iceland, Greenland or America, and in my imagination I considered, what will they do when they come to Iceland? They’ll need wood, they’ll need to harvest food. And this gave me the idea to create a game of exploration and of settling, he says.

So Teuber began to work on Catan. The first draft «was very big, he says, and it included multiple islands and ships filled with settlers exploring new lands. It took him nearly four years to reduce the game to a single island ready to be explored and developed by players (the sea exploration segment was later sold as an expansion of the original game).

When it was released in Germany in 1995 — as Die Siedler von Catan — it was an instant hit. It also won the Spiel des Jahre. Sales didn’t taper off after a few years, as with his previous award-winning games. Catan sales surged after it was released in the United States in 1996 and continued upward, prompting him to quit his day job.

Teuber has a theory about why the game became so popular. «First thing, it’s variable. Every time it’s a new game. You cannot destroy someone’s buildings. It’s impossible, he explains. «And you have to communicate. I think these are actually factors that women like. In my opinion, part of the success is that women play together in the family with their husbands and with their children.

As families shelter in place due to the coronavirus pandemic, sales of Catan have continued to climb. While the global economy spirals downward, the company says sales skyrocketed by 144% for the first five months of this year.

Klaus Teuber, whose sons Benjamin and Guido work for Catan Inc., says he still plays the game with his family.

But he admits he’s not very good at it and rarely wins. He says his son Benjamin usually prevails.

What Klaus Teuber enjoys most is the process of playing it, he says, and being there with his family; something millions of other families are apparently enjoying, too.

Esme Nicholson contributed to this story.