Klaus Teuber created Catan, and it changed the world's expectations of board games
Klaus Teuber created Catan, and it changed the world's expectations of board games
Enlarge / Klaus Teuber, in 2015 during a game festival in Essen, Germany. Teuber created The Settlers of Catan (later just Catan), as well as other award-winning board games.
Image Alliance via Getty Images
I was in my early thirties when I first played TheSettlers of Catan. I had been at a bar with a small group one freezing winter night in 2012 in Buffalo, New York. One of us, eager to share his recent obsession, said it was time for the next stage of the release. We went to his newly unpacked apartment nearby. He pulled the game out of a plastic bag, opened it on a rickety dining nook table, and set the tray down, apologizing for the warped edges from the damp. I took a photo (on my HTC Thunderbolt) because after having had a few I wanted to make sure I would remember this game with the wooden pieces and the odd amount of sheep.
Enlarge / Settlers of Catan, as I saw it in early 2012.
Kevin Purdy
It was an inauspicious start to the rest of my board game life. Growing up in the 80s and 90s and then starting life as a young adult in the early 2000s, I thought of board games as something you do in situations where you can't do anything else: power outages , cabins in the woods, gatherings with people with no known common interests. They weren't really going to be fun, and you wouldn't necessarily have played with them, but someone would win, and time would pass. Catan changed that, for me and for what are now legions of modern board game enthusiasts.
From a German basement to 32 million copies
You may have seen the news this week that Klaus Teuber, the German designer who created TheSettlers of Catan (now just Catan), died on April 1 at the age of 70. Teuber developed Die Siedler von Catan in the early 1990s, toying with ideas from the Icelandic colonies, tinkering in his basement while working full-time in a dental lab. He would bring new iterations for his wife and kids to test out every weekend, he told The New Yorker. The breakthrough, he said, was to use hexagonal tiles instead of squares.
Enlarge / Klaus Teuber, holding an early version of Catania and its Spiel des Jahres awards in 1995.
Uta Rademacher via Getty Images
Teuber created other memorable games, with two pre-Catan titles winning Germany's (and the world's) top board game award, the Spiel des Jahres. But Catan was the right game at the right time. Its release in 1995 gave it time to infiltrate European gamers, then American Eurogame enthusiasts, then, above all, the still nascent Internet.
Enlarge / Klaus Teuber, in 2015 during a game festival in Essen, Germany. Teuber created The Settlers of Catan (later just Catan), as well as other award-winning board games.
Image Alliance via Getty Images
I was in my early thirties when I first played TheSettlers of Catan. I had been at a bar with a small group one freezing winter night in 2012 in Buffalo, New York. One of us, eager to share his recent obsession, said it was time for the next stage of the release. We went to his newly unpacked apartment nearby. He pulled the game out of a plastic bag, opened it on a rickety dining nook table, and set the tray down, apologizing for the warped edges from the damp. I took a photo (on my HTC Thunderbolt) because after having had a few I wanted to make sure I would remember this game with the wooden pieces and the odd amount of sheep.
Enlarge / Settlers of Catan, as I saw it in early 2012.
Kevin Purdy
It was an inauspicious start to the rest of my board game life. Growing up in the 80s and 90s and then starting life as a young adult in the early 2000s, I thought of board games as something you do in situations where you can't do anything else: power outages , cabins in the woods, gatherings with people with no known common interests. They weren't really going to be fun, and you wouldn't necessarily have played with them, but someone would win, and time would pass. Catan changed that, for me and for what are now legions of modern board game enthusiasts.
From a German basement to 32 million copies
You may have seen the news this week that Klaus Teuber, the German designer who created TheSettlers of Catan (now just Catan), died on April 1 at the age of 70. Teuber developed Die Siedler von Catan in the early 1990s, toying with ideas from the Icelandic colonies, tinkering in his basement while working full-time in a dental lab. He would bring new iterations for his wife and kids to test out every weekend, he told The New Yorker. The breakthrough, he said, was to use hexagonal tiles instead of squares.
Enlarge / Klaus Teuber, holding an early version of Catania and its Spiel des Jahres awards in 1995.
Uta Rademacher via Getty Images
Teuber created other memorable games, with two pre-Catan titles winning Germany's (and the world's) top board game award, the Spiel des Jahres. But Catan was the right game at the right time. Its release in 1995 gave it time to infiltrate European gamers, then American Eurogame enthusiasts, then, above all, the still nascent Internet.
Enlarge / Klaus Teuber, in 2015 during a game festival in Essen, Germany. Teuber created The Settlers of Catan (later just Catan), as well as other award-winning board games.
Image Alliance via Getty Images
Enlarge / Settlers of Catan, as I saw it in early 2012.
Kevin Purdy
It was an inauspicious start to the rest of my board game life. Growing up in the 80s and 90s and then starting life as a young adult in the early 2000s, I thought of board games as something you do in situations where you can't do anything else: power outages , cabins in the woods, gatherings with people with no known common interests. They weren't really going to be fun, and you wouldn't necessarily have played with them, but someone would win, and time would pass. Catan changed that, for me and for what are now legions of modern board game enthusiasts.
From a German basement to 32 million copies
Enlarge / Klaus Teuber, holding an early version of Catania and its Spiel des Jahres awards in 1995.
Uta Rademacher via Getty Images
Teuber created other memorable games, with two pre-Catan titles winning Germany's (and the world's) top board game award, the Spiel des Jahres. But Catan was the right game at the right time. Its release in 1995 gave it time to infiltrate European gamers, then American Eurogame enthusiasts, then, above all, the still nascent Internet.
