“Tabletop games are eminently social,” says Thomas Koegler, the CEO of French board-game publisher Asmodee. “They’re an excuse to spend time with people.”
Monocle meets Koegler at the company’s development office in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. The space is teeming with employees who are play-testing sessions and rolling dice over laughter-filled lunches in the staff canteen.
As people increasingly seek out social interaction, Asmodee has capitalised on this, growing from a niche publisher of obscure role-playing games into a billion-euro company that produces popular board games. It’s behind global hits such as Ticket to Ride (which has sold 13 million copies so far), Dixit (12 million) and the acclaimed 7 Wonders.
Though you’ll find Asmodee products on sale in 100 countries, the company’s home market is now the strongest in Europe after France overtook Germany as the leading continental consumer of board games. The coronavirus pandemic gave the industry a significant boost as households looked for in-home entertainment. “In most cases, when people buy a game, they have already played it or it has been recommended to them by someone they trust,” says Koegler. “This notion of transmission is extremely powerful.”
An expanding clientele of “kidults” – grown-ups embracing hobbies and forms of entertainment previously perceived as the domain of children – backs up Koegler’s claim that people no longer feel constrained by stigma around a board-game habit. “A good comparison is comic-book superheroes,” he says. “Being a fan of them used to be considered very nerdy, then it became part of pop culture. Now it’s completely mainstream.” These older players represent more than 30 per cent of the European market for toys and games, compared to 15 per cent a decade ago.
The spending power of kidults has been a boon for games publishers. Trading-card games in particular are having a moment. This includes Asmodee’s new Star Wars Unlimited collection, featuring characters from the franchise.
“We launched it about a year ago and the first Galactic Championships [a Star Wars Unlimited competition] that we organised in Las Vegas sold out,” says Koegler. More than 2,000 players travelled from across the world to take part in the event.
Asmodee also publishes the French version of the Pokémon Trading Card Game, making it a major player in a global trading-card market that’s valued at €6.6bn.
Koegler believes that the same thing powering analogue gaming’s ascent in Parisian living rooms is attracting enthusiasts to vast Las Vegas venues. “The more our societies become digitally connected, the more people will be looking for physical interaction,” he says. “That’s what is behind the success of board games.”
