![]() “Going Cardboard,” a 2012 documentary about the board-game industry, includes footage of Teuber appearing at major gaming conventions, where he is greeted like a rock star-fans whisper and point when they see him-but seems sheepish while signing boxes. Almost all board-game designers, even the most successful ones, work full time in other professions Teuber is one of a tiny handful who make a living from games. “I never expected it would be so successful,” he said. Teuber is still somewhat baffled by the popularity of his creation. of Mayfair Games, said, “Our volume of sales will be such that, over time, Catan could, in terms of gross revenue, be the biggest game brand in the world.” Rebecca Gablé, a German historical-fiction author, has written a Viking-era Settlers of Catan novel. Paraphernalia in the online Catan shop includes socks and custom-designed tables. Including all the spinoffs, expansions, and special editions, there are about eighty official varieties of Catan-more if you include electronic versions-and Teuber has had a hand in creating all of them. Big-box chains like Target, Walmart, and Barnes & Noble carry the game and its offshoots, such as Catan cards, Catan Junior, and Star Trek Catan. It was released in the United States in 1996 last year, its English-language publisher, Mayfair Games, reported selling more than seven hundred and fifty thousand Catan-related products. First published in Germany in 1995 as Die Siedler von Catan, the game has sold more than eighteen million copies worldwide. Teuber, now sixty-one, is the creator of The Settlers of Catan, a board game in which players compete to establish the most successful colony on a fictional island called Catan, and the managing director of Catan GmbH, a multi-million-dollar business he runs with his family. He started designing elaborate board games in his basement workshop. ![]() “I had many problems with the company and the profession,” he told me. The Catan studio team urged those mourning Teuber to “honor Klaus’ memory by being kind to one another, pursuing your creative passions fearlessly, and enjoying a game with your loved ones.”Īttendees play the Catan board game at the Gaming Expo at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Film Interactive Festival 2017 in Austin, Texas, U.S., March 16, 2017.In the eighties, Klaus Teuber was working as a dental technician outside the industrial city of Darmstadt, Germany. In the first five months of the pandemic in 2020, sales skyrocketed as people played games in quarantine, the company told NPR. Teuber never thought his game would become so successful he finally left his dental technician job in 1998 “when I felt like Catan could feed me and my family,” he told the New Yorker. In the multi-player game, competitors use five resources to build their colonies, or settlements: wool, grain, lumber, brick, and ore. “I had many problems with the company and the profession,” he said. He was working as a dental technician in the 1980s outside the industrial city of Darmstadt when he took up designing board games in his basement, he told The New Yorker magazine in 2014. Teuber was born in June 1952 in the German town of Rai-Breitenbach. ![]() The family requested privacy.Ī statement from the Catan studio team on social media noted that “While Klaus’ contributions to the board gaming industry are immeasurable, we will remember him most as a kind and selfless human being, an inspirational leader, and most importantly, as a friend.” “It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that the Teuber family announces their beloved husband and father Klaus Teuber passed away at the age of 70 on Apafter a short and serious illness,” said the statement posted on the German-language Catan website. It has spawned dozens of spinoffs and new editions, including electronic versions, not to mention products related to the game. The board game, originally called The Settlers of Catan when introduced in 1995 and based on a set of hexagonal tiles, has sold tens of millions of copies and is available in more than 40 languages. ![]() WATCH: Annie Lennox on her success in music and dedication to activism Klaus Teuber, creator of the hugely popular Catan board game in which players compete to build settlements on a fictional island, has died after a brief illness, according to a family statement.
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