History of Board Games Timeline

Ludo (c. 1896) is a classic dice game in which players roll dice to move their tokens around the board. Variants such as giving each player the choice of rolling the dice or using the previous player's roll can add strategic decision-making to the game.

Image source: Ludo

Sorry! (1934) uses a deck of special cards that, when shuffled, create randomness, determining how players move their pieces around the board in this classic race-style family game.

Image source: Sorry! (game)

Monopoly (1935) became the most popular board game sold during its period, with 500 million games played as of 1999. Players roll dice to determine how many steps they move their token, buying properties and driving opponents into bankruptcy.

Image source: Monopoly (game)

Stratego (1946) is a war-themed board game in which some information is hidden from players, as each side cannot see the ranks of their opponent's pieces, creating hidden-information gameplay unlike perfect information games such as chess.

Image source: Stratego

Scrabble (1948) creates randomness using randomly picked letters, challenging players to form words on a grid and score points based on letter values and premium squares.

Image source: Scrabble

Candy Land (1949), like snakes and ladders, requires no decisions by the players and is decided purely by luck, making it a classic example of a children's game with no strategic element.

Image source: Candy Land

Advanced diplomacy, exemplified by the aptly named game Diplomacy from 1954, consists of making elaborate plans together with other players, with the ever-present possibility of betrayal shaping negotiations and alliances.

Image source: Diplomacy (game)

In Risk, dice rolls decide how players' forces fare in battle as they compete for global domination, exemplifying how chance mechanics can resolve combat outcomes in strategy board games.

Image source: Risk (game)

Game of Life (1960) became one of the well-established standby Golden Era board games that dominated the 20th-century board game market, simulating a player's journey through life from college to retirement.

Image source: The Game of Life

Harold Murray's A History of Board Games Other Than Chess (1952) has been called the first attempt to develop a scheme for the classification of board games, separating them into five categories: race, war, hunt, alignment/configuration, and mancala games.

Image source: Glossary of board games

Robert Bell's Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations (1960) similarly espoused a classification of board games, this time divided into four categories: race, war, positional, and mancala games, building on Murray's earlier work.

A 1991 estimate placed the global board game market at over $1.2 billion, reflecting the substantial commercial scale of the industry even before the modern board game renaissance.

Image source: Board game

In David Parlett's The Oxford History of Board Games (1999), based on the work of Murray and Bell, he described a classical categorization of board games consisting of four primary categories: race, space, chase, and displace games.

Image source: David Parlett

A 2001 estimate for the United States 'board games and puzzle' market gave a value of under $400 million, while the United Kingdom market was valued at about £50 million.

In 2009, Germany was considered to be the best market per capita, with the highest number of games sold per individual, cementing its status as the heartland of the Eurogame tradition.

A 2009 estimate for the Korean market was put at 800 million won, and another estimate for the American board game market for the same year was at about $800 million, showing strong growth across major markets.

A 2011 estimate for the Chinese board game market placed its value at over 10 billion yuan, highlighting the rapid expansion of board gaming in Asia during the early 21st century.

A 2013 estimate put the size of the German toy market at 2.7 billion euros, out of which the board games and puzzle market was worth about 375 million euros, with Polish markets estimated at 2 billion and 280 million zlotys respectively.

A 2015 estimate suggested a hobby game market value of almost $900 million, underscoring the expanding economic footprint of the hobbyist board game segment.

The Settlers of Catan (1995) is often credited with popularising German-style board games outside of Europe and growing the hobbyist game market to a wider audience. In Catan, dice rolls determine which resources a player gains.

Image source: Catan

Tigris and Euphrates (1997), designed by Reiner Knizia, is a game in which some information is hidden from players, contrasting with perfect information games like chess where each player has complete knowledge of the game state.

Image source: Tigris–Euphrates river system

Carcassonne (2000) was a major part of the period of board games industry development that saw a shift away from 20th-century domination by well-established standby Golden Era board games like Monopoly and Game of Life.

Image source: Carcassonne (board game)

Ticket to Ride (2004) was another major title in the shift away from Golden Era standbys, helping define the new wave of accessible yet strategic German-style board games for a global hobbyist audience.

Image source: Ticket to Ride (board game)

A 2012 article in The Guardian described board games as 'making a comeback', capturing mainstream media recognition of the growing popularity of tabletop gaming in the digital age.

A 2014 article gave an estimate that put the growth of the board game market at 'between 25% and 40% annually' since 2010, and described the current time as the 'golden era for board games'.

Crowd-sourcing for board games is a large facet of the market, with $233 million raised on Kickstarter in 2020 alone, demonstrating how crowdfunding has become central to bringing new board games to market.