Your favorite board game went through a lot to get here

Designers, artists, marketers and publishers of some of the most popular tabletop games tell CNN exactly what it takes to turn an idea into reality.

When Guido and Benjamin Teuber were young, their father would sit them down at a table in their small family home in Hessia, Germany on Sundays — the only day he wasn’t working 12 hours as a master dental technician — to play board games. It was more than fun between father and sons: Klaus Teuber, who passed away last year, became a renowned board game creator. In 1995, Klaus Teuber released Catan (then called The Settlers of Catan) in Germany. The game would go on to become one of the most popular in the world. The brothers recall a day around 10 years ago when they tested out an early version of a Catan expansion with their parents. It was so unplayable that their mother left the table to go do the laundry. Such visions of family and friends huddled around a board game are universal. Everyone has their version — maybe it involves Parcheesi, or one of the hundreds of versions of Monopoly, or a raucous round of Cards Against Humanity at a party. With 19% of people worldwide playing board games as a hobby and the global board game market reaching almost $17 billion in 2023, it’s an industry that’s hard to ignore. Big box retailers and bookstores have shelves dedicated to games, and you can even find board game cafes in cities around the world. Tabletop games, such as Risk and Clue, are the most popular segment of board games, closely followed by card and dice games like Uno and Pandemic: The Cure. Tabletop games also encompass role-playing games like the iconic Dungeons & Dragons.