Even though the game publisher “Hans im Glück” has existed since 1983 and was shortlisted for the game of the year twice back in the 1980s, “the real boom began around twenty years ago with ‘Carcassonne’,” says Moritz Brunnhofer. The placement game was voted “Game of the Year” in 2001 and is still the company’s most successful game with 16 million copies sold and translated into 30 languages - from the basic game to expansions and so-called spin-offs.
Even a neologism went along with the game, it refers to the small wooden figures representing the players, which only become knights, travellers, monks, farmers or traders when they are placed on different fields of the game. “Meeple” is what a user called these characters, designed by Moritz Brunnhofer’s father Bernd, after their first appearance in discussions in a game forum, a combination of “my” and “people”. And then something very rare happened: “The term was adopted into the gamer’s jargon, the ‘meeple’ developed into a generic name, even in the context of games that have nothing to do with us,” explains Brunnhofer.
Father Bernd, sociology lecturer at the TU, founded the publishing house in a garage workshop
The publishing house is no longer based in a garage workshop in the backyard, as it was in the early years when his father Bernd, who taught sociology at the Technical University of Munich, initially developed games as a part-time job and had them made by hand. Today, a dozen employees, including the game developers and testers, are spread out in the publishing house on Infanteriestrasse. Moritz Brunnhofer, who joined the publishing house as managing director and editor in 2008, is now pulling award-winning classics from the family business off the shelves – including “El Grande”, “Stone Age Junior”, “St. Petersburg” and “Paleo”.
The basic game “Carcassonne” with its eleven expansions is still the publisher’s “bread and butter business”.
(Photo: Hans im Glück Verlag)
They form a considerable pile on the table, with the placement game Carcassonne enthroned at the top, which takes you to a medieval setting with its square tiles. Author Klaus-Jürgen Wrede came up with the idea when he followed the path of the crusade against the Cathars, who were fought as heretics by the Inquisition, to the eponymous city in Languedoc. There are several spin-offs on the table, such as “Carcassonne Junior” or the newly released “Nebel über Carcassonne”. Since all of Carcassonne is swallowed up in a dense fog, even the bravest knights tremble when they hear the tales of the souls of the Cathars who come to seek justice. In order to restore peace in Carcassonne, the players must work together to appease the restless spirits.
“It is the first cooperative game in the world of Carcassonne, the previous ones worked according to the competitive principle, i.e. as competition between the players,” explains Brunnhofer. The base game, with its numerous expansions and spin-offs, is “still the publisher’s bread and butter,” says Brunnhofer. So it’s a matter of honor that his publishers celebrated the 20th birthday of Carcassonne in Carcassonne last summer – with a two-year delay due to the pandemic – with business partners from all over the world, and of course the game designer Wrede too.
Out of print expansions to base games fetch high prices on the secondary market
While prequels, sequels and so-called “spin-offs” in films are sometimes viewed with suspicion by fans and critics, the situation is quite different with games. “If a game is successful, people even send in their own ideas for expansions,” says Brunnhofer. The recently released mega box for the strategic board game heavyweight “Ultimate Railroads”, for example, contains all expansions of the basic game “Russian Railroads” about railway construction in the Tsarist Empire, including those that have long been out of print. The box was therefore eagerly awaited by the fans, for the out-of-print expansions had previously paid high prices on the secondary market.
Are there also extensions that are rejected? “Yes, we once had a kind of fun expansion of Carcassonne with ‘Katapult’; with her, you threw tiles onto the playing surface. But the players didn’t like that at all, because their carefully put together landscape maps got mixed up with meadows, paths, cities and monasteries,” says Brunnhofer. The seventh expansion “Katapult” is no longer being produced, it’s not positive and meaningful enough.
A traffic light with red, yellow and green should show how complex the rules and instructions are
Over the past four decades, the small, now “medium-sized” as Brunnhofer calls it, Hans im Glück Verlag has developed into one of the most awarded game publishers in Germany. “We are known in the game community for challenging games.”
In 2021, the Stone Age game “Paleo” won the “Kennerspiel des Jahres” award. This is also a cooperative game in which you have to provide your own tribe with food. In order for this to succeed, you need the right tools and the help of your fellow players. “Kennerspiel is an award that as a game manufacturer you are only partially happy about,” says Brunnhofer. Although the prize generates attention in retail, it leaves interested parties rather at a loss: “Am I a connoisseur, is this game something for me?” is then the big question mark that you have over your head, says Brunnhofer.
That’s why a so-called traffic light is now printed on his publisher’s games. The shows between green, yellow and red how complex the set of rules and the instructions are. “Red is then a game that’s easy for the freaks who play two to three times a week; but for others who only play ‘Mensch ärger dich nicht’ and ‘Yatzy’, it’s too complicated,” he said Brunnhofer. He and his team work a long time on game instructions that nobody should have “anxious thoughts”. “Even if they are ten pages long, they are very well structured with pictures and paragraphs and are easy to understand,” says Brunnhofer.
“Two pages too many rules” separated Stone Age from the title of “Game of the Year 2008”
The Stone Age game was shortlisted for Game of the Year – but it wasn’t until its junior spin-off that it won a title eight years later.
(Photo: Hans im Glück Verlag)
Similar to the genesis of the term “Meeple”, Hans im Glück Verlag was also directly involved (albeit unintentionally) in coining the “Kennerspiel des Jahres” award. The impetus came from the game “Stone Age”, which his father Bernd had designed under his author pseudonym “Michael Tummelhofer”. The game was shortlisted for Game of the Year in 2008, but ultimately lost out. “You talk to each other, and the members of the jury told us afterwards that they had decided against Stone Age because the scope of the game rules was too complex, it should have been two pages less”.
So that this would no longer be an obstacle in the future, the new award “Kennerspiel des Jahres” was created the following year in addition to the Game of the Year and the Children’s Game of the Year. Which the Hans-im-Glück-Verlag won only a few years later with “Paleo”. “Stone Age Junior” by Marco Teubner, the publisher’s second children’s game, won the title of “Children’s Game of the Year” in 2016: Modern Ice Age children receive raw materials, barter or build huts.
Second chance for mankind
Planet A, the earth, is destroyed. Humanity can start over – on Planet B. But it seems that little has been learned.
(Photo: Hans im Glück Verlag)
For 2023, Brunnhofer does not have much hope for an award. “I consider ‘Nebel über Carcassonne’ as a standalone game, but because of the well-known name it could be counted as a spin-off and out of the question,” says Brunnhofer. “Planet B” meanwhile, the great novelty of the publisher and a first work by its editor Johannes Natterer, “could be in the running, but it is again a very complex and rather cynical game about wealth and power for players aged 14 and over,” says Brunnhofer.
The setting is a sci-fi game where planet A, the earth, is destroyed. Instead, players can start over on Planet B: assuming the roles of corrupt governors and presidents who misuse government funds to further their personal ends and enact laws that serve their purposes. So it remains questionable whether humanity knows how to use its second chance. The speedometer on the cover shows “red”. But what should motivate experienced players.