Handbook of Board Games: Insights into the Industry and its Players

by Jürgen Karla (Editor), Christoph Post (Editor)

Overview

This edited volume includes written documentation by experts from the board game industry.

The handbook presents the industry and industry structures. Well-known authors explain their approaches to developing board game ideas and passing them on to the editorial teams in publishing houses. Leading experts from various fields of work present their areas of responsibility and explain the processes involved in the creation of board games (editing, illustration, graphics, localization, licensing). The production process is explained, starting with costing, purchasing, different material components, production facilities, quality assurance and product safety. Different distribution channels for board games are considered as well as the media and communication work in publishing houses. The various media segments through which board game-related content is received are examined, as are the awards relevant to the industry. Finally, the handbook is examining board games as a cultural asset from various perspectives.

The handbook is not only of interest to industry insiders, but also to board game enthusiasts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783662713433
Publisher:	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publication date:	04/20/2026
Pages:	746
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Professor Dr. habil. Jürgen Karla is Professor of Information Systems at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences. In research and teaching, he is active in the fields of social media, digital technologies and digital ethics; in his free time, his hobby is board games. Professor Dr. Jürgen Karla founded the spielbar.com website in 2000. Since 2005, this has included a podcast service, which has since resulted in the board game-related services Brettspielbar, Brettspielradio and beeple Talk.

Christoph Post is a business coach, mentor and consultant. With his company Fokus Schärfen, he accompanies active and prospective managers as well as self-employed people in the start-up phase and has been running the website brettspielbox.de and the YouTube channel Brettspielbox with game reviews, news from the scene and trade fair previews since 2014. Together with Jürgen Karla, he also creates the Brettspielbar board game podcast.

Brettspielbar - a combination of the two websites mentioned above, Jürgen Karla and Christoph Post joined forces in summer 2018 to found the Brettspielbar project. Here, podcast episodes are created at regular intervals in which the two of them chat about industry news from the board game scene and current gaming experiences. In spring 2021, a podcast series was recorded with guest Matthias Nagy on the topic of creating a board game - from the idea to the finished product. This gave rise to the idea for this book with experts.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction.- 2 Developmendt and Ideas.- 3 Submission.- 4 Editing.- 5 Illustration / Graphics.- 6 Localization.- 7 Purchasing / Production.- 8 Logistics / Distribution / Sales.- 9 Marketing.- 10 Magazines.- 11 Events.- 12 Game awards.- 13 Other.