I remember 2007 and our first Essen. We went to the Spiel with Neuroshima Hex and our pitch was ‘hybrid game’. It was a time of two worlds colliding. On one hand, we had all those awesome American games, with a great theme, perfect artwork, and rules that were so-so. FFG was coming up with titles like Doom, Descent, Warcraft and it was the Ameritrash arm of the hobby.

On the other hand, 2007 is a year of Agricola, guys like Rosenberg or Feld were invading North America and making a very interesting point – there are geeks who like farming and point-salading.

Portal Games as a super small publisher back then was trying to convince everybody that the future is in the hybrid games. Super cool theme combined with solid rules. Neuroshima Hex had an Ameritrash theme, but euroish rules. Two years later we did Stronghold, which was on one hand pure euro with cubes, but at the same time one of the most thematic fantasy games ever. The same with Robinson Crusoe, hybrid again, euro rules, ameri theme.

There were more and more such games, designers were blurring the border between Ameritrash and Eurogames. Of course, we had Stefan Feld defending euro camp, of course, we had pure Ameri too, but more and more games were hybrid.

And then, French hit and man, they hit strong. Narration driven Dixit, story-driven Time Stories, and Sherlock Holmes changed the way we play today and changed what we are looking for in the games now.

I like to think of myself as a forerunner of this trend with Robinson Crusoe released in 2012 and the whole Board Games That Tell Stories concept, but of course, this is not true. There were more and more games focused on a good story, there were more and more gamers looking for that in games and then it just exploded. The tremendous success of Time Stories and the new edition of Sherlock Holmes, both games created in France were a true starting point of the revolution.

In 2017 among the most popular and most discussed games we had Gloomhaven and 7th Continent, both games with super strong narration. New edition of Robinson Crusoe was selling like crazy for the whole year, Sherlock Holmes was in Top 10 best selling games in America. For 2018 there are more story driven games announced, with my very own Detective: modern crime board game being one of them.

It’s a great time for me. Portal Games was founded in 1999 as a company that was releasing Role Playing Games. Telling stories was always in our DNA. For years we were creating super thematic euro games, with Stronghold and Robinson Crusoe being the best examples. Now we can move further and focus even stronger on telling stories in our games.

I don’t know what’s next. I don’t know how the industry and games will look like in 10 years. But the time we have now, the French revolution, the story-driven era is pretty awesome.

Bring me that horizon! I am ready to tell some good stories!

Originally posted on BTTS Blog on BGG forum: https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/72860/french-revolution