Czech Republic has global leaders in board gamesAfter their success in Germany, they have taken off (not only) in the US

"Board game players are really passionate about what we do. We like to play and sit at the same table together – and that is also reflected in our business. There is huge competition, as up to three thousand new games appear on the market every year. But unlike computer games, board gaming is not a mass-market activity. If a game is produced in about twenty thousand copies, it’s a success. But if you're lucky and come up with something amazing, it can go way beyond these numbers. We have already sold fourteen million copies in forty-five languages of our most successful game called Codenames. We’ve sold more than half of that, which is over seven million copies, in the US," says Petr Murmak, founder and co-owner of Czech Games Edition (CGE). We have talked to him at the company’s HQ in Prague's Černý Most, surrounded by – not too surprisingly – board games.

Fortune favours the brave

They say that everyone who works in this creative field likes games and likes playing them. Like always, there will be exceptions that prove the rule. "Such people usually do it only for money and it’s best to avoid them," says Petr Murmak. "We do it mostly because we enjoy it. Games have been my hobby since I was a little boy, but back then I had no idea that I would do this for a living one day."

For Petr Murmak, it was not a straightforward path to making and selling board games. His father started a computer systems business just after 1989, and Petr followed up in this direction. Originally an IT guy, he programmed and looked after computers and networks in his father's company. Later, he created websites, had his own publishing house and a news site. But his hobby was there all the time. Besides playing board games and going to board gamers gatherings, Petr Murmak and his friend Vláďa Chvátil also started developing games on evenings and weekends. And so it happened that one day in 2006, they were presenting their game Through the Ages at a tiny booth in the smallest hall of the world-famous Spiel fair in Essen, Germany. Until then, the two unknown guys from the "East" would only go to the event as visitors.

"We took a few home-made pieces to the fair, and they sold on the first day. Our vision was that we had a prototype that a professional game publisher would fine-tune, balance out, create better graphics and bring to market. And we did find such a person then. But when we saw what he eventually did with our game, or rather what he failed to do with it, we thought we may as well publish it ourselves. And that's how it all started. On top, we figured that we really enjoy the whole process of inventing and creating. Then Vláďa came up with an idea for another game, so we went to Essen the following year with Galaxy Trucker. That was already under the Czech Games Edition brand."

Codenames, the most successful game from Czech Games Edition so far. To date, it has sold over 14 million copies in 45 languages

Courage and perseverance were needed

Through the Ages, then, was a masterstroke. The game was so successful that it was at one time the second best ranked board game in the world on BoardGameGeek. The largest website of its kind, you can find there over 120 thousand board games from all over the world, and more are being added every day. The ranking is made by the players themselves, who rate the games directly on the website. Some games may have up to fifty or even a hundred thousand ratings. "Through the Ages held the second spot for a very long time, and even today you can find it in the top twenty. This gave us a great introduction to the gaming community, and everyone was eager to see what we would come up with next."

Galaxy Trucker was thus somewhat awaited at the prestigious trade fair the following year. "We already went to Essen to present this game as a company to get publishing partners in other countries. We left the fair with agreements for the German, English and French versions. In the year after that, we released another six or seven language versions. And then it really took off. This was also our first game to receive a recommendation from the jury of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award, which is like the Oscars of board games."

Petr Murmak and Vláďa Chvátil receiving the highest award for a board game – Spiel des Jahres. Codenames won the award it in 2016. Vlaada Chvátil is the author

How to build a business in the US

After nearly seven years in business, CGE had proven to be successful in publishing games that generate interest. Their first copies had always sold out immediately, and another reprint had as well. Most of their games had sold 20 thousand copies and more, a great achievement in this segment. That's when Petr Murmak realized that the margin of their US publisher, for example, was five times bigger than their own. "We wanted to cover the risk of failure, but in our case there really wasn't any. So we decided to enter the US market directly. In 2013, I came up with the idea to set up a branch in the US, and in 2014 it was already operating successfully."

Little did they know then that it was the perfect preparation for what was to come. When CGE released Codenames in 2015, their US branch was working just fine, so they could afford to lower the price a bit, which turned out to be a great decision. "The price was calculated to be between $22 and $25, but we offered the game for $19.95. We opted for a smaller margin and tried to print a run of 10,000. It was a very bold step for us, because until then we had printed at most five thousand copies per game at a time. But I thought it would eventually sell in two- or three-years’ time. In the end, I had orders in hand for 20,000 copies even before the container with Codenames arrived in the US! So I ordered another 20,000 – and they also sold out in a flash. Then we kept ordering more containers in the printing house, and I just kept an eye on the finances and cash flow to keep going. It was a ride. It took half a year before we finally had any Codenames left in stock in the US. We have sold over seven million of them in the US market so far, and they keep on selling."

Then in 2016, Codenames won the highest global award a board game can receive – the Spiel des Jahres. This led to over 300,000 units released for the German market alone in the same year, and of course its sales grew in other countries as well, with numbers going even higher in the covid year of 2020. Over fourteen million copies of Codenames have been sold so far.

"In the US, we are now moving to the next level. We found out that the distributor model is no longer enough and that we need to start negotiating some deals directly. We also plan to do marketing on our own. In the first phase, we have targeted the US toy market. It works with representatives, each of them overseeing a given territory and representing several different brands that they offer to individual stores. This is how we are already operating in the west of the US, and gradually we want to cover the entire country. This week, we will be training fifteen new US representatives," Petr Murmak reveals.

Games published by CGE have also won a couple of awards at the Gen Con board game fair

Heads full of new games and plans

Let's stay in North America for a while. The biggest board game trade show in the region is Gen Con in Indianapolis. Board game enthusiasts gather there to find out what's new and enjoy the prestigious event. Games by Czech authors from CGE are once again among the favorites. Last year, the Kutná Hora game prototype had a great response at Gen Con, just like Deal with the Devil the year before.

What else will they come up with? In addition to traditional board games, CGE will also have their digital versions, to respond to the market demand. After the success of the digital game Through the Age, they are now finalizing Codenames. This may be taking longer than usual because they want to do it differently. They don’t want to make a simple digital copy of the board game. They say that they want to teach the board game how to live in the digital environment, respecting the author and his vision, and design it in such a way that it is user-friendly for the player.

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During our conversation, Petr Murmak ran off to make a phone call, for which he apologized in advance: "We are in the process of buying a company where we make all our board games. There's a lot of dealing around it, so I’m sorry I have to leave my mobile on." Thus we witnessed a new stage in the expansion of Czech Games Edition in the making. May Czech games continue to thrive in the world!

Written by Jana Jenšíková

Photo credits: Marek Jenšík and CGE