Just finished reading this 2009 Wired piece by Andrew Curry on the popularity of Settlers of Catan, which apparently is the “Mona Lisa” of modern board gaming.

The most interesting insights to me were how board games are so popular in Germany that major media review them with the same seriousness as they do movies and books. And, that Germany’s post-WW2 revulsion towards violence affects their board game industry, so much that “Risk” risked being banned for fear that it would inspire another Hitler among the youth. They ended up getting past the censors by having players “liberate” opponents’ territories, rather than conquer them.

Back when I was in college, a lot of my dormmates played the game (it was an engineering/science dorm…) nightly. I avoided it because there didn’t appear to be any battleships or ICBMs and was more interested in Counterstrike anyway. But it sounds like a pretty legit game, sans armies. I bought the $4.99 iPhone app today.