Netflix has taken a significant step towards expanding its content offering by adapting the iconic board game The Settlers of Catan. The company has secured the rights to develop a series of projects that include movies, television series, and reality shows, in both live-action and animated formats. This move
Netflix has taken a significant step towards expanding its content offering by adapting the iconic board game The Settlers of Catan. The company has secured the rights to develop a series of projects that include movies, television series, and reality shows, in both live-action and animated formats. This move underscores the growing influence of board games in popular culture and home entertainment, as highlighted by the CEO of Asmodee, the company that owns the rights to Catan.
Catan can take on many possible forms
With over 30 years in the market and more than 45 million units sold, Catan has solidified its status as a modern classic among board games. Although in 2015 they secured the rights for a movie that eventually went to Sony, the project did not materialize. However, the recent initiative by Netflix shows a renewed interest in exploiting the game’s narrative, which focuses on the construction and governance of a new home through resource exchange.
In addition to Catan, Netflix has begun adapting other popular board games, such as Werewolves, Exploding Kittens, and a Monopoly reality show, indicating a strategic approach towards content that resonates with audiences of various ages. Jinny Howe, head of fiction series at Netflix, mentioned that the intense strategy inherent in the game offers endless opportunities to build drama and narrative on screen.
The existence of novels that expand the universe of Catan suggests that there is a rich narrative foundation that could be brought to the screen, potentially providing stories that resonate with the gaming experience of millions. As Netflix ventures into this new creative territory, Catan fans eagerly await what surprises this adaptation will bring to the world of entertainment.
This is the story of a small and simple card game that ended up becoming an international phenomenon: ‘Exploding Kittens’.
The proposal was simple: a Russian roulette game that instead of guns and bullets was played –for whatever reason– with cards and explosive cats. But you could also screw up your opponents as much as you wanted and have a good laugh in the meantime. This is the story of a small and simple card game that ended up becoming an international phenomenon: ‘Exploding Kittens’.
Stay Alive in this Hilariously Explosive Card Game
Take care of my cat, Manuel
Elan Lee, even as a teenager, was a computer genius. So much so that he ended up modeling Jar Jar Binks‘ neck in ‘The Phantom Menace’ and, soon after, became the lead game designer at Xbox, where he helped launch ‘Halo’ and other milestones. And yet he felt he was making the world worse by feeling guilty about making people not talk and laugh, basing his life on a video game: “I started to feel responsible, because I was the one who had put those pixels on the screen,” he said.
So he decided to go back to basics: a card game called ‘Bomb Squad’ in which you drew from a deck and, when you got the bomb, you were eliminated (unless you had a card to counter it). The next step was to contact Matthew Inman, better known as The Oatmeal, a viral Internet hit, who saw the game and thought it was fun but had no soul. It lacked being, well, funny.
“What if instead of a bomb, everyone was stressing and worrying about a kitten? A kitten could kill you and blow you into a thousand pieces.” Said and done: ‘Exploding kittens’ was born. But of course, it’s one thing to come up with a game and another to have enough money to get it off the ground. And here comes a basic tool for the day to day of creative people: Kickstarter. If you’ve never had to use it, you don’t know how much stress you’ll get rid of.
Kick and go
In January 2015 the campaign was launched, with the idea of raising 10,000 dollars and having enough money to be able to launch, in addition to the decks agreed with the backers, another five hundred for some stores. One month later they had raised almost nine million dollars with 290,000 backers thanks to a strategy (later copied ad nauseam) in which they turned crowdfunding into a game in itself.
From then until now they have sold 11 million units, that’s a lot to say. Who said that board games didn’t make money? It didn’t matter the anger of some animal groups, the fact that it was similar to others or its extreme simplicity for the most hardcore players: ‘Exploding Kittens’ was such a success that they immediately started to release expansions and special editions.
From 18+ games to zombie variants, 2-player games, including collars, imploding cats, minions or recipes, the world of exploding kittens continues to make millions of dollars. So much so that an animated series is already being prepared for Netflix and the team has grown from two people to more than a hundred in just five years.
Burritos that hurt
And next to ‘Exploding Kittens’, games that have revolutionized boardrooms around the world, such as ‘Throw throw burrito’ (and its variants with avocados and giants), in which you have to throw rubber burritos across the room, ‘Mantis’, ‘Happy Salmon’ or ‘Hand-to-hand wombat’. Originality, a lot of testing and having fun: those are the keys to any board game after all, aren’t they?
Oh, yes: and they have also gone to the digital market with apps, console games, merchandising and much more. Not bad for a simple game of strategy, cats and explosions that started as an alternative to the Xbox… and ended up eating it.
