Interview
heightening the very human need for connectedness as well as the uncomfortable feeling that we were all spending far too much time on screens. “Lockdown was a big driver [back to physical games], but we were seeing it happen before then,” asserts Francke. “Our puzzles and games business has been growing in double digits for half a decade now.” Today, Ravensburger is in robust health; net revenue for 2021 was EUR 636 million. In the same year, the company opened branches in China and Poland, and saw employee numbers rise by 109 to 2,413. This year kicked off with a EUR 4 million investment in Polish company Gamefound, a crowdfunding platform specifically for the games industry (more on that later), which will, Francke hopes, allow “more games that fit a smaller audience” to come onto the market.
“The next big thing for us is to make sure that we create more opportunities for people to enter gaming,” says Francke. “There are ‘gamer gamers’, who want deep mechanics, but then there are all these people who are a bit scared of games, and so we try to use fan-driven stories, as in our Jurassic Park and Jaws games, and our Disney lines, to help people access the experience and the storytelling.” Licensed games are huge sellers for the company, but in typical Ravensburger fashion, “it’s not about just slapping an IP onto an existing gameplay”. Francke
explains: “I think we’ve tried to redefine what licensing is, to really make sure that when we do something with a licence, be it Harry Potter for Labyrinth or Disney for Villainous or Paw Patrol for memory games, we actually try to make it an immersive experience, so we’re not just bringing the IP holder X per cent of royalties, we’re building the equity of their IP. “We call it the ‘play the story’ approach. If you feel, when you’re playing Jurassic Park, that you’re actually co-operating to escape the dinosaurs – and we do get customer feedback where people say, ‘I really felt like I was going to get eaten if I couldn’t get off the island’ – then that’s a much more engaging and authentic experience than simply sitting down and watching the movie on Netflix. And I think that’s what people are looking for.” Ravensburger takes care to consider each IP’s existing fan base when devising a branded game. “Our new Star Wars Villainous is an excellent example. We spent so much time making sure that we understood the very different views of the fans of Star Wars; it was far easier to do Disney and Marvel versions of Villainous because the fans are much more aligned. We also spent a huge amount of time figuring out the gameplay, asking ourselves, ‘What are the iconic moments for this IP? How do we replicate that in the game mechanics? What’s the story that we’re ultimately trying to tell?’”
In the end, it all comes
back to storytelling. The first game Ravensburger ever produced, nearly 140 years ago, was Journey Around the World – based on Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. Today, with the fourth generation of the Maier family at the helm, Ravensburger is continuing its literary legacy, having just launched its second Adventure Book Game, based on The Wizard of Oz, following on from 2020’s The Princess Bride. Beautifully designed, the game takes players from sepia-toned
Thomas Bleyer, Group Director, Corporate Development & New Business
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