Page 40 - Spielbox_2_2020

bach-Gupta, and in 1989 it appeared for the first time at the games fair in Essen exclusively with Carrom boards. In time, the company began producing the Carrom boards in Germany itself in order to offer consistent quality – an approach
time and couldn’t appreciate the impor- tance of this award.”
He soon closed Laurin, at a loss, but transferred the games and editor Bernd Dietrich to his own company, Queen Games. This was decisive for the further
supervising children’s games and Thyben maintaining the level of the company’s family and adult games. With his business acumen, Rajive knew to start using Kick- starter early on to secure financing for all his game publishing. Rune Stones had almost 2,000 people support the game, exceeding the subscription target amount of $10,000 15-fold. This also explains the different emphasis that Queen Games sets for the trade fairs in Nuremberg and Essen. “The Nuremberg Toy Fair is becom- ing less and less important for us,” says Beate, “whereas game testing, product placement and marketing are becoming increasingly important for the interna- tional market.”
As for distribution, Rajive relies on Queen’s own Amazon shop as well as other sales channels. Mogli-Distribution is responsible for direct sales for most of Queen’s products. There are currently over 200 game stored in Queen’s Troisdorf archive that Ulrich Fonrobert manages.
One of Rajive’s sons, Julien Gupta, has been a game author in their publishing program for several years. His first game came out in 2014 – a dexterity game for young players titled Dragon Valley. In 2016, his game Super Vampire was pub- lished, once again emphasizing dexterity. He’s currently working on Wolves’ Forest with Wolfgang Dirscherl.
I Talented offspring
As to whether Julien or his brother
Robin will secure the future of Queen Games in five or ten years, that’s up in the air. “That’s as hard to predict as winning a game of the year,” says Rajive with a smile. He says that the game affinity that he naturally sees in Julien is not enough, that business sense is also important. Beate agrees, saying that, ultimately, the decision is up to her sons but “we want to give them some more time. “In any case,” Rajive adds, “it’s not a must to have a second generation of the Guptas in the business. There are enough inquiries from other publishers and thus alterna- tive future prospects.” For the time being, however, his assessment is: “... we enjoy what we are doing now, we would like to continue it in the coming years and there- fore I do not see any change, provided that we remain healthy.”
Wieland Herold/tw
38
that Queen Games still largely upholds today.
It soon became clear to the Guptas that, in the long run, they would not be able to live off the sales of Carrom boards alone. They decided they would keep the “Queen” brand and offer a selec- tion of games under that name such as “Queen Backgammon”, “Queen Mancala” or “Queen Toys”. At the 1992 Essen fair, Rajive became aware of the great demand for Lord of the Rings-themed games and came across Ringgeister (Ringwraiths) by the Laurin publishing house. Nego- tiations to purchase 3,000 copies, for which Rajive already had buyers, turned into takeover negotiations for the entire publishing house. Today, Rajive confesses that he “actually only wanted to buy games and not a whole company.” Never- theless, in 1993, he took over Laurin and the rights to games such as Hanse, Rol- emaster and Middle-Earth Role playing (MERP). He even had a game of the year with Railway Rivals in his collection, but says he “didn’t understand all that at the
development of Queen. With Dietrich on board, the Guptas had a very knowl- edgeable and detail-oriented editor who would bring them outstanding games. This included games such as Show Man- ager, created by their in-house author Dirk Henn, which in 1997 only barely missed winning Spiel des Jahres but did win third place. Six years later, the Guptas and their Henn-Dietrich team were awarded the Spiel des Jahres for Alhambra and second place at the Deutscher Spielepreis.
In 2012, Kingdom Builder also won the Spiel des Jahres, following many suc- cessful games such as Shogun, Chicago Express, Thebes, and Fresco, all thanks to Dietrich’s first-class management. “If there is one jury decision I’m disap- pointed with, it would be Fresco, even the Deutscher Spielepreis doesn’t really make up for it” admits Rajive.
Following the Kingdom Builder era and Bernd Dietrich leaving the company, Frank Thyben and Wolfgang Dirscherl left their mark on the editorial work for Queen Games, with Dirscherl successfully
Always looking for new ideas: Rajive Gupta with Hanno Schwede at the Göttingen Game Designer Meeting
spielbox