Klaus-Jürgen Wrede

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Klaus-Jürgen Wrede (born August 19, 1963 in Meschede ) is a German game designer .

Life

Wrede, in Arnsberg grew up, studied Catholic theology and music in teaching , then piano and composition at the Cologne University of Music and the University of Cologne . In addition to studying the cello and piano instruments, he began composing his own early on. At the age of 16 he was a prize winner in the “ Youth composes ” competition. Until 2009, Wrede was a music and religion teacher at the Georg-Büchner-Gymnasium in Cologne . He is currently a freelance game inventor and lives in Hennef .

Since visiting SPIEL '89 in Essen , occasional gaming has turned into a great passion. In 1992 his first game Scippo was about to be released by Hexagames ; However, this went bankrupt . Then Wrede tried his hand at writing books. For his research on a book on the Ghent Altarpiece , he traveled to the Carcassonne region in the south of France in 1999 to study the history of the Carthars . During this trip he developed the idea for a game from which the game Carcassonne originated. Together with the prototype for the game Mesopotamia , he submitted it to three publishers. Wrede found Mesopotamia better than Carcassonne and was surprised when the Hans im Glück Verlag agreed and published Carcassonne for SPIEL '00. What success the game would have in the long term could not be foreseen for him. 2,000 copies of Carcassonne were sold at the fair and with a circulation of around 400,000 copies it quickly became the best-selling board game in Germany. Licenses went to the USA, France and Scandinavia, among others. His game Mesopotamia was released in 2005 and an expansion to it in 2006.

This also resulted in the development and implementation of own game ideas. When inventing games, he is particularly interested in the implementation of historical topics in family-friendly games. His games have been recommended by the Game of the Year jury several times , including Rapa Nui in 2012 .

In 2015 his book about the Ghent Altarpiece was published, which is why he traveled to southern France in 1999 and the idea for Carcassonne was born.

Carcassonne

His debut Carcassonne was awarded the coveted titles Game of the Year and the German Game Prize in 2001 . In the meantime ten large and over 30 mini- expansions for Carcassonne have appeared, as well as over a dozen other independent Carcassonne games . By 2005 Carcassonne had been translated into 15 languages ​​and over five million copies had already been sold. By 2015, Carcassonne was published in over 25 languages ​​and sold over ten million copies worldwide.

Wrede said of Carcassonne in 2016:

“Right now people want either very simple games or very complex ones. Everything in between is difficult. I think that today perhaps no publisher would take a game like Carcassonne any more, because it's in between. "

- Klaus-Jürgen Wrede : Interview with Hannah Schmitt in the General-Anzeiger Bonn

Games

Works

Web links

References

  1. ↑ Ferdinand Knauß: The hard work on the fun. In: Welt am Sonntag. October 14, 2001, accessed June 30, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Martin Klein: The history of Carcassonne - The author . In: SpielDoch! 1/16 . Nostheide Verlag, Memmelsdorf March 17, 2016, p. 28 f .
  3. ↑ a b Sabine Buchwald: The playmakers. Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 28, 2015, accessed on July 25, 2016 .
  4. ↑ a b c Hannah Schmitt: "Carcassonne was created in the sauna". General-Anzeiger Bonn, April 16, 2016, accessed on August 21, 2016 .
  5. ^ History of the publisher. (No longer available online.) Hans im Glück Verlag , archived from the original on August 19, 2016 ; Retrieved August 19, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hans-im-glueck.de
personal data
SURNAME Wrede, Klaus-Jürgen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German game designer
DATE OF BIRTH 19th August 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Meschede