TM games

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TM Games GmbH
legal form GmbH
founding 1993
Seat Stuttgart
management
  • Reiner Müller
  • Wolfgang Lüdtke

The TM-Spiele GmbH is a game publisher. The abbreviation "TM" stands for the game designer Klaus Teuber , who became famous through The Settlers of Catan , and the game editor Reiner Müller. In addition to Reiner Müller, Wolfgang Lüdtke is the second managing director and game editor at the small publishing house.

TM games is as an external service for product development and editing of the 1997 Cosmos - board game program responsible. Previously, from 1995 to 1997, TM had developed the Goldsieber game program for the Simba Toys group.

history

In the beginning there was the Klaus Teuber game bankrupt vultures - the later vernissage . Teuber had considerable problems finding a publisher for this game. It would have been published by a large publisher, but only on the condition that Teuber had given up the right to change the game. He did not agree with that. Reiner Müller, with whom he had already worked on his games published by ASS and Bandai -Huki, therefore proposed to found his own publisher: TM-Spiele.

Klaus Teuber (right) and Wolfgang Lüdtke (left) with the two-person game Starship Catan

Teuber agreed to this idea and also spoke to Peter Neugebauer and Wolfgang Lüdtke about founding the publishing house. "When there are four of you, you have more ideas and can play better together."

Teuber met the game critic Neugebauer in the 1980s at the Göttingen game designers' meeting. Klaus Teuber had come from Hessen with his first game, a prototype of what would later become Barbarossa , and no one was interested in this game, Neugebauer recalled. He was the only one to sit down with him and was enthusiastic about the game. Teuber then made a copy for him against reimbursement of the material costs. Neugebauer later regularly received prototypes with the request to test them.

Wolfgang Lüdtke got to know Neugebauer, both of whom live in the Ruhr area, through an advertisement in the games magazine Pöppel-Revue . After he had already played Neugebauer's Barbarossa copy, he met Teuber personally for the first time at the following authors' meeting in Göttingen.

In particular, Neugebauer, who as a teacher had (and still has) no ambitions to get involved professionally in the game industry, hesitated to join TM-Spiele GmbH. He did find it interesting to be involved in game development as well. Primarily, however, he wanted to continue writing about games as a critic and remain independent. In the end, however, he did not turn down his friend Klaus Teuber's offer and took part in the risky venture. While Neugebauer tends to act in the background at TM to this day and has thus largely been able to maintain his independence as a games critic, Lüdtke stopped working as a critic after joining TM professionally.

The TM debut Vernissage achieved third place in the 1993 German Games Prize , but the Game of the Year jury was unable to win any award.

In the following year TM brought the Wolfgang panning game Knock out onto the market. “Unfortunately we weren't brave enough. We didn't intervene in the game as much as we would today, ” Lüdtke regretted some weaknesses in the game and the attempt to cover up the boxing topic in an ironic way. It was enough for eighth place at the German Games Prize , but economically the game was a "total flop" . After only two years, the publisher was facing financial failure. While about 90 percent of the 5000 copies published by Vernissage were sold, knock-out was like lead on the shelves. Tom Schoeps' Sternenhimmel was already being prepared as the third TM game, but a production was out of the question. The money was gone.

TM and Goldsieber

Fritz Gruber from Nuremberg had the saving idea. He was connected to the industry through press work for various toy companies. At that time he was in charge of public relations for the Simba Toys group . This company did not produce board games. Gruber therefore suggested that they develop a line of games to complement the program, and it met with open ears. Since Simba had no know-how in this area, he recommended that TM be commissioned to develop this series of games.

However, the negotiations between Simba and TM did not go very smoothly. Simba wanted to get away from its image as a cheap mass producer and thought of producing exclusive games from expensive materials. However, Simba was dissuaded from this idea and TM was commissioned to initially develop four board games for the series called Goldsieber .

In the meantime, the time to the Nuremberg Toy Fair had become quite short. The starry sky was already ready, Klaus Teuber was able to contribute Galopp Royal and a call to Stefan Dorra gave line 1 . Only the fourth game was still missing. The four TMers and Fritz Gruber (who was the fifth TM partner from 1998 to 2009) had to take action themselves and - from more or less known elements - construct their own game. Baksheesh was the not so bad result, an auction game that appeared under the “author's pseudonym” Hering . This herring was a figure that played a role in the Vernissage and Knock out games .

The Goldsieber program has been received with enthusiasm in the gaming scene. Line 1 and Galopp Royal made it onto the Game of the Year selection list in 1995 , Line 1 and Starry Sky made it to second and third place in the German Games Prize . More could not be achieved, because Teubers The Settlers of Catan cleared this year.

The Goldsieber debut program was borne by the success of line 1 . In the second year, the Goldsieber range was expanded. Although Klaus Teuber's discoverer was not on the shortlist - it was at least second place in the German Games Prize - it became the program's bestseller. However, the Game of the Year jury was able to bring itself to endow Carabande with a “special prize game of skill”. In addition, Teuber contributed to the success with the children's game Hallo Dachs , as well as the following year with The Knights of the Hazelnut .

In the third and final TM year at Goldsieber, Mississippi Queen was decorated with the gold-wreathed pawn of the Game of the Year jury and Löwenherz was delighted with the German Games Prize . Added to this was the sales success of the Little Fish and Manitou , two titles in the newly developed card game line.

TM and cosmos

The Goldsieber program had become more and more complex, and it was becoming more and more difficult to run Goldsieber and Kosmos in parallel. TM did not work directly with Kosmos, but the TMers as individuals certainly did: Reiner Müller was the games editor at Kosmos, Klaus Teuber was the author of the Catan games, and the others also more or less helped with the tips and hints necessary for game development regularly with. So it made sense to bundle all TM activities at Kosmos and to conclude an exclusive contract with this publisher, which then happened in the second half of 1997.

At Kosmos - in contrast to Goldsieber - autumn novelties also had to be developed, as the Stuttgart publishing house traditionally wanted to be present during this time of the year. That is why TM not only had to create a board game up to the Essen Games, but also a two-person game that was to follow up on The Settlers of Catan - The Card Game and its huge success. Fortunately, Wolfgang Lüdtke still had a prototype of the Risk Card Game in the drawer that he had once offered Parker . Parker had been of the opinion, however, that a purely two-person game did not fit into their program. TM remained the task of changing the theme of the risk card game, as Kosmos had found that the settlers card game was bought and played more often than average by women. Continents became patricians, and armies turned into Roman and Egyptian influence cards. Caesar & Cleopatra was named the best card game of 1998 and has sold more than 150,000 copies.

There was no exclusive bond between TM and Goldsieber. At that time TM also developed a game series for a youth non-fiction book publisher, of which only one game was published. It is different now. TM works exclusively for Kosmos, and Klaus Teuber has also connected exclusively with Kosmos as an author.

As TM managing director based in Stuttgart, Reiner Müller is responsible for all Catan games. Wolfgang Lüdtke, his office is in Duisburg , has fully joined the company as the second managing director and is responsible for all non- Catan titles. Fritz Gruber, who lives near Nuremberg, is responsible for public relations work for the entire Kosmos program, including books and experiment kits.

“ Outsourcing ” is the name of the concept that Kosmos is pursuing. Because even very large publishers can afford a maximum of one or two permanent game editors. By outsourcing all editorial activities to TM-Spiele GmbH, Kosmos is tapping into the creative potential of five people.

But soon Kosmos had to bring some of the editorial work back into their own company. After the Klee brand was acquired, TM was involved in developing 18 games within a year. That was too much. Kosmos then hired an in-house product manager who, among other things, took on editorial responsibility for most of the children's games.

The Kosmos games developed by TM landed on the "shortlist" several times, and Giganten was even awarded a Game of the Year nomination. The series of two-person games is a particular success. In classic two-person titles, black plays against white, luck has no place and the better wins - whichever is always the same in the long term. The Kosmos games, on the other hand, are thematically embedded, and luck always plays a role. Sometimes the better wins and sometimes the happier - that avoids frustration.

Otherwise, the Catan titles remain a sure- fire success in the Kosmos program. "To make games, you have to earn money," said Fritz Gruber. In this way, some risk and some flop in the program can be balanced.

In between, four new games were also released under the almost forgotten TM label: Minister , War and Peace , The White Lotus and Volldampf . "Only what TMers like to play appears as a TM game," said Lüdtke, explaining the principle behind this line of games. Nevertheless, the four titles were not a success story. Minister was a simple game, the remake of a man-not-annoy-you version. At least the minister made it onto the “shortlist”, but the far more demanding and convincing war and peace failed due to a misunderstanding. “Can you recommend a game with such a title, a decidedly combative content and an aggressive, emotionally charged process as exciting entertainment?” Asked one of the jury members in a controversial newspaper article. After four games, the TM game line distributed by Kosmos was buried again in 2001. Sales of these titles were extremely modest and TM has since limited himself to his editorial work for Kosmos.

Ludography

"Hering" team of authors

  • Baksheesh, 1995
  • The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring - Game based on the film, 2001
  • The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers - game based on the film, 2002

Goldsieber games (selection)

Cosmos games (selection)

Web links