Catan & the Boardgame Renaissance
Die Siedler von Catan (The Settlers of Catan), released by Klaus Teuber in 1995, broke clearly from the dominant style of board games up to that point — crush your opponents and knock them out. In Catan, nobody leaves the table. You can't destroy anyone else's buildings. Dice luck and negotiating skill are woven together. Even a player who's losing still has value as a negotiating partner right to the end, so the table never goes dead. This design became the signal for a new wave of board games out of Germany, the Eurogame movement, and turned tabletop play back into a growth industry even in the middle of the digital era. Note: the idea that "nobody drops out" was the guiding design principle is repeated across many articles, but I could not confirm Teuber's own exact words on it.