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Patrick Leder is an emerging leader in an upticking board game industry that is largely overlooked amid the glare of electronic gaming.
Leder, 44, is also an IT refugee.
In 2016, Leder resigned from his data business analyst job at Macalester College. He had other things on his mind.
"There was an understanding and I quit my day job," Leder recalled last week. "I wasn't into it anymore. They knew that and thought I should get going. I wanted to publish board games."
And things are going pretty well.
Leder Games, based in St. Paul's Midway, expects revenue approaching $7 million this year from popular games Leder financed with several million bucks raised on Kickstarter.
Leder this month raised more than $1 million from supporters on the crowdfunding platform, the latest of several offerings, to support production-and-distribution of what appears to be the latest hit: Oath.
Conceived and developed since 2018, Oath is a game about generational power struggles.
That was preceded by growing commercial successes, including Vast: the Crystal Caverns, about knights and dragons; and Root, which won the 2018 Golden Geek Board Game of the Year.
"The board game industry is booming," said Stephen Charles McArthur, a Los Angeles attorney who represents board game clients, including Leder. "Patrick Leder has caught lightning in a bottle. The games he announces are routinely crowdfunded for $1 million from eager fans.
"Entertainment companies and video game companies have...