Cluethe murder mystery board game, has been a staple of game nights and big box stores for as long as we can remember. In fact it is 2024 Clue‘s 75th anniversary.
First released as Clue In the United States in 1949 by Parker Brothers, the game has sold over 150 million copies and is listed as the second most popular board game in the world, after Monopoly (and excluding chess and checkers), according to Hasbro, which bought Parker Brothers in 1991. ClueThe game’s story doesn’t actually start in 1949. The game dates back even further, all the way to World War II.
To find out more about its origins and future, we spoke to the Hasbro resident Clue expert – and senior vice president of board games – Brian Baker.
(Ed. remark: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
Polygon: How did Clue come?
Brian Baker: We have to go all the way back to 1943. That’s when the story begins, with a musician named Anthony Pratt. He was a pianist in Birmingham, England, and he played at these lavish murder mystery parties in the country houses.
During the air raids in World War II, when England was bombed by (the German army), they (the English) were in the air raid shelters. He wanted to capture the experience he witnessed while playing the piano at these parties in a game. So Anthony came up with the idea of a game he called Cluedowhich took place in a country house and involved a crime – in this case it was a murder. And there are all these colorful suspects and weapons, and the goal of the game was to find out who committed the murder with what weapon and where in the mansion the crime actually took place.
The name Cluedo was a pun on the Latin word ludowhich means ‘I play’, and the word ‘clue’. So that was it Cluedo. Ludo is also the British derivative of Parcheesi or Pachisi, originating from ancient India. The origin of the name actually goes back much further than 1943. But he brought (Cluedo) to a British publisher called Waddingtons (which was acquired by Hasbro in 1994), who initially published the game, then received a license of sorts from Parker Brothers in 1949 and renamed it Clue because Ludo as a name and as a game was not widely played in the US
This year marks 75 years Clue. How has it changed in that time?
Obviously a lot of time has passed and the tastes of the people who play this game have changed, and the world has changed. So a lot of small changes have been made to the games, in terms of the characters, the weapons and the rooms, just to make it more accessible and relevant to today’s audiences.
There were originally 11 rooms in the mansion, and a few have been eliminated. There was an armory and a cellar, so they are no longer part of the mansion. There were nine weapons (including) an unexploded or unused bomb, a syringe and a fireplace poker – so those have been replaced.
To make a game feel modern and relevant to today’s audiences, especially over a period of 75 years, it’s important to make sure you don’t keep the game static. It is constantly evolving and evolving with the tastes and needs of our players.
How often does the basic game change?
We try not to change it too much. We call it a refresher, and last time we got to the heart of it Clue game was last year. We published a new version that launched in early 2023. We did a lot of things for that edition. We gave the characters backstories, made them more interesting and provided a lot of depth. For example, Mrs. White is now a chef. Mrs. Peacock is a lawyer. We just felt like the players of it Clue I’ve always wondered who these characters are.
We don’t try to reinvent it every year, but we do need to look at it at least every four years to make sure the game on the shelf reflects the tastes of today’s players. Even the mansion from 1943, when the game was first invented, looks very different from what I think people today would associate with a mansion.
There have been many different versions. What we have tried to do is to ensure that the furniture and decor do not look dated, but look elegant and sophisticated. With current printing technologies we can print at a much higher resolution, with much richer colors and a much wider palette. And so if you look at some of the original artwork and artwork from the game, you can see that it’s antique and it’s not necessarily something that was printed and published today. That’s why we try to keep the character and authentic nature of the game, but use all the ingredients we have access to when publishing modern board games.
How have these technological advances affected the materials you use for the game?
In the latest version of ClueOne thing you’ll notice is that the pawns are actually miniatures of the Clue characters, whereas before they were generic pawns – Colonel Mustard was yellow, Professor Plum was purple, and that’s how you would play.
It is much more fun for an 8 year old child to play with a small miniature of that character. That’s really made possible by some of the casting techniques and some of the rapid prototyping that we use. We can get a lot more details about the characteristics of those miniatures. While before we were limited in size and resolution – those characters would look more like blobs, instead of having everything down to the cheekbones and hair that we can have on these miniatures today. That’s an area that has really had an impact.
We pay close attention to the weight of the cardboard to ensure it feels premium. In the new version the weapons are a little bigger, a little heavier. And although these may not be technologically new developments, they are details that we pay a lot of attention to.
Why put so much emphasis on the tactile feel of a game, rather than the mechanics or gameplay aspect?
To me, the tactile feel of these components is the soul of board games – because we often compete with digital games that involve swiping, pressing a button and moving a controller. One thing that will never be replaced is the thrill of shuffling cards, dealing them, moving a miniature across a board, rolling dice. There are digital ways to replace all these experiences – we can generate random numbers with a phone, we can create a digital board on a screen – but why do these games still exist? It’s because that’s the one thing players don’t want to give up. They want to roll dice. They want to shuffle the cards. They want to control them and they want to move the pawns around the board themselves. But from the time of the ancient Egyptians and Romans, who played these types of games, until now, that hasn’t changed and probably won’t change in the future.
Murder mysteries seem to be big in popular media right now. What’s next for Clue?
Like Glass onion or White Lotusthe idea of murder mystery is somewhat timeless. With all the content out there, it seems like it’s only going to increase. We’re excited because we have an entertainment division that is currently working closely with Sony Pictures across multiple different live-action, unscripted and other mediums to build the franchise.