By All Means

“I thought, you know what I could do? I could make games.” Julien Sharp is a game inventor and industry executive who moved to Minnesota in 2022 to head up the U.S. division of Paris-based Asmodee Group, a global game company with a portfolio that includes Catan, Spot it!, Ticket to Ride, and Star Wars X-Wing. An avid game player, who can solve a Rubik Cube in 45 seconds (which she says is amateur stuff), Sharp started out in the industry as the inventor of several games including Disruptus and Juxtabo. She sold her company, Funnybone Toys, to FoxMind Toys & Games, and went on to work for popular names including What Do You Meme? And Spin Master toys. Sharp takes us inside the fast-growing $13 billion global industry, from the challenge of creating a game that endures to the power of play—for both kids and adults. Sharp says games are played every day in the Asmodee office in Lino Lakes, Minn. But her work is not all fun and games. “Budgets, logistics, sell-throughs—there’s all the aspects of busines