The origin of board games dates back into ancient times and throughout all vastly different cultures. You may find that there are games creating in Egypt, India, China, and even the Aztec civilization!

Ancient game of Senet (Looks like Chess, plagarism), pictured above.

From late 1990s and onward, there has been a massive increase in board game creation. This is attributed to the rise of the Internet and allowance of wide-spread ideas and information!

The number of board games published by year (1900–2014), as listed on BoardGameGeek. Expansion sets for existing games are marked in red.