Donald, in the first pages of this two-year-long interview you mentioned German players and German families explicitly, as opposed to American families. I cannot think of what you could have referred to regarding different preferences between Germans and Americans when playing board games. I'm German and German board game players are the only board game players I know.
I was talking about casual gamers rather than serious gamers. I don't know that there's any significant different for serious gamers, although European publishers have historically leaned more towards less text-heavy games, which obv. is nice for when you're making a game for multiple languages.
I feel like the hit German casual gamer games tend to be more strategic than the American ones, with certain flavor restrictions.
Okay I am looking at the first page of board games (24 games) for amazon and amazon.de (they change by the minute). There is some overlap (Settlers, Qwirkle, Dominion, Carcassonne), and there are games I'd have to research to know what they are. But it seems to me that the German list is more game-y. The American list has some things that aren't even games (Rory's Story Cubes and a commercial version of Telephone Pictionary). There are two Monopolies on the German list and none on the American one. But the American list has Candy Land, Hungry Hungry Hippos, and a commercial version of 20 Questions. The German list has some SdJ winners/nominees.
Anyway I don't really know anything about this, but I imagine that a big hit in America is often more of a party game.