I feel like board games got out of the Monopoly/hardcore-wargame duality after D&D blew up in the early '80s. There were a lot of designs after that which may not have been great but were at least aspirationally staking out new territory. I refer mainly to the US/UK markets as I don’t know what continental Europe was doing pre-Knizia. Much less Japan (are boardgames big in Japan?).