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July 22, 2020

board game designers, photos from the internet, collage with photocollage.com 22.07.2020 19:43

👨 15 cool board game designers

People who create really cool games we play.

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Let me introduce to you 15 famous board game designers. They are like 🎥 movie directors - can have their own style through the works. And it’s always interesting, what’ new they can invent.

I can’t ✍️ write about all the board game designers. This list is created in my humble opinion. If you know someone else who deserves to be here - write to me, and I will create Part II later ;)

I don’t want to compare these people, that’s why this list is ordered alphabetically. 😇

So, let’s go to the board games 📽️ Kubricks!

You can find digital versions of their games here.

🇦🇹 Alexander Pfister ⬆️

Alexander Pfister

Alexander Pfister (born 1971 in Austria) is game designer who has been living in Vienna, Austria.

He grew up in Vorarlberg and started developing his own games as a child. Alexander studied economics and works independently in the financial sector.

Some high-rated games:

  • 2000+. Great Western Trail
  • 2000+. Maracaibo
  • 2000+. Mombasa
  • 2000+. Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King (with 🇦🇹 Andreas Pelikan)
  • 2000+. Blackout: Hong Kong
  • 2000+. Port Royal
  • 2000+. Broom Service (with 🇦🇹 Andreas Pelikan)
  • 2000+. Oh My Goods!

🇫🇷 Antoine Bauza ⬆️

Antoine Bauza

Antoine Bauza is the popular designer of several award-winning games, including 7 Wonders and Hanabi (which won the 2013 Spiel des Jahres prize). Even before the success of 7 Wonders, Antoine was well-known for his many other games, including Ghost Stories and Tokaido.

Bauza was born on August 25, 1978. As a teenager, he was very interested in role-playing games, and wanted to become a video game designer. However, Bauza decided not to pursue video games as a career because he did not want to move away to Shanghai or Montreal, where video game companies were hiring at the time.

An avid board game player, Bauza decided to start making board games in 2007. In 2010, he began working on board games full-time.

Some high-rated games:

🇫🇷 Bruno Cathala ⬆️

Bruno Cathala

Bruno Cathala (born 1963) is a French game designer who has lived in Haute-Savoie near Geneva, Switzerland, since 1986.

Bruno started developing games in the early 2000s.

He is a designer of titles such as Five Tribes, Kanagawa, Shadows Over Camelot and Kingdomino. He won the Spiel Des Jahres in 2017 for Kingdomino.

Some high-rated games:

🇮🇹 Daniele Tascini ⬆️

Daniele Tascini

Loving boardgames and any other kind of ‘intelligent’ games, Daniele Tascini used to invent and create games for his friends since he was very young. He had several high level expriences as a gamer, with RPG first, Magic:The Gathering, and finally boardgames.

Mr. Tascini is just insistent on making games that start with the letter T that nobody knows how to pronounce. Bless his soul, he’s on a roll.

Some high-rated games:

🇨🇦 Eric M. Lang ⬆️

Eric M. Lang

Eric M. Lang (born in 1972) is a Canadian game designer based in Toronto, currently serving as Game Director at CMON.

He began his career as a playtester for FASA before publishing his first game, Mystick independently in 2000.

Some high-rated games:

🇺🇸 Jamey Stegmaier ⬆️

Jamey Stegmaier

Jamey (born in 1981) has been designing board games his entire life, but in late 2011 he started developing his first published board game via Kickstarter, Viticulture: The Strategic Game of Winemaking.

Jamey Stegmaier runs the day-to-day operations of Stonemaier Games, it publishes such popular games as Wingspan and others.

Also, Jamey has pretty cool Youtube channel.

Some high-rated games:

🇬🇧 Martin Wallace ⬆️

Martin Wallace

Martin Wallace is a game designer from Manchester, England (currently living in Australia after a stint in New Zealand), who is the founder of Warfrog/Treefrog Games.

Wallace is known for designing complex strategy games that depict a variety of historical settings. Two themes he has frequently used are the construction and operation of railroads, and the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. He has developed a reputation for blending elegant European style game mechanics with the strong themes that are more typical of American style games. Many of his games feature economic systems, incorporating rules for income, taxation, and debt.

Wallace’s most popular game, Age of Steam, was the winner of the 2003 International Gamers Award, and was one of the top twenty rated games on BoardGameGeek.

Some high-rated games:

  • 2000+. Brass: Birmingham (with 🇨🇦 Gavan Brown and 🇨🇦 Matt Tolman)
  • 2000+. Brass: Lancashire
  • 2000+. Age of Steam
  • 2000+. Railways of the World (with 🇺🇸 Glenn Drover)
  • 2000+. Steam
  • 2000+. London (Second Edition)
  • 2000+. A Few Acres of Snow
  • 2000+. London
  • 2000+. Discworld: Ankh-Morpork
  • 2000+. Automobile

🇩🇪 Reiner Knizia ⬆️

Reiner Knizia

Reiner Knizia (born 1957 in Germany) is a full-time game designer who lived for many years in England. He earned a PhD in mathematics and has previously worked in the banking industry.

His first published games in 1990 were Gold Digger and Desperados. Since then he has been one of the world’s most prolific game designers with more than 600 games and books published in numerous languages and countries including many global licences such as Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, LEGO, Mensa, Disney, Monopoly, Playmobil, Simpsons, Asterix, Star Trek and Star Wars. Over 13 million games and books sold worldwide. He is particularly notable for his auction trilogy and his tile-laying trilogy.

Some high-rated games:

  • 2000+. Tigris & Euphrates
  • 2000+. The Quest for El Dorado
  • 2000+. Ra
  • 2000+. Modern Art
  • 2000+. Samurai
  • 2000+. Battle Line
  • 2000+. My City
  • 2000+. Lost Cities
  • 2000+. Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (with 🇨🇦 Eric M. Lang and 🇺🇸 Christian T. Petersen)
  • 2000+. Amun-Re

🇺🇸 Rob Daviau ⬆️

Rob Daviau

Rob Daviau (born c. 1970) is a game designer from Western Massachusetts.

David known for creating legacy board gaming. He has guest lectured at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, and New York University on game design and has been a visiting professor of game design at Hampshire College. In 1998, Daviau joined Hasbro as a writer for text-heavy games like Trivial Pursuit and Taboo.

He has been married to Lindsay Daviau who has worked in the board game industry in production, prototype development, play testing, graphic design, and art direction. She is one of two art directors for Restoration Games. He met her while working at Hasbro.

Daviau is credited as the designer of over 80 board games or game items.

Some high-rated games:

🇮🇹 Simone Luciani ⬆️

Simone Luciani

Simone Luciani (born in 1977) is an Italian game designer from Fermo. He published his first game (frutti di mare) in 2009, a simple card game. He likes to create any kind of games. From 2014 he works as Chief of Editorial Development in Cranio Creations.

Some high-rated games:

🇩🇪 Stefan Feld ⬆️

Stefan Feld

Stefan Feld (born in 1970) is a game designer from Gengenbach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

He is particularly known for the ingenious use of dice in his games, using them to add variety and different options without excessive randomness. Three of the games he has designed, Strasbourg, Bruges, and Carpe Diem have been nominated for the prestigious award Kennerspiel des Jahres in Germany. Many of his games feature artwork from game artist Harald Lieske.

Some high-rated games:

  • 2000+. The Castles of Burgundy
  • 2000+. Trajan
  • 2000+. Bora Bora
  • 2000+. Bruges
  • 2000+. Notre Dame
  • 2000+. In the Year of the Dragon
  • 2000+. Carpe Diem
  • 2000+. Macao
  • 2000+. Bonfire
  • 2000+. Amerigo
  • 2000+. AquaSphere
  • 2000+. Luna

🇺🇸 Thomas Lehmann ⬆️

Thomas Lehmann

Lehmann is a former economist, programmer, technical writer, and game publisher (Prism Games) who now designs strategy board, card, and dice games full time.

His most famous game is Race for the Galaxy. The game won Boardgamegeek’s Golden Geek Award for best card game, Fairplay Magazine’s À la carte award for best card game of 2008, and was described by the magazine Tric Trac as “LE jeu de cartes de cette année 2008” (THE card game of the year 2008).

Some high-rated games:

  • 2000+. Race for the Galaxy
  • 2000+. Roll for the Galaxy (with 🇺🇸 Wei-Hwa Huang)
  • 2000+. Res Arcana
  • 2000+. 1846: The Race for the Midwest
  • 2000+. New Frontiers

🇩🇪 Uwe Rosenberg ⬆️

Uwe Rosenberg

Uwe Rosenberg (born 27 March 1970) is a German game designer and the co-founder of Lookout Games. He initially became known for his card game Bohnanza, which was successful both in Germany and internationally. He also designed Agricola, a genre-changing game that dethroned Puerto Rico as the highest rated game on BoardGameGeek.com in September 2008 and stayed at the top of the rankings until March 2010.

Rosenberg is well known for the development of complex, economic eurogames, as well as innovative card game mechanisms. Many of his designs have been recognized as being excellent for solitary play.

Some high-rated games:

  • 2000+. A Feast for Odin
  • 2000+. Caverna: The Cave Farmers
  • 2000+. Agricola
  • 2000+. Le Havre
  • 2000+. Fields of Arle
  • 2000+. Agricola (Revised Edition)
  • 2000+. Patchwork
  • 2000+. Ora et Labora
  • 2000+. Glass Road
  • 2000+. Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small
  • 2000+. At the Gates of Loyang
  • 2000+. Hallertau
  • 2000+. Nusfjord

🇵🇹 Vital Lacerda ⬆️

Vital Lacerda

Born in 1967 in Lisbon, Vital Lacerda has a masters degree in Marketing and Advertising. After working in advertising agencies for almost 15 years as an art director, and later as the creative director of his own agency, he decided to try his luck as a freelance graphic designer in 2006. Boardgame design is his greatest and most loved passion.

Vital Lacerda is a designer who specialises in layering complex systems upon very simple ones and his ability to create intricate such interconnections between actions and resources in his games is unrivalled.

Some high-rated games:

  • 2000+. On Mars
  • 2000+. The Gallerist
  • 2000+. Lisboa
  • 2000+. Vinhos Deluxe Edition
  • 2000+. Kanban EV
  • 2000+. Kanban: Driver's Edition
  • 2000+. Escape Plan
  • 2000+. Vinhos

🇨🇿 Vlaada Chvátil ⬆️

Vlaada Chvátil

Vlaada Chvátil is a Czech game designer whose games are often on the border between thematic games and euros.

He became a recognizable name in the board game community following the publication of Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization in 2006 and thereafter his designs frequently made the top 100 list on BoardGameGeek. In 2016, he won the coveted award “Spiel des Jahres” (Game of the Year) in Germany for Codenames.

Vlaada’s designs are strongly rooted in the game’s theme preferring the mechanics that fit the theme best. His attachment to the theme is also evident in the way he writes the rules for his games which always make the theme apparent and sometimes even uses the theme to inject humor into the process of learning a game.

He also gained a reputation for innovative mechanics and a diverse range of designs, including the epic civilization game Through the Ages, the award-winning party word game Codenames, and the real time sci-fi adventure Galaxy Trucker which required the players to simultaneously rummage through a pile of cardboard tiles looking for ones to improve their spaceship.

Some high-rated games:

  • 2000+. Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization
  • 2000+. Mage Knight Board Game
  • 2000+. Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
  • 2000+. Codenames
  • 2000+. Codenames: Duet (with 🇺🇸 Scot Eaton)
  • 2000+. Galaxy Trucker
  • 2000+. Dungeon Petz
  • 2000+. Space Alert
  • 2000+. Dungeon Lords
  • 2000+. Codenames: Pictures
  • 2000+. Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends

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Games’ ranks update: Invalid Date

The second part is here.

Written by Max.

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