Elizabeth Hargrave | |
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| Nationality | American |
| Education | LBJ School of Public Affairs Brown University |
| Occupation | Game designer |
| Years active | 2014 - Present |
| Known for | 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres for Wingspan |
| Notable work | Wingspan |
Elizabeth Hargrave is an American game designer. She has designed several games, including Wingspan , which won the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres for best connoisseur game of the year, Tussie-Mussie and Mariposas. [1]
Hargrave grew up in Florida. Her father, Paul Hargrave, was a biochemist. Growing up, she played games with her family, particularly Scrabble and hearts, and played gin rummy in high school. [2] In 1994, she graduated from Brown University, [3] and she went on to earn her Master's in Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. [4] Following this, Hargrave worked for many years in Washington, DC, first at the Department of Health and Human Services, [5] then for US Senator Tom Daschle, and later as a public policy analyst at the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. Her policy research included prescription drug policy, and work for the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. [6] Hargrave was featured in a US News Money article discussing the U.S. 2012 Medicare Part D Plan. [7] She was described by the New York Times as "a spreadsheet geek". [6]
Meeting regularly with others from the Washington, DC area to play board games, [6] Hargrave got the idea to start designing games based on themes from nature in 2014 at one such event, according to Audubon : [8] To another interviewer, Hargrave explained she felt "there were too many games about castles and space, and not enough games about things I’m interested in. So I decided to make a game about something I cared about." [9] Hargrave designed Wingspan using online data from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and from the National Audubon Society. [6] She describes the game as "a card-based engine-building game about bringing birds into a nature preserve." [10] Hargrave pitched the game (then called "Bring in the Birds") [11] to three different publishers at Gen Con in 2016; it was bought by Stonemaier Games. [10] Published in 2019, the game sold 44,000 copies worldwide over three printings in its first two months of release, [6] with the publisher issuing a public apology for not having more copies available. [12] Wingspan received critical acclaim for its theme, component quality, accessibility, and gameplay. [13] [14] [15] [16] It also won the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres for best connoisseur game of the year. [17]
Hargrave created the game Tussie Mussie in 2018 during the month leading up to the 2018 Game Design contest of Gen Can't. [10] Each game card shows a different flower, together with text describing its secret meaning in the Victorian "language of flowers." After winning the Gen Can't contest, the game was published in 2019 by Button Shy Games, funded by a Kickstarter campaign with a $1000 goal that instead brought in more than $80,000. [18]
Hargrave had begun work on Mariposas (Spanish for "butterflies"), a game about migrating monarch butterflies in 2018, and she sold it to game publisher Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG), who had put out a call for women game designers, in 2019. [19] Hargrave told an interviewer the project was inspired partly by visiting a Mexican butterfly sanctuary in 2003 and partly by reading Barbara Kingsolver's 2012 novel Flight Behavior . [19] It was published in 2020 and was described as family-friendly game aimed at a broader audience than Wingspan. [20] [21] [22] [23] The game's components and its environmental message also earned praise. [24] [25]
Hargrave published a game about fox domestication, The Fox Experiment, in 2023. In November 2023 she published Undergrove, a game about mycorrhizal networks. [26] She has stated that a commonality in her games is “something cool in the world that I want people to know about, that I think maybe a lot of people don’t pay attention to.” [27]
Hargrave lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband, landscape designer and forager Matt Cohen. A New York Times article about their garden described it as "brimming with food for insect pollinators, birds and people." [27]
She travelled to Belize in 2019 to volunteer her time supporting research scientists who track shark and stingray populations. She assisted with the catching, tagging and measurement of stingrays and sharks. [10]
A Eurogame, also called a German-style board game, German game, or Euro-style game, is a class of tabletop games that generally has complex rules, indirect player interaction, and multiple ways to score points. Eurogames are sometimes contrasted with American-style board games, which generally involve more luck, conflict, and drama. They are usually less abstract than chess or Go, but more abstract than wargames. Likewise, they generally require more thought and planning than party games such as Pictionary or Trivial Pursuit.
The Spiel des Jahres is an award for board and card games, created in 1978 with the purpose of rewarding family-friendly game design, and promoting excellent games in the German market. It is thought that the existence and popularity of the award was one of the major drivers of the quality of games coming out of Germany, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. A Spiel des Jahres nomination can increase the typical sales of a game from 500–3,000 copies to around 10,000, and the winner can usually expect to sell as many as 500,000 copies.
The National Audubon Society is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world. There are completely independent Audubon Societies in the United States, which were founded several years earlier such as the Massachusetts Audubon Society, Indiana Audubon Society, and Connecticut Audubon Society. The societies are named for 19th century naturalist John James Audubon.
BoardGameGeek (BGG) is an online forum for board gaming hobbyists and a game database that holds reviews, images and videos for over 125,600 different tabletop games, including European-style board games, wargames, and card games. In addition to the game database, the site allows users to rate games on a 1–10 scale and publishes a ranked list of board games.
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This page lists board and card games, wargames, miniatures games, and tabletop role-playing games published in 2019. For video games, see 2019 in video gaming.
Wingspan is a board game designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games in 2019. It is a card-driven, engine-building board game in which players compete to attract birds to their wildlife reserves. During the game's development process, Hargrave constructed personal charts of birds observed in Maryland, with statistics sourced from various biological databases; the special powers of birds were also selected to resemble real-life characteristics. Upon its release, Wingspan received critical and commercial acclaim for its gameplay, accurate thematic elements, and artwork. The game also won numerous awards, including the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres. Several expansions and a digital edition have been subsequently published.
The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is a board game for 3–5 players designed by Thomas Sing and released in 2019. In The Crew, a trick-taking cooperative card game with 50 missions, players aim to win tricks based on their task cards, but can only communicate limited information on their cards. Upon its release, The Crew received critical success and won numerous awards. A sequel, The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, was released in 2021.
Dominant Species is a 2010 competitive, area control board game published by GMT Games, designed by Chad Jensen. The game is an evolution-themed game in which players take on the role of broad categories of life: mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, arachnids, and insects in a world heading for the Ice Age.
Rosemary Mosco is a cartoonist and writer working in science communication. She is best known for the science-and-nature comic Bird and Moon, and her graphic novels about nature. She also published a best-selling travel guide for children.
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