Richard Channing Garfield is an American mathematician, inventor and game designer. Garfield created Magic: The Gathering, which is considered to be the first collectible card game (CCG). Magic debuted in 1993 and its success spawned many imitations.
Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.
Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which winning is determined by a player's ability to answer trivia and popular culture questions. Players move their pieces around a board, the squares they land on determining the subject of a question they are asked from a card. Each correct answer allows the player's turn to continue; a correct answer on one of the six "category headquarters" spaces earns a plastic wedge which is slotted into the answerer's playing piece. The object of the game is to collect all six wedges from each "category headquarters" space, and then return to the center "hub" space to answer a question in a category selected by the other players.
Reiner Knizia is a prolific German-style board game designer. He was born in West Germany in 1957 and earned a doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Ulm before designing games full time. He is frequently included on lists of the greatest game designers of all time. Many of his hundreds of designs are considered modern classics, and many have won or been nominated for significant gaming awards, including the Spiel des Jahres and the Deutscher Spiele Preis. His notable designs include Amun-Re, Blue Moon City, Ingenious, Keltis, Lord of the Rings, Medici, Modern Art, Ra, Taj Mahal, Tigris and Euphrates, and Through the Desert. Many of his designs incorporate mathematical principles, such as his repeated use of auction mechanics.
Scene It? is an interactive film series created by Screenlife Games, in which players answer trivia questions about films or pop culture. The games were first developed to be played with questions read from trivia cards or viewed on a television from an included DVD or based on clips from movies, TV shows, music videos, sports and other popular culture phenomena. Scene It? was released on mobile and console platforms. After discontinuation in 2012, the series was revived in 2022, with streaming functionality replacing DVDs. It is owned by Paramount Pictures since 2008.
Days of Wonder is a board game publisher founded in 2002 and owned by Asmodee Group since 2014. Days of Wonder distributes its games to 25 countries. It specializes in German-style board games and has branched out to include some online games. Days of Wonder has published games in several languages including English, Dutch, French, German, Russian, and Greek. Days of Wonder was co-founded by Eric Hautemont, Mark Kaufmann and Yann Corno.
Alex Jacob is an American former professional poker player and game show contestant.
Barbu, also known as Tafferan, is a trick-taking, compendium card game similar to hearts, in which four players take turns leading seven different sub-games over the course of 28 deals. Barbu originated in France in the early 20th century where it was especially popular with university students, and became a prominent game among French bridge players in the 1960s. The French version of the game was originally played with a stripped deck of 32 cards ranked seven to ace in each suit. Modern forms are played with a full 52-card deck. Barbu may be descended from earlier compendium games popular with students and originating in the Austro-Hungarian Empire such as Lorum or Quodlibet.
Wits & Wagers is a board game designed by Dominic Crapuchettes and Nate Heasley. It is published by North Star Games. The first edition of the game was published in 2005, and the second edition was released in 2007. The game is designed for 3 to 7 players or teams.
Brain Chain is a strategy-driven trivia board game played by two or three players or teams. The object is to be the first player or team to connect an unbroken row of six "links" horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. The game is played on a 10x10 category grid surrounded by an exterior track. Brain Chain has been described as Trivial Pursuit with a Go-Moku win mechanic plus a dash of Pueblo added in.
The 3M bookshelf game series is a set of strategy and economic games published in the 1960s and early 1970s by 3M Corporation. The games were packaged in leatherette-look large hardback book size boxes in contrast to the prevalent wide, flat game boxes. The series grew to encompass over three dozen games. Most were multi-player board games or card games; a few were trivia games or two-handed board games. Acquire and TwixT were among the best-selling titles. The series later became part of the Avalon Hill Bookcase games. Very few of these games are still being published.
Spin Master Corp., formerly known as Spin Master Toys, is a Canadian multinational toy and entertainment company. Spin Master employs over 1,600 people globally with offices in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam.
Z-Man Games is an American board game company, incorporated in 1999. It was named after its founder, Zev Shlasinger. The company is known for their Pandemic series of board games, as well as being the sole publisher for the English editions of popular Eurogames, such as Carcassonne and Terra Mystica.
Pandemic is a cooperative board game designed by Matt Leacock and first published by Z-Man Games in the United States in 2008. Pandemic is based on the premise that four diseases have broken out in the world, each threatening to wipe out a region. The game accommodates two to four players, each playing one of seven possible roles: dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher, operations expert, contingency planner, or quarantine specialist. Through the combined effort of all the players, the goal is to discover all four cures before any of several game-losing conditions are reached.
Enchanted Forest is a board game designed by Alex Randolph and Michel Matschoss that requires players to remember the locations of fairytale treasures. The first edition of the game was published by Ravensburger in Germany in 1981 under the original name Sagaland.
Say Anything is a board game designed by Dominic Crapuchettes and Satish Pillalamarri. It was released by North Star Games in 2008 as a follow-up to the award-winning Wits & Wagers.
Azul is an abstract strategy board game designed by Michael Kiesling and released by Plan B Games in 2017. Based on Portuguese tiles called azulejos, in Azul players collect sets of similarly colored tiles which they place on their player board. When a row is filled, one of the tiles is moved into a square pattern on the right side of the player board, where it garners points depending on where it is placed in relation to other tiles on the board.
Evolution is a 2014 board game where 2-6 players build a highly competitive ecosystem of omnivores, carnivores and scavengers. Players adapt their existing species and evolve new ones in response both to the abundance or scarcity of food, but also the behaviour of other species in the ecosystem. The scoring system rewards players whose species have high populations, consume the most food and are the most diverse. It was designed by Dominic Crapuchettes of North Star Games, working with Dmitry Knorre and Sergei Machin, who had previously released a similar game in Russia.