Tag designer

Pandemic creator Matt Leacock on fighting for designers’ rights, working with effective developers and his publisher ‘pet peeves’

After being catapulted into the board game industry limelight following the success of Pandemic in 2008, Matt Leacock has scored ongoing success through titles such as the Forbidden series, Ticket to Ride and Pandemic legacy titles and his Kennerspiel-winning climate-change co-design Daybreak. In this in-depth interview he spoke with BoardGameWire about how the industry has changed for designers over the last quarter of a century, how working with developers can best help a design to sing, and why fighting for designer rights is among his most important jobs in 2026.

“I’m a lot less apologetic about the types of games I design”: Descent, Arkham Horror design veteran Kevin Wilson on heading back to freelance after Incredible Dream downsizing

Kevin Wilson, the veteran tabletop designer whose abundant list of work includes Descent: Journeys in the Dark, Arkham Horror and Cosmic Encounter, spent most of the 2010s working a successful freelance career after a decade at Fantasy Flight Games. Wilson became director of game design at Incredible Dream upon the company’s 2021 launch, but a tariff-disrupted year for the Kinfire series publisher has seen the business downsize to just two permanent staff - putting Wilson back into the freelance pool. He spoke to BoardGameWire about how his time at Incredible Dream has helped him hone his design strengths, why visibility as a freelancer is key and which of his older unpublished designs might now get another bite at the cherry.

Boardssey: The All-in-One Platform Reshaping How Board Games Get Made [sponsored]

As the board game industry has exploded in the last couple of decades, so too has the desire and demand from designers for ways to streamline and manage the often fragmented reality of prototyping, testing and preparing to publish their new creations. In this sponsored article, the team behind board game design toolkit Boardssey explain how they've leveraged their own experiences designing games - and the pain points they ran up against - to create a one-stop shop for supporting overwhelmed game designers.

Flamecraft designer Manny Vega on quitting his 20-year video games career to make board games his “forever home”

Flamecraft designer Manny Vega has been working in the video game industry for more than 20 years, most recently on Electronic Arts' first person shooter Immortals of Aveum. But a lukewarm response to that release left him in a distressingly familiar situation - unemployed, and facing the prospect of hunting for work in what he describes as a "volatile and toxic" industry. Video gaming's loss is set to be board gaming's gain, however, with Vega turning his focus to tabletop as he looks to make the industry his "forever home". BoardGameWire caught up with Vega to find out his game design and illustration plans - and his work on Flamecraft's successor - for 2024 and beyond.