大象传媒

Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave

Game(s): Wingspan, Tussie-Mussie,  Mariposas

Elizabeth Hargrave has been a board game lover for a long time, but at some point, became disenchanted with the fact that so many board games involved castles, medieval villages, trains, or trading economies in 鈥渧aguely Mediterranean locales.鈥� Being a bird enthusiast, she turned to this passion to create a new game called Wingspan. In 2020, as the pandemic forced families to stay in their homes much more than before, the game outsold every other game its publisher makes combined. Slate.com describes how Wingspan works best: 鈥淚n Wingspan, you, the player, control a small wildlife refuge, a little patch of ground with some forest, some grassland, a marsh. Your job is to populate the preserve with a flourishing array of birds.鈥� (Check out for an in-depth look at Hargrave as a designer and how Wingspan works.) Women have responded overwhelmingly positively to Wingspan 鈥� while it鈥檚 unclear how many women or non-binary individuals have purchased the game, the game鈥檚 official Facebook group is made up of 40% women. Not only is Wingspan colourful, fun, and challenging, it is also an easy entry into the activity of bird watching. Hargrave鈥檚 other games can also teach us about history and the natural world:  is based on a Victorian fad that assigned meanings to the flowers that friends and lovers exchanged, and 鈥渋s a game of movement and set collection鈥� that lets players be part of the 鈥渁mazing journey鈥� that monarch butterflies take when they leave Mexico to spread across North America. Find more information about Elizabeth Hargrave at .

Designer: Susan McKinley Ross

Game(s): Qwirkle, Color Stix, Cirplexed, and more

Susan McKinley Ross started her design company, , in 2002, and her husband (a former video game designer) joined in 2008 to work full time with Idea Duck. McKinley Ross鈥� most popular game is Qwirkle, which was first published in 2006 and has sold more than 2 million copies across the world and won multiple awards. In Qwirkle, players use wooden tiles to make lines that are either all one color or all one shape. There can鈥檛 be duplicate tiles in a line. When you finish a line of six tiles, it鈥檚 called a "Qwirkle" and you score bonus points. According to the Idea Duck website, 鈥淚t鈥檚 simple enough for 6 year olds to play, and strategic enough for adults to enjoy.鈥� And, after McKinley Ross had a dream where she saw something similar to a finished board of Qwirkle! Visit the for more information on the awards the game has won, where the game is sold around the world, and reviews. The other games designed by McKinley Ross and Idea Duck also help develop skills of speed, visual thinking, and strategy.

Designer: Rachel Simmons

Game(s): The Guns of Gettysburg, Napoleon鈥檚 Triumph, Bonaparte at Marengo

Rachel Simmons is a game designer who also happens to be a trans woman. Her games are all about history and wargaming, simulating their respective time periods. The games don鈥檛 feature dice, and 鈥渃hance comes solely in the form of what the players do and what they think their opponents are doing鈥�essentially, in the worst cases, being fooled, being foolish, or fooling yourself.鈥� A full review of the games can be found at . Rachel describes in that she had tried tinkering with game design as a kid, making her own expansions to existing games or entire games from scratch. She claims that wargame publishing is not done to become rich; 鈥測ou do it because you love it and you hope to be able to get enough compensation for it that you will be able to continue doing it.鈥� She also says that, 鈥淚nnovation cannot be a goal in and of itself. If you set out to create an innovative game as your goal, you're steering towards nowhere and everywhere. What I did was decide what kind of game experience I wanted to provide and let that drive the design decisions.鈥� Rachel has twice been a finalist for the for outstanding achievement in historical wargames.

Designer: Fertessa Allyse Scott

Game(s): Book of Villainy, Wicked & Wise, Mansplaining

Fertessa Allyse Scott became known on the board game scene via Board Game Workshop鈥檚 design contest in 2018, combining a renaissance artist鈥檚 eye, a love of mechanics, and a pinch of impishness to create fun, accessible games. In with "Girls' Game Shelf," she says she had always played mass produced games growing up, but only in the last few years discovered games such as Settlers of Catan, Sushi Go, and Betrayal on a Hill. She is best known for her game Book of Villainy, described as, "a tile-hopping strategy game for two to four villains. Players race around the grid, trying to claim the most points for their evil deeds. Play as one of six villains, each with a unique power, and sabotage your way to victory" on . In the previously mentioned interview, she mentions that if she could improve anything about the board game industry, she would like to see more tolerance for "casual" games such as Monopoly, as well as tolerance online and offline in general. She says that 90% of the time, she feels welcome in the industry and community, but is constantly surrounded by men who are not people of colour, and it can feel isolating, as she is often one of the only women in a given space, and usually, the only woman of colour. Fertessa Allyse - and other women, whether women of colour or not - absolutely deserve a seat at the board game table, and you don't want to miss checking out her .

Designer: Nikki Valens

Game(s): Quirky Circuits, Mansions of Madness 2e, Legacy of Dragonholt, and more

Nikki Valens (they/them) . When they were very young, they became interested in Magic the Gathering, roleplaying games, and Warhammer, and were an in house designer for Fantasy Flight Games for just over 5 years. , Nikki has expressed that for the connection to others, as well as the supportive board game community and industry, saying, 鈥淚鈥檓 amazed and inspired everyday by the community鈥檚 love for boardgames. I鈥檝e received many lovely comments and direct messages about how my games have touched players鈥� hearts and lives.鈥� But they鈥檝e also mentioned that, 鈥淏etween starting my career with Fantasy Flight and me being non-binary, I feel that I鈥檝e been insulated in some ways from the challenges others have faced. It鈥檚 immediately obvious that this industry is dominated my men (and white men at that). There is certainly an undeniable ingrained misogyny that permeates the industry. I think women in the boardgame industry face many similar challenges to those of women in any male dominated industry.鈥� When it comes to game design, Nikki has 鈥渢ons of game ideas,鈥� and many start with a game mechanic that they want to build around, and the worlds they create don鈥檛 carry the same ingrained bias that our real world often does, which is a real breath of fresh air. To find out more about Nikki and their games, visit their .

Lastly, we have to plug the card game that WWEST was involved in creating with (Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory) at the University of British Columbia.  is a trading card game that makes use of the wonderful, complex, and inspiring things that inform the notion of biodiversity. It is an exercise in crowd sourcing, open access, and open game development that has grown to broach elements of game based science education, ecological literacy, and hackathon mechanics within the teaching community. You can find out more information about the game here and see examples of the beautiful artwork that was created for the card deck.