A world-class game designer in our midst

Matt Leacock has been my colleague and friend ever since I interviewed him for his first UI design job at Claris back in 1997. He's been a board game enthusiast and designer for as long as I've known him. Admittedly, some of his first efforts weren't that great. I remember playing one game with a "castle seige" theme where there were two different game boards, and for every conflict, the defender had to construct a castle from blocks. Nice concept, but far too fidgety.

In the intervening years, I've playtested numerous games and variants of Matt's: Ants, Lumberjacks, and of course Pandemic. Pandemic was a hit from the first time I played it. A cooperative game, it gets people positively interacting throughout the entire game. It was no surprise to me that he went on to get it published, and it subsequently won Games Magazine Best New Family Game for 2009. Even more prestigious, it was nominated for the German Game of the Year, and just barely lost to Dominion (an excellent game in its own right).

One clear indicator that a game is popular is when it gets an expansion. That means the number of people who own the basic game is high enough that even if only 20% or so buy the expansion, it will still be profitable for the publisher. The Pandemic expansion—On the Brink—just came out this month.

I was over at Matt's house last night picking up a copy of the expansion. That same day, I received an email announcing the 2010 Games Magazine winners. I congratulated Matt on his back-to-back wins. He hadn't yet heard. His latest game—Roll Through the Ages—had won Best New Family game for 2010.