Elizabeth Hargrave

American game designer

Elizabeth Hargrave

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]

## Biography

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### Early life, education and early career

[edit]

Hargrave grew up in Florida. Her father 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] 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 on a report to the U.S. Congress by 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 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.[8]

### Board game design

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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:[9]

> Hargrave and her husband loved nature, and had recently started birding. All their friends were similarly outdoorsy. “Why,” she posed to the group, “are there no games about things we are into?”

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."[10] 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."[8] 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.[8] 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 (an online conference initially created as a joking alternative for people who can't attend Gen Con.)[8] 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's began work on Mariposas (Spanish for "butterflies"), a game about migrating monarch butterflies in 2018, and sold it to game publisher Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG), who had put out a call for women game designers, in 2019, just before Wingspan was published.[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 also published a game about fox domestication, The Fox Experiment, in 2023. In November 2023 she published Undergrove, a game about mushrooms.[26]

## Personal life

[edit]

Hargrave was described by the New York Times as "a spreadsheet geek". She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband, landscape designer Matt Cohen.[6]

## References

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1. ^ Zimmerman, Aaron (July 23, 2019). "2019's "Board Game of the Year" goes to Just One". Ars Technica. Retrieved December 23, 2019.
2. ^ Thompson, Corey (December 12, 2020). "Elizabeth Hargrave Part 2 - Condors and Contests". Dice Tower Dish. Retrieved August 21, 2021. "That year it was sponsored by Button Shy, who specializes in 18 card games...so that was like the extra little push to get me to do this 18-card game. Also, working on an 18-card game is delightful, after having worked on 170 [cards in Wingspan game]"
3. ^ "Taking Flight". www.brownalumnimagazine.com. Retrieved November 18, 2022.
4. ^ "Elizabeth Hargrave LinkedIn Page".
5. ^ Thompson, Corey (January 3, 2021). "Elizabeth Hargrave Part 3 - Persimmons and Prototypes". Dice Tower Dish. Retrieved August 21, 2021. "I first came to D.C. to work for the federal government and worked for the Department of Health and Human Services, and then I worked on Capitol Hill for a while. And then it's a very typical D.C. career path to then become a consultant...I did a lot of research for a couple foundations, and a little commission, that are very interested in making the Medicare and Medicaid programs better."
6. ^ a b c d e Roberts, Siobhan (March 11, 2019). "She Invented a Board Game With Scientific Integrity. It's Taking Off". NY Times. Retrieved November 27, 2019. "Ms. Hargrave, a health-policy consultant in Silver Spring, Md., is an avid birder...A spreadsheet geek with a master's degree in public affairs, she spent more than a decade as a policy analyst with NORC at the University of Chicago."
7. ^ Brandon, Emily. "7 Tips for Picking a 2012 Medicare Part D Plan". US News. Retrieved September 30, 2020.
8. ^ a b c d Buscemi, Eric (December 7, 2018). "Punchboard Media: In Focus - Interview with Elizabeth Hargrave". Punchboard Media. Archived from the original on March 25, 2019. Retrieved March 24, 2019. "I spent a lot of time researching publishers and trying to think about who would be a good fit to take a chance on this theme. I pitched to three different publishers at GenCon 2016."
9. ^ McLoughlin, Shaymus (December 7, 2018). "Birds Star In One of This Year's Hottest Board Games". Audubon. Retrieved November 27, 2019. "Hargrave and her husband loved nature, and had recently started birding. All their friends were similarly outdoorsy. "Why," she posed to the group, "are there no games about things we are into?" That conversation led Hargrave, a health policy consultant in Maryland, to a realization: She should make one. Now, her debut board game Wingspan is one of the industry's hottest titles for 2019 and is netting rave reviews."
10. ^ "Wingspan: how birds colonized board games". Journal of Geek Studies. February 24, 2019. Retrieved November 27, 2019. "I've always been a nature lover and appreciated birds in general when I saw them, the same way I appreciated any other wildlife. I've always had a bird field guide and a pair of binoculars around. But I didn't really start intentionally birding – like, going out with birds as my primary purpose – until maybe 6 or 7 years ago."
11. ^ Kois, Dan (August 15, 2021). "How a Board Game About Birds Became a Surprise Blockbuster". Slate. Retrieved August 15, 2021. "One executive, Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games, listened to her pitch for Bring in the Birds, as it was called, responded with a list of suggested changes, and told her that if she revised the game and came back to him, he'd consider it. That meant another half-year of unpaid work before Stegmaier accepted her revision and agreed to manufacture the game. Hargrave, as a first-time designer, received no advance, so until the game sold, she wouldn't see a dime."
12. ^ Whipple, Tom (March 11, 2019). "Birdwatching game Wingspan flies off the shelves". The Times. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
13. ^ West, Stuart (May 14, 2019). "A bird-based game takes wing". Nature. 569 (7756): 334–335. Bibcode:2019Natur.569..334W. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-01503-0. S2CID 153314882.
14. ^ Kois, Dan (August 16, 2021). "The Surprise Hit Board Game That's Transforming an $11 Billion Industry". Slate Magazine. Retrieved February 19, 2022.
15. ^ Zimmerman, Aaron (March 16, 2019). "Wingspan review: A gorgeous birding board game takes flight". Ars Technica. Retrieved February 19, 2022.
16. ^ Anderson, Brian (February 2, 2022). "One Good Thing: A soothing tabletop game about birds". Vox. Retrieved February 19, 2022.
17. ^ Pyttlik, Olaf (August 17, 2019). "Looking for a new game? Trust the judges". Winnipeg Free Press. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
18. ^ "Tussie Mussie - by Elizabeth Hargrave (Wingspan)". Kickstarter. Retrieved December 23, 2019. "Famous authors such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Emily Bronte all utilized the meaning of flowers in their writings, and now you can experience the language of flowers in this newest wallet game from Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave, artist Beth Sobel, and Button Shy Games."
19. ^ a b Hostetler, Brian (August 19, 2020). "Interview with Elizabeth Hargrave". UnfilteredGamer.com. Retrieved August 21, 2021. "Before Wingspan came out – I finished it in the spring of 2018 – my work was done and it didn't come out until January 2019. So it was in that time I started working on Mariposas again. AEG put out a call for women designers to submit games to them because they wanted to feature some different designers. Up until that time they only included men. Before that round, I guess… last year they did put out Point Salad which has a woman on the team that designed it. I submitted Mariposas to them before Wingspan came out in November and heard back from them right about the time Wingspan was coming out"
20. ^ Hoffer, Christian (January 7, 2020). "Wingspan Creator Announces Next Board Game Project". ComicBook.com. Retrieved August 21, 2021. "AEG has announced Mariposas, a new tabletop game by Elizabeth Hargrave, the creator of the 2019 smash hit Wingspan."
21. ^ Hall, Charlie (June 8, 2020). "The biggest board games of the summer and where to buy them". Polygon. Retrieved August 21, 2021. "Now the spiritual successor to her game about bird watching is set to arrive on the market in August, and it promises the same chill vibe and well-balanced gameplay."
22. ^ Harkleroad, Stephen (August 29, 2020). "Mariposas: A review". BoardGameGeek.com. Retrieved August 21, 2021. "Elizabeth Hargrave's newest design, Mariposas, depicts the migration of butterflies from Michoacan in Mexico throughout North America and back again, giving birth to new generations as they go...Mariposas is 100% a fantastic gateway game."
23. ^ Yu, Dale (September 8, 2020). "Review of Mariposas". OpinionatedGamers.com. Retrieved August 21, 2021. "Mariposas is a great middle weight game. The beautiful art and nature theme will likely help this game appeal to more than just the hardcore gamers."
24. ^ Hudson, Gavin (September 7, 2020). "Mariposas Review". Board-Game.co.uk. Retrieved August 21, 2021. "This is a game of small, exquisite details hidden beneath a sheen of gorgeous components and accessible gameplay."
25. ^ Yaragadda, Tara. "12 board games for Earth Day". Inverse.com. Retrieved August 21, 2021. "Here are the 12 best board games with an eco-friendly message available now...Wingspan...Mariposas"
26. ^ AnnaMaria (January 15, 2019). "Designing Women: Elizabeth Hargrave". Girls Game Shelf. Archived from the original on December 27, 2021. Retrieved December 23, 2019. "I always wonder what the world of boardgames is missing out by having most designers fitting within such a limited demographic profile. I would love to help figure out how to get more women, genderqueer folks, and people of color over that initial hurdle of entering the design space."

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