Elizabeth Hargrave

Elizabeth Hargrave is an American game designer whose game Wingspan won the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres for best connoisseur game of the year.[1] Her game Tussie-Mussie won the 2018 Button Shy - GenCan't Design contest. Hargrave worked for a decade as a senior research scientist at the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC). Her policy research included prescription drug policy, and work on a report to the U.S. Congress by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.[2] Hargrave was featured in a US News Money article discussing the U.S. 2012 Medicare Part D Plan.[3]

Biography

Hargrave, who earned a master’s degree in public affairs, worked for many years as a public policy analyst at the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center.[4] Described by the New York Times as "a spreadsheet geek," she lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband landscape designer Matt Cohen.[4]

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.[5]

Game design

Hargrave meets regularly with others from the Washington, DC area to play board games.[4] She got the idea to start designing games based on themes from nature in 2014 at one such event, according to Audubon:[6]

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."[7]

Hargrave designed Wingspan using online data from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and from the National Audubon Society.[4] She describes the game as "a card-based engine-building game about bringing birds into a nature preserve."[8] Hargrave pitched the game 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,[4] with the publisher issuing a public apology for not having more copies available.[9] Wingspan won the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres for best connoisseur game of the year.[10]

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 unconference 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 by Button Shy games, funded by a Kickstarter campaign with a $1000 goal that instead brought in more than $80,000.[11]

Hargrave is also working on games about migrating monarch butterflies, mushrooms, and the genetics of dog-fox hybrids.[12]

Games
  • Tussie Mussie (2018)
  • Wingspan (2019)
  • Mariposas (2020)

References
  1. Zimmerman, Aaron (July 23, 2019). "2019's "Board Game of the Year" goes to Just One". Ars Technica. Retrieved December 23, 2019.
  2. Roberts, Siobhan (11 March 2019). "She Invented a Board Game With Scientific Integrity. It's Taking Off". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  3. Brandon, Emily. "7 Tips for Picking a 2012 Medicare Part D Plan". US News. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  4. 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.
  5. Buscemi, Eric. "In Focus - Interview with Elizabeth Hargrave". Punchboard Media. Punchboard Media. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  6. 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.
  7. "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.
  8. Buscemi, Eric (December 7, 2018). "Punchboard Media: In Focus - Interview with Elizabeth Hargrave". Punchboard Media. 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. Whipple, Tom (March 11, 2019). "Birdwatching game Wingspan flies off the shelves". The Times. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  10. Pyttlik, Olaf (August 17, 2019). "Looking for a new game? Trust the judges". Winnipeg Free Press. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  11. "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.
  12. AnnaMaria (January 15, 2019). "Designing Women: Elizabeth Hargrave". Girls Game Shelf. 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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