“I was born in Seattle, and except for 1 year and a couple of weeks, I’ve lived here my entire life. I was brought up playing games like Yahtzee, Monopoly, Careers, Cribbage, Pinochle, etc.

In high school I took a computer programming class and never looked back. I was a business programmer for about 15 years. Around that time I got married and took a year off from working. When my wife got sick of supporting me, I went looking for work, where I found a job programming Gameboy/Gamegear handhelds. I was a game programmer for about 10 years, until a little over a year ago.

Several years ago I stumbled onto a thrift store and found some cheap games. I started grabbing every different one I could find thinking that it might help my game programming. I was up to a couple of hundred games when a friend of mine that knew I was into games introduced me to Peter Sarrett. After Peter introduced me to Euros I was hooked. I started picking up every different euro I could find. I haven’t counted recently, but I’m probably between 2500 and 3000 different titles.

Andrew was born in 1969, and lives in New Jersey with his wife Kathleen and their two daughters Sarah and Julia. He has been playing games his entire life, spending hundreds of hours in his teenage days playing Dungeons & Dragons, Talisman, Risk, and many others. He enjoyed the CCG craze in the 1990’s, playing Magic: The Gathering, Star Wars CCG, Marvel Overpower CCG, and others. He also became a fan of Eurogames
during that time, with the release of Settlers of Catan opening up the door to a whole new universe of fun.

Andrew and his friends spent many hours creating homegrown expansions to their favorite games, and in 1998, Andrew began the long journey of visiting publishers and pitching his games. Although it would be five years before his first game appeared on a game store shelf, there were many industry folks who helped him out along the way, to whom he will always be in great debt.

“I was born in 1952 in Edinburgh, the first son of an English veterinary surgeon and a Scots nurse. My father’s family are from Yorkshire and one branch made a bundle of money in the 1860s as coal masters and bought a village in which a slice of my family still live (Appleton-le-Street, near Malton in North Yorkshire). My mother’s family were dirt poor Scots trawlermen and miners. I am the eldest of five, father of two, uncle to thirteen, and great-uncle to another three (last time I visited). I’m married to a Pole from Warsaw.

I was educated at a Quaker boarding-school and the local grammar-school. I dropped out after school, but bored by this read law externally from London, taking the prize in 1979. I then went to London and took Chartered Accountancy articles, qualifying in 1982. I did a fellowship thesis to the Institute of Taxation in (I think) 1993. I worked for Binder Hamlyn to 1984, KPMG to 1992 and myself thereafter. I specialise in the financial director role for small companies and acting as a consiglieri.

Apart from the gaming, my hobbies are clay-pigeon shooting, and France and the French.

Unusually for someone whose parents are not of the nobility, I am a claimant to the ancient earldom (now Dukedom) of Foppington. Until the matter is decided, I can only enjoy the courtesy title of Lord Foppington (Prince Foppington in France) and occasionally make a joyeuse entrée to my good towns.

Hobbywise, I started out in figures in the sixties under the influence of the Blessed Donald Featherstone. I still collect figures (mostly plastic), though my painting skills have declined since the days when I painted for Garrison figures. I started in boardgames with 1914 (Avalon Hill) and reviewing for SWORD & LANCE in the Seventies. I started my magazine Perfidious Albion back then, and our house style of frank reviews led to trouble with a number of companies and individuals over the years. We published gamers in early PAs (instructions to assemble them), and I’ve designed a few games for publication by others.

“I was born in Koenigsberg, the capital of East Prussia, in 1932. It was a vibrant, culturally active city of about 400,000, the home of the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant and the writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, the subject of the opera “The Tales of Hoffmannâ€? by the French composer Jacques Offenbach. But it was totally destroyed towards the end of World War II, given to the Soviets at Yalta, and is now called Kaliningrad.

When Hitler started World War II, I was seven years old. My father was drafted and sent to fight in Russia where he was killed. Between the ages of seven and ten, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather at his apartment in Koenigsberg. He was an outgoing and very creative person who loved to play games. Not only did he introduce me to games, he taught me the tactics and basic strategies of how to play them well. He enjoyed nothing better than getting beaten by me. This would make him laugh uproariously. He would slap my back and compliment me on my good play. That is how I fell in love with games.

Losing our home in Koenigsberg and my grandfather, who starved to death under the ruthless Soviet occupation, my life journey took me farther and farther west until I wound up in the United States in 1957, and in the Washington, D.C. area in 1958. At that time, the Washington Senators were playing major league baseball at Griffith Stadium.
A friend took me there to watch a game against the Boston Red Sox. A former soccer player myself, I immediately grasped the intellectual superiority of baseball over soccer. The tactics of the game are dictated by the limited options available to the pitcher and the batter, and equally to the fielders, runners, and the manager. The pitcher may possess a good fastball, sinker, and curveball – and the batter knows that. Both need to do battle over those three options, depending on the number of outs, base runners, and the score while at bat. Yet no two games are ever alike. Later the idea came to me that this could be replicated in a card game. Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball Game is the only game design I ever completed and put on the market.

“I’m 41 years old and married with 2 daughters, ages 14 months and 4 years.

My hobbies include boardgaming (of course), RPG’s, ultimate frisbee, reading and playing and watching basketball.

I have worked professionally as a Substitute Teacher, Rock Climbing Instructor, Lifeguard, Congressional Page, Water Polo Coach, Office Temp, Warehouse worker, Restaurant Assistant Manager, Retail Game Store Manager, Bike Shop Manager, Driver and just about any type of flunky you can imagine.

My first published credits were for submissions I made to Steve Jackson’s “Uncle Albert’s” catalog 2036? for “Car Wars”. I did the mine flinger, high explosive rockets and infrared laser among other things.

My published credits as a designer begin with the self-published “9th Generation” post apocalyptic RPG and a board game entitled “Mass Murderer” that I actually published under the name of my girlfriend because I didn’t want to hurt any political future I might have.

In 1992 I officially joined the Adventure games industry by forming Gamesmiths Inc. and debuted my first professional products “Total War” and “Pantheon” bookcase style games. In the following 3 years I released “Robotanks”, “Caesar” and “Monster Derby” as well as a re-release of “Pantheon “ with added materials and a spiffy new cover. In 1995, I published “Throwing Stones” the first ever collectible dice game (beating “Dragon Dice” to market by a few months). Initial orders from buyers caught up in the middle of the CCG craze sold us out in the first month. I racked up a huge debt to reprint just as the returns started coming back from the buyers who’d bit off more than they could chew. Due to a bizarre loophole in time-space law I somehow ended up with more in my garage than I printed altogether. Gamesmiths Inc. went under and I slunked off to nurse my ego. “T-Stones” is still one of my favorite designs.

I released the card game “Lifeboat” through Fat Messiah Games in 2002. It was a legitimate sell out. The fulfillment company that FMG was using, however, never came through with the money.

In 2004, I formed Gorilla Games to release “Battlestations”. Armed with a lot of knowledge about what went wrong with my first game business, Gorilla Games has been successful. I was able to pay out my investors after the first year, and now it’s all gravy. Actually, it’s not a lot of gravy because “Battlestations” is expensive to make and heavy to ship and I’ve got to give a cut of the profits to my brother Jason. It is important to mention Jason in this bio because he has been instrumental in every project other than “Lifeboat” that I’ve released. His primary roles are art director, editor and computer file masseuse, but he is also more involved in design and development than I like to admit to myself.

I’m a chemical engineer by training so my style may be different from others - not as wordy, it’s not that I’m not interested; I’m just not verbose. Of course, this call meant I had to go read other people’s bios to see what you want here.

Born: Oct 1962 in Delaware

Degrees: BS in Chemical Engineering, University of Delaware (Go Blue Hens!), MS in Chemical Engineering, University of Idaho, worked on but never completed PhD Chemical Engineering, University of Maine

Currently reside in Delaware with my wife of 10 years, Carrie, and our two sons, Dan and Wes.
I’ve lived in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Maine, and California (met Carrie there). Started gaming in 1971 with D-Day from Avalon Hill

Game Collection: probably about 1,000 games - I’m a game junkie who likes to read rules for fun..
Counter Clipper - been doing it since about 1980. Started with Modern Battles 2 - I kept moving 10 units when I tried to move one because of the corner nibs.

First Developer Project: Saratoga (GMT Games)

Current Hobby Position: VP of Design, Development, and Events GMT Games LLC - Basically gate keeper for design submissions and head scout to search out unsigned projects.

Favorite Topic/Genre: Don’t have one. I love a good board game no matter the topic or type (Euro/wargame/sports)

Top 3 All-Time Favorite Wargames: We The People, War at Sea, Advanced Squad Leader

Favorite Conventions: WBC (for tournament play) and Spiel in Essen (one huge dealer area and in Germany to boot - can’t wait to go again)

Growing up with my two older brothers amidst the time of the classic Milton Bradley and Parker Brother games is what initially piqued my interest in games. It was the usual, what else do you do on a rainy day? This was soon followed by delving into the Avalon Hill releases. I wouldn’t have called us avid gamers, but we did play everything from Mouse Trap to Blitzkrieg. (Of course, I always lost since older brothers have no mercy.) My true gaming fixation occurred when I was fortunate enough that my college days coincided with the heyday of SPI. Gathering together with a group of friends with the same interest, and all weekend to play (what, study?), were fabulous times. I still remember my first purchase from SPI’s mail order was Patrol. Each of us took turns getting the latest offerings from SPI, and subscribing to S&T, so our collections blossomed nicely. After a few years of gaming bliss, then disaster struck—we graduated.

Fortunately, now many moons later, my college gaming buddies are still within relatively close proximity to my place, and we get together to game once per month. I have definitely supplanted my grognard status with the Eurogame invasion which I wholeheartedly support (to my lovely wife’s dismay who’s not a gamer at all). As my profile on BGG states, even with game play, my small game company, and writing game related articles, my gaming addiction is rarely sated.

I was born in small town Nebraska where the land is so flat they say you can watch your dog run away for 3 days. When I was 8, my parents moved out to Southern Oregon where I lived the typical kid/teenage life. I attended and graduated Drake University, located in Des Moines Iowa, with a double major in history and political science. After living a couple years after graduation in Des Moines, working in the computer/online industry, I moved back to Oregon.

I started at Funagain just before the Christmas season in 2002, and was hired on as a shipping clerk to help with the holiday rush. I spent a few years in Iowa going to college and working there. I finally decided I had enough of Iowa, quit my job, moved back home and needed employment. I saw an ad for a job at Funagain, and I applied. I knew Funagain existed, as I had visited a couple of times when I was home on break during college but was really unaware what Funagain did.

“I’m still on the younger side of 40, having been born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I hold no college degree but am still pursuing my Masters in Life.

In 1986 I began a 6-year stint in the Army National Guard.

I rode the coattails of early MtG and opened a game store in 1995 with two buddies. We closed our doors three years later, and I became manager of one of our competitor’s stores for another three years.

I was born on 14th of May 1959.

In 1984 I graduated from university with a degree in Computer Science. In my IT career I nearly did everything in the field apart from constructing hardware.

Sports:
In the past - table tennis, badminton, volleyball, running / now - jogging

First Boardgames:
Around 1974 I played a lot of Monopoly, Sorcerer’s Cave, Risk, Focus, Big Boss, etc.; after that I played some big ones like “A Might Fortress...”, “Source of the Nile”, and the like.

But it really started with role playing - a lot of role playing in fact. I started with a German RPG named “Midgard” about 1980 and for the following 15 years created a lot of adventures and doing game mastering mostly. I published some adventures for Midgard and some other minor RPG and finally designed a German RPG based on Midgard: Der Autor und sein Werk: Heinrich Glumpler (sorry - it’s in German - I will translate it, if you find it interesting).

At some time during these years I translated the boardgame “Baston” (Faidutti) from (ironically) French to German, and that started my career as translator of English RPGs to German, especially Star Wars, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, Castle Falkenstein and the like ...  I am especially proud of “Paranoia” since it was deemed “untranslatable” :-)

During this time I played a lot of German style board games, including most of the classics; but these games did not start my gamer’s career - they just followed naturally.

With Castle Falkenstein I started Edition Erlkönig (together with Mario Truant) - for the history see this: Edition Erlkoenig - about us.

Last published boardgames: “Feurio!” (self published) and “Zauber Stauber"/"Techno Witches”, the first game that was accepted by a big publisher (Kosmos).

I was born in 1972 in a small city in the north east of Italy. When I was young, I had two gaming passions: Lego (the building construction toys) and board games. In Italy there is not yet, so there was not at all in the past a lot of culture about board games, so the choices for games were not so large. But for a kid it was enough to start a passion for games. I remember that I also loved baseball, but I did not have a chance to play it (I was an announced flop basketball player, not for my skills, but for my height ;-). That reason was the first incentive for designing a game about baseball simulation.

Moreover, I fell in love with Dungeon & Dragons. It was the mid 80’s, and I was showed American teenagers friends of mine’s manual (I lived close to an American military base). I didn’t try to play with them, but I decided to buy my own manual. Unfortunately I never found a way to play it in those years. I started to play seriously, when I discovered HeroQuest, GamesWorkshop’s Space Hulk and Magic the Gathering. It was during my university years that I started to organized game sessions with friends. Magic was a long parenthesis that took a lot of energy (in terms of money and time ;-), so the real discovery of board games was when I lived in Switzerland. In the meantime I earned my degree in software engineer and started to work in Lausanne for a 3D software simulator of robots. In particular it was about the Robocup university competition: a game between robots from universities world wide that each year is held in a different place. My passion for games then continued, while I worked for an amusement ride company. In Switzerland I had the chance to play to the old Ludolier edition of La valeé de Mamouths by Bruno Faidutti. I then bought Castle and Carcassonne and started to play board games regularly both with friends and my wife Barbara.

She was the boost for trying to create a prototype and participating in an Italian contest for non-published games. I won in 2001 and participated again the year after when I won again. This gives me the feeling of trying to start the adventure with Mind the Move in 2003. My wife Barbara was again the real engine of Mind the Move; she organized almost everything from the Essen fair to the production of the game; I concentrated on designing a new game, Fantasy Pub.

Ken holds two world records in official tournament play for the fastest game (bankrupting 3 players in 15 minutes, 38 seconds) and the highest asset 4 player game ($20,882). He enjoys corresponding with fellow players via E-mail, and often plays socially with some of the top players in the country. He is also contacted several times each month over the Internet from players all over the world asking him to settle disputes over the rules and their interpretation, a service he gladly performs for free. The answers to some of your questions might be found in our Monopoly FAQ. (The Monopoly FAQ is a new page and a work in progress. It will be updated frequently over the next few weeks.)

DORK TOWER is a multi-Origins Award winner, while John’s work on games like MUNCHKIN and CHEZ GEEK has also garnered multiple awards. In July 2003, John was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame, the first cartoonist to receive such an honor.

John is co-founder, co-owner and Art Director of OUT OF THE BOX GAMES (producers of the million-plus selling, multi-award-winning APPLES TO APPLES among many other critically acclaimed games). He also created the Games-100 award winning WHAD’YA KNOW party game in 2003.

The mission of Fun Factory Games is to create high quality board games with good game mechanics for the enjoyment of board gamers all over the world. We strive to champion the cause of board gaming, exposing non-gamers to the joy of this hobby and drawing them into the tightly-knit community of board-gamers.

I’m a designer by training and as such am the artwork and graphics coordinator of Fun Factory Games’ products. However, most of my time as the Director of Fun Factory Games is spent managing all the business aspects of the company- from finance and marketing to logistics and order fulfillment.

I was born 06 November 1962 in Munich. I grew up in a village near Munich: Haar. I received my high school diploma in 1981. Community service was (in lieu of military service) in a hospital at Haar. I received professional training for being a civil servant in Cologne, Dieburg (near Frankfurt) and Munich from 1983 until 1986. Actually I am a financial controller at Deutsche Telekom AG.

I got in touch with my wife in 1979, we married in 1988.
The gaming virus came from my parents (with the classics Chess, Card Games) and improved with my wife’s family. They played stuff like Sagaland, Hase und Igel, the german Spiel des Jahres games. This led to ‘new’ games like Acquire (by the way still one of the best games ever) and really new games like Dodge City (from Hans im Glück) that made me go to Essen.

I’m 39, live in southern California, and work for NASA’s robotic space program. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory I’m the deputy manager of the spacecraft mechanical engineering section--the Mars rover inventors (and proud of it!). Growing up with the usual American stuff (Monopoly, Battleship), in 7th grade I discovered wargames in the form of science fiction Microgames. After G.E.V. and Starfire II it was on to roleplaying games (Traveller, The Fantasy Trip, Champions) with new friends in high school. That more or less continued into college, and grew to include Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS. Grad school in Austin, Texas meant SJ Games was right in town, which led to some opportunities as a playtester, playtest coordinator, and eventually contributor and author of a few supplements for GURPS Supers.

After graduating my gaming time dropped way down, where it mostly stayed until Magic:The Gathering appeared. A limited budget kept things from getting crazy with that amazing game, and it indirectly brought me back to boardgaming. In 1996 I started a boardgame group (the Tri-Valley Boardgamers, still going), left it in 1998 for a work move to SoCal and joined Jonathan Degann’s Left Coast Gamers. In 2001 I helped get SoCal Games Days started, and by 2002 I was forming my current group, the Santa Clarita Boardgamers, with Ryan Wheeler in my own town. Most recently I jumped on the latest internet bandwagon, transforming my old blog into the Boardgames To Go podcast.

I have been a board gamer all my life. Early memories include Waddington’s Formula One and Buccaneer. My first big box game was at the age of 11 with Richtofen’s War. Junta was a bi-annual favourite. In 1997 I discovered the German style games and was blown away by the production quality and design quality of the games now available. No looking back now...!

I am one of the founder members of the Scottish Board Games Association and have been its Chairman since its inception in 2001. Its goal is simply to promote our hobby. We run a (now) bi-annual convention called DiceCon (see www.dicecon.com for more details) - the next one will be in June in Glasgow.

I was also the board game convenor at Gen Con UK in 2004 and the main board games representative at World Con in 2005 (the science fiction convention). I occasionally write for Counter magazine. I regularly demo euro style games to any local groups that want a fun evening (you haven’t lived unless you have seen Guides aggressively playing Egg Dance).

In 2004 my brother Fraser and I set up Fragor Games (FRAser and GORdon - Gorfra sounded too much like a government agency !). We self-published “Leapfrog” at Essen in 2004. In Essen 2005 we released our second game “Shear Panic” and had a wonderful experience !

In the early nineties I joined Ducosim, a Dutch wargamers association. With some friends I started demonstrating German family games at the Ducosim conventions. I also started a column on German games in their monthly magazine Conflict Gazet. I think we did a great job as ambassadors for German games, spreading the word and increasing their popularity. Soon thereafter I became a Ducosim board member. My task was organizing their quarterly games conventions. I was also responsible for organizing the Ducosim presence at the Spellenspektakel games show. The Spellenspektakel used to be a smaller Dutch version of Spiel, but in 1996 it had devaluated to a sales event for collectible card games. In 1996 you could find only a couple of board game demonstrations at this so-called family event. In 1997 I claimed a large booth for Ducosim, showing and demonstrating the latest and greatest German and Dutch games. This booth was a huge success and the organizer realized he should move back to board and card games. In 1998 and 1999 I managed almost every board and card game booth on the show and in 2000 the organizer finally took matters into his own hands. 

Ulrich (Uli) Blennemann, age 40. I live in Duelmen, Germany with my much better half Marion.

I studied History, Eastern European History, and Politics at the Ruhr-University Bochum. I founded Moments in History in 1993 and published about 14 products; 2 winning Charles S. Roberts Awards as best wargames. I sold the company to Critical Hit, Inc. in early 1999. After working for a book and magazine publisher I returned to the game publishing business in 2001 with the newly founded Phalanx Games. Here I´m working as Brand Manager.

I was born in 1980, which makes me younger than most people seem to think. I live in Tampere, Finland - Tampere is, by the way, a twin city of Essen, Germany - with my wife. We’ve been married for a year now, it’s been pretty sweet.

I’m finishing up my studies at the University. I’m getting a master’s degree on information studies, which is basically library science. Right now I’m working as an intern at the department. I also work as a freelance journalist. I have a game column in a Finnish home computer magazine (I was recruited because I write a blog on the topic). In addition to that, I translate board games for the flourishing Finnish board game industry.

My gaming biography includes 20 years of video games (mostly computers, starting from Commodore 64, but now I’m mostly a console gamer), roleplaying games, live-action roleplaying (certainly not my thing) and collectible card games. I’ve also played a ton of board games in my childhood, and then got back at them through Catan in 1998 or 1999.

Right now most people would probably know me from Gameblog, which is a board game blog I’ve run for about three years now. It’s been fun. In Finland, I’m better known as the guy behind Lautapelaaja.net (that’s “boardgamer” in Finnish), the foremost Finnish board game site. I’ve been working on that for almost five years now.