Larry Levy:  Designers of the Year – Part 1

A few years ago, Joe Huber and I began a correspondence about the concept of a Designer of the Year award.  Such an award would honor the game designer who had the best body of work in a given calendar year.  As is often the case, Joe and I had very different takes on this subject and we’ve each come up with our own separate lists.  I thought I’d spend the next few weeks talking about mine.

The concept of a designer producing more than one or two games a year is a fairly new one.  Consequently, an award for the best body of work doesn’t really make much sense until the mid-nineties.  However, I decided to extend it backwards in time anyway.  It was fun and interesting (I love investigating the history of gaming) and it allows me to honor some great designers of the past.  Hopefully, it will give you a bit of a feel for how gaming has progressed over the years.

As for when the awards start, I originally began with 1990, a watershed year for a number of reasons (not least of which is the first DSP award and Reiner Knizia’s first published games).  The effects of the German gaming revolution are fully felt during this time and there are a large number of designers with bulging portfolios each year.  But then I found there were earlier years I wanted to consider, which brought the process back further and further.  I basically kept this up until the string of interesting years ran out, by which time I had gone all the way back to 1958!  That far back, good games are harder to come by, but even more significantly, there just aren’t that many games for which we know the designers.  So I’ll use 1958 as my starting point, almost 50 years ago.

Here are the rules for the award which I’ve imposed on myself.  Select the designer with the most impressive body of work for that calendar year (not necessarily the best game!).  I’ve excluded classic hardcore wargames (I don’t know the field that well, and besides, they have their own set of awards), but everything else is eligible:  board games, card games, children’s games, role playing games, collectible card games, dexterity games, etc.  Toss ‘em all in the mix and see who has the best creations.

The criteria used includes the quality of the games, how well received they were at the time of their release, and how well they have stood up to the test of time.  The first item is my mostly my judgment call, strongly influenced by the opinions of others I respect; the second item is based on how well the game performed in Game of the Year awards, as well as commentary from players of that time period; and the last item can be estimated by current play lists and ratings.  But I didn’t spend too much time researching any of this; I usually had a pretty good feel for how the games ranked in these areas without checking.

In the earlier years (the ones I’ll list this week), there are quite a few joint awards.  That’s because with the passage of time, it gets harder to differentiate between close decisions.  I also wanted to honor as many deserving designers as possible.  Beginning with 1990, I actively tried to come up with a single award winner as often as possible, but even then, a few joint winners slipped in.

The format for each year is as follows.  I list the year, the winning designer, and the significant games he released that year.  In almost every case, games are listed in the year they were first published.  If a game is italicized, it indicates that it is a redesign of an earlier game or that it is strongly based on another design.  I’ve also indicated the awards or honors that the included games have achieved.  The letters S, D, and I show that the design won Game of the Year honors from the Spiel des Jahres (SdJ), Deutscher Spiele Preis (DSP), or International Gamers Awards (IGA), respectively.  The lower case letters s, d, and i show that the game was nominated for the indicated award, or, in the case of the DSP, that it finished in the Top Ten.  $ shows that the game won a special award (for example, Most Beautiful or Best Children’s Game).  Finally, H shows that the game is included in the Sumo/Counter Hall of Fame and h shows that the game is included in the latest version of the Games Magazine Hall of Fame.

This week, I’ll be listing the winners from 1958 to 1989, along with a little commentary for each year; I’ll cover 1990 to 2004 next week.  For many of these early years, the winning designer only has a single game released during the year.  There are even a few years where there was simply no qualified game, so no awards are given for those years.  With the later years, you see multiple designs appearing with more frequency, and the award truly starts to look like a Designer of the Year, rather than a Game of the Year.

I’ll be very interested to here comments on these choices.  In fact, that’s the principal reason I’m presenting this list, to see what kind of response it generates.

Here, then, are my choices for Designer of the Year.

1958:  Allan Calhamer – Diplomacy(Hh)
What better way to start than with this great and remarkably innovative classic?  1958 was a good year for games of conflict, as it also saw the release of Charles Roberts’ Tactics II.

1959:  Albert Lamorisse – Risk(h)
More games of conflict, this time from France.  Yet another one debuted that year:  Stratego (designer unknown).

1960:  Joli Kansil – Bridgette(h)
Bridgette is considered by many to be the best two-player Bridge variant ever created and was one of the first games selected to the Games Magazine Hall of Fame.

1961:  S. Spencer/F. Murray – Broker
A personal favorite and a design well ahead of its time.  This American stock market game was republished in Germany as Das Börsenspiel in 1967 and has had many other European versions since.

1962:  Sid Sackson – Acquire(sdHh)
` ` ` `Alex Randolph – Twixt(sh), Oh-Wah-Ree
How appropriate to honor the two Grand Old Men of gaming together, along with the introduction of the great 3M Bookshelf line of games.  Acquire is as highly regarded as ever and Twixt remains a very popular abstract.  Oh-Wah-Ree is a Mancala variant that permits multiplayer play.

1963:  Sid Sackson – Focus(S)
Domination, the German version of this abstract, gave Sackson his only SdJ in 1981.  The American version of Focus was originally published by, of all companies, Whitman!

1964:  no award

1965:  Jack Cavanaugh – Mr. President
This 3M game is one of the best political games ever designed.  1965 also saw the introduction of the popular Beer ‘n’ Pretzels game Nuclear War (by Douglas Malewicki).

1966:  John Reilly/Thomas Divoll – Win Place & Show(H)
Another member of the 3M product line, this well designed Day at the (horse) Races is a great family game.

1967:  Sid Sackson – Sleuth, Bazaar
Two more highly original designs by the Master himself.  Sleuth remains on top of many deduction lovers’ lists, while Bazaar is a trading game that appeals to those who enjoy logic puzzles.

1968:  Sid Sackson – Venture, The Case of the Elusive Assassin
Here’s that man again.  Venture is an innovative set collecting card game with an economic element and includes one of the first appearances of the “wertungâ€? random scoring system.  Assassin is a big box game from Ideal that includes many elements of Sleuth.

1969:  Frederick Herschler – Thinking Man’s Football, Blue Line Hockey
Herschler was the only regular 3M designer besides Sackson and he eventually had seven games released by the publisher, most of them dealing with sports.  He is probably best known for his 1997 Oh Hell variant, Canyon.  1969 also sees the release of Sackson’s brilliant book, A Gamut of Games.

1970:  Sid Sackson – Monad
Sackson scores again with this weird trading card game (like Bazaar, all the trading is done with the bank).  Monad really defies description, but like so many of Sid’s games, it’s unique and innovative.

1971:  Sid Sackson – Executive Decision
“Sid’s Decadeâ€? ends with Sackson’s sixth Designer of the Year award in ten years.  He earns this one for this game of psychology and double guessing hiding inside the staid exterior of a business game.

1972:  Joli Kansil – Montage
This great partnership crossword game didn’t make much of a splash when it was first released, but in recent years it’s been getting the acclaim it deserves.

1973:  Philip Orbanes – Cartel
` ` ` `Alan Turoff – Boggle
Two co-winners with very different kinds of games.  Cartel is a wonderful and innovative financial game decades ahead of its time.  Boggle is one of the great word games and remains extremely popular.

1974:  Francis Tresham – 1829(H)
` ` ` `Dave Arneson/Gary Gygax – Dungeons & Dragons(Hh)
An amazing year for games.  Besides the creations of the two winners, both of which have spawned entire genres and changed the face of gaming forever, the following notable games made their debut in 1974:  Hare and Tortoise (David Parlett), Kingmaker (Andrew McNeil), Rail Baron (R.S. & Thomas Erickson), McMulti (James St. Laurent), Rise and Decline of the Third Reich (John Prados), and quite a few others.

1975:  Rudi Hoffman – Janus(s), Minister(s), Ogallala, Schützenfest
Hoffman, who had been designing games in Germany for over a decade, has perhaps the first true “body of work� year for a designer, with two eventual SdJ nominees and a couple of other notable games.

1976:  no award
In the midst of all this gaming plenty, amazingly there were no notable designer games released in 1976.

1977:  Bill Eberle/Jack Kittredge/Peter Olotka – Cosmic Encounter(dH)
Eon’s maiden release is one of the most influential games of all time and still widely played.  Steve Jackson (the American one) also has a great debut, with the publication of OGRE and Melee.

1978:  Eric Solomon – Black Box, Spellmaker
Veteran designer Solomon has his best year, with the classic two-player deduction game Black Box (inspired by a famous physics experiment) and the fantasy themed Spellmaker.

1979:  Bill Eberle/Jack Kittredge/Peter Olotka – Dune, Darkover
The Eon trio strikes again, with Dune (commissioned by Avalon Hill), one of the best themed games of all time, and the very bizarre Darkover, based on the novels of Marion Zimmer Bradley.

1980:  Sid Sackson – Can’t Stop(s), Corner
Sackson earns his seventh, and last, Designer of the Year award, thanks to Can’t Stop, probably the greatest dice (and push-your-luck) game of all time, and the abstract two-player set-collector Corner.

1981:  Francis Tresham – Civilization(Hh)
One of the most celebrated and best designed games of all time.  A design that has touched just about every gamer who was active at the time of its release.

1982:  Alex Randolph – Enchanted Forest(S), Ghosts(s)
` ` ` `Steve Jackson – Illuminati, Car Wars, G.E.V., Killer
Randolph wins his only SdJ and also adds the delightfully “pureâ€? psychological game Ghosts.  Jackson has his best year, including the megahit Car Wars and the delightfully subversive Illuminati.

1983:  Reinhold Wittig – Riombo(s), Wir Füttern die Kleinen Nilpferde($)
Wittig, who produced distinctive and gorgeous games throughout the eighties, snares the award with an SdJ nominee and a Beautiful Game award winner.  The most notable game of the year is Scotland Yard, but it’s essentially a group effort (with half a dozen designers credited as the “Ravensburger Project Teamâ€?).

1984:  Larry Harris – Axis & Allies(h), Conquest of the Empire, Broadsides and Boarding Parties
The big news in gaming was the release of Milton Bradley’s Gamemaster Series, and three of them were designed by Harris, based on games he designed earlier in the decade.

1985:  Alex Randolph – Top Secret(s), Jago(s), Velono
Randolph has another big year, with a trio of well regarded designs that include two SdJ nominees.

1986:  Karl-Heinz Schmeil – Die Macher(sdH)
` ` ` `Michael Gray – Shogun, Fortress America
For many, the German game revolution begins with Schmeil’s brilliant Die Macher, although it doesn’t gain a truly large audience until the 1997 remake.  Milton Bradley’s Gray, one of the great names in American gaming and an early proponent of German gaming, scores with two popular additions to the Gamemaster Series.  The award could have easily been a three-way tie, as Tresham’s 1830 also appears this year, but I chose to reward the first 18xx game, 1829, instead.

1987:  Wolfgang Kramer – Auf Achse(S)
Although Auf Achse hasn’t really aged that well, I’ve chosen to go with the SdJ winner in a less than stellar gaming year.  It’s fitting, as Kramer is clearly the best designer in the world during the late eighties.

1988:  Alex Randolph – Hol’s der Geier(s), Inkognito($)
` ` ` `Urs Hostettler – Kremlin(s)
Randolph takes his fourth award, thanks to a highly influential filler and a quirky deduction game.  Kremlin is the most popular gamer’s game of the year and still gets some play today.

1989:  Rudi Hoffman – Café International(S), Maestro(s)
The 65-year-old Hoffman is clearly the pre-eminent designer of the year, with a popular SdJ award winner and another nominee to his credit.

So those are my choices.  What do you think—am I on target or full of crap?  I’d love to hear people’s opinions, particularly if you have some good alternatives.  I’ll continue this list next week, with my Designers of the Year from 1990 up to the present.

Comments:

< Back Home