S9E6: Elizabeth Hargrave

Elizabeth Hargrave is an American game designer whose games include Wingspan, Mariposas, and Tussie Mussie. 

Before becoming a game designer, she did research on health care policy, and her experience with spreadsheets and focus groups helped her design rule sets and incorporate feedback from playtests. Once a publisher licenses a game, the aesthetics get worked out, but the information design often comes earlier:

A lot of card layout — which is so important for the user interface, user experience type stuff — a lot of that in my games has gotten hashed out in the playtesting process. There’s a lot of information on a Wingspan card, and the layout of where everything is on the card, and the hierarchy of what’s bigger and smaller. I was surprised when I got it back from the graphic designer that it looked so similar to what I had sent them.

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If you enjoyed this conversation with Elizabeth, you might want to listen to Ellen’s and Jessica’s earlier conversation with Lisa Nakamura.

This season’s theme music is from Solar Echoes, by Nigel Stanford.

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