S6.E6 | Game Changer: Rewriting the Rules

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A board game looks simple. A set of pieces, a set of rules, a way to win. But every game is a system. It teaches us what to value, how to compete, and what success looks like. So who gets to design the game? Welcome to What Does It Profit? A show where we bring you stories about the social and moral value of economic life. I'm Dr. Dawn Carpenter. This season of What Does It Profit is all about dignity at work. Who gets to create, who gets to design, and whose contributions are taken seriously. In this episode, we're looking at board games, a multi-billion dollar industry, but less than 1% of board games are created by women. For the next 2 episodes, we'll hear from some of the women who are turning the tables on the industry. A board game night in 2005 changed Elizabeth Hargrave's life.

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I was on a ski weekend with some people I knew from my Unitarian church and I am not really a skier because I grew up mostly in Florida, and someone had brought a bunch of board games and I ended up spending a good chunk of that weekend just playing a bunch of the things that we think of as gateway games to this deeper hobby. So games like Carcassonne and Catan.

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She and her friends loved board games, but found the themes of dragons and castles to be repetitive. So her husband Matt suggested she create a board game about birds, a topic she knew a lot about.

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My brain just would not let it go. Like, as soon as he said that, I was just like, oh, what would that be like? And, uh, so I just like randomly made some little scrappy cards out of cardstock and pencil and started moving stuff around on the table trying to figure out what a board game about birds might look like.

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Elizabeth, an avid birder, had never designed a game before. At the time, she was working as a health policy consultant in Washington, D.C. But she thought, why not? And spent the next decade creating, testing, and pitching to publishers what would become Wingspan. The basic premise of the game is you're a birdwatcher trying to attract birds to your network of nature preserves. Each bird is represented by its own illustrated card with facts that are linked to their abilities.

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It was a lot of pulling eBird data. eBird collects data from birders who report lists of all the birds they're seeing while they're out birding. And you can sort of download their data in different ways. And so I was trying to get a sense of what are the most common birds in different parts of North America so that like if you were playing from sort of any part of this area, you would recognize a good chunk of the birds as ones that are like common where you live. And then I mix in ones that are endangered or that are just cool.

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Wingspan flew off the shelves. To date, the game has sold over 2 million copies, and it is one of the most awarded board games of all time. Its success made it possible for Elizabeth to focus on game design full-time.

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I think that that's like part of the resonance of Wingspan is that like so many people have some sort of personal connection to the birds that we don't necessarily have to like so many of the other things That board games are about.

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Because of Wingspan, birders have become gamers, gamers have become birders, and more women have gotten to work in the industry. The cards in Wingspan were hand-drawn by Ana María Martínez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, and Beth Sobel. This makes Wingspan the rare board game created by a women-led team.

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Historically, board gamers have been heavily skewed male, like, you know, '80s Dungeons and Dragons and war games and things, and who was invited into those spaces. And it just takes a long time to dig out of that. And so, you know, to the extent that designers are all gamers before they're designers, then if the population of gamers is skewed, then the population of designers will be skewed.

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Last year's data from BoardGameGeek, a large crowdsourced site where users can rate board games, shows just how skewed the industry still is. Of the top 500 games, only 5 on the list were designed solely by women or non-binary designers, and 28 of the games were designed by gender-diverse teams. But the industry is changing slowly. Since Elizabeth began designing, she says she has seen more women entering the field and getting their games published.

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It can kind of snowball as we start to get established. I think things will change more and more quickly. I hope they will. It's fun to have company.

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Elizabeth's story proves that women aren't just players, they're game changers. And we can't forget those early pioneers: Eleanor Abbott, creator of Candyland; Leslie Scott, who invented Jenga; and Elizabeth Magie, who patented the Landlord's Game, a precursor to Monopoly that's anti-capitalist. These aren't girl games. They're games created and designed by women that everyone can enjoy. Games may look like play, but every game is a system. It teaches us what to value, how to compete, and what it means to win. The deeper question is not just who plays, but who designs the rules. Because the people who design systems shape how the rest of us live, work, and measure success. Elizabeth Hargrave and the women who came before her remind us that women have always been part of that story. And when new voices begin to design, the game itself begins to change. So let us never forget to ask: in the work that we do, the things we buy, And the investments that we make, what does it profit? What Does It Profit is a production of the Solidarity Economy Workshop at Georgetown University. The show is hosted by me, Dr. Dawn Carpenter. Jordan Gasparet is our senior producer.

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Production assistance from Sophia Arachetti. Our engineer and designer is Mark Busch. Thanks to our Season 6 intern, Abby Treppes. Original music for What Does It Profit? was composed by Nick Pennington. Additional music provided by Epidemic Sound. And a special nod to Eva Bode and the moms at Busy Mom Media. Support for What Does It Profit? Is provided by the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor and the Capital Applied Learning Lab at Georgetown University. You can learn more at whatdoesitprofitpodcast.com.