2023 Award Judges

Leon started in the board game industry in 2014 at Nice Game Publishing and Nice Game Shop where they brought the best game from East Asia to a wider audience. In 2019 he joined Korea's largest board game distributor and publisher Korea Boardgames.

At Korea Boardgames he is a game developer and project manager having overseen the production of games like Four Gardens, Nirvana and our just announced game Terra Pyramides.

Chris Kirkman is founder and President of Dice Hate Me Games, publisher of great titles like Brew Crafters, VivaJava: The Coffee Game, New Bedford, and The Great Heartland Hauling Co. He lives in Chapel Hill, NC, and teaches graphic design and journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He enjoys experimenting in the kitchen, a good dirty martini, and says "y'all" a lot.

Brote de Juegos (roughly translated as Sprout of Games) is the brand name for the games created by siblings María and Enrique. They are from Sagunto, a sunny coastal and historical Spanish city. Maria works as an architect and graphic designer, and Enrique teaches maths to teenagers. They are members of LUDO, the Spanish association of game authors. Since 2015 they have designed some “18 card games” that they offer as print-and-plays.

Nate Murray is the Director of Development for Liithos Entertainment and Publisher of Erasmus Fox. He has worked in tabletop gaming for a decade and was a founding member of the IDW Games team.

A former scientist, Caezar started Alley Cat Games by creating games for the scientific community before changing course towards creating games that were simply fun. The driving force behind Alley Cat Games, he works tirelessly to make their games a reality.

Marcus Lehner lives in Boston, where he is a proud member of the Game Makers Guild. Marcus has been hooked on making games ever since he made his first one as a wedding gift for his sister (whose husband can be entirely blamed for introducing our family to Catan). Now he designs games to play with his family and friends that try and bring novel and exciting experiences to the kitchen table. When not making games, Marcus can be found working as an engineer, answering absurd hypothetical questions on his podcast, and laughing at his own terrible puns.

Chad founded 25th Century in 2016 which is headquartered in Atlanta Georgia. To date the company has released 23 games and 2 puzzles, with over 10 new releases planned for 2023. When not playing games, he is an avid comic reader and craft beer enthusiast. And despite the sometimes quite drastic ups and downs, is a diehard Atlanta sports fan. He lives with his wife and their four rescue animals, two dogs and two cats: Toby, Chloe, Peaches, and Alley.

Eric is owner of Talon Strikes Studios. He is the designer of Talon Strikes Studios' Vinyl and the producer of Cardboard Edison’s Cobras. He lives in Oyster Bay, N.Y., with his wife, Meredith, and two sons, Ari and Eli.

Curt Covert is the owner of Smirk & Dagger Games and the designer of Cutthroat Caverns, Hex Hex, and Nevermore, just to name a few. For the past 20 years, he has been shaking up game tables with unique game experiences, eye-grabbing table presence and a desire sweep you up in the world of the game.

Shari Spiro is the founder of Ad Magic / Breaking Games, printer of Cards Against Humanity and Exploding Kittens, and publisher of games like Game of Phones and Game of 49.

Tim Eisner founded Weird City Games in 2012 and has spent the last decade designing a wide range of games. His published games include: Wonderland’s War, Tidal Blades, Leaf, Canopy, March of the Ants, The Grimm Forest, and Aquicorn Cove. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he spends the majority of his time designing and playing games, teaching game design, and jumping in rivers.

Tim Blank is a staple in the Boston game design scene. He is a Vice President and board member for BostonFIG, the world's largest indie game convention, as well as President of the Game Makers Guild. In addition, he has taught Game Design at both Northeastern University and MIT since 2019. His published games include Oh My Gods!, Bumuntu, and 2022's Yosemite. Aside from board games, Tim also designs Escape Rooms. He has been a judge for the Cardboard Edison Award since 2017.

Matthew Legault is Gaming Handyman, Translator, Adaptor, and Project Manger at Montreal-based board game publishers Scorpion Masqué and Randolph. Although his primary duty is translation and editing (rulebooks, game components, marketing, web-content, etc.), he also works in game development.

Before his current position, Matthew worked in international distribution with F2Z Entertainment, and then Canada-wide distribution with Asmodee Canada. He holds a post-graduate diploma in Game Design from the Université de Montréal, speaks fluent French, and plays guitar and sings. Any requests?

Geoff Engelstein is an award-winning table-top game designer, whose titles include Space Cadets, The Expanse, and Super Skill Pinball.

He has written several books, including Achievement Relocked, and Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms. The latter now serves as the basis for the mechanism directory on Board Game Geek.

He is also a noted podcaster. From 2007 to 2021 he was a contributor to the Dice Tower, the leading table-top game podcast, with a series on the math, science, and psychology of games. He also hosted the first 200 episodes of Ludology a weekly podcast on game design beginning in 2011.

Geoff is an adjunct professor of game design at the NYU Game Center, and has spoken at a variety of venues, including GDC, Pax, Gencon, Rutgers, and USC. He has degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is currently the president of Mars International, a design engineering firm.

M and Corinne Yeager are a dynamic duo. Married for 9 years. Parents for 8 years. Design partners for 8 years. CE judges for 1 year. After years of the creating, testing, shelving cycle, their first published game, Exploring Galapagos, is coming out soon from Button Shy.

M (@CrimsynSeraph) has been tinkering with game design since she was little, always trying to improve games like Chess, Risk, and Axis & Allies. This has informed her designs and has led to an opportunity to create expansion content for Flick Fleet by Eurydice Games. She is passionate about inclusion and intersectionality in board gaming, especially in the LGBTQIA+ community.

Corinne (@CoffeeLghtWght) is always looking for ways in which familiar mechanisms can be inverted or stripped down to their simplest forms. This design ethos has greatly informed her own design, the game system Pop of Color (a Cardboard Edison submission in 2021), coming out from Side Room Games.

They love that relationship building is the primary goal of the board game community and have really come into their own as designers and developers because of those relationships. Their main goal is to help others find their fit in the industry.

Ian Zang is the co-founder of Gravitation Games, publisher of Please Fix the Teleporter, and won the Mensa Select award for his game Constellations in 2018. He lives in Michigan with his wife and African Grey parrot.

Edwardo Rodriguez, aka Eddie, is a husband, a father to two boys, and is your friendly neighborhood Jack of all trades Master of none/pin enthusiast over at Breaking Games. He's been a judge for the Cardboard Edison Award for quite a number of years. This year, Eddie will be returning as both a First Round Judge and a Finalist Judge. Eddie is looking forward to seeing what games are coming to the table for 2023.

Rich has had diverse game design work over the last two decades. He has designed over 30 published or public event games across mediums. From digital audio adventures (Twisted Tales series for Grabbit Entertainment), transformational games for social good organisations (Hohi 1816 tabletop game, End-danger mega game for Four Paws International, etc), games for street festivals, large events, and personal hobby games for tabletop (Award nominees Dirty Little Secrets, Skip Jack, etc).

Rich is a regular speaker at academic and industry conferences on games and gameful learning, recently the Games Based Learning Conference, Play by Play, and the NZ Association of trainers and developers conference.

Finally, in his role at the University of Auckland Rich works in the leadership of the faculty of Creative Arts and Industries to shape teaching and learning strategies and - yes - smoosh in playful design and games.

Dave Chalker is the award-winning game designer of Get Bit! and the Sentinel Comics RPG, as well as games including Heat, Thief's Market, and Thunder Road: Vendetta. He has over 20 years of game industry experience, during which time he's playtested for dozens of companies, and serves as an advisor to the Unpub board. He lives in Maryland with his wife and their cocker spaniels.

Dr. Wictz - designer of Robotech: Reconstruction and You Fool. Dr. Wictz also writes a blog on boardgame design at dr.wictz.com

Diane Sauer owns a business restoring old pinball machines and is a game designer and co-owner of Shoot Again Games. Her games include Conspiracy!, Pinball Showdown, Bigfoot vs. Yeti and most recently Born to Serve.

Nick Sauer is a scientist and game designer and has a collection of over 3,000 games. He is co-owner of Shoot Again Games. His games include Mystery Rummy Al Capone, Conspiracy!, Looting Atlantis and Born to Serve. In addition, he has worked on a number of role-playing games.

Jack Berkenstock Jr., MHS is the Executive Director and one of the founder's of The Bodhana Group a non-profit based in York, PA that uses table top board games and RPG for education, skill building and therapy. He has been an active role player and board gamer and role player for over 40 years. Bodhana believes in the inherent power of games to not only entertain, but also inspire and develop fundamental skills. They provide training and consultation for therapists, educators, and the community on intentional use of the tabletop hobby.

Matteo has been managing Volpe Giocosa https://www.volpegiocosa.it since 2016, with the aim of spreading the word of hobby board games in Italy.

We are interested both in the strategic aspect and in the educational one, passing through mathematical, social and historical themes.

From the inexperienced player to the more addicted ones, we believe there is a game for everyone.

Nicole Amato has been designing board games for a decade. She has four published games and has worked on dozens more as a designer, developer, writer, and editor. She is currently the Games Outreach Lead at Kickstarter.

Paul Peterson started his career as a game designer in the card mines of Wizards of the Coast in 1994. There he worked on almost a dozen collectible card games including Magic: the Gathering, Pokemon, and Harry Potter. It is also where his first card game, Guillotine, was published. Since then he has bounced back and forth between the worlds of electronic and tabletop gaming, and his credits include games for PC, mobile, and Facebook as well as numerous card and board games such as Smash Up, Unexploded Cow, and as one of the designers for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game.

Sarah Shipp is a game designer and freelance theatre technician out of Dallas. She has been designing board games since 2018 and blogging about board game design since 2019.

Rob and Sean Moore have been creating instructional/gameplay/review videos for a couple of years now, often focusing on bringing comprehensive coverage to otherwise overlooked games. They both have experience in playtesting prototype games such as The Butterfly Garden and Indulgence, and they have been judges for the Cardboard Edison Award since 2017. Outside of the gaming hobby, Rob is a historian/teacher and Sean is a filmmaker/musician.

Jeff Johnston, Pair of Jacks Games, designs fun family games, ones you'd love to play with your favorite nieces and nephews. He's worked with publishers like Gamewright, Breaking Games, and Education Outdoors.

Scott has helped design top-selling video games including: Pac-Man World, the Maximo series, God of War, Drawn to Life series, Darksiders, and Warhammer 40K. A former Disney Imagineer, Scott designed board games (Pantone the Game, Rayguns and Rocketships), authored books (Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design and Swipe This! The Guide to Touchscreen Game Design) and is featured in the documentary film Gamemaster (2020). He teaches at USC's prestigious school of interactive media and the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles where he hosts/produces their popular Masters of Game Design speaker series.

Mike Bonet is the host of the Who, What, Why game design podcast and the former co-host of the Ninja Vs Pirates Podcast. He's been podcasting off and on for 10 years between both shows. Mike also owns lots of games and generally plays them when he can. He frequently loses to keep things interesting in the game.

Dave Beck (he/him) is a game designer and owner of Paverson Games. an indie board game publisher located in Wisconsin, creators of Distilled and the forthcoming Luthier. When Dave is not designing games in his basement lair, he is working at the University of Wisconsin-Stout as a Professor of Game Design and the Director and Associate Dean of the School of Art & Design, the largest higher education art and design program in the upper midwest. In his spare time, he loves spending time with his family, even if they don't love to play board games as much as he does.

Lauren is a tenured assistant professor of astronomy and physics at Grand Rapids Community College. She served as co-host of the Playability Podcast for two years, judges several competitions including past Cardboard Edison Awards, playtests with local designer groups and at game conventions, and has designed games of her own (for more info, see cgsunit.com/games).

Mac is a game designer and editor by avocation and a non-profit tech professional by vocation.

Eric Yurko writes and does board game photography for What's Eric Playing?, a board game review website which just celebrated 1000 reviews! When not doing that, Eric also serves on the American Tabletop Awards Committee, a group of US-based media and content creators working to find and promote great board games released in the US each year. You can find him on Twitter @whatseplaying or on Instagram @whatsericplaying.

Liam Millard is the Lead Editor at Alley Cat Games.

Chris Chan is an art director who grew up in Rochester, N.Y. He attended New York University and pursued playwriting for a time. Chris began his game design journey while working the late shift in a Greenwich Village chess store. He started exploring non-chess game designs while attending Virginia Commonwealth University for art direction and advertising. Chris' advertising career introduced him to the friends with whom he would co-design his first published game, The Night Cage by Smirk & Dagger Games. That process also introduced Chris to the hobby game community which he's thrilled to be a part of now. When he isn't designing board games, Chris is probably out running or taking photos.

David Masnato is a community manager, graphic designer, and co-organizer of Protospiel Online. When he's not making or playing games, David loves to cook, crochet, and listen to music. He's also the proud parent of an enormous orange cat named Baran. His first game, Roux Mates, was the winner of the 2022 Cardboard Edison Award In-Person Track.

Sydney Engelstein has been working with games for over ten years. Currently, she is the Director of Game Development at Indie Game Studios, heading up the design of such projects as Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition and Aeon’s End. Aside from her own designs, she also handles acquisitions for the company, and loves to find exciting new prototypes to bring to life. This is her third year judging for Cardboard Edison, and she can’t wait to see all the great designs this year!

Alex Cutler is the Head of Development for Pandasaurus Games, as well as a game designer whose published titles include Expancity, Team 3, and Before there were Stars. He lives in Wake Forest, N.C. with his wife Nicole and son Jack. He enjoys good beer, bad puns, and moderate success.

Precious Eria Wonah is a board game enthusiast from Nigeria.

Dale holds a master’s degree in digital game theory and design and has applied that knowledge to the field of tabletop gaming. He has developed games for Mythic Games and Thunderworks Games including Roll Player: Fiends and Familiars, Solomon Kane, Reichbusters: Project Vril and Hel: The Last Saga.

His movement from digital to analogue gaming could in part be due to his partner and primary gaming companion, who is blind. The greater tactility of tabletop games allows him to share his passion with greater accessibility. Or at least that’s what he tells himself as he orders an increasing volume of ‘deluxe’ components.

In his spare time, he enjoys creating home-brew expansions as well as providing advice and feedback at his local playtest meetups; of which one published success is FlickFleet by Eurydice Games. He is based in the UK with his partner, two children and black Labrador guide dog who is the real brains behind his work.

Heather is the CEO of 9th Level Games. 9th Level is a small indie game design and publishing house known for blending humor, great mechanics and fun for over 20 years! Heather has designed tabletop board games and roleplaying games including Schrodinger's Cats, Pavlov's Dogs, Meeple Party, and Venture Village! Find out more at 9thlevel.com or follow @9thlevelgames.

Karl is a part-time engineer / part-time board game designer and developer from Melbourne, Australia. After finishing university in 2014, Karl stumbled across modern board games, and since then has thrown himself deep into the hobby. Since winning the Cardboard Edison Award in 2021, he has 5 signed games, and has led development on many up and coming games In addition to designing and developing, Karl is also on the committee of the Tabletop Game Designers Australia, a not-for-profit advocating and facilitating Australian tabletop game design development and commercialization, and is a founding member of the GV Gamers Guild, a not-for-profit running weekly meetups to play games and an annual board game convention known as ShepparCon. When not playing with cardboard, Karl enjoys learning from his wife and son, Laura and George.

Kellen Freeman is a librarian and maker from central Ohio who was once told he's too nice for the internet. In the gaming world, he serves on the board of the Unpub organization and designs 3D printed and laser cut game inserts for board games from time to time. You can find him on Mastodon @kellenfreeman@mastodon.world and more information can be found at kellenfreeman.com.

Kristy and Jared have been playtesters for over 10 years, having tested games by hundreds of designers including many of their other fellow judges. And as to date, they have been thanked by more designers than they have left crying.

3rd Generation Nerd. Long-time board game enthusiast, board game designer.

John du Bois is the designer of Avignon (the game, not the city in France), a speech pathologist who uses hobby games as speech therapy materials, and an ardent supporter of gnomes as the best playable race in any game ever, including ones in which technically gnomes are not a playable race. Yes, even that one.

Connor Wake is the designer of the 2019 Cardboard Edison Award winner Umbra Via (now published by Pandasaurus games). He's a software engineer by day and a game designer the rest of the time living in Seattle, Washington.

Hana is the youngest member of Cardboard Edison. She is an avid gamer who also loves to read, play soccer, cheer and do activities in the gifted and talented program at her school.

LilyAnne has been playing games since she could walk and is a member of Cardboard Edison. She also enjoys running track, cross country, cheerleading, being active in student council, National Junior Honor Society and drama club.

Chris Zinsli is co-founder of Cardboard Edison. Outside of the gaming industry, he is a journalist working in podcasts.

Suzanne Zinsli is co-founder of Cardboard Edison. She is a board member for Unpub. Suzanne is also very active in her local community, being a Girl Scouts leader, board member of the elementary school PTO, and trustee of the high school PTO.