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Wingspan

Elizabeth Hargrave, who designed Wingspan, giving a keynote in 2021. Image Analog Game Studies, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Wingspan

14 traced influences · 4 sources

dig Wingspan

What it took directly

  1. statedWingspan took from Race for the Galaxy: Hargrave's first question was what that game would be with birds"Wouldn’t it be great if we had Race for the Galaxy but with birds?" Elizabeth Hargrave, to Siobhan Roberts, The New York Times (March 2019)
  2. documentedWingspan's bird cards took from eBird, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's citizen-science database, plus All About Birds and Audubon's online guide"Ms. Hargrave pulled data on North American birds from eBird, a citizen-science project managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She also made use of the lab’s All About Birds website, as well as Audubon’s online guide." Siobhan Roberts, The New York Times (2019)
  3. documentedWingspan's 170 bird illustrations took from artists Natalia Rojas and Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, commissioned by Jamey Stegmaier"Stegmaier honored Hargrave’s commitment to accuracy by commissioning artists Natalia Rojas and Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo to do original bird illustrations, a bright collection of lifelike colored-pencil works." Shaymus McLaughlin, Audubon (January 2019)
  4. documentedWingspan took from Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games, who heard Hargrave pitch "Bring in the Birds" at Gen Con in 2016 and sent it back with changes"One executive, Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games, listened to her pitch for Bring in the Birds, as it was called, responded with a list of suggested changes, and told her that if she revised the game and came back to him, he’d consider it." Dan Kois, Slate (August 2021)
  5. documentedWingspan took from Hargrave's own charts of the birds she had spotted"Her personal charts about different birds she’d spotted were the inspiration for the game," Ryan Teague Beckwith, Hyattsville Wire (April 2019)

What it learned to do

  1. documentedWingspan's scoring learned from a spreadsheet of 596 birds by nearly 100 columns, with formulas valuing each bird"Then she built a spreadsheet. At its most extreme, it ran five hundred and ninety six rows by nearly one hundred columns — sorting, for instance, by order, class, genus, habitat, wingspan, nest type, eggs, food and red-list status." Siobhan Roberts, The New York Times (2019)
  2. documentedElizabeth Hargrave (as a designer) learned from Marc LeBlanc's eight kinds of fun, a list she keeps taped to her wall"taped to the wall facing her is a list of the essential elements outlined by Marc LeBlanc" Siobhan Roberts, The New York Times (2019)
  3. documentedWingspan learned from play testers, among them Matthew O'Malley, Franklin Kenter and the "Break My Game" group at the Board and Brew Café in College Park"said Matthew O’Malley, a game designer and one of Ms. Hargrave’s perpetual play testers." Siobhan Roberts, The New York Times (2019)
  4. documentedElizabeth Hargrave (as a designer) learned from years running focus groups and reading data as a health policy consultant"she worked as a health policy consultant, often running focus groups, and her experience with analyzing data and interpreting consumer response was also crucial to Wingspan’s development." Dan Kois, Slate (2021)

The tradition it sits in

  1. statedWingspan answered board games about castles, trains and medieval villages"At one point we placed a moratorium on games about castles," Elizabeth Hargrave, to Dan Kois, Slate (2021)
  2. inferredWingspan comes from engine-building board games, a line the Times traces from Monopoly to Terraforming Mars"Wingspan bills itself as a card-driven, engine-building board game: players start with limited strength and slowly assemble their gameplay mechanism, which becomes more powerful with each turn. A classic example is Monopoly, in which players accrete real-estate empires, although hobby gamers would point to more sophisticated examples, such as Terraforming Mars." inferred — Wingspan bills itself as an engine-builder and the Times names these as examples; Hargrave is not quoted naming them as sources

Where the whole form comes from

  1. documentedElizabeth Hargrave learned from Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride, on a 2005 ski trip with friends from her church"One of the friends had brought a selection of board games—Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride," Dan Kois, Slate (2021), from his interview with Hargrave
  2. documentedWingspan comes from Hargrave's birding, with a life list of 755 birds"That comes from Hargrave’s history as a nature lover and birder" Dan Kois, Slate (2021)
  3. statedWingspan comes from the human urge to collect, sort and admire, which its publisher saw in birds"There’s something about birds that instantly captures a human desire to collect, sort, and admire." Jamey Stegmaier, Stonemaier Games, in an email to Audubon (2019)

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