About

The BGDL is a Community

The Board Game Design Lab is a community built on one central purpose: To help you design great games that people love.

It started off as a podcast in 2016 when I was having a hard time finding the game design information I needed, and I assumed I wasn’t the only one.

Since then, it’s grown into an incredible community of designers and publishers doing their absolute best to encourage and help one another down the design path.

The BGDL has acted as a helpful guide to thousands of game designers from all walks of life, and I firmly believe it’ll help you accomplish any design goal you set.

01

Inspiring

Helping you stay motivated
to finish what you start.

02

Informative

Offering the best resources from the best designers.

03

Empowering

Giving you the tools you need
to become a great designer.

Helping you design great games people love.

The Board Game Design Lab’s Central Purpose

The Podcast

The Board Game Design Lab podcast is a weekly show that interviews designers, publishers, and board game insiders on specific topics.

We don’t waste time talking about games we’ve played lately or get caught up on pop culture. (There are plenty of other podcasts that do those things well.)

Instead, each episode does a deep dive into a specific topic that I hope you find extremely valuable as you progress through your game design journey.

You can subscribe to the show through your favorite podcast app HERE.

And you can check out the huge backlog of shows, broken down by category HERE.

About Me

My name is Gabe, and I’ve been designing games since 2009.

I’ve found that I enjoy designing games far more than I like playing them. (And I really like playing them.) There’s just something about the process of creating a game that sets it apart from other creative endeavors. It combines art and story and experience and engagement all into one.

If you think about it, we’re not really designing games as much as we’re designing “fun engines.” Players put time in, and they get fun out. And it’s our job to make sure the engine spits out as much fun as possible!

Designers have an incredible opportunity to help people escape to faraway lands without having to leave the comfort of their homes. We get to bring joy and laughter and sometimes even betrayal to people we’ve never even met as they experience what we’ve created.

I love that a designer can bring friends and families together around a sacred place: the table. Designers get to help people disconnect from the craziness of modern day life and reconnect with the people who are most important to them.

And we carry a responsibility to make the best games we possibly can. So, I hope this site helps you create great games that people can fall in love with.

A Little More about Me

In 2010, I co-founded the M25 Mission Camp that organizes mission trips for high school and college students to serve the homeless in Atlanta. From 2010 – 2022, I spent two months of the year in Atlanta leading mission teams, and from 2014 – 2021, I spent 10 months a year in Honduras working at a high school in the mountains. Now, I live in a small, quiet town in Alabama.

I’m the author of eight books, and I run my own publishing company.

And I’m also married to an amazing woman, who is also my chief playtester and beats me at my own games 97.6% of the time, and we have four wonderfully rowdy children.

My Games

My Books

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