Hello and thank you for visiting David Gordon Game Design!

Designing

Building games is a joy, a process that combines elements from many of my passions. Inventing environments and experiences for players in games activates the creative expression I used in my music composition days. Crafting, honing, and applying strategies and tactics draws on my chess, poker, and billiards background. Iterating worlds, from pieces to boards, employs tactile skills from my model train building experience. And writing clear and concise rules makes use of my years of teaching and writing manuals and workbooks for my tutoring business, Pinnacle Prep (www.pinnacleprep.com).

I am thrilled to have had the great fortune to sign several games with publishers. I’m eagerly awaiting one of them to hit the market and will post news here if / when that happens. I’m also actively pitching several games to publishers. I will post news here if / when games are signed.

Here’s a nice review of two of my games at a conference: review! Here’s a recent panel I did at Nonepub: panel! And here’s a wonderful blog post about my games by Phil Amylon: post!

Appreciation

I’m so thrilled to have the opportunity to devote my time to making games, and I’m very proud to have worked on ideas for about 60 games in the last 4 years.

I have so many people to thank for supporting, helping, and tolerating me in this pursuit. First and foremost, thank you Jen, Ben, and Ari Gordon. Your patience is immeasurable, and your incredible ideas, insight, and ingenuity are consistently invaluable! You and the following people have been so helpful, bravely play testing games that often weren’t quite ready yet!

 • Jonathan Gilmour

• Tam Myaing

• Gil Hova and the entire NYC-Playtest group, in particular Tam Myaing, Chris Chan, Daniel Newman, Orion McClelland, Scott Gratien, Rocco Privetera, Catherine Stippell, Spencer McCormick, and Aaron Wilson.

• The online community of designer play testing groups, including Remote Playtesting, Heavy Championship Playtesting, and Virtual Play Testing. Thank you for providing such helpful feedback, especially from Bryn Smith, Phil Amylon, Fertessa Allyse, Chris Backe, Andrea Pincombe, Ryan Horricks, Jack Rosetree, Max Seidman (and for your invaluable tech support and scripting!), Andy Juell, and so many others

• Joshua Hilson (my brother)

• The Pinnacle Prep team members I’ve wrangled into testing,in particular, Megan Williams, Dhaya Ramarajan, Myles Heffernan, Dennis Corsi, Cici Ogden, Corinne Wilkinson, Sadi Mosko, Chad Small, Forrest Cardamenis, Lydia Gallant, Maggie Langhorne, Lizz Brady, Willa Tracy.

• Friends who’ve endured some rough testing Simon Ying and Emilie Deschamps, Emily Wong, Amanda Cooper, Amy Meckler, Josh Gaylord

• Others in the industry who have supported my designs and provided invaluable play testing and feedback include Jamey Stegmaier, Danielle Reynolds, Ian Moss, Lucas Kohn, Carolyn Stallard, and Joe Bisz

• All the publishers who have signed my games (listed with the games)!

• My parents Ron Gordon, Sallie Gordon, Danielle Hilson, and Doug Hilson

and so many other friends and family.