Matt Leacock

Antoine Bauza

Kelly North Adams

Chris Faulkenberry

Doug Schepers

Board games are exploding in popularity.  With scores of players, huge conventions, countless media outlets, and thousands of games coming out each year, the board game industry is truly a global phenomenon.  But who makes all of the games that fuel this industry?  And how are all of these games designed, developed, and eventually released to the public?  The answer is found in The Game Designers!

Garry Kasparov is possibly the greatest chess player who has ever lived. In 1997, he played a match against the greatest chess computer: IBM's Deep Blue. He lost. This film depicts the drama that happened away from the chess board from Kasparov's perspective. It explores the psychological aspects of the game and the paranoia surrounding IBM's ultimate chess machine.

Popular review site Shut Up & Sit Down follows the creative heads of Fantasy Flight Games as they develop a new edition of their flagship game Twilight Imperium.

Scrabble is experiencing a renaissance. The younger generation have rediscovered the game online - through the copyright busting Scrabulous - and they're having night after night on the tiles.  Alan Yentob sets out to discover why the word game leaves us spellbound, tracing its surprising history, meeting the American tournament Word Freaks, and paying a visit to the SAS-style training camp that the Nigerian government trains their players at.

The classic board game, Scrabble, has been popular for decades. In addition, there are fanatics who devote heart and soul to this game to the expense of everything else. This film profiles a group of these enthusiasts as they converge for a Scrabble convention where the word game is almost a bloodsport.

What's with the sudden boom of independent designers and small publishers creating tabletop games? This film tells their stories.

A deep dive into the world of the thriving board game industry and the creators behind popular games.

America’s favorite board game, Monopoly, is a love letter to unbridled capitalism and the impulses that make our free-market society tick. Contrary to the folksy legend spread by Parker Brothers, Monopoly’s origin involves a radical feminist and a community of Quakers in Atlantic City. If not for the determination of an economics professor and impassioned anti-monopolist, the real story behind the creation of the game might never have come to light.

Randall Hoyt is an aspiring game designer on the road to publishing his first board game. His wry observations about life, gaming and his own struggles with being bipolar drive this story about what it takes to get a board game published.