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Interview. Matt Leacock
“Creative Ways to Solve Problems”
By ANDREAS BECKER and MANUEL FRITSCH
Bronze Age in 2010, and Forbidden Is land in 2011. Another game he created with Rob Daviau was also nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres: Pandemic Lega cy: Season 1 in 2016, and there was a special award for Pandemic Legacy: Sea son 2 in 2018. And let’s not forget this year’s second nomination for Kennerspiel, which is for Ticket to Ride Legacy: Leg ends of the West (designed with Daviau and Alan R. Moon).
The theme of Daybreak is quite unusu- al for a board game. How and when did you come up with it?
Matt Leacock: It happened during the pandemic. There was a lot of bad stuff going on in the world, including climate
change. I wanted to better understand what caused it, so I began researching the subject and reading a lot about it. How did you decide that this complex topic could be transposed into a game? I really felt that this could be a strong theme for a game. However, many books paint a very bleak picture. This made it very challenging to figure out whether there was even a solution to this problem. Luckily, I met Matteo Menapace very ear- ly in the development. Together, we ana- lyzed and discussed the information. And in the end, we arrived at the conclusion that there are solutions to the climate cri- sis. It gave us both hope.
The theme is serious and has a grim outlook, yet the game is entertaining.
I
highly topical theme. Yet, that’s just what Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace managed to pull off. So it’s only natural that Daybreak was the front-runner in the competition against a host of strong contenders for Kennerspiel des Jahres.
In a way, this award was overdue; Lea- cock was on a path to become the Martin Scorsese of the gaming industry. Indeed, his games were nominated for Spiel des Jahres for three years running: Pandemic in 2009, Roll through the Ages: The
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t’s not often that you have a very good
game that also seamlessly integrates a
Jury statement
Daybreak is brilliantly conceived, exciting and educational, and it demonstrates the value of collabora-
tion: if everyone pulls together, we can still overcome this global crisis. The two designers have also man- aged to present the highly charged, topical subject of climate crisis in such a way that it comes across without finger-pointing. The projects and research on the cards are based on real life research projects, which invites people to further research and discuss this subject, even after the game.
Photos: Thomas Ecke / Format C / Spiel des Jahres e. V.
Matt Leacock, nominated for Daybreak and Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends
of the West, at the award ceremony in Berlin, along with co-designer Matteo Menapace (the watermelon sticker— showing support for Palestinian civilians (see also Editorial)—on his t-shirt was removed after the photo was taken). Axel Kaldenhoven, managing director of Schmidt-Spiele, sits behind them.
