Game Designer Hall of Fame

Spiel des Jahres 2024 nominations are just around the corner (watch this space for our annual predictions), but I wanted to take this opportunity for a look back over the history of the award. Specifically, I wanted to see which designers have been most successful at the Spiel, Kennerspiel and Kinderspiel des Jahres awards.

The first red meeple was given out in 1979. Since 1989, the jury also awarded the Kinderspiel des Jahres for children’s games, initially as an annual special award, and from 2001 as its own award with the blue meeple. (In what follows I count those special awards as regular Kinderspiel des Jahres winners.) Finally, in 2011, the Kennerspiel des Jahres was introduced for (slightly) more complex games with an anthracite meeple, again following a couple of special awards with a clearly similar intent, but less steady, so they just stand as special awards on their own in the statistics.

Games

Overall, the jury included 831 games on its various longlist across the three categories over its 45 year history, with (naturally) 45 Spiel, 35 Kinderspiel and 13 Kennerspiel des Jahres winners.¹ This is the overall number of games:

A quick word about the data: As usual, I rely on BoardGameGeek (BGG) for data about the games and their designers. If a game is not in the database or if the designer entry is wrong, the statistics here will necessarily be wrong too. I’ve collected data about the different Spiel des Jahres awards manually over the years, so that’s another potential source of errors. If you’re reading this from the future, I should point out that the statistics here should be complete up to and including Spiel des Jahres 2023.

The current format of having a longlist (which become the recommendations), out of which three games are selected for the shortlist (which are the nominated games), out of which one game will be given the award, has been in place since 2011 with the introduction of the Kennerspiel des Jahres. Formats have varied throughout the decades and I’ve tried to map them to the current situation as much as possible.

I’ve already mentioned that the first 12 Kinderspiel des Jahres winners were really special awards. There was another special award given during the first 18 years between 1979 and 1997 for “beautiful games”. Since this article is meant to focus on designers, not artists, it felt like those games clutter the statistics somewhat, so I treated them as recommendations rather than special award winners.

So without further ado, let’s take a look at the designers.

Designers

Over the course of 45 sessions, the jury has mentioned games by 566 different designers. By far the most successful designer is Wolfgang Kramer who has won Spiel des Jahres five times (four of those were co-designs) and Kinderspiel des Jahres once between 1986 and 2000. During that time period, Klaus Teuber won Spiel des Jahres four times, so during those 15 years Wolfgang & Klaus shared 11 awards between them. The record for most games on the longlists is held by Reiner Knizia with 36 games, which makes it even more surprising that he has “only” won two awards: one each of Spiel des Jahres and Kinderspiel des Jahres – both in 2008 (and both largely forgotten today, unlike his other timeless designs).

Overall, 94 designers have won at least one award (111 if we include special awards), with 21 of them winning more than one (22 including special awards). Only 8 of those have won their awards in more than one category: Wolfgang Kramer, Inka & Markus Brand, Alex Randolph, Reiner Knizia, Bruno Cathala, Antoine Bauza and Steffen Bogen. To this date, no designer has won in all three categories.

Looking at the shortlists (including winners), the jury nominated 217 different designers over the years. Of those, only 22 have been nominated in more than one category and just 4 designers can claim the distinction of being nominated in all three categories: Wolfgang Kramer, Antoine Bauza, Rüdiger Dorn and Wolfgang Warsch.

As mentioned earlier, the jury has recommended games by 566 different designers, with 68 of them appearing in more than one category and 9 in all three. In addition to the 4 mentioned above, those are Inka & Markus Brand, Reiner Knizia, Bruno Cathala and Roberto Fraga.

I’ll leave you with some more detailed statistics below. I hope you enjoy those and they help you bridge the time until the nominations are announced on June 11th. 🤩

Designer records

Overall

• Most games on the longlist: 36
  • Reiner Knizia
• Most games on the shortlist: 13
  • Wolfgang Kramer
  • Reiner Knizia
• Most wins: 6
  • Wolfgang Kramer
• Most games on the shortlist without win: 5
  • Jürgen P. Grunau

Spiel des Jahres

• Most games on the longlist: 25
  • Reiner Knizia
• Most games on the shortlist: 9
  • Wolfgang Kramer
• Most wins: 5
  • Wolfgang Kramer
• Most games on the shortlist without win: 5
  • Rüdiger Dorn

Kennerspiel des Jahres

• Most games on the longlist: 4
  • Alexander Pfister
  • Stefan Feld
  • Simone Luciani
• Most games on the shortlist: 3
  • Stefan Feld
• Most wins: 2
  • Inka Brand
  • Markus Brand
  • Andreas Pelikan
  • Alexander Pfister
• Most games on the shortlist without win: 3
  • Stefan Feld

Kinderspiel des Jahres

• Most games on the longlist: 13
  • Kai Haferkamp
• Most games on the shortlist: 5
  • Reiner Knizia
  • Heinz Meister
• Most wins (incl special award): 3
  • Marie Fort
  • Wilfried Fort
• Most wins (main award): 2
  • Alex Randolph
  • Marie Fort
  • Wilfried Fort
  • Heinz Meister
  • Manfred Ludwig
  • Klaus Zoch
  • Peter-Paul Joopen
• Most games on the shortlist without win: 3
  • Jürgen P. Grunau

Designers in different categories

Longlist (incl shortlist and winners)

• 9 designers appear in all 3 categories
• 68 designers appear in at least 2 categories
• 566 designers appear in at least 1 category

Shortlist (incl winners)

• 4 designers appear in all 3 categories
• 22 designers appear in at least 2 categories
• 217 designers appear in at least 1 category

Winners

• 0 designers appear in all 3 categories
• 8 designers appear in at least 2 categories
• 94 designers appear in at least 1 category (111 incl special awards)

Winners per category

Spiel des Jahres

• 342 designers had a game on the longlist
• 105 designers had a game on the shortlist
• 58 designers won the award (incl special awards)
• 48 designers won the main award

Kennerspiel des Jahres

• 95 designers had a game on the longlist
• 52 designers had a game on the shortlist
• 20 designers won the award (incl special awards)
• 14 designers won the main award

Kinderspiel des Jahres

• 206 designers had a game on the longlist
• 86 designers had a game on the shortlist
• 41 designers won the award (incl special awards)
• 40 designers won the main award

Spiel & Kennerspiel des Jahres

• 22 designers had a game on both longlists
• 9 designers had a game on both shortlists
• 1 designer won both main awards

Spiel & Kinderspiel des Jahres

• 55 designers had a game on both longlists
• 15 designers had a game on both shortlists
• 5 designers won both main awards

Kennerspiel & Kinderspiel des Jahres

• 9 designers had a game on both longlists
• 6 designers had a game on both shortlists
• 2 designers won both main awards

Spiel, Kennerspiel & Kinderspiel des Jahres

• 9 designers had a game on all longlists
• 4 designers had a game on all shortlists
• 0 designers won all main awards

Designer Hall of Fame

This table includes designers with at least 2 wins or 5 nominations across all categories. Each entry shows the number of wins / nominations / recommendations for that designer in each category. Special awards are added in parentheses.

Download the full results here: designers and games. As always, you can find the code for this analysis from GitLab.

See also

• Thoughts on Spiel des Jahres
• Spiel des Jahres 2024 nominations
• Spiel des Jahres 2024 predictions
• How long is a game of High Society?
• Spiel des Jahres 2023 winners