Game Designer Bios

John Butterfield

(“Battle of the Bulge”, “RAF”) is a professional designer with long-standing ties to the game industry. His first published release was with SPI in 1978, and in the over thirty years since he has published with Victory Games, West End Games, and Decision Games. John won the 2009 Charles S. Roberts Awards for Best WWII Board Game and Design Elegance, both for his game “D-Day at Omaha Beach”, and is a member of the Board Game Design Hall of Fame. Other notable designs include “RAF”, “Hell’s Highway”, “Voyage of the B.S.M. Pandora”, and “Ambush!” (with Eric Lee Smith). John is widely recognized as one of the premier designers of solitaire games working in the industry today.

When not working on games John also designs museum exhibits and digital experiences for web and mobile. His clients include The American Museum of Natural History, the Children’s Museum of Houston, and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Jeff Dougherty

(War Patrol): See Bio.

Joe Miranda

(“Waterloo”) has been a game designer for over twenty years, working for a number of clients including Decision Games, Hexagon Interactive, Law Enforcement Crisis Management, and the Department of Defense. He currently works with Modern Conflicts Studies Group on modern era simulations. Joe has designed some 200 published wargames, including “Tet Offensive”, “Xenophon”, “Waterloo-20″, “Battle for Baghdad” and “Winged Horse: Campaigns in Vietnam”¸ as well as the “Cyberwar XXI” joint operational warfare simulation for the USAF. He is a six-time winner of the Charles S. Roberts Award for excellence in wargame design, and in 2001 was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Since 1991 he has also edited Strategy & Tactics magazine, one of the foremost publications in the wargaming hobby.

Joe is presently a full-time game designer and magazine editor based in California.

Darin Leviloff

(“Soviet Dawn”) is a game designer and attorney residing in Northern California. In 2008 he pioneered a popular solitaire system with “Israeli Independence”, creating a simple yet deep set of rules that allowed games to be designed around many situations previously considered ‘ungamable’. There are currently 9 solitaire games on the market using the system he created, including “Soviet Dawn”. Darin’s first gaming experience was Victory Games’ “The Civil War”, designed by Shenandoahs CEO Eric Lee Smith, so this collaboration has been in the cards for a while.

In his spare time when not gaming or designing Darin enjoys history, travel, reading, and indoctrinating his three sons into the hobby.

Eric Lee Smith

(Blue and Gray Battles): See Bio.