Jack Degnan with his game Word on the Street that features his name on the front on the box. (Photo by Jack Degnan)

It’s not a question that comes up when drawing a Get Out of Jail Free card or rolling the red “attacking” dice to capture Iceland or accusing Colonel Mustard of committing a murder in the library with a candlestick, but who came up with the ideas for Monopoly or Risk or Clue?

“I don’t think people even know that there is such a thing as a board game designer,” said Jack Degnan, a 49-year-old clinical researcher and, yes, board game designer from San Diego, Calif. “Monopoly, for instance, is so much a part of our culture and no one knows who created it.”

One reason: nowhere on the 275 million boxes of Monopoly sold worldwide is the inventor’s name disclosed.

But now, small and medium sized publishers, whose games attract hobbyists and enthusiasts, are driving a trend to credit the designer on the box. Influenced by the European board game industry, they say it’s about acknowledging the creativity of their designers and building a marketable brand around them.

In 1988 in Europe – where the board game industry is much older and more mainstream than in the United States ‑ 13 European designers signed the “Coaster Proclamation,” a vow not to sell games to companies that would not print their names. Today, European designers have become well-known public figures, celebrities of sorts.

Award-winning German designer Reiner Knizia, whose games such Ra, Keltis and  Lord of the Rings have catapulted him to “rockstar” status, is a household name, and others such as Martin Wallace, Andreas Seyfarth and Wolfang Kramer have a significant fan following.

Not to be left behind, American-born designers have  begun to demand similar treatment.

When Degnan started designing board games five years ago, he didn’t care if he was paid or not. He just wanted to see his name in cardboard. In October 2009, his game Word on the Street was published by a Wisconsin-based company, Out of the Box. The game marked a turning point in Out of the Box’s 13-year history because, for the first time, the name of an American designer was featured prominently on the front of the box.

“Our European designers always had this requirement in their contracts,” said Leah Sugar, vice president of marketing. “We thought, why not extend it to our American designers?”

Much like writers and actors, many game designers are specialists – in strategy games, war games, party games, fantasy games, role-playing games. Designing can take from a few months to a few years, and typically follows a four-step process: conceiving the idea and theme, drafting of rules to establish the “mechanics,” creation of prototypes such as boards and cards, and play-testing with friends and strangers.

“Designing a game is like writing a book,” said Robert Carty, director of marketing and sales at Mayfair Games, which has featured designers’ names for several years. “It’s important to give credit where it’s due.”

Over the last 15 years, designers have gradually come to be acknowledged as creative thinkers, especially with the advent of “Euro-games.” Characterized by simple rules, complex strategy, less inter-player conflict and high replay value, Euro-games – also called “designer games” ‑ hit American shores in a big way when Mayfair translated and imported The Settlers of Catan in the mid-90s.

The Settlers of Catan by German designer Klaus Teuber was the first "Euro-game" to make it big in America (Photo by Niharika Mandhana/CNS)

Today, American designers of Euro games, such as Alan Moon (best known for his railway-themed game Ticket to Ride) and Thomas Lehmann (designer of Race to the Galaxy) are well-recognized in the industry.

This gradual change in culture also ties in with the fact that the American board game industry is maturing, said John Ward, executive director of the Game Manufacturers Association. Game enthusiasts are beginning to watch their favorite designers as anxiously as horror fans await the next Stephen King release.

“If I like a designer, there’s a good chance I’ll buy his or her next game straightaway,” said Randy Wentworth, 51, a member of the San Diego Boardgames Group.

Wentworth, who works as a cashier, loves playing “On the Underground,” a game about the London subway designed by Sebastian Bleasdale. Impressed by the style and game play, Wentworth is watching the market and online forums like boardgamegeek.com for news on Bleasdale’s next.

The brand value surrounding designers has evolved into an attractive marketing strategy for small publishing companies that don’t have thousands of dollars to pump into advertising. Mike Kilbert, 65, who owns four specialty game stores called The Compleat Strategist, looks to author James Patterson for a parallel. “If Patterson wrote a cookbook, they (his followers) would buy that too,” he quipped.

The games-with-names section at a board game store, The Compleat Strategist, in New York (Photo by Niharika Mandhana/CNS)

At toy fairs and conventions across the country, designers are becoming prominent faces behind the booth, signing boxes and playing their games with enthusiastic fans. “In fact, people are now coming to fairs expecting to meet designers,” said Mary Couzin, founder of Discover Games that organizes the TAGIE awards and the annual Chicago Toy and Game Fair.

Taking this trend a step further, Educational Insights, a 50-year-old company that makes educational games for children, recently started printing bios and photos of its designers. Its word game, Kabam! displays the smiling face of designer Daniel Acuff alongside a story of how he came up with it. “This fits perfectly with our image as a friendly company as opposed to a corporate monster,” said Amy Opheim, the director of marketing.

But the fact remains that “mass market” games like Scrabble, Taboo, Jenga and Apples to Apples, available at mega-stores like Toys R Us and Walmart continue to be known by their fun elements, the colors of their boxes or their big-ticket publishers like Hasbro and Mattel ‑ not their designers.

“There is definitely an old mindset where manufacturers want to promote their brand and not the designer,” said Couzin. “But our movement is gathering momentum.”

E-mail: nsm2127@columbia.edu