Jamey Stegmaier, right, photographed with his partner Megan Sisco, has been designing board games for as long as he can remember. “It was a fun hobby,” he explained, “that turned into something much more.”
Stegmaier, who’s from Chesterfield, VA,, came to St. Louis because of the Japanese studies program offered at Washington University. He graduated in 1999 with a degree in International Business, and decided to remain in St. Louis landing a job with his alma mater.
He was fascinated by the idea of running his own business, so in 2012, while still working full-time, Stegmaier launched a Kickstarter campaign for his game “Viticulture” (shown above) to see what would happen. The experiment went so well that he soon released other games, and founded Stonemaier Games, a tabletop-game publisher that has been so successful that the company was included in a December 2023 article in The New Yorker titled The Personal, Political Art of Board-Game Design..
Kansas City native Megan Sisco, who double-majored in mathematics and science at Kansas State, describes herself as a “nerd at heart.” After graduation, she worked remotely for a baking ingredient company, and in 2019 she moved to St. Louis where many of her friends were living. Mutual board-game playing friends introduced Stegmaeier and Sisco and now they host game nights twice a month in their CWE condo.
Sisco explained: “It’s a great way to get together with friends, and a lot more social than playing video games to unwind, as we did in college.”
Stonemaier Games, which has sold over 5M games, publishes one or two games each year. Stegmaier has created approximately half of the 16 games in the company’s portfolio. He describes himself as the “publisher,” working with designers to make their games as good as they can be. He also connects to a world-wide board-game community on Facebook Live, offering advice to those who want to get into the business.
Stegmaier now has 7 full-time employees, 4 in St. Louis, and others in Oregon, Nevada, and Florida. Their responsibilities include retail, distribution, and customer service. The company’s web designer is based in the U.K.
Stegmaier was project manager for Elizabeth Hargrave’s wildly popular game Wingspan. Hargrave, a nature enthusiast, wondered why there weren’t more games about the natural world and thus created Wingspan, which centers around North American birds and their powers. Stegmaier helped with Wingspan’s game planning and worked with his graphic designers to pull the project together. The completed files were sent to Panda, a board-game manufacturer in Canada, which makes all of the brand’s games.
Wingspan, which was released in 2019, is a big seller at Left Bank Books. It’s offered in 30 languages and has sold 2M copies. The game also garnered an endorsement from the Audubon Society. Stegmaier gives back to the community by making donations to causes related to the games. For instance, Apiary, a game about wild bees in space, was created by an amateur beekeeper, Connie Vogelman. Donations have been made by Stonemaier Games to pollinator.org, which promotes the health of pollinators, and other related organizations.
There are aspects of game design that seem obvious after the fact, but are a big part of the initial planning. For instance, board-gamers are very picky about how games are packaged. “They are very tactile and I get it,” Stegmaier explained. As a result, there are companies that make organizational pieces for table-top games, see an example at the top of the photo above. There are also important considerations about the size of the box and how much room the game occupies on the table. All of that information, including how long it takes to play the game, is included on the website.
Stonemaier Games are what are called “medium weight strategy games.” They require a decent amount of reading and a little bit of layered strategy. I think anyone can play, but there are some stepping stones,” Stegmaier said. “I hear from parents whose 8-year-old plays Wingspan for instance, though the suggested age range is 10 to 12 and up. The average player is 30 to 49 years old.
Most of the games also have digital versions, which attract hundreds of thousands of players around the world. Scythe and Wingspan are the most popular.
Megan Sisco has loved doing puzzles since she was a child, so Stegmaier suggested she create puzzles based on the Wingspan theme. The results, shown above, were released a couple of years ago in 500, 1000, and 1500 piece versions, $22 each. They will be in stock at Left Bank Books soon. In the meantime, the neighborhood book shop can take orders by phone (314) 367-6731, or they can be purchased on Stonemaier Games website.
When this Central West End couple isn’t working or playing board-games with friends, they said they love walking around the neighborhood, exploring its historic architecture, and the many different restaurants that are just a short distance away.