Guests of Honor

Throughout the history of Gen Con, we have been fortunate to have the best and brightest minds in the industry as Guests of Honor at the show.

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Elizabeth Hargrave

Elizabeth Hargrave is an award-winning board game designer whose first game, Wingspan, won the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2019. Since then, she has published several more titles including Tussie Mussie,The Fox Experiment, and Undergrove. She is also co-founder and Treasurer of the newly formed Tabletop Game Designers Association (TTGDA), and an advocate for underrepresented voices in gaming. 

Elizabeth is inspired by a love of nature and a desire to play games that break away from tried-and-true themes. When not gaming, you'll often find her hiking, birding, or collecting mushrooms in and around Washington, DC. For more information, visit Elizabeth’s website.

Eric Lang Guest of Honor

Eric Lang

Eric has been a professional game designer since 1996, and has designed, developed or consulted for over 400 games in that time. He is best known for his epic box board games like Blood Rage and Marvel United, trading card games like Game of Thrones, Call of Cthulhu, Dice Masters, Duelyst, or countless family/party games like Life in Reterra and Let's Hit Each other With Fake Swords.

He has done extensive work with Hasbro, Exploding Kittens, CMON, Fantasy Flight Games, Wizkids and many more. If you see him at the convention, please say hi! He rarely bites.

Featured Events at Gen Con 2025

Nature Systems Game Design

Join Guest of Honor Elizabeth Hargrave as she relates how she goes about translating cool things in nature into the form of a game - then practice brainstorming your own ideas for nature-based games from prompts she provides.

Followed by a Q&A and moderated by Kathleen Mercury

  • When: Saturday, August 2 at 1-2:30 pm
  • Where: JW: White River Ballroom A–B

Event Registration

  • TRD25ND292195 – Game Design Academy Students only (those with a Trade Day badge)
  • SEM25ND292326 – Available to anyone with a 4-day or Saturday badge

stack of board games

Span-Span-Span

Elizabeth Hargrave, David Gordon, & Michael O'Connell discuss how they expanded the Wingspan universe to dragons & fish. What makes these games feel like they are in a shared family, yet different? There will also be a Q&A session with this event.

  • When: Sunday, August 3 at 2 pm
  • Where: JW: White River Ballroom A–B

Event Registration

  • SEM25ND298119 – available to anyone with a 4-day or Saturday badge

Your Perspective, Your Voice, Your Passion

Join Guest of Honor Eric Lang a game designer who has been in the business almost 30 years. Together you’ll will discuss why and how the most important thing you can bring to the craft is YOU. In interactive workshop format with a short lecture, we will explore one seed of an idea and pull it in at least three highly divergent directions based on the background and experiences of different potential authors.


Event Registration for Game Design Academy Students

  • When: Wednesday, July 30 at 11 am
  • Where: Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 2
  • TRD25ND299065 – Game Design Academy Students only (those with a Trade Day badge)


Event Registration for Explorers

  • When: Saturday, August 2 at 11 am
  • Where: JW: White River Ballroom A-B
  • SEM25ND299066 – Available to anyone with a 4-day or Saturday badge