The Making of Pandemic - the board game that went viral

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It's difficult to understate Pandemic's impact upon board gaming. This game, in which players work together to save the world from an outbreak of deadly diseases, is the most successful cooperative board game of the last ten years, possibly of all time. Released in 2007, its blend of a simple, accessible ruleset framed around a tough, unpredictable puzzle has proved a hit with casual and hobbyist board gamers alike, and proved to both communities that playing together can be just as entertaining as playing competitively.
"I tracked sales of cooperative games before and after the game came out and there was a huge lift in that genre of games that were released as well," says Matt Leacock, the softly-spoken creator of Pandemic, and co-creator of its most recent strain, the mighty Pandemic Legacy. "It was part the reason why I was able to go full-time as a game designer."
The story of Pandemic goes right back to Leacock's childhood, the ideas and experiences that influenced its final form accruing gradually over time. Leacock has been designing games all his life. Growing up in Minnesota, like many of us he used to receive boardgames as a birthday present. But Leacock held boardgames to a slightly higher standard than most children, and was often disappointed with the plastic-heavy, roll-and-move-based products that constituted the bulk of the family gaming market in the eighties. So he'd redesign them into something he did want to play.
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