Matt Leacock


Matt Leacock is an American board game designer, most known for cooperative games such as Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert.

Early life

Leacock grew up in Long Lake, Minnesota. He studied visual communication at Northern Illinois University.

Career

Matt designed Pandemic, published in 2008 by Z-Man Games. Leacock had previously worked as a developer of social media and as a user experience designer, primarily in community and communications products for AOL and Yahoo. He switched to designing board games full time in July 2014.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, which Leacock co-designed with Rob Daviau, has been rated very highly among board gamers and by the website Board Game Geek on its board game rankings. His latest game, Daybreak is about climate change, and won The Best Board or Tabletop Game for Impact at the 2024 Games for Change Festival.

Games

According to Leacock, 5% of his design royalty for Pandemic products is donated directly to Medecins Sans Frontieres.