The Game Design Masterclass was created by veteran games designer James Wallis as a one-off event for the London Games Festival in 2006. Ten years later it has been run on three continents, at games conventions, in universities, for corporations and charities, in many games cafes, and once on an island in a Norwegian fjord. Clearly, people like it.

All the Masterclass tutors are professional games designers with at least two published titles and a decade of experience in the industry.

UK and Europe: James Wallis
‘The godfather of indie game design’, James had his first article on games published in Warlock magazine in 1984 and hasn’t looked back. He’s the co-designer of the modern classic storytelling card game Once Upon a Time and created The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, now renowned as the progenitor of the ‘story game’ genre. Having spent the 1990s running the largest RPG publishing company in the United Kingdom and the 2000s running the games consultancy Spaaace, these days James is executive director of Big Table, the trade body for the games industry in Britain and Ireland. He wrote Everybody Wins, about the rise of modern board games, and co-wrote a history of board games with games legend Ian Livingstone, Board Games In 100 Moves. His latest tabletop game is Seize, designed in collaboration with F1 racing legend Charles Leclerc.

Australasia: Steve Dee
It is with enormous sadness that we report the sudden and unexpected death of Steve Dee at the start of 2026. He was a major force in shaping the Game Design Masterclass and establishing it across Australia. As a game designer he will be remembered for There’s Been A Murder, Relics and many more, and his 2025 book Worldbuilding for Game Designers. We miss him every day.