Eamon Bloomfield

Eamon Bloomfield is a game designer who lives in Lübeck, Germany, and who owned the board game store Games Unlimited in Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. Many Brits will remember me as I opened a games shop in the late 70's, called Games Unlimited. Later, after moving to Norfolk, I sold my original shop and opened a new one, called Games Corner. this would be around the early 90's. In the previous decade, I contributed reviews, variants and articles to various magazines, like Games & Puzzles, Random and White Dwarf. It was at this time that I started designing games, under the NPD Toys UK banner. In the 80's I had been a leading supplier of trivia questions (Trivial Pursuit had started a new public mania for games with quiz questions in them). I worked first for Paul Lamond and then I was 'picked up' by Milton Bradley UK. That is where I met Roger Ford. He was head of games for MB UK at that time. When he left the company, he 'took' me with him and we worked together, up until his death three years ago. Roger was only interested in good commercial games and that was fine by me. I had ideas, he would turn them into great-looking samples, and take them to the game/toy industry. I was very lucky to have such an agent. Roger could 'open doors', that is, he had the contacts and prestige within the industry and he was always invited to show his portfolio, where ever he went. The mainstream game companies, like MB or Parker in the 70's, would tend not to look at ideas from the public, but they would look at items submitted by a professional 'insider'. Thus, Roger had that 'key'. We didn't only design new games together, we were also asked to do new designs for existing games. Not the rules but just the 'look' of the box. Two I can remember are Race Round Britain and Ghost Party, both for Ravensburger's UK distributor. I still work for this agency, but with Roger's son, Max at the helm.