Kevin Zucker (game designer)

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Kevin S. Zucker (born June 26, 1952) is an American wargame designer, historian, author, and musician. He started playing wargames as a teenager in La Jolla, California, and soon began designing his own games. In 1971 he helped start Conflict magazine. He later moved to New York to work for Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI), where he became Production Manager and oversaw many Strategy & Tactics issues and boxed games.

After leaving SPI in 1976, Zucker and former colleagues designed a Napoleonic wargame that evolved into Napoleon at Bay, first published as a ziplock game. He formed Tactical Studies Group to publish it, which later changed its name to Operational Studies Group (OSG). Napoleon at Bay was a finalist for the Charles S. Roberts Award in 1978, and its successor Napoleon at Leipzig won the award in 1979. Zucker joined Avalon Hill in 1979 and designed The Struggle of Nations, a finalist for a Charles S. Roberts Award in 1981. He then returned to college to study music, while also designing 1809: Napoleon’s Danube Campaign for Victory Games, a finalist for the 1983 award.

In 1985 Zucker began working with Clash of Arms, producing The Emperor Returns (1986). He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Visual Arts in 1985. Zucker eventually revived OSG as a publisher focused on Napoleonic-era operations, publishing Bonaparte in Italy: The Defense of Mantua and the Quadrilateral in 2000. He was inducted into the Clausewitz Award Hall of Fame in 2003. OSG briefly shut down in 2008 but returned the next year with The Coming Storm, a 2010 finalist for a Charles S. Roberts Award. Besides game design, Zucker has explored flower essence therapy, creating The Flower Essence Game for the Flower Essence Society in 2018.