When The Strong created the International Center for the History of electronic Games (ICHEG) in 2009, we recognized the important role that coin-operated games played in the evolution of video games. Indeed, the first commercial video game, Nutting Associates’ Computer Space(1971), and the first hit video game, Atari’s Pong (1972), arrived in coin-operated arcade cabinets. The Strong acquired these significant titles as part of a collection of more than 100 arcade games in 2009. More than a decade later, this […]
Remembering Play Scholar and Advocate Joe L. Frost
Joe L. Frost, the renowned scholar and educator who advocated for the importance of free outdoor play, playgrounds, and recess, died on February 17, 2020. Frost was a charter member of the editorial advisory board of the American Journal of Play. In his more than 50 years of research, including writing 20 books and multitudes of articles and reports, teaching, consulting, and service, he became one of play’s greatest champions.
Born in Parks, Arkansas, on March 25, 1933, Frost grew up […]
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The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Persistence of Children’s Play
In a recent American Journal of Play article, psychologist Peter Gray draws on surveys with U.S. children and parents to suggest that in the earliest months of the pandemic lockdown, many children who had increased time to play, more time with their families, and opportunities to contribute constructively to family life, showed improved mental well-being. This research got me thinking about my own children’s play experiences during the pandemic. I thought about how their play endured under difficult circumstances and […]
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Jerry Lawson, Video Soft, and the History of the First Black-Owned Video Game Development Company
By 1980, Jerry Lawson was ready for a change. The 40-year-old electrical engineer had spent most of the 1970s working for Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation in Silicon Valley. In 1976, he led a team of talented engineers who took an Alpex Computer Corporation prototype and developed it into the Fairchild Channel F, the first home video game console to use interchangeable game cartridges. Although revolutionary in concept, the Channel F was quickly eclipsed by another cartridge-based console […]
The Coin-op Industry Legacy of ICE President Ralph Coppola
Have you ever played hockey with miniature stick-wielding players and a thumbnail-sized puck on a three-foot table covered by a plastic dome? If so, you have probably played Innovative Concepts in Entertainment’s (ICE) Chexx (or later Super Chexx) “bubble hockey” arcade games. First released in 1982, the iconic game is, in part, the work of Ralph Coppola (1948–2018), who, along with business partner Jack Willert refined David M. Barcelou’s initial invention and brought it to market. Over the course of […]
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Carol Kantor: The Video Game Industry’s First Market Researcher
How do you know if a game will be a hit or a flop with players? According to legend, video game pioneer Atari knew their 1972 coin-operated video game Pong would be a winner because players filled the test game’s coinbox with so many quarters that it jammed up the machine. As any veteran of the arcade game industry will tell you: “The coin box never lies.” But surely there should be more to it than that? In […]
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Remembering Jerome L. Singer: Psychologist and Scholar of Daydreaming and Play
Jerome L. Singer, the distinguished psychologist who explored the depths of daydreaming, and alongside his wife the eminent developmental psychologist Dorothy G. Singer (1927–2016), became a pioneer in the study of imaginative play, died on December 14, 2019. Jerome and Dorothy were charter members of the editorial advisory board of The Strong’s American Journal of Play. With his hundreds of publications over a half century of scholarship, Jerome Singer helped us better understand the mysteries of human consciousness, […]
Playing with Sidewalk Chalk Brings Us Together While We’re Apart
Museums, schools, gyms, and malls are closed. Basketball games, poetry readings, dance recitals, and playdates are canceled. As a global pandemic casts a shadow over our daily lives, so many of the places that we see as playgrounds—including The Strong itself—are temporarily closed. But, as I was reminded this past week, play persists. A box of sidewalk chalk showed me firsthand the important role of play, and the ways in which it connects us with each other, during […]
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Remembering Educator and Play Advocate Vivian Gussin Paley, 1929–2019
Vivian Gussin Paley, the teacher, author, and advocate for the importance of play for young children, died on July 26, 2019. She was a charter member of the editorial advisory board of the American Journal of Play and The Strong’s Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play cares for a collection of her personal papers. Her pioneering technique of storytelling and story acting in the early childhood classroom earned her a MacArthur “genius” grant in 1989 and influenced […]
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