Game design is learned by doing. Get a game with a level editor or a scenario maker or whatever and create something. Get some friends to try it. Don’t TELL them how to play. Instead, watch them and see what happens.—Arnold Hendrick
Granting a rare interview in 2009 and reflecting on his career, Arnold Hendrick (1961–2020) described his passion for wargaming and then for game design. His first published game appeared as the game supplement in the wargaming magazine Strategy & […]

Continue Reading about Game Influencer: The Career of Arnold Hendrick Published on:
April 7, 2023

In the Autumn, 1975 issue of Strategic Review, the precursor to Dragon Magazine, Gary Gygax wrote:
John Bobek and Bill Hoyt have used D&D as a teaching aid in grade school classes. Bill has a great little book of accounts of adventures and illustrations of monsters prepared by his 6th graders. Wish I’d have had such luck as a child . . .
Role-play gaming as a formal and specific game type began with the invention and introduction of the original Dungeons […]

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March 3, 2023

The first G.I. Joe action figure, initially named an “action soldier,” appeared in 1964. Even though the series was renamed the G.I. Joe Adventure Team in 1975 to downplay associations with the Vietnam War, for many kids Joe remained a soldier. The origins of the term “G.I.” have been debated but, during World War I, U.S. soldiers were referred to as “G.I.’s.” Cartoonist and draftee Dave Breger is credited with adding the “Joe” in his 1942 cartoon strip “G.I. Joe” […]

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March 10, 2022

On November 4, 2022, the board game Risk joined the other celebrated toys and games in the National Toy Hall of Fame. But that accolade only confirmed what someone like John Crocker knew—Risk is a great game. Crocker served in the United States Air Force during the Gulf War, from 1990–1991. His squad stumbled upon a Risk board game. He said,
“During our time in the Gulf we must have played 50 (heated) games of Risk. Fast forward to our 25 year Gulf war […]

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November 18, 2021

We receive lots of donations every year at The Strong, from single items to accumulations numbering in the hundreds or even thousands. One of the largest collections ever gifted to the museum has been the game collection we received from the founder of Mayfair Games. This collection includes not only thousands of games, but important archives related to a game manufacturer and to game design and marketing. And the collection holds game prototypes which I find fascinating artifacts.
Most of the […]

Continue Reading about Board Game Prototypes and a Gift of Clank! Published on:
September 23, 2021

During the first few years after the introduction of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1973, Gary Gygax, who had the strongest impact on the fantasy elements of the game, denied any direct influences from fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. Many players recognized immediately that numerous D&D character and creature names came directly from the books. But it took until 1977 for intellectual property lawyers from a firm which had licensed the rights to Tolkien’s work to send a cease-and-desist […]

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April 22, 2021

Born in Tanganyika (now the Republic of Tanzania) in East Africa, English national Leslie Scott and her family moved to Ghana, a country rich in wood, when she was 18. She and her family had played a block stacking game since childhood, and she commissioned sets of blocks from a local sawmill. In her 20s, Scott moved to Oxford, England, and brought some block sets with her. Her British friends loved the game to obsession, she says, “but […]

Continue Reading about Block by Block: Leslie Scott’s Jenga Game (or, in Swahili, Zuia kwa kuzuia: Mchezo wa Jenga wa Leslie Scott) Published on:
November 5, 2020

1989 was the year of the Basel Convention, officially named the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. An international treaty designed to reduce the movements of hazardous waste between nations, it is meant to prevent transfer of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries. It does not address radioactive waste. As of 2020, the United States signed, but never ratified the treaty. A 1989 board game, NIMBY “The Game of Toxic Waste,” was custom […]

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September 3, 2020

I recently revisited World Video Game Hall of Fame inductee The Oregon Trail, traveling west with extra oxen, plenty of bullets, and cash to spare. My colleague Laurie was laid up with typhoid, and Jo died of cholera near Independence Rock. I succumbed to the same malady before South Pass, alas! I think I started too late in summer because finding water became an issue, but I still had plenty of bullets. Despite criticism aimed at its biases, […]

Continue Reading about A 1927 Board Game Prefigures The Oregon Trail and Beth Dies of Dysentery Published on:
May 27, 2020