In May 2025, I had the pleasure of spending two weeks at The Strong Museum as a Valentine-Cosman Research Fellow to conduct research on the collectible card game (CCG) genre. While the field of Games Studies has grown significantly in the last decade, locating texts, artifacts, and archival materials focused on games and play in most institutional libraries and archives is difficult. Given my own research focus is understudied, even within the field, the problem was compounded for me.  
For those […]

Continue Reading about Researching Collectible Card Game History at The Strong Published on:
August 13, 2025

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
If you were watching Jeopardy! on June 23, you saw a game that ended with a strange coincidence. The Final Jeopardy! clue:
In 1896, the Vassar-educated wife of this man wrote, ‘Thousands of dollars may be paid for a copy of Shakespeare’
Contestant Emily Croke was the only one who wrote the correct question: “Who is Folger?”
After being declared the winner, Croke revealed to host Ken Jennings, “That was my […]

Continue Reading about Jeopardy Coincidences Published on:
July 28, 2025

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
After its founding on April 1, 1976, Apple Computer Company had one of the fastest rises ever for an upstart company. Their first computer was named, simply, Apple I, but in June 1977, the company changed the world with the Apple II. With an external shell for containing the components, a built-in keyboard, game paddles, cassettes for saving data, and glorious full-color graphics, the Apple II was credited […]

Continue Reading about Apple II Powered Game Show Published on:
June 30, 2025

How to Win at Checkers, How to Beat Grandad at Checkers, Play Winning Checkers. These are the titles of just a few of the books from Alfred C. Darrow’s checkers library, which recently found a new home at The Strong Museum. The literature covers every aspect of playing a winning game, even How to Lose at Checkers, as it turned out. In my survey of Mr. Darrow’s vast collection, I discovered that I knew nothing about how to win—or lose—at […]

Continue Reading about Losing at Checkers: A Learning Experience Published on:
June 29, 2025

How do you use objects to capture and preserve a concept as abstract as play? For although play stands as a universal phenomenon, it is also a deeply subjective experience, which can look and feel completely different depending on the time, place and people engaging in it. How can anyone, much less an entire museum, adequately convey such a personal and imaginative experience through artifacts in a way that does play justice? In my time as an intern with The […]

Continue Reading about How Play Is Preserved Published on:
June 9, 2025

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
The two-part documentary Pee-Wee as Himself, now available for streaming on HBO Max, chronicles actor Paul Reubens’ unexpected rise to fame as the character Pee-Wee Herman. As the documentary explains, game shows had a small role in the rise of Reubens and his bizarre alter ego.
Reubens’ earliest shots at the big time came from The Gong Show. He and actress Charlotte McGinnis appeared on the daytime show as […]

Continue Reading about Pee-Wee Herman…the Game Show Star? Published on:
May 30, 2025

I had the amazing opportunity through a G. Rollie Adams Research Fellowship to visit The Strong National Museum of Play in order to conduct research for my project on metaplay.
The purpose of this fellowship was to build on my dissertation research, specifically delving further into the theory of metaplay. In my review of the literature, metaplay was poorly defined and inconsistent in its (under)utilization in scholarship since eminent anthropologist Gregory Bateson loosely introduced the idea in a conference paper in […]

Continue Reading about Chasing Brian Sutton-Smith and Gregory Bateson: Retracing Metaplay Published on:
May 9, 2025

The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play sits quietly on the third floor of The Strong above the excitement and joy of our museum guests. Most guests don’t realize that this library even exists or that it is one of the largest study collections on play in the world. The library collection is one central element to the museum’s mission to share the history and many meanings of play. The library helps the staff as they consider new exhibitions, […]

Continue Reading about A Research Library atop The Strong Museum—Powered by Donations Published on:
April 25, 2025

In 1980, American youth raced to their television sets on Saturday mornings, not for cartoons, but to play Space Invaders on their Atari 2600s. Fast forward to today, where players worldwide coordinate across time zones to join massive multiplayer matches in Fortnite’s shared virtual world, using devices ranging from smartphones to gaming consoles. The contrast is staggering in comparison to a mere 44 years ago. This then begs the question: how did what began as a hobbyist pursuit in the […]

Continue Reading about From Space Invaders to Fortnite: A Look Back at the Evolution of Video Gaming Published on:
April 18, 2025