Making a video game can take months or even years to create from start to finish. It isn’t always a straightforward process either: character designs change, stories get rewritten, and entire gameplay mechanics are removed or added throughout the development process. But sometimes all the hard work, sweat, and tears that go into making a game doesn’t end with a product on the shelf. Sometimes, a game’s release is cancelled.
In 2016, Interplay Entertainment founder Brian Fargo donated a […]
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Switches and Screens: Researching Video Game Interface Design
In Will Wright’s game design documents for SimCity (1989), he wrote on his graph paper pad, “Interface?” Around the word, Wright drew a box, as if to highlight it. On the rest of the page, there are a random assortment of notes: “Fixed / Mobile Cursor,” “Navigate / Edit / Tool Select.” On the page, Wright also drew a series of arrows that show early design possibilities for the buttons used in SimCity to rotate buildings or move […]
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Documenting the Skylanders Story
It began with a phone call from Paul Reiche III last summer.
I’ve known Paul since hearing him at the Game Developer’s Conference in 2012 tell the story of the creation of the Skylanders line of toy-to-life video games. I loved his enthusiasm for video games, tabletop games, and toys, a passion that fueled pioneering work in those fields from his time at TSR in the 1970s working on Dungeons & Dragons to his many years in the video game business; […]
Game Saves: Preserving the First LGBTQ Electronic Game
Floppy diskettes are an incredibly volatile medium. Available in multiple shapes, sizes, and formats, the magnetic disks were often used, rewritten, and eventually tossed aside as new methods of data storage arrived. Disks by their very nature are disposable, and younger generations may only recognize a floppy disk as a save icon. With some experts estimating the lifespan of a floppy disk at 10 to 20 years under the best conditions, many pieces of software, including games, are at risk.
Caper […]
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An Expansion Pack for A History of Video Games in 64 Objects
In our new book from the World Video Game Hall of Fame, A History of Video Games in 64 Objects, we faced a challenge. Which objects should we include? The Strong museum, home of the World Video Game Hall of Fame, has hundreds of thousands of objects related to video games in its collections, and so we needed to include just the right mix of artifacts that were important, helped tell the broader history of video games, and would engage […]
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More Stories from the National Toy Hall of Fame
Get out your library cards and alert your book club! As far as we’re concerned, National Toy Hall of Fame season never ends, making it a fine time for another edition of Toy Stories: Tales of the Games and Toys We Love. Last year, I recommended books about 11 Toy Hall of Fame inductees and their inventors. This year, dive into four “old-timers” and one new inductee with this fresh reading list!
LEGO, Class of 1998
Named “Toy of the Century” in […]
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Oral Histories in the Archives
In this age of sharing every idle thought online, younger generations might find it hard to believe that publicly documenting one’s own life wasn’t always the norm. The most ancient forms of memory were kept in the oral tradition, and the keepers of records were individuals entrusted with the task of memorizing details and transmitting them through recitation to others. As writing systems developed and literacy rose across the globe, the written record became the rule (and oftentimes, entire groups […]
Tournaments, Contests, and International Scoreboards: A Prehistory of Esports in the 1980s Arcade
I had the privilege of digging through the archives at The Strong museum during the last week before Labor Day 2017. The collection had a great deal to offer my research interests, which center on game studies generally and competitive gaming (esports) specifically. The research project I had proposed focused on investigating the prehistory of esports. Today, a class of competitive players earn a living by excelling in tournaments for games such as League of Legends and Super Smash Bros. Melee, […]
A History of Video Games in 64 Objects
How do you tell the history of video games?
For more than a decade, The Strong has been collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of video games. Over that time our collection has grown to more than 60,000 video games and related artifacts, as well as hundreds of thousands of video game-related items in our archives. We’ve showcased them in exhibits, featured them in online content like our timeline of the history of video games, and made them available to scholars […]
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