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In 1960, to celebrate the firm’s 100th anniversary, Milton Bradley Company hired designer Reuben Klamer to create a new game. Looking for inspiration, Klamer turned to the company archives where he encountered one of Milton Bradley’s first games, The Checkered Game of Life. It had been the company’s first best-selling success back in 1860 when its namesake, Milton Bradley, owned the firm. A printer and something of an entrepreneur, Bradley produced a “pocket” version of The Checkered Game of Life […]

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November 16, 2010

What games would you include if you had to present the history of video games in 4 minutes? That’s the challenge ICHEG exhibit designers faced when determining what to put in a montage of video game clips from the past 50 years. Each clip lasts about 10 seconds, and starting next week the video is on display in ICHEG’s eGameRevolution show at the Strong.
The CHEGheads had to decide whether to pick the most famous games or the most infamous; the […]

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November 12, 2010

Playing cards are truly ancient game-playing devices. Their earliest origins are traced to ninth-century China, where people marked leaves with symbols and spots for game play. Most scholars believe that similar handmade playthings also appeared in Egypt and India. In Europe, the first handmade cards showed up during the 1300s, but printed decks arrived in Germany with the development of printing itself in the mid-1400s. The decks we recognize today came directly from England with the first colonists. After the […]

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November 9, 2010

The Strong, ICHEG’s parent organization, just acquired the only complete run of Playthings magazine, a great resource for anyone interested in the history of electronic games. Started in 1903, Playthings appeared monthly and for more than a century served as the main publication for the toy and game industry. The magazine highlighted toy trends, publicized new releases, noted what was hot and what was not, and featured in-depth articles on products, companies, organizations, and leaders in the toy industry.
I’ve noted […]

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November 4, 2010

Excitement is building around the Strong as we lead up to this year’s induction of new toys into the National Toy Hall of Fame. The toys in this year’s slate of 12 nominees demonstrate all the qualities necessary to earn a place of honor with other classics. Each finalist has the longevity, recognition factor, and play value that let them rise above the more than 300 other toys nominated by the public this year. I can’t wait to be part […]

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November 2, 2010

Roger Ebert once said “video games can never be art.” He compared video games to competitive sports, because all these activities involve a winner and a loser. In contrast, Psychology Today blogger David Lundberg Kenrick explored aesthetic philosopher Dennis Dutton’s theory of art and applied it to how people view video games. Dutton says art appreciation is linked to several evolutionary factors including depictions of environmental cues, solving adaptive problems, and expression of sexually selected traits. According to Kenrick, all […]

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October 29, 2010

Playing with words and images can be funny: joke-telling, trickery, and satire allow us to be subversive without the repercussions that may accompany more malicious behavior. At seven or eight years old, my best friend and I produced a fake weekly newspaper. We pasted school portraits alongside our bylines and painstakingly crafted gossip columns, “horror-scopes,” quizzes, and bizarre feature stories about our classmates. No matter that the publication went defunct after a couple of issues or that its circulation was […]

Continue Reading about Funny Papers: Spoofing the News Published on:
October 26, 2010

It’s nearing midnight, the witching hour, on October 31. The Hunter’s Moon is shining brightly through your curtains, providing the only light in an otherwise dark room. The house is silent, except for the occasional sound of an owl hooting outside your window. You feel like the only person alive in the world.
No, this isn’t the opening of a horror story, but is the best setting in which to play one of the greatest survival horror video games of all […]

Continue Reading about Video Game Horrors: Surviving Resident Evil Published on:
October 22, 2010

In my May 12 blog, I noted that the museum will soon be embarking on an important project—collecting play histories from all of you. These firsthand recollections and stories will help us bring new life to the objects in the Strong’s collection and will add a new dimension to the meaning of play for us all.
Back in my first blog, I mentioned that I had taken a course in American Folklore in college. That course prompted me to sit down […]

Continue Reading about Capturing your Past for our Future Published on:
October 21, 2010