Denise Chaudhari was the first woman hired for the then-secret Xbox project, where she designed more than just the original “Duke” controller that launched with the system in 2001.
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Digital Resources from The Strong’s Women in Games Initiative
Nolan Bushnell, Shigeru Miyamoto, Ralph Baer, Jordan Mechner, Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, John Romero. These are some of the most recognizable names in the history of video games. They’re also—well, noticeably, all men. Yet, there are obviously plenty of women who have made a huge impact on the games industry—and one of our most recent projects at The Strong seeks to highlight that.
The Women in Games initiative at The Strong began in 2017 as a key program of the museum’s […]
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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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The History of Black Barbies: From Playthings to Liberation
Aria S. Halliday, 2019 Strong Research Fellow
Assistant Professor, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH
On my first visit to The Strong National Museum of Play in February 2016, I came as a Strong Research Fellow. Then, I was on a search for any information about Mattel and its history with Black Barbie dolls. I wondered how and why Mattel created Black Barbies, who was involved in their production, and how those designs were then marketed in ads and magazines. Fantastically, I […]
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Stories from the Stacks: What You Don’t Know about Stormfront Studios
While processing the Don Daglow papers for The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play, I had the privilege of sitting down with Daglow himself when he was in Rochester for an event here at The Strong. Though our time together was short, the stories he told me made a big impression. I think it’s important to document these details that provide so much context for the materials we have in our archive and I’m happy to share these fun […]
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Skater Girls: A Brief History of Female Skateboarders
In 1959, Roller Derby Skate Company released its Roller Derby Skateboard, the first mass-produced skateboard to hit the marketplace. Skateboarders found it easy to recreate the design at home—they used cut-out sheets of plywood and attached repurposed wheels. Hermosa, California saw the first skateboarding contest in 1963 and the sport quickly emerged as a popular activity. Stories of the origins of skateboarding often center around teenage boys in Southern California, while many of the female pioneers are overlooked. […]
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Toxic Times: The NIMBY Satirical Board Game
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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A Brief History of Online Games
For most of human existence our ability to play together has been circumscribed by our physical connection with others in our immediate vicinity, a radiating circle of family, friends, and neighbors, spiced with an occasional get together with more distant associates. As I write this blog, we are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that has mandated new social distancing rules greatly limiting our ability to gather with others. And yet the play must go on. Fortunately for us, […]
A Monopoly on Monopoly: Parker Brothers’ Pursuit of a Game to Call Their Own
The Strong recently released an online exhibit on the early history of Monopoly, and it details the complex origins of one of the world’s most iconic games. What started as The Landlord’s Game, patented by Elizabeth Magie in 1904, eventually became a game called Monopoly that Charles Darrow sold to Parker Brothers in 1935. A lot happened in between those dates, including other versions of the game showing up in homes and stores courtesy of other alleged or unknown inventors. […]
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