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Earlier this month, The Strong opened its newest permanent exhibit, Game Time!, which traces the history of non-electronic games. The exhibit includes an artifact-rich timeline of games from the 1800s to the present, and also presents collections of some of the most popular game genres, such as race, strategy, party, and wealth accumulation. As excited as I always am to explore a newly completed exhibit, I had a special sense of pride in this one, because a small group of […]

Continue Reading about From Paper to Pixels: Magic: The Gathering Video Game Published on:
April 29, 2013

A few weeks ago, while gathering some toys from The Strong’s collection for a media event, I came across a little infant doll I had never seen before. She sat alone on a shelf in storage, and I would have missed her completely if I hadn’t been looking specifically for dolls depicting African Americans.
 I looked up her record in the museum’s database and found that she was made in the early 1950s by the Ideal Toy Company. Her computer record […]

Continue Reading about The Other Sara Lee: A Doll Story Published on:
April 23, 2013

Henry David Thoreau advised his peers, “Let us first be simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores.” Thoreau’s contemporaries professed similar emotional, individualist, and idealist sentiments. I respect authors of the American Romantic and Victorian period of literature; however, I don’t always enjoy wading through their sometimes ornate language. I recently discovered a few video game titles that provide a new format to interact with […]

Continue Reading about Poe, Thoreau, and Dickinson as Video Game Avatars Published on:
April 22, 2013

In New York, Washington, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Seattle and in many other U.S. cities and cities around the world people have gathered for “Run for Boston” events to offer tribute and support to victims of bombings at this year’s Boston Marathon.

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April 22, 2013

Every day should be Earth Day, of course, but once upon a time, a group of concerned citizens coordinated its very first occasion. Earth Day began on April 22, 1970, with schools across the United States hosting concurrent teach-ins to protest practices polluting natural resources. It’s apropos, then, that my lifelong respect for the environment grew out of my own classroom experiences. And I’m pleased that my job affords me the pleasure of recognizing educational toys that promote environmental stewardship.
 The […]

Continue Reading about Young and Green: My Early Environmental Education Published on:
April 17, 2013

After Lakers’ shooting-guard Kobe Bryant’s left Achilles tendon gave way catastrophically last Friday in a game against the Golden State Warriors, he tweeted from his hospital bed a plaintive question: “how the hell did this happen?” Bryant had dribbled hard to his left, a move he’d performed a million times. But this one time, and in an instant, the body failed him.
Failure came as a shock and a surprise even to a player who had seen plenty of injuries. In […]

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April 16, 2013

The roots of video gaming go deep into the longer history of games, puzzles, and play. Backyard games of cops and robbers predated first-person shooters. Puzzles existed long before designers incorporated them in video games. Pen and paper RPGs proved so exciting and immersive that programmers began creating electronic variations. To celebrate and explore this deep history of game playing and puzzle solving, The Strong has opened Game Time!, a permanent exhibit at the National Museum of Play.
My work with […]

Continue Reading about From Board Games to Video Games Published on:
April 15, 2013

Roll the dice! Deal the cards! It’s time to welcome you to Game Time!, the newest exhibit at the National Museum of Play at The Strong. Game Time! explores the stories behind the non-electronic games that have played an important part in American life and culture over the past three centuries.
Anyone who’s ever competed at Go Fish, Candy Land, or pin the tail on the donkey will discover that many familiar games of today have histories extending back decades or […]

Continue Reading about Welcome to Game Time! Published on:
April 9, 2013

When George Gomez, Vice President of Game Development for Stern Pinball, found out he’d be designing The Avengers (2013) pinball machine, he was truly excited. The 2012 film of the same name was a box office juggernaut, grossing more than $600 million domestically. Tasked with designing the game, Gomez spent a weekend traveling back in time, so to speak, playing each of the machines he’d designed—from Corvette (1995) to Transformers (2011)—with the hopes of, as he told ICHEG, “consciously creating […]

Continue Reading about Assembling The Avengers: From Comic Book to Pinball Machine Published on:
April 8, 2013