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 […]
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Welcome to Game Time!
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 […]
Assembling The Avengers: From Comic Book to Pinball Machine
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 […]
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Tired of the Same Old Treadmill at Work? Try a Treadmill?
You might remember a famous scene from Charlie Chaplin’s movie Modern Times (1937) that features Chaplin’s character, The Little Tramp, at his impossible assembly line job. Two wrenches in hand, he tightens nuts on the parts that fly by, hour after hour. Conscientious to a fault, and falling behind during a sneeze—the line stopped for no one!—he dives after the parts he’s missed and is drawn deep into the factory’s mechanism where he literally becomes just a cog in the […]
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West. Honey West: Female Spies in Television and Toys
Though Bond girls and seductive villainesses have been the most memorable women of the spy genre since Dr. No premiered to American audiences in 1963, not all ladies have found themselves relegated to supporting roles. Surely female characters engaged in espionage have James Bond to thank for sparking the 1960s spy trend and the fantastic toys it generated. But women’s greater contribution to the field is too sensational to keep undercover.
Smartly dressed, sharp-witted, and armed with clever gadgets hidden in […]
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April Fools! Remember the Barbie Liberation Organization!
For this April Fool’s Day, let’s recall a truly elaborate prank. In 1993, a madcap group of California conceptual artists calling themselves the Barbie Liberation Organization (BLO) seized an opportunity for comic mayhem about gender stereotyping in a revealing bit of cultural parody that they called “culture jamming.” When a version of talking Barbie that recited the chatty phrase “Math class is tough” (in the interest of full disclosure, this is a sentiment I’d share, by the way) appeared on […]
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ICHEG Collects More Than Video Games
When someone mentions the “video game industry,” what’s the first image that comes to mind? I’m betting it’s your favorite game, or perhaps a console or handheld device. But the industry is made up of far more than just the games and hardware. Developers and publishers use clothing, action figures, stuffed animals, toys, key chains, buttons, and even replicas of in-game weapons and armor to promote their games. ICHEG strives to collect and preserve all aspects of the gaming community, […]
The Bunny Hop
Spring has brought the annual influx of chocolate bunnies into my supermarket. And April’s sunnier days with longer daylight have sent my neighborhood’s rabbits onto a quest for sprouting greenery to munch. With hares seemingly everywhere, I’ve also started noticing all the rabbits in The Strong’s collection.
For instance, I spotted this dapper rabbit, attired in a suit and carrying both a satchel and a furled red umbrella. His black eyeglass frames remind me of Bunny Rabbit, one of the stars […]
Altering Classic Video Games
I recently watched independent animation film director and designer Léo Verrier’s short film, Dripped. The 8-minute film presented a fictional story of a burglar who stole famous paintings from museums and proceeded to eat the artwork. Shortly after the thief consumed an artwork, his body morphed into a figure or design from the specific painting. I like to imagine that Verrier came up with this idea for his film after viewing a Picasso. Many artists find inspiration in existing art. […]