Depending on what year you were born, I am sure that you will remember playing board games before electronic games came along. The toy aisles in department stores were once lined with various games. They were all different genres, made for different age ranges, and different types of people. There was literally a board game for everybody out there, The Game of Life used to be my board game. But the thing is, this game has changed throughout the years to accommodate the younger generations like for colors and fun. As adults, it is often hard for us to remember childhood memories unless they hold some significance.
So, it is strange that for some reason we can seem to remember the old games that we played. Whether it was something simple like a game of Go Fish, or more complex like Chess, we can recall gameplay from many years ago. The Game of Life, was first introduced to myself as a six-year-old child. It was one of those Christmas gifts that was used more than once before being thrown away. But this game was never thrown away, it is still under that same cabinet, and every now and then when you open it a colored piece of money will fly out.
I wish I could say that playing The Game of Life today would still be the same, unfortunately this is not a statement that I can make. The game has been making changes since its early beginnings as The Checkered Game of Life. Perhaps I should start here to show you the true depth of the adaptations of this classic board game. The Checkered Game of Life was created in the year 1860 by Milton Bradley. It was originally a parlor game, to give men something other to play than cards. This original game was shockingly truthful, there was no sugar-coating the real aspects of life.
But this was the point, the game of life was meant to teach you about life. Parents eventually caught on this new game and allowed their children to play due to its teaching properties. The Checkered Game of Life had a layout like that of a checkered board and each square was good or bad. It was up to the player to make the right decisions to reach happiness and riches. Or they could do make the wrong decisions and reach poverty or even possibly suicide. Now remember that this is a time where religious values were of major importance, so suicide, even game suicide was one of the worst places that you could land on.
Others included disgrace, prison, and ruin just to list a few examples. While the games layout might have been like a checkered board, Milton made sure to create a way that players could move around the board while still having the opportunity to decide where they wanted to go. There was not always the option to make a good choice, so just like in life sometimes there were setbacks before a player could move forward again. Unfortunately, Milton Bradley would pass way in 1911, and the original The Checkered Game of Life would die along with him. The Game of Life was released in 1960, exactly one hundred years after The Checkered Game of Life.
By its new name you can see that there now was no checkered layout to the game. Instead now it had been completely revised to resemble a winding road. It was essentially made out to be one of the first three dimensional games. This new game came with small plastic shrubs and bridges to be placed on the board. Players were provided with small convertibles and blue and pink pegs for gameplay. Promissory, fire, car, and life insurance were all aspects of the game. And that extra left over blue and pink pegs, well those were the “children” to be added to the convertible if the player landed on the corresponding space.
The Game of Life still had some of those real-life lessons incorporated, but was this enough to remain at the top? Around this same time Monopoly was on the rise. Another question is now posed here. What would the developers of Life do to compete? The answer is they would add even more color and less lesson. We are all familiar with the famous colorful Monopoly money. The Game of Life had traded in its plain uniform money for the brighter more fun looking kind. But why stop there right? The developers of the game also gave the money higher amounts; 1 mean after all Monopoly had high dollar amounts.
To once again surpass this game, Life took some aspects from it. There was now no more promissory notes or fire insurance. And remember those convertibles that were mentioned earlier? Those were now mini sport utility vehicles to appeal to this time. It was after the Cold War, and now the baby booming period. There were not many cool convertibles riding around with all the new babies being born. The 1970s versions of the game also changed the art on the front of the box. Yes, it was now also more colorful too, but even more than that it now had a family on the front.
The point was to make the game seem perfect for families, something for both the young and old to play. The few notes that remained such as fire, auto, and life insurance, were now much smaller. They were reduced to the same size as the money. The 1980s-version added color to these notes to make them more distinguishable. Even the black spaces on the board were changed to now be orange. Hopefully you can notice the pattern being made here. It seemed that as the years were progressing so were the colors on this game board. Many things are associated the with 90s.
These were some years that a lot changes came about, and well many children were born. It is also the decade in which the most alterations were made to The Game of Life. The layout of the game was remade, and the paths on the board altered. The penalty spaces that once were a part of the game had now become reward spaces. Players had no way to lose anymore. Bad decisions posed no real consequences and good decisions were just good decisions. As we entered the 2000s, we also entered an age of technology. Children were growing up in a time where you could place them in front of a television and they would be occupied.
Bubbly faces, songs, and what else but bright colors kept them entertained. In 2005 Life gave the lesson teaching game another try, but this time around there was no life or auto insurance. All the insurance cards and notes had been done away with. Game play was made to be easier for the younger generations. Life was becoming more simple and so was the game. Sadly, the game did not sell like it did in the past. This was a fault of the developer, but more so of society. Kids were not playing board games anymore and they were becoming a thing of the past. Instead there was now Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox’s.
Not to leave out the good invention of computer and internet games. Children truly had no reason to go to the store and buy an oldfashioned board game when they were all digitally at their fingers. I guess The Game of Life had a few more moves to make to try and reach this new digital world. They went electronic. The Game of Life Electronic Banking is a version of the game where you do not have to do any counting or keeping up with paper because it is all electronic. You are still given that little small car and pegs, but now the only other item you need is a card like a debit card.
The card is inserted into a machine and it does all the counting for you. Oh, and guess what? Even more color. The game board now boasted images such as hot air balloons and boats in the ocean. And if the electronics and new colors were not enough. There were now cartoon versions of the game. All those characters that the children had fallen in love on television were now on the board game. For instance, a child could “journey through life in Bikini Bottom” with SpongeBob. Or if My Little Pony better suites a kid’s needs, they have a version for that too.
Milton Bradley created The Checkered Game of Life to teach the value of virtues. It was intended to show others just how much the good or bad choices that you made impacted the outcome of your life. After Milton’s death in 1911, developers from The Milton Bradley Company took over complete development of the game. The changes that they would end up making over the years would completely change the meaning of this game. The Game of Life was developed in 1960 and while the layout of the game was altered there was still an attempt to keep the teaching and virtues.
But as the years passed and the preferences of kids changed these qualities would be lost. It seemed that with each new version, the game gained more color in exchange for less lesson. Children no longer wanted to be taught but rather to be entertained. They wanted what was fun and appealing to the eye. And nothing is better at catching your eye than colors and cartoon characters. Even myself at the age of nineteen would be more inclined to notice color over dullness. The Game of Life is a game that I used to play time and time again, though it is not something that I would find myself playing repeatedly today.
The game has been turned into one that a player literally cannot lose. Those of us who have survived past childhood and teenage years know that life is not something you can always win at. The Game of Life that I played was one of the first things to teach me this lesson, just as it had taught children in the past. The versions of the game that you will find on the shelves today will not do this. What exactly is it that these new versions will do for? Well the answer is not much but provide you with a few moments of fun and entertainment, far from what Milton developed The Checkered Game of Life to do.
