1700's Games

Benjamin Franklin once said, "We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing."

Originally, I had decided to research popular games starting in the1940s but Franklin has inspired me to go back to the early 1700s. Colonial American children played with games and toys such as marbles, skittles, cat in a cradle, ball in a cup, dominoes, checkers, hopscotch, jacks, jump rope, pick-up sticks and yo-yo.  Children would also play with stuffed dolls made of worn socks and play cards games such as solitaire.

The Art of Game design says that a good game does "Not need to perfectly replicate real experiences... [However it does] need to capture the essence of those experiences" (Schell 20). The early 1700's-games are interesting in that the only activity that actually replicates a real-life experience would be playing with dolls. Playing with dolls  captures the essence of parenthood. All of the other games are original experiences.

It will be interesting to find the century when the majority of popular games captures the essence of real experiences instead of original thinking.