The Games We Played: The Golden Age of Board & Table Games

by Margaret Hofer, Kenneth Jackson (Foreword)

As families are rediscovering the joys and virtues of staying and entertaining at home, board games have surged in popularity – indeed, sales doubled in the last year alone. this mirrors a trend in the late nineteenth century – the heyday of American boards and table games – when, fueled by the introduction of games coincided with a growing need for middle-class social entertainment.
Then, like now, the games that best captured players’ imaginations mimicked, and sometimes poked fun at, the culture that produced them Organized around themes such as courtship, commerce, travel, sports, and city life, The Games We Played brings together over one hundred eye-catching examples of America’s rare and popular board games, such as The Game of Playing Department Store, which encourage players to accumulate the greatest quantity of goods while spending their money as economically as possible, and Bulls and The Great Wall St. Game, in which players try their hand as speculators, bankers, and brokers, yelling each other down as if in a trading pit.
This playful visual survey of its thematic essays will cause board and table game aficionados to share in the revelry of togetherness.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Games, Gaming

147 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2003

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting history of board games in the US, how culture, immigration, the econmy, and war influenced themes, and technological advances allowed for visually appealing boxes and components. As a life long game player, I would love to check some of these out, and some many of us has probably played the updated version. Cool book, check it out.

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Games We Played: The Golden Age of Board & Table Games is more of an art book or coffee table book than pure history book. Margaret A. Hofer is an art historian/museum curator more than a game historian and it shows in some of the descriptions of the elaborate color plates in this book. Those elaborate color plates are beautiful photographs of 19th century board games and, outside of the short introduction and seven brief introductions for various game themes, the text consists of brief to paragraph-long captions describing the images in the photographs. I speak of the game themes (parlor amusements (not necessarily games, per se), educational games (a mix of card games, panoramas, puzzles, and race games), moral and materialistic games (mostly race games, but including some economic strategy), war games (race games, quiz games, table-top “bowling” games with military figures, and a couple of strategy games with no rules that are not immediately obvious), parlor athletics (race games and dexterity games using athletic themes), urban games (race games, story games (using card decks), and a couple of economic games), and travel games (almost all race games).

Immediately useful for my purposes was the beautiful reproduction of the race game built on John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (no real strategy, but visually appealing enough that I used it in a recent sermon illustration), the images of Parker Brothers’ original Pit compared with images from its competitive set, Commerce, games inspired by the Spanish-American War (since we cover this era in the class, I’ll want to show the box covers or boards for Uncle Sam at War with Spain, Schley at Santiago Bay, Roosevelt at San Juan, and Rough Rider Ten Pins), and race games similar to the ancient ones like The Post Office Game (using its map of downtown Manhattan), The Game of Phoebe Snow (wonder if McLoughlin Brothers actually licensed the character from the Lackawanna Railroad advertisements of the time for this game), Jerome Park Steeple Chase and Yacht Race.

The only negative to the book is that, perhaps because it is written by a curator rather than a gamer, there are a couple of captions that do not make sense. For example, there is a game called War at Sea or Don’t Give Up the Ship. The game box has a warship from the era of the Spanish-American War. The goal of the game is to sweep the enemy’s fleet from the Caribbean and Atlantic Seaboard. Although the phrase, “Don’t Give Up the Ship” dates to the War of 1812, the box cover (as noted earlier) reflects the Spanish-American War. So, the text claims that the game as well as the box was changed to the more recent conflict (p. 94). Yet, the game board pictured alongside the caption is marked with British forts and ports from the War of 1812 rather than with Spanish flags (p. 95). It would appear, at least to this observer, that only the box was changed to pull in patriotic young men through disingenuous marketing. Of course, since the author is not a gamer, there are rarely any rules summaries or descriptions of play to go with the elaborate illustrations.

Still, this is a beautiful book to peruse and it provides a launching pad for further research. It offers occasional jewels of information and deserves a place on every game historian’s (academic, amateur, or professional) desk. Some of the classics can be recreated merely from the images provided and some of the classics beg for further investigation. Although Ms. Hofer left me wishing for more information, I am thankful for this delightful introduction to games more readily experienced on the east coast of the U.S. than near my west coast roots.

[Jocelyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Blech.
Stupid.
Unfulfilling.

Maybe I just didn't read the description? Does the description say "contains little interpretation, has big pictures" ?
Or what about this :
When the paper is brilliant white, the text should probably NOT be bright yellow.
Ow.
Eyes!!

I was looking for something like.. why the games were played? Where? How? Maybe a little bit of the rules to the games just for fun measure? Not so many sentences starting with "Possibly intended for" or "Might have been used with" or "Probably designed by".

Stupid.

[Chris Aylott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a bone to pick with this title, because I think the Golden Age of board games is right now. The games of today are certainly better than the games of a century ago, and they're still a popular form of entertainment.

That said, this is a fun read for the game artwork and the social attitudes expressed by the games themselves. I wish there had been more descriptions of rules and game play, but you can figure out a lot from looking at the boards. Plus you can be glad your own kids don't look like the slightly creepy Victorian cherubs depicted on every box.

[Brandt · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is more of a coffee table book than a book for people who want to know about this supposed "golden age" of gaming (I would argue that the golden age of board games is now, but that's an argument for another time.) The graphics are spectacular, but there is no discussion of the actual game play, and ultimately, that's what makes this a disappointing book.

[Whitney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like how this book was written. It wasn't too heavy on the text and leaned more toward the photos and examples of the very beautiful games, and the content was short and poignant. The color photos of the games are absolutely stunning and well-organized. I enjoyed this book very much.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great pictures, not much text.