{"id":68393,"date":"2021-12-18T01:00:05","date_gmt":"2021-12-18T06:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=68393"},"modified":"2021-12-17T08:25:41","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T13:25:41","slug":"qotd-the-game-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2021\/12\/18\/qotd-the-game-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: <em>The Game of Life<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em><strong>Life<\/strong>, as it is often called, was conceived as a modern take on a board game designed in 1860 &#8230; called the <strong>Checkered Game of Life<\/strong> &#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>By 1960, the <strong>Checkered Game of Life<\/strong> had disappeared from most American game tables. It had been replaced by such as entrants as <strong>Monopoly<\/strong>, which rewarded winners with riches, punished losers with penury and became one of the top-selling board games in the United States during the Depression. Mr. Klamer&#8217;s task, as assigned by the Milton Bradley Co., was to create a game to mark the company&#8217;s 100th anniversary &#8230; With the assistance of colleagues &#8230; Mr. Klamer updated [the <strong>Checkered Game of Life<\/strong>] for the aspirations of contemporary players. For instance, players of the new version would choose between a &#8220;business&#8221; route, which afforded an immediate salary, and &#8220;college&#8221;, which promised a larger but delayed one &#8230; To board game enthusiasts, the <strong>Game of Life<\/strong> was a beauty: a marvel of topography with raised roads that players traversed in their station-wagon game pieces. According to the volume <strong>Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them<\/strong>, by Tim Walsh, <strong>Life<\/strong> was &#8220;the first three-dimensional game board using plastic.&#8221; &#8230; Destinations in the 1960 version included &#8220;Millionaire Acres&#8221; \u2014 or the &#8220;Poor Farm&#8221;.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>From &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/obituaries\/reuben-klamer-dead\/2021\/09\/16\/41a20418-1692-11ec-b976-f4a43b740aeb_story.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Reuben Klamer, toy inventor who created the Game of Life, dies at 99<\/a>&#8221; (WaPo). <\/p>\n<p>I played that game when it was new in the 1960s, and I guess those 3-dimensional aspects and the built-in spinner were pretty exciting. But what a drag it made life seem! You&#8217;re a peg in a car and you gather family members to fill the hole in the car and keep driving till you get to the end. At least the end wasn&#8217;t called <em>Death<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>And it seems that this is where we Baby Boomers learned we&#8217;d better go to college. The game had determined the income difference. But you didn&#8217;t even have any fun in college or learn anything deep. You just upped your earning potential, and the point of life\/<em>Life<\/em> was to make the most money. What an awful game!<\/p>\n<p>Ann Althouse, <a href=\"https:\/\/althouse.blogspot.com\/2021\/09\/life-as-it-is-often-called-was.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;<em>Life<\/em> as it is often called, was conceived as a modern take on a board game designed in 1860 &#8230; called the <em>Checkered Game of Life<\/em>&#8220;, <em>Althouse<\/em><\/a>, 2021-09-17.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Life, as it is often called, was conceived as a modern take on a board game designed in 1860 &#8230; called the Checkered Game of Life &#8230; By 1960, the Checkered Game of Life had disappeared from most American game tables. It had been replaced by such as entrants as Monopoly, which rewarded winners with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,7,41,13],"tags":[311,1439,374,45,504],"class_list":["post-68393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming","category-history","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-1960s","tag-boardgames","tag-children","tag-nostalgia","tag-teenagers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-hN7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68393"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70647,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68393\/revisions\/70647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}