You cannot get such a more realistic game than The Game of Life.
- The Game of Life is a board game that somewhat replicates the average life of a person, from college through to retirement, by advancing along spaces on the board.
- ‘The Game of Life’ is also known as ‘LIFE’, and it generally uses cars as game pieces, with small pink or blue pegs to represent people.
- The Game of Life is based on the original and highly successful version of the game called ‘The Checkered Game of Life’, which was designed by Milton Bradley, an American lithographer, in 1860, after his print run of presidential candidate portraits of Abraham Lincoln failed to sell, due to Lincoln growing a beard after they had been printed.
- Milton Bradley’s 1860 version of The Game of Life involved the player advancing across a checkered board to gain points, and it was designed with his own morals in mind, which resulted in negative consequences for spaces depicting suicide, gambling, jail, ruin, poverty and the like.
- The Checkered Game of Life was overhauled and revamped on its 100th anniversary in 1960, and resulted in the modern style version, The Game of Life, designed by Americans Bill Markham and Reuben Klamer for the Milton Bradley Company.
- The three-dimensional modern style game board of The Game of Life, first produced in the 1960s, was the first of its kind, and it featured moulded plastic buildings, mountains and bridges.
- The aim of The Game of Life is to collect the most money by the end of ‘life’, which is generally collected by luckily landing on specific spaces and/or by various choices made throughout the game.
- The numbered spinner famous in The Game of Life has its origins in the numbered spinning top or teetotum, used to move across the game board in the 1860s version, as dice were considered inappropriate by Milton Bradley, due to their association with gambling, which went against his morals.
- There have been various updates on The Game of Life over the years, and numerous versions of the game, and while each have their differences, life events that are, or have been depicted in The Game of Life, including marriage, college, having children, suing, insurance and the like.
- As of 2010, more than 50 million copies of The Game of Life had been sold since 1960, and it had been created in at least 20 different languages.
Bibliography:
Edwards P, Why the Game of Life used to have poverty, suicide, and ruin, 2015, Vox, http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7924487/game-of-life-history
The Game of Life, 2015, The Strong, http://www.toyhalloffame.org/toys/game-life
The Game of Life, 2015, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Life
