Hullo!

We did a board game night at work last night, and it was great. In celebration of this, here's a Fem Fri about women who design board- or card- or, more broadly, not-computer-games.

Firstly, before I started writing, I had no idea that a woman invented Jenga, enduringly fun game for children, adults, and adults in pubs. All the key game demographics. Here's Leslie Scott talking about sticking to your guns:

The first ‘key moment’ came when I refused to allow either Irwin Toy or Hasbro Corporation to drop Jenga as the name of the game. Both companies wished to acquire the rights to the game (Irwin for Canada, Hasbro for the rest of the world) at a time when I was up to my ears in debt from having published and marketed the game for three years entirely on my own. Both companies loved the game, but both ‘hated the name because it didn’t mean anything’. It was a potential deal breaker, but I stuck to my guns.

https://freshpeel.com/2009/11/interview-with-leslie-scott-the-creator-of-the-game-jenga/

Here's another loved game that was designed by a woman – it's nerdy favourite Set! You can really crush people emotionally in this game, which is something you only really understand when you play it against someone slightly less good at pattern matching than you. Or when the reverse happens to you. Highly recommended, anyway. Marsha Jean Falco, game designer and geneticist, explains its origins:

The idea for the SET game came when I was trying to understand whether epilepsy in German Shepherds was inherited. To track the individual traits of the dogs, I created file cards with blocks of information for each dog. Because certain blocks of information were the same for many dogs, I drew symbols to represent the information rather than writing out the data each time. […] While explaining the mathematical properties behind the combinations on the file cards to the veterinarians, I saw the fun in finding the different combinations and SET was born. Over the years, I refined the game by playing with my family and friends and SET was finally released in 1990.

http://www.entertainmentvine.com/online/2017/03/interview-with-game-designer-marsha-jean-falco/

Holly Gramazio does all sorts of charming real life games. Definitely not board games but fitting the not-computer brief so I think we are okay. Let's start with an article by Holly! About games and cities:

For game designers who are interested in articulating or exploring a particular place, the attraction of making a game that takes place physically within that space is clear: creating another layer of meaning, a different way of interpreting the streets, drawing players’ attention to things they would never otherwise notice, galvanising activity, bringing people together, taking advantage of the whole real city that is already there and the people within it, and the joy we can feel at the physical pleasures of play.

http://essays.centreforlondon.org/issues/play/fun-and-gaming/

Holly's game about being a blackbird in London remains entirely delightful. It's on the internet, so technically I suppose a computer game, but it's pretty arty so even if you are not usually a games person I think you will enjoy this one:

you are a small blackbird

in a big city

http://severalbees.com/blackbird/how-to-be-a-blackbird.html

Have fun,

Alex.