History Corner: Family Game Night: Board Games from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties By Susan R. Asbury

  Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge, from University Press of Kentucky, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it. All opinions are my own

Synopsis:

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the rise of industrialization and a gendered division of labor set the stage for tastemakers, architects, and social reformers to elevate the home parlor as a as a space for leisure and family gathering. Board game makers and marketers capitalized on these trends by peddling a certain exclusionary brand of the American dream.

In Family Game Night, Susan R. Asbury provides a history of US board games from the 1880s through the 1920s, the morals and tropes they conveyed, and the influence game designers and manufacturers had on consumers. Drawing from historical documents, marketing materials, patents, diaries, and photographs, Asbury shows how games incorporated and promoted concepts related to progress and abundance, including a clear delineation of the purported beneficiaries: white middle-class families. Asbury further analyzes box covers and game components to uncover the ways in which manufacturers and designers crafted narratives to maintain a sense of cultural hegemony in a rapidly changing society.

Through the imagery and instructions woven into the framework of play, Family Game Night reveals how these board games influenced players' values and associations, shaping their worldview.

Review:

Did you realize that the majority of the board games we know and love are actually from the last century, ie Victorian times? I know, right???? But the companies that fill our games cabinet started the basis of the games we love, like Monopoly and Life, back in Victorian times, when games became a way for young people to be chaperoned on group dates, and the concept of family time became a concept of the middle and upper classes! The author does a great job in showing how as the economy changed, so did our board games, and how the popular ones were updated, as times and cultural norms changed. It's really interesting to look at the generational changes and compare them to the games you still have in your family! It might just make you want to bring out games and reinstitute family game night!

About the Author:

Susan R. Asbury is assistant professor of history at Middle Georgia State University and former associate curator at the Strong National Museum of Play. Her work has appeared in publications such as Board Game Academics, The American Journal of Play, and Folklife and Museums: Twenty-First Century Perspectives