The 1860s were not exactly a bed of roses in the United States: over the next 40 years, more than 14 million immigrants would arrive from all over the world, the Civil War divided the states, and there was a need to educate citizens to live virtuously rather than in toxicity. That’s where a board game came into play, which over 150 years later is still being published: ‘The Game of Life’.
To… play?!
Milton Bradley, known as MB in Spain, was a self-made man who was born in the tumultuous year of 1836 and, at the age of 24, started a factory dedicated to publishing lithographs that eventually transitioned into board games. And it was no trivial matter: during those times in the 1860s, games of any kind were considered sinful and even “instruments of the devil.” It was clear what he had to do: create a game that would teach virtues in life, leading up to the longed-for age of 50. And thus, ‘The Checkered Game of Life’ was born.
To achieve this, he chose different possibilities that a life could take and assigned positive or negative points to each of them: poverty, ambition, education, childhood, gambling, politics… The goal was to reach one hundred points and land on the special square that would award you half of them: Happy Old Age. You could attain wealth or government contracts, but what was most intriguing is that a square was included in which landing would result in the end of the game: suicide.
In 1860, they didn’t beat around the bush. In this game of morality, it was possible to end up in jail and miss a turn, go bankrupt… or end your life by hanging from a tree. Immediately, your token would be removed from the game because “How can anyone continue their journey to Happy Old Age after committing suicide?” From 1866 onwards, that square removed the depiction of a person hanging from a tree and became a simple wild card where nothing happened. Imagine the traumatized children of that time.
Interestingly, to avoid using dice, which were associated with gambling at that time, Bradley counted the points using a hexagon that he would spin on the board. One hundred years later, ‘The Game of Life’ was reissued, completely changing the board and the moral aspects, turning it into the game that continues to exist to this day. It now has versions featuring ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘Hello Kitty,’ ‘Pokémon,’ and even ‘Star Wars.’ However, suicides are no longer part of the game… or at least, we hope not.
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