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The Game Makers: The Story of Parker Brothers from Tiddledy Winks to Trivial Pursuit (Literature)

April 27, 2005 By Glenn Turner

Sometimes it's easy to forget that the medium of games reaches beyond the realm of electronic entertainment, to disregard card and board games as nothing more than objects of antiquity. After all, you don't hear reports about board games bringing in more cash than Hollywood (a largely fictitious claim routinely made concerning video games), or about how board games are turning our kids into killers. However it might be best for the video games industry to ignore its analog roots no longer, as right now board and paper game creators like Cranium Inc. are examining and exploring all sorts of new competitive facets in games, and companies like Parker Brothers have dealt with many of the same market trials and tribulations as the video game industry, as Philip E. Orbanes, a former Parker Brothers research and development vice-president details in his literary history of Parker Brothers entitled The Game Makers.

After all, what company is better to examine for a general history of board games? Parker Brothers were the ones to bring board gaming kicking and screaming into the mainstream, and in the oddest of ways that will sound familiar to anyone familiar with Counter-Strike or Desert Combat: in 1883, 16 year old George S. Parker modified a morality card game named Everlasting, and turned it into a new, original game christened Banking. Banking, with its inspired loan and stock fluctuation schemes became the first brick in the foundation that would become the Parker Brothers legacy and quickly gained in popularity, enough to convince young George that he had a future in creating games.

The Game Makers is the story of George and his brethren's establishment of a gaming empire. Mr. Orbanes examines the sprawling history of Parker Brothers, all 100 plus years of it and it's an educational and informative (if slightly colored) yarn. He provides a quick, but illuminative read that covers everything from their first office in Salem, to publishing Monopoly in 1935, then making (and loosing) millions developing and publishing games for the Atari VCS in 1982, to the closing of the Parker Brothers Salem office in 1991, including a slightly awkward period of Orbanes's hiring in 1979 to his resignation in 1990.

What drives The Game Makers as a compelling text is George S. Parker's auteur-like company management. He ran the company, continued to contribute to the product line and kept his personal ethos for Parker Brothers on track for . To hear about how inspired George's leadership was, how steady the Parker Brothers boat was during his presidency (especially when described by the idolatry gaze of Mr. Orbanes) certainly makes one wish his autocracy had lasted, but the real meat of the book lays in the mistakes of his 'successors', how their deviations from George Parker's doctrine, and their flubs, would eventually cause the company to fumble and become lost in the quagmire of global corporate culture. The downfall of an American institution as a result of pride, ego and power struggles; it's like watching, or reading, a carwreck. While I was making up a single-player version of Monopoly to whittle away my childhood days, Parker Brothers was breaking into the lucrative market of video games developing Star Wars and a version of Frogger for the Atari 2600. As I was being beaten yet again by my three-foot teddy bear, Parker Brothers were completely mismanaging their electronics division, overworking their department, turning a blind eye to the escalating video game implosion and still expecting quintuple growth (that would never occur). It's the story of a company that grew too large, that swelled exponentially without enough food to sustain itself, lacking rational thought to keep itself in check; a story that sees Parker Brothers spun off, sold off, swallowed up and bought up, passed around like Monopoly land deeds.

It's tempting to say 'if only they had followed George S. Parker's self-imposed rules, Parker Brothers would be a thriving, independent entity today!', especially after reading Mr. Parkers's '12 tenets for running a good business':

  1. Know your goal and reach for it.
  2. Find "winning moves".
  3. Play by the rules but capitalize on them.
  4. Learn from failure; build upon success.
  5. When faced with a choice, make the move with the most potential benefit versus risk.
  6. When luck runs against you, hold emotion in check and set up for your next advance.
  7. Never hesitate and give your opponents a second chance.
  8. Seek help if the game threatens to overwhelm you.
  9. Bet heavily when the odds are long in your favor.
  10. If opportunity narrows, focus on your strengths.
  11. Be a gracious winner or loser. Don't be petty. Share what you learn.
  12. Ignore principles 1 to 11 at your peril!

Those aren't just principles; those are rules, rules for the game of a corporation. George S. Parker prided himself on the clarity of his rules in his games, and this is no exception. These rules should have been engraved into the top of his table so his successors would have been forced to read them every day, to realize that their management practices went against not only the ethics of the company, but the ruleset of the industry. The presidents that floated through Parker Brothers's final years, those who saw the red ink overfloweth might have been able to pay attention to principles four and ten. But they didn't, and now Parker Brothers is just another name under the Hasbro umbrella.

The Game Makers contains a wealth of information and trivialities about Parker Brothers and its games, from Camelot to Nerf, including detailed tangents into Mah-Jongg and Ping-Pong. Many of Parker Brothers's classic games wouldn't exist today if someone hadn't brought them to the company. Mr. Orbanes details the submission process of many of the more popular and influential games (such as Monopoly which the company initially passed on, citing "fifty-two fundamental playing errors") and of course, as time goes by the number of outside contributors wanes until it's announced that "In a sign of the times, Hasbro Games, Winning Moves [Orbane's own gaming company], and most other game companies no longer accept unsolicited new game ideas from amateurs [...] due to intellectual property disputes and other legal concerns." While it may be necessary (for example, the intellectual property of Monopoly's rules have been a source of constant questioning), I can't help but wonder what unpublished games might have been the next Monopoly if the corporate climate hadn't changed.

Regardless, there's quite a bit for video gamers and any gaming enthusiasts to learn from The Game Makers, ranging from a selective history of paper gaming to business and managerial techniques as well as what might be (if it's not already) a ghost of video game's future. While informative, it is a slightly awkward read, containing a number of stories that end glibly and fail to contribute in any meaningful way, but it is a valuable text if for no other reason to learn from the falterings of an established company.

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