The Hidden History of Women Game Designers - JSTOR Daily

"Educational games were all the rage in the early ninteenth century. As the narrator of Sir Walter Scott's 1814 novel, Waverley, observed, " the history of England is now reduced to a game at cards, the problems of mathematics to puzzles and riddles." This bemusement reflects the burgeoning industry of instructional card, dice, and board games that sprang up in the late 1700s, partly in response to changing attitudes towards juvenile education outlined early on by the philosopher John Locke a century before."

"Yet the wave of enthusiasm for educational games nevertheless created an opportunity for some enterprising women-despite significant structural obstacles-to find an intellectual and creative outlet. Standout figures in the history of game design include Margaret Bryan, who directed a girl's school in Blackheath in southeastern London. A writer on science with a particular interest in astronomy, Bryan produced the boardgame Science in Sport, or the Pleasures of Astronomy in collaboration with the well-known game publisher John Wallis."

"This game, a variation on the staple of the Game of the Goose (akin to Chutes and Ladders), requires players to spin a teetotum and race their pieces along the board. Most of the squares illustrate scientific phenomena, explained in an accompanying rule booklet, but some depict bad behavior, such as square six, which features "The County Gaol...for those who attend to the motion of Billiard Balls, more than to the motion of the Planets," and square twelve, which features "a blockhead.""

Educational games surged in popularity in the early nineteenth century, converting history and mathematics into card-based puzzles and instructional play. A commercial industry of card, dice, and board games emerged in the late eighteenth century, shaped by evolving ideas about juvenile education traced to John Locke. Women were largely excluded from college and channeled toward governess roles, yet educational games opened creative and intellectual avenues for enterprising women. Margaret Bryan, a science writer and headmistress in Blackheath, collaborated with John Wallis to produce Science in Sport, a boardgame that taught astronomy through a teetotum-driven race and illustrated scientific phenomena on its squares.

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