At Interacting with Immersive Worlds J. P. Dyson gave a great talk about “Immersion In and Out of Virtual Worlds.” He is the Director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) in Rochester which is associated with the Natioal Museum of Play and the National Toy Hall of Fame.
He mentioned how some of the toys inducted into the Hall of Fame include the Cardboard Box and Stick.
The ICHEG has some 27,000+ artifacts including video games, game system hardware, arcade games (in cabinets) and papers from people like Ralph H. Baer and Will Wright’s. They have an interesting interpretative framework online titled, Concentric Circles: A Lens for Exploring the History of Electronic Games (see bottom of page for link to PDF).
Dyson’s talk traced a history from toy soldiers (H. G. Wells and “Floor Play”) to Dungeons and Dragons to text adventure games. He talked about Romanticism and changes is our ideas about childhood and play. He talked about the new (for Victorians) places for play like the nurseries and gardents, the availability of toys, and the leisure time for play or other foms of immersion (like reading novels.) I’m convinced we need to pay a lot more time to the history of toys and children’s play in order to understand computer games.