Milton Bradley was a gamer before PlayStation or Nintendo existed. The Harvard-educated Bradley was a board game pioneer who saw the value in teaching personal character and educational basics with playtime. Not unlike the famous game he created in 1860 that is still found on store shelves today, Bradley’s life took some unforeseen twists and turns before his eponymous enterprise became synonymous with board games.
Life is funny like that.
Who Was Milton Bradley?
Bradley grew up in a small but loving working-class family. He was born in Maine, but the family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, and that’s where he attended high school. His early work life hardly took a straight path. Bradley worked first as a draftsman and patent agent while saving for college at Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School in Cambridge. He dropped out of college when his family moved to Connecticut, but when he was unable to find work there, he struck out on his own and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1856 and worked as a mechanical draftsman.
The parlor game pioneer Milton Bradley, early 20th century. Public Domain
When business slowed, he lost his job and moved to Providence, Rhode Island, to learn lithography. A year later, he set up the first color lithography shop in Springfield, Massachusetts. Bradley’s life took another unexpected spin when his popular lithograph of then clean-shaven Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln became worthless after the president grew a beard, outdating his most popular product.
Needing an alternative product, Bradley found inspiration after playing a popular board game, a game from overseas, with his childhood friend George Tapley. Could he come up with a game that would appeal to Americans? Bradley wanted to invent a new type of game, one that would be fun but also instructive. The game he envisioned would be tailored to American interest in wealth and success but would also promote virtue and character. And, at the time, with Civil War storm clouds forming, Bradley wanted to create a pleasant parlor game to divert families’ attention from their increasing worry over current events.
The Checkered Game of Life
Bradley called his new game The Checkered Game of Life. The board displayed 64 colored squares like a checkerboard, but that wasn’t how the game got its name. The name was derived from the inventor’s belief that life was “checkered” with positives and negatives. Bradley’s board displayed squares with words depicting life situations like college, work, prison, or disgrace. The instruction booklet described the object of the game this way: “To gain on his journey that which shall make him the most prosperous, and to shun that which will retard him in his progress.”
The Checkered Game of Life board game box from 1866. Courtesy of New-York Historical Society
Players used a spinning top called a teetotum to determine how many squares to advance, but the players would choose which direction to move. Some choices and some squares awarded the players points. Players making good choices could end up on “Happy Old Age” and bad choices ended up on the “Ruin” square. The first player to collect 100 points won, even if another player reached “Happy Old Age” first.
After manufacturing 100 copies of the game, Bradley traveled to New York to promote his product; he sold out almost immediately. By the game’s first anniversary in 1861, Bradley had sold 45,000 copies of The Checkered Game of Life.
The original board game included a wooden and cardboard teetotum and four playing pieces made of bone. Courtesy of New-York Historical Society
Bradley halted production of the game during the Civil War to produce weaponry for the Union Army. After seeing bored soldiers stationed in Springfield, however, he returned to his game-board drawing board and created travel games for soldiers. These were smaller versions of five classic games: chess, checkers, backgammon, dominoes, and The Checkered Game of Life. The travel games sold for $1 and proved popular with the troops, further spreading awareness of his game.
After the war ended and as the Second Industrial Revolution was ramping up, Americans had more leisure time than ever before, creating more play time to enjoy Bradley’s The Checkered Game of Life.
The Game’s Evolution and Timelessness
To celebrate the game’s centennial in 1960, the company renamed it The Game of Life. They hired renowned game-designer Reuben Klamer to give the game board and cards a colorful facelift, and the features were updated to reflect a more contemporary design and cover more relevant topics. People pegs riding in cars were added, and a weaving road replaced the checkerboard design. Money amounts ranged from $500 to $100,000. But some features remained the same: The timeless board game has never involved dice because Bradley believed dice were associated with gambling and debauchery.
Courtesy of New-York Historical Society
Since the centennial update, the game has undergone periodic updates:
- In the 1970s, the “Poor Farm” was changed to “Bankrupt”; “Millionaire Acres” was shortened to “Millionaire”; and “Revenge” squares were subtitled “Sue for Damages.”
- In the 1980s, minivans replaced many of the earlier convertibles.
- Seven years after Hasbro acquired the Milton Bradley Company in 1991, players could earn “Life Tiles” and were financially rewarded for certain behaviors like doing good deeds and helping in the community.
- In 1998, personal computer (PC) and PlayStation video game adaptations were introduced, and a PC version was re-released in 2003.
- Later versions added a “Keep this Card for $100,000” feature and added “Invest” cards.
Throughout his career, Bradley was a big believer in education, and many of his later games and products like Candy Land, Operation, Stratego, and math flash cards emphasized learning through fun activities. In 2006, Milton Bradley was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame. In 2010, The Game of Life was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, approximately 150 years after the founding of The Checkered Game of Life.
This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
