On a cold winter day in 1975, I was wandering through the remainder section of Brentano’s bookstore in midtown Manhattan. I discovered an intriguing book filled with interesting and unusual games—Sid Sackson’s classic A Gamut of Games—for the remarkable price of one dollar. I spent hours exploring the many excellent games in Sackson’s book. The book was wonderful for many reasons including Sackson’s designer commentary, his willingness to include games from his contemporaries, the variety of types of games, and then the extraordinary (for its time) catalog of “games in print” in the back of the book. At this point, the book was six years old (published in 1969), but it’s still amazing to consider all these years later that you could list all the games (250) in print. Compare that to the annual production of games in 2023.
About thirty five years later, I was attending The Gathering in Niagara Falls when Rick and Joanne Soued (Eagle-Gryphon Games) invited me to join a group of folks who were going to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester. The museum housed Sid Sackson’s array of design notebooks. I was blown away by the intricate detail of Sackson’s ludographic awareness. The notebooks were filled with details of his design ideas, games he played with friends, and comprehensive commentaries on all aspects of board games. It was an inspiring experience to encounter the depth, creativity, and perseverance of Sackson’s work. Sackson was probably the first modern ludographic scientist. His journals resembled the field notes of a great naturalist—serious commentary and detailed observations, interspersed with daily chat and even game gossip.
Fortunately, The Strong Museum has a Sid Sackson portal with reproductions and transcriptions of these diaries. It also contains many photographs of various prototypes. You can access the portal via the link below and then check out an example from his diaries.
https://sacksonportal.museumofplay.org/s/sackson-portal/page/welcome
You can learn more about Sackson’s games, by reading the fine commentaries of the late Herb Levy and Nick Sauer:
https://web.archive.org/web/20081215071922/http://www.gamersalliance.com/sidsackson.htm
The purpose of this essay is to provide readers with a reminder of Sackson’s legacy, to briefly review the important role of Eagle-Gryphon games in revitalizing Sackson’s work, and then to comment on the parallel careers of Sackson and the most prolific game designer of this era, Reiner Knizia.
Before I proceed I’d like to offer a cultural and personal comment. Sid Sackson was born in 1920. He was of Jewish ancestry. His parents migrated to the United States in 1904. I know this cultural milieu well as my father was also born in 1920, and his parents emigrated to the United States from Russia at around the same time. These families were striving to establish themselves in a new world and the children were expected to pursue professional careers. Sackson was an engineer and then in his fifties he pursued game design on a full time basis. I mention this because I doubt there was anything about his upbringing that supported even the remote possibility of pursuing such a career. His passion and vision emerged in a milieu that preceded the consumer booms of the late 1950’s and 1960’s at a time when most immigrants had nothing more than a deck of cards and/or a checkerboard, and board games as well as playing cards were often considered frivolous. Yet games, like sports, for many children of these immigrants were also a means of acculturation to the American way of life. In these days with Kickstarter, international conventions, and electronic gaming, it’s very easy to forget that not that long ago, indeed, within the lifetime of folks like me (I’m in my 70’s) none of this existed. In my view, that makes Sackson’s accomplishments even more remarkable. He was a visionary and a pioneer.
This history is especially relevant as a testimony to new releases from Eagle-Gryphon games, The Sid Sackson Legacy Collection. The Red Box contains Cinema, Dig Site, and Bowling Solitaire. The Blue Box contains I’m the Boss: The Dice Game, Banana Blitz, and Scope. Bowling Solitaire can be found in a Gamut of Games. Dig Site is a remake of the game Corner, first published in 1974. All of the other games are in Sackson’s notebooks. They are resurrected and revitalized in these collections. The only game of these that I am familiar with Dig Site (Corner) is a fine abstract game, now dressed up thematically. You could easily devote a focused review to the interesting variety of games in these collections. Suffice it to say they all look very interesting and playing through them will undoubtedly be a mini-workshop in game design. But my purpose here is to highlight Sackson’s career and to commend Eagle-Gryphon for their vision in bringing so many Sackson games back to life.
Rick Soued and his team began negotiating for the rights to Sackson’s games (except Acquire) in 2006 and now have a contract with the Sackson estate for these rights until 2031. Rick told me that “the royalties are actually paid to Sid Sackson’s two grandchildren who have young families of their own that are playing and enjoying these games as well.”
I asked Rick why he became so interested in revitalizing the Sackson legacy.
“My wife, Joanne, and myself have been playing Sid Sackson games since we got married in 1970. We have continued to play and enjoy with our family games like Can’t Stop, Buy Word, Venture, Sleuth, Monad, I’m the Boss, Samarkand, Bazaar (and many obscure titles) for over fifty years. When the opportunity arose to work with Sid’s daughter. Dale Friedman, and contract with the Estate to produce as many of his games as we wanted to, that was simply a no brainer for me. As both an avid games player all my life, and one who cut his gamer teeth on so many Sackson games early on, I actually felt it was a responsibility I must take on and that we had an obligation to perpetuate and honor the legacy of one of the seminal designers in the history of American game design. So that is what our staff at Eagle Gryphon is doing.”
You can see the full collection of the Sackson games available through Eagle-Gryphon here:
https://www.eaglegames.net/searchresults.asp?Search=sackson&Submit=
One of Sackson’s most interesting projects was the publication between 1975-1979, of no less than five paperback game books. The first one, Beyond Tic Tac Toe was a series of six paper and colored pencil abstract games named after and modeling the work of famous artists—Vaserely, Miro, Mondrian, Arp, Delauney, and Springer. I don’t think any of these are classic games, but they are an interesting exercise in abstract game design, and worth exploring for that reason alone. Eagle-Gryphon published this in 2014 as Games of Art, including markers and wipe-off boards. It’s a very nice production and a fine addition to any collection.
The second, Beyond Solitaire, may be the best volume, and it contains another six games. Most notable is Pinball, more like a Pachinko game (there are no flippers). It’s interesting to compare it to the recent pinball simulations Super-Skill Pinball and FreakyFrogs from OutaSpace. It’s far simpler, more elegant, and a lot of fun to play, my respect for the modern designs notwithstanding. Beyond Words is a clever series of word games, loosely modeled after the styles of famous authors—Tolstoy, Joyce, Dickens, Poe, Carroll, and O’Henry. Like the other books, this is a mini workshop in board game design and there is considerable variety in this collection. Also, there is no seminal game here but they are all of interest. Beyond Competition offers a series of collaborative games (Sackson figured out the virtue of this genre in 1977). Sackson writes in the introduction:
“A final note: these are games for fun which, hopefully, will bring pleasure to the players. But on this ever-shrinking earth, unless all people learn to play the important games cooperatively so that they all can win, all will certainly lose.”
Apparently Sackson’s vision went well beyond game design! This is sage advice for our challenging times.
Finally, and to capitalize no doubt on the personal calculator craze of the late 1970’s, Sackson’s final book in the series is Calculate!
He writes, “Over the years I have had a number of ‘great’ game ideas that never came to fruition. Although the basic play was intriguing, the ‘bookkeeping’ turned out to be so laborious that the games were more work than fun. Then along came the pocket calculator, which with the flick of a finger handles all the drudgery.”
What might this man have done with “apps?“
These five books, taken together, are an amazing accomplishment. They all have simple rule sets, play between 15-60 minutes and are mainly adaptable for 2-4 players. I know that Eagle-Gryphon is planning a third legacy collection, possibly to include Sackson’s great abstract game Focus (Domination). I wonder if several of these “Beyond” volumes might also be worthy of consideration, or perhaps an anthology of the best games from the set.
Consider the parallel careers of Sid Sackson and Reiner Knizia. Of course when Knizia was growing up, he undoubtedly played many of Sid’s games, and his work stands on the shoulders of Sackson. Similar to Sackson, Knizia wrote a book of games, New Tactical Games with Dice and Cards that emphasizes dice, playing cards, and checker boards. If you go through the Knizia book, you can recognize the seeds and origins of so many of his later designs. And like Sackson, Knizia is interested in as many game formats as he can explore. Both men are prolific, visionary, and open-minded in their explorations. One interesting difference is that Sackson is clearly interested in the designs of his colleagues and was an obsessive collector of games, whereas Knizia in various interviews claims that he has little time to play any games other than his own. Both men also have notebooks, drawers, and prototypes galore and more possible game designs than any one person could ever plausibly finish. What I respect and admire about both is that they are searching for elegance, simplicity, interactivity, and fun, and they never lose sight of those goals.
We live in a time when we take the proliferation of games for granted. Our inner collector wants to explore as many new games as possible. Our inner curmudgeon suggests there is nothing new under the sun, that the golden era of game design has faded. My view is that the Golden Era is now. We live in a time featuring the internationalization of game markets, the availability of online shopping, and the lightning speed of communication stimulated by the Internet , all contributing to an extraordinary complexity of possibility, sharing, and interdependent design ideas.
Often it’s hard to search through the noise to find the gems. That’s why I am so appreciative when we can take the time to honor and enjoy the creativity of a master. To think that there are still Sackson games to be uncovered! I am sure, too, that in the future, the same attention will be placed on Knizia’s extraordinary ludography. If you want to take a break from the cult of the new, your time will be well spent by returning to the cult of the old, especially when it’s Sid Sackson’s work. Three cheers to the Eagle-Gryphon team for making this possible. And if you don’t have a copy of A Gamut of Games, you are missing out on a real treat.
Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers on Sid Sackson
Dale Y: Sid Sackson was one of the designers that turned me onto TGOO. Way back when, I discovered the great 3M Bookcase game line, and many of those games important to my gaming development were designed by Sid. To this day, Acquire remains one of my all-time favorite games. I think I now own about a dozen different versions of that game, including a fairly rare “world board” version which was actually owned by Sid himself – acquired in the auction of his games after his passing. It has been great to have periodic reminders of his games as Eagle Gryphon continues to reprint them at a steady pace. While some feel a little dated; most of them play well now just as they did when originally released.
Dan B: While I got into games before reading A Gamut of Games, it was a very important book to me as it was to Mitchell. I remember putting together components of many of the games and trying them out when I was a teenager. Later of course I played many of Sackson’s published designs. I don’t play a lot of them now, as in general I prefer other games, but their influence on the industry is difficult to overstate. (I still play Can’t Stop, Extra/Can’t Stop Express [a good roll-and-write game published well before the boom in such], and Acquire.)
As for the Legacy sets: Dig It/Corner is a perfectly decent abstract. Bowling Solitaire is a fun little solo game (but as noted can be played without the Legacy set). Banana Blitz seems like a decent Hearts variant which I’d certainly be willing to play again, but may not stand out in the current sea of trick-taking games. Scope is a fine little flip-and-write game, but possibly more of interest for showing how ideas like that were percolating in Sackson’s brain well before they became popular. I haven’t managed to play the other two games yet.
You can also read another piece about 10 Great Sid Sackson games published earlier on the blog
Also, here is a piece on a game diary from Sid Sackson
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Mitchell T: The Legacy of Sid Sackson
On a cold winter day in 1975, I was wandering through the remainder section of Brentano’s bookstore in midtown Manhattan. I discovered an intriguing book filled with interesting and unusual games—Sid Sackson’s classic A Gamut of Games—for the remarkable price of one dollar. I spent hours exploring the many excellent games in Sackson’s book. The book was wonderful for many reasons including Sackson’s designer commentary, his willingness to include games from his contemporaries, the variety of types of games, and then the extraordinary (for its time) catalog of “games in print” in the back of the book. At this point, the book was six years old (published in 1969), but it’s still amazing to consider all these years later that you could list all the games (250) in print. Compare that to the annual production of games in 2023.
About thirty five years later, I was attending The Gathering in Niagara Falls when Rick and Joanne Soued (Eagle-Gryphon Games) invited me to join a group of folks who were going to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester. The museum housed Sid Sackson’s array of design notebooks. I was blown away by the intricate detail of Sackson’s ludographic awareness. The notebooks were filled with details of his design ideas, games he played with friends, and comprehensive commentaries on all aspects of board games. It was an inspiring experience to encounter the depth, creativity, and perseverance of Sackson’s work. Sackson was probably the first modern ludographic scientist. His journals resembled the field notes of a great naturalist—serious commentary and detailed observations, interspersed with daily chat and even game gossip.
Fortunately, The Strong Museum has a Sid Sackson portal with reproductions and transcriptions of these diaries. It also contains many photographs of various prototypes. You can access the portal via the link below and then check out an example from his diaries.
https://sacksonportal.museumofplay.org/s/sackson-portal/page/welcome
You can learn more about Sackson’s games, by reading the fine commentaries of the late Herb Levy and Nick Sauer:
https://web.archive.org/web/20081215071922/http://www.gamersalliance.com/sidsackson.htm
The purpose of this essay is to provide readers with a reminder of Sackson’s legacy, to briefly review the important role of Eagle-Gryphon games in revitalizing Sackson’s work, and then to comment on the parallel careers of Sackson and the most prolific game designer of this era, Reiner Knizia.
Before I proceed I’d like to offer a cultural and personal comment. Sid Sackson was born in 1920. He was of Jewish ancestry. His parents migrated to the United States in 1904. I know this cultural milieu well as my father was also born in 1920, and his parents emigrated to the United States from Russia at around the same time. These families were striving to establish themselves in a new world and the children were expected to pursue professional careers. Sackson was an engineer and then in his fifties he pursued game design on a full time basis. I mention this because I doubt there was anything about his upbringing that supported even the remote possibility of pursuing such a career. His passion and vision emerged in a milieu that preceded the consumer booms of the late 1950’s and 1960’s at a time when most immigrants had nothing more than a deck of cards and/or a checkerboard, and board games as well as playing cards were often considered frivolous. Yet games, like sports, for many children of these immigrants were also a means of acculturation to the American way of life. In these days with Kickstarter, international conventions, and electronic gaming, it’s very easy to forget that not that long ago, indeed, within the lifetime of folks like me (I’m in my 70’s) none of this existed. In my view, that makes Sackson’s accomplishments even more remarkable. He was a visionary and a pioneer.
This history is especially relevant as a testimony to new releases from Eagle-Gryphon games, The Sid Sackson Legacy Collection. The Red Box contains Cinema, Dig Site, and Bowling Solitaire. The Blue Box contains I’m the Boss: The Dice Game, Banana Blitz, and Scope. Bowling Solitaire can be found in a Gamut of Games. Dig Site is a remake of the game Corner, first published in 1974. All of the other games are in Sackson’s notebooks. They are resurrected and revitalized in these collections. The only game of these that I am familiar with Dig Site (Corner) is a fine abstract game, now dressed up thematically. You could easily devote a focused review to the interesting variety of games in these collections. Suffice it to say they all look very interesting and playing through them will undoubtedly be a mini-workshop in game design. But my purpose here is to highlight Sackson’s career and to commend Eagle-Gryphon for their vision in bringing so many Sackson games back to life.
Rick Soued and his team began negotiating for the rights to Sackson’s games (except Acquire) in 2006 and now have a contract with the Sackson estate for these rights until 2031. Rick told me that “the royalties are actually paid to Sid Sackson’s two grandchildren who have young families of their own that are playing and enjoying these games as well.”
I asked Rick why he became so interested in revitalizing the Sackson legacy.
“My wife, Joanne, and myself have been playing Sid Sackson games since we got married in 1970. We have continued to play and enjoy with our family games like Can’t Stop, Buy Word, Venture, Sleuth, Monad, I’m the Boss, Samarkand, Bazaar (and many obscure titles) for over fifty years. When the opportunity arose to work with Sid’s daughter. Dale Friedman, and contract with the Estate to produce as many of his games as we wanted to, that was simply a no brainer for me. As both an avid games player all my life, and one who cut his gamer teeth on so many Sackson games early on, I actually felt it was a responsibility I must take on and that we had an obligation to perpetuate and honor the legacy of one of the seminal designers in the history of American game design. So that is what our staff at Eagle Gryphon is doing.”
You can see the full collection of the Sackson games available through Eagle-Gryphon here:
https://www.eaglegames.net/searchresults.asp?Search=sackson&Submit=
One of Sackson’s most interesting projects was the publication between 1975-1979, of no less than five paperback game books. The first one, Beyond Tic Tac Toe was a series of six paper and colored pencil abstract games named after and modeling the work of famous artists—Vaserely, Miro, Mondrian, Arp, Delauney, and Springer. I don’t think any of these are classic games, but they are an interesting exercise in abstract game design, and worth exploring for that reason alone. Eagle-Gryphon published this in 2014 as Games of Art, including markers and wipe-off boards. It’s a very nice production and a fine addition to any collection.
The second, Beyond Solitaire, may be the best volume, and it contains another six games. Most notable is Pinball, more like a Pachinko game (there are no flippers). It’s interesting to compare it to the recent pinball simulations Super-Skill Pinball and FreakyFrogs from OutaSpace. It’s far simpler, more elegant, and a lot of fun to play, my respect for the modern designs notwithstanding. Beyond Words is a clever series of word games, loosely modeled after the styles of famous authors—Tolstoy, Joyce, Dickens, Poe, Carroll, and O’Henry. Like the other books, this is a mini workshop in board game design and there is considerable variety in this collection. Also, there is no seminal game here but they are all of interest. Beyond Competition offers a series of collaborative games (Sackson figured out the virtue of this genre in 1977). Sackson writes in the introduction:
“A final note: these are games for fun which, hopefully, will bring pleasure to the players. But on this ever-shrinking earth, unless all people learn to play the important games cooperatively so that they all can win, all will certainly lose.”
Apparently Sackson’s vision went well beyond game design! This is sage advice for our challenging times.
Finally, and to capitalize no doubt on the personal calculator craze of the late 1970’s, Sackson’s final book in the series is Calculate!
He writes, “Over the years I have had a number of ‘great’ game ideas that never came to fruition. Although the basic play was intriguing, the ‘bookkeeping’ turned out to be so laborious that the games were more work than fun. Then along came the pocket calculator, which with the flick of a finger handles all the drudgery.”
What might this man have done with “apps?“
These five books, taken together, are an amazing accomplishment. They all have simple rule sets, play between 15-60 minutes and are mainly adaptable for 2-4 players. I know that Eagle-Gryphon is planning a third legacy collection, possibly to include Sackson’s great abstract game Focus (Domination). I wonder if several of these “Beyond” volumes might also be worthy of consideration, or perhaps an anthology of the best games from the set.
Consider the parallel careers of Sid Sackson and Reiner Knizia. Of course when Knizia was growing up, he undoubtedly played many of Sid’s games, and his work stands on the shoulders of Sackson. Similar to Sackson, Knizia wrote a book of games, New Tactical Games with Dice and Cards that emphasizes dice, playing cards, and checker boards. If you go through the Knizia book, you can recognize the seeds and origins of so many of his later designs. And like Sackson, Knizia is interested in as many game formats as he can explore. Both men are prolific, visionary, and open-minded in their explorations. One interesting difference is that Sackson is clearly interested in the designs of his colleagues and was an obsessive collector of games, whereas Knizia in various interviews claims that he has little time to play any games other than his own. Both men also have notebooks, drawers, and prototypes galore and more possible game designs than any one person could ever plausibly finish. What I respect and admire about both is that they are searching for elegance, simplicity, interactivity, and fun, and they never lose sight of those goals.
We live in a time when we take the proliferation of games for granted. Our inner collector wants to explore as many new games as possible. Our inner curmudgeon suggests there is nothing new under the sun, that the golden era of game design has faded. My view is that the Golden Era is now. We live in a time featuring the internationalization of game markets, the availability of online shopping, and the lightning speed of communication stimulated by the Internet , all contributing to an extraordinary complexity of possibility, sharing, and interdependent design ideas.
Often it’s hard to search through the noise to find the gems. That’s why I am so appreciative when we can take the time to honor and enjoy the creativity of a master. To think that there are still Sackson games to be uncovered! I am sure, too, that in the future, the same attention will be placed on Knizia’s extraordinary ludography. If you want to take a break from the cult of the new, your time will be well spent by returning to the cult of the old, especially when it’s Sid Sackson’s work. Three cheers to the Eagle-Gryphon team for making this possible. And if you don’t have a copy of A Gamut of Games, you are missing out on a real treat.
Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers on Sid Sackson
Dale Y: Sid Sackson was one of the designers that turned me onto TGOO. Way back when, I discovered the great 3M Bookcase game line, and many of those games important to my gaming development were designed by Sid. To this day, Acquire remains one of my all-time favorite games. I think I now own about a dozen different versions of that game, including a fairly rare “world board” version which was actually owned by Sid himself – acquired in the auction of his games after his passing. It has been great to have periodic reminders of his games as Eagle Gryphon continues to reprint them at a steady pace. While some feel a little dated; most of them play well now just as they did when originally released.
Dan B: While I got into games before reading A Gamut of Games, it was a very important book to me as it was to Mitchell. I remember putting together components of many of the games and trying them out when I was a teenager. Later of course I played many of Sackson’s published designs. I don’t play a lot of them now, as in general I prefer other games, but their influence on the industry is difficult to overstate. (I still play Can’t Stop, Extra/Can’t Stop Express [a good roll-and-write game published well before the boom in such], and Acquire.)
As for the Legacy sets: Dig It/Corner is a perfectly decent abstract. Bowling Solitaire is a fun little solo game (but as noted can be played without the Legacy set). Banana Blitz seems like a decent Hearts variant which I’d certainly be willing to play again, but may not stand out in the current sea of trick-taking games. Scope is a fine little flip-and-write game, but possibly more of interest for showing how ideas like that were percolating in Sackson’s brain well before they became popular. I haven’t managed to play the other two games yet.
You can also read another piece about 10 Great Sid Sackson games published earlier on the blog
Also, here is a piece on a game diary from Sid Sackson
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