History
The History of Tabletop Games By John Anthony Gulla
Part XI- Turn of the 20th Century Pit Stop
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t the end of the last article, I promised we would be covering the early 20th Century board games, such as the Landlord’s Game, et al. During my research for that era, however, I came across another interesting genre of games --and an intriguing bit of board game history-- that I consider too relevant to our exploration to leave out. So, without any further setup, our journey will now take a brief “Pit” stop to cover this turn-of-the-century gaming story. The Landlord will just have to wait his turn, because it’s time to get real about our board game history… real-time, that is. As it turns out, the earliest examples of real-time games made a big splash in America just after the turn of the century in 1903, where three card games, all using similar real-time elements, duked it out for eternal supremacy (or at least for dominance in market share). The first of these games was called Bourse, the second was called Panic, and the third was called Pit (published by the notorious Parker Brothers). History would make it quite clear as to who the winner of that contest was (and still is), but what is likely to be much less known is that each of these three games heavily “borrowed” their core idea from a game released only a few years prior, called Gavitt’s Stock Exchange (herein referred to as GSE).
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GSE was so named for its designer, one Harry E. Gavitt, of Topeka, Kansas. While Mr. Gavitt seemed quite a lively man, insisting through the written rules of his game that players be loud and raucous during play or risk losing points, he was not, apparently, too interested in obtaining a copyright for his game. Gavitt claims to have filed for Patent and Copyright in 1896, but it is unclear whether there any actual copyright or patent was indeed filed for the game until at least sometime after January, 1903. This could also be because Gavitt, who also owned a primitive pharmaceutical company selling herbal remedies first created and sold by his father W.W. Gavitt during the American Civil War, was merely using the game as part of a promotion to sell more medicines. In fact, Gavitt had been giving the card game away freely to those who purchased products from him! Regardless, the lack of verifiable copyright and patents opened the proverbial door long enough for the creators of games such as the now quite familiar Pit, the aforementioned Bourse, Panic, and still others to get to market as direct competition to GSE, using much the same style of play. This, in turn, created a micro-war between these similar versions of the game, which would go on for a short time. In its advertising, the makers of Bourse proclaimed that it was the original game of “’change” (presumably short for “exchange”) and that all other similar games were merely “infringing imitations.” Panic boldly
Game Nite Issue #13