Recreational, usually competitive, activities with agreed-upon rules that organize play
and provide criteria for determining winners and losers (Roberts, Arth, and Bush 1959).
Games may be played either alone or with others, and opposition may occur between
players or teams or with impersonal obstacles or fortune. The desired outcome or goal is
only sometimes achieved. Like play, games are generally voluntary and non-utilitarian,
but they are sufficiently systematic in their rules and procedures that they can be repeated
by others (Avedon and Sutton-Smith 1971). Sports are generally distinguished from
games by the vicarious participation of persons other than the players and a more formal
institutional structure.
Like much of the early study of folklore and folklife, serious scholarly interest in
games began in the last half of the 19th century and reflected the Romantic impulses of
the period. The early collectors combined an interest in identifying patterns of cultural
contact and diffusion with an antiquarianist concern for preserving the vestiges of ancient
lore. William Wells Newell, a founder of the American Folklore Society who published
the first major collection of American children’s folklore, Games and Songs of American
Children ([1883] 1963), reflected both of these concerns.
Like many others at the time, Newell believed that the traditions he was studying were
rapidly dying out. This led him to collect the childhood memories of adults rather than
the ongoing traditions of contemporary children. He assumed that the further back in time
he reached, the richer the traditions would be and the closer he would come to their
“original” forms. This perspective characterized most of the work on games well into the
20th century and may still be found in contemporary game collections.
Newell also systematically annotated his collection with similar rhymes and games
found in historical documents and in non-English-speaking countries. He argued that
cultural diffusion was the only reasonable explanation for these similarities. Early
anthropologists like Edward B.Tylor and Stewart Culin, who wrote Games of North
American Indians (1907), also studied games for clues to patterns of cultural evolution,
contact, and diffusion, and for vestiges of primitive magical practices. They also
observed, however, that many children’s games mimic culturally important adult
activities like hunting and combat, and they proposed that games continue to play an
important role in the enculturation of children.
The other major 19th-century English-language collection of children’s games, Lady
Alice B.Gomme’s two-volume work The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and
Ireland ([1894, 1898] 1964), also reflected a greater concern for what children’s games could tell us about the past than for what they could tell us about the present. She
believed that children’s games were imitations of adult customs, preserved over centuries
only in the play of children. Like Newell, Gomme relied primarily on the recollections of
adults, looked for patterns in the geographical distribution of games in the British Isles,
and annotated connections with folk customs and similar rhymes and games in historical
documents.
American Paul G.Brewster, who published extensively on games from many parts of
the world beginning in the late 1930s (see bibliography in Avedon and Sutton-Smith
1971:162–164), continued the diffusionist and antiquarianist tradition. His Children’s
Games and Rhymes (1953) represents the most extensive early collection of children’s
games in the United States.
While interest in the origins and diffusion of games has continued, studies of
children’s games are no longer primarily driven by the belief that they are historical
documents to be preserved and deciphered. Educator Dorothy Mills Howard, who began
collecting games in the early 1930s, was a pioneer in studying the ongoing traditions of
contemporary children and collecting games directly from children themselves. The
changing focus of games studies is most evident, however, in the work of Iona and Peter
Opie, who began collecting children’s folklore in the British Isles in the 1950s, and Brian
Sutton-Smith, who studied games in New Zealand in the late 1940s and the early 1950s
and, later, games in the United States.
Criticizing “shelfloads of books…instructing children in the games they ought to play…[or] instructing adults on how to instruct children in the
games they ought to play,” the Opies used extensive surveys of schoolchildren to “record
games children in fact play…of their own accord when out of doors, and usually out of
sight” (Opie and Opie 1969:v). In their Children’s Games in Street and Playground
(1969) and The Singing Game (1988), and in Iona Opie’s The People on the Playground
(1993), they documented a rich and dynamic body of ongoing tradition. The remarkable
historical preservation and broad geographical distribution they found in children’s
games were strong evidence for the vitality and continuity of children’s lore in Great
Britain. Children’s games were far more than hollow vestiges of the past, and they did
not appear to be in immediate danger of extinction.
The Opies were influenced by Sutton-Smith, who had documented a similarly vital
and dynamic body of children’s games, but while the Opies focused on continuity in
childhood traditions, he focused on how they changed over time.
Sutton-Smith set out to place contemporary New Zealand children’s games in
historical context by collecting from both children and adults and by extensively
reviewing historical documents. He used newspapers and radio to solicit written
accounts, conducted interviews, surveyed hundreds of college students, visited and
collected reports from schools, and observed children’s play at one school over a period
of two years. In The Games of New Zealand Children (1959, reprinted in 1972 in his
Folkgames of Children), Sutton-Smith organized his material historically within game
type, contrasting the games played between 1870 and 1920 with those played between
1920 and 1950. A History of Children’s Play: The New Zealand Playground, 1840–1950
(1981) extended the historical record back to the English settling of New Zealand in
1840.
In these works, Sutton-Smith documented the explosion of traditional games that
accompanied the introduction of compulsory schooling in the last half of the 19th
century, and “the taming of the playground” (Sutton-Smith 1972:13) that occurred as
adult supervision of playgrounds increased in the early 20th century. Rougher types of
play decreased, even as more active types of play increased among girls. He showed how,
especially from 1920 on, the influence of organized sports and recreation for children and
the increasing presence of commercial toys led to the loss of traditional games. Many that
survived were relegated to younger children, especially to girls.
Sutton-Smith also outlined a developmental progression from the choral and simple
central-person games (like ring-around-a-rosy, hide-and-seek, and various forms of tag)
played by children younger than ten years old to the more complex competitive and team
games (like king of the mountain, marbles, hopscotch, dodgeball, and keep-away) played
by older children. He proposed that dramatic, central-person games were popular among
younger children because they replicated children’s common experiences of family
relationships. At the same time, he believed, they helped children master the give-andtake with peers necessary for the more complex competitive games of later years.
This early work launched Sutton-Smith on the most varied and persistent career of any
researcher in the area of children’s games in the United States. An educator and
developmental psychologist by training, he has brought to his work an interdisciplinary
perspective often guided more by the social sciences than by folklore. Over the years, he
has drawn on historical, anthropological, developmental, and psychological theory and
methods to explore children’s games and game involvement. His Folkgames of Children (1972) covers topics as diverse as the “it” role in children’s games, sex differences in
play choices, historical changes in American children’s game preferences, and adolescent
kissing games.
Numerous collections of games have appeared since these pioneering works. Many are
small local or regional collections that are widely scattered through the literature (SuttonSmith, Mechling, Johnson, and McMahon 1994 presents an extensive bibliography of
children’s folklore, including games). Other collections, like Roger D.Abrahams’ JumpRope Rhymes: A Dictionary (1969) and (with Lois Rankin) Counting-Out Rhymes: A
Dictionary (1980), are compilations of texts associated with particular game types. More
general collections of American children’s folklore, like Mary and Herbert Knapp’s One
Potato, Two Potato: The Secret Education of American Children (1976) and Simon
J.Bronner’s American Childreris Folklore (1988), also include sections on children’s
games.
There is no single, complete, and broadly accepted system for classifying games.
Collectors have employed literally dozens of different game categories, and different
collectors have categorized the same games in different ways. Some, like Gomme, simply
presented their games alphabetically by title. Others, like Newell, ordered their
collections in part around themes like love, history, and mythology.
Most collectors have relied on similarities in game structures or actions to group their
games into categories and subcategories. Some of the more common categories of
traditional games are: singing games (like London bridge), counting-out games (like one
potato, two potato), chasing games (like tag), catching games (like prisoner’s base),
seeking games (like hide-and-seek), leader or central-person games (like Mother, may I?
or statues), daring games (like truth or dare), guessing games (like odd or even), fortunetelling games (like cooties), dueling games (like the dozens), acting games (like fox and
chickens), pretending games (like cops and robbers), ball games (like dodgeball or
foursquare), rhythmic games (like jump rope, hand-clapping and ball-bouncing games),
gambling games or games of chance (like dice), parlor games (like charades or tic-tactoe), games of skill (like jacks, marbles, hopscotch, or string games), and board or table
games (like chess and various card games). Many other categories can be found in the
literature, and it is likely that new types of games, like video games and fantasy role-play
games, will eventually expand them still further.
Since the 1960s, cross-cultural studies have used a much simpler scheme for
classifying games. In “Games in Culture,” anthropologist John M.Roberts and his
colleagues categorized games based upon whether their outcomes depended on physical
skill, chance, strategy, or some combination of these elements. They went on to
demonstrate that the types of games played in different cultures are related to various
dimensions of cultural complexity and evolution, and to variations in child-rearing
practices (Roberts, Arth, and Bush 1959).
According to these analyses (reviewed in Chick 1984), complex cultures have more
complex games and more types of games than simpler cultures. Games of physical skill
(like races, hopscotch, and many marble games) seem to be very ancient. They are the
most widespread among world cultures and appear at all levels of cultural complexity. In
contrast, games of strategy (like checkers, go, and tic-tac-toe) appear to have developed
later and are common only in societies with complex political and social structures.
Games of chance (like bingo and a variety of dice and fortune-telling games) are more common in societies characterized by environmental uncertainty, regardless of the degree
of social complexity. Further, these analyses found that games of physical skill were
associated cross-culturally with training children for high levels of achievement; games
of strategy, with high obedience training; and games of chance, with training for high
levels of responsibility. Combination games (like football which relies on both physical
skill and strategy, and poker, which combines elements of strategy and chance) show
even more complex and interactive patterns of relationship to childhood socialization
practices.
Roberts and his colleagues explained these connections by proposing a “conflictenculturation hypothesis” of game involvement. They believed that societal demands for
particular qualities induce conflicts in children, who are then drawn to activities like
games that allow them to explore and master these conflicts in a playful, buffered
environment. From this perspective, games are “expressive models” of important cultural
qualities and a medium through which children are gradually enculturated to core values
and behaviors.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Roberts and his colleagues also extended this model to adult
involvement in games like eightball pool, tennis, trapshooting, and soccer. In a series of
ethnographic studies (reviewed in Chick 1984), they explored why individuals choose
and abandon particular games, and how novice and expert players differ in their patterns
of involvement in particular games. These are some of the very few studies of adult
games in American culture outside of the context of sport.
Studies of the games of non-Anglo American children are also less common. A
notable exception is Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes’ Step It Down: Games, Plays,
Songs, and Stories from the Afro-American Heritage (1972). This is a compilation of
children’s lore drawn from Bessie Jones’ experiences growing up in Georgia and the
Georgia Sea Islands in the early 20th century. It includes many types of games, including
baby games, clapping, jumping, and skipping games, singing and ring plays, dances,
house plays, and outdoor games.
In her introduction, Hawes notes that almost all of the games reported by Bessie Jones
are group activities involving music and dance. She reflects on how these games differ
from the more individual, competitive games common in Anglo American culture, noting
that many are miniature dramatic “plays” that publicly dramatize the conflicts and
confrontations inherent in Afro-American life.
Comparisons like this of the games played by different groups within American
society are rare. The only major exception is the games played by boys and girls. Game
researchers have long noted gender differences in children’s games (reviewed by Hughes
in Hollis, Pershing, and Young 1993:130–148). Boys and girls largely play in separate
play groups and play different types of games throughout childhood, especially in the
school settings where most children’s games have been observed and collected.
A number of differences have been noted in the games typically played by boys and
girls. Boys’ games (like baseball, cowboys and Indians, and more recently video games)
have been characterized as more complex, competitive, active, and aggressive than girls’
games. They more often involve physical contact, larger and outdoor spaces, larger and
more mixedage play groups, and well-defined outcomes with clear winners and losers. In
contrast, girls’ games (like hopscotch, jump rope, and clapping games) have been
characterized as simpler and more passive, cooperative, and verbal. They more often involve indirect competition among individuals rather than teams, smaller and more
indoor spaces, smaller play groups (often twos or threes), more waiting in line, turntaking, and sustained cooperative, choral activity (like clapping or skipping) rather than
clear winners and losers.
It has been suggested that these differences prepare boys and girls for different adult
roles. The small, intimate play groups common among girls, and the more cooperative,
verbal, and passive quality of their play, has been associated with preparing girls for
traditional domestic roles. The more active, aggressive, and competitive qualities of boys’
team games and sports have been similarly associated with preparation for work roles.
One of the interesting questions in games study is whether recent changes in adult
gender-role expectations, and attempts to increase girls’ participation in sports, will result
in changes in the games girls and boys play. At least since the 1920s, boys appear to have
been narrowing their game choices largely to ball games and other sports-related
activities, while girls have increased their involvement in more active games and their
interest in games previously played mostly by boys. It is not clear, however, how much
girls’ spontaneous game participation has actually changed.
Folklore studies have recently moved away from analysis of isolated texts like game
descriptions or rhymes toward more in-depth analysis of the contexts in which folk
groups create and communicate traditional culture. Folklorist Kenneth S.Goldstein (in
Avedon and Sutton-Smith 1971:167–178) was an early advocate of ethnographic field
studies of how games are actually played. He proposed that games, with their easily
stated rules, were ideal for studying how folklore is expressed, performed, transmitted,
circulated, and used.
Goldstein also pointed out that there are often important differences between the stated
rules of games and the actual rules used by their players. As a result, he proposed, many
studies of games may be based on inaccurate classifications. To illustrate, Goldstein
described how children in a working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia played the game
of counting-out. While commonly classified as a game of chance, many of the players
Goldstein observed actually played it as a game of strategy. Among other things, they
chose rhymes with different numbers of beats depending on the number of players or
tagged on additional rhymes when the outcome was not the one they wanted (“My
mother told me to…”).
Following Goldstein, folklorist and developmental psychologist Linda Hughes has
explored contrasts between game rules and the rules actually used by players (in SuttonSmith, Mechling, Johnson, and McMahon 1994). She conducted a two-year-long
ethnographic study of how one girls’ play group played the game of foursquare (in
Hollis, Pershing, and Young 1993:130–148), describing how social relationships
influenced how players elaborated, interpreted, modified, and selectively ignored the
stated rules of their game. She also described a way of competing among these players
that differed in important ways from the individual competition specified by the rules of
the game.
Several in-depth ethnographic studies of the dynamics of social life in particular play
groups and children’s understanding of their own games have been conducted on school
playgrounds. Andy Sluckin focused on children’s folklore in two English primary
schools. In Growing Up in the Playground (1981), he described the games his children
played, but also how they included and excluded each other from play groups, gained entry into the game and particular game roles, started and resolved disputes, made and
maintained friendships, and negotiated status in the play group and relations between the
sexes. Folklorist Ann Richman Beresin (in Sutton-Smith, Mechling, Johnson, and
McMahon 1994) conducted a yearlong ethnographic study of recess at an elementary
school serving an ethnically diverse, working-class neighborhood in a large American
city. Relying primarily on children’s interpretations of videotapes of their own play, she
explored the complex social worlds children construct on the playground and in their
games.
There are also a number of in-depth studies of children’s play and games outside of
school settings. Anthropologist and sociolinguist Marjorie H.Good win studied the play
of African American children in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia. In He-Said-She-Said
(1990), she analyzed how boys and girls organize their play groups and games. In Shared
Fantasy (1983), sociologist Gary Alan Fine explored the gaming culture of players of
fantasy role-play games like dungeons and dragons. In With the Boys (1987), Fine
examined the world of little league baseball from the players’ perspectives.
City Play (1990), by Amanda Dargan and Steven Zeitlin, represents another type of
contextual study of games. They used fieldwork and historical research in the
neighborhoods of New York City to explore how the urban environment shapes, and is
exploited for, play; how play has varied with class, ethnicity, and gender; and how it has
changed with a changing environment and cast of players.
One of the most interesting issues in games study is how changes in society will affect
children’s traditional games. During the 20th century, children’s play has been
increasingly brought under adult supervision and direction and channeled into organized
sports and recreation programs. More and more schools are shortening recess or
confining it to children of the same age. Some are even proposing to eliminate it
altogether. At the same time, safety concerns in many neighborhoods are limiting
children’s opportunities for spontaneous play and exploration, and television and video
games are competing for children’s time and attention. All of these ongoing changes in
American society will continue to affect when, what, how, and with whom children play.
What the effects will be, whether they will be positive or negative for children, and how
they will further alter children’s repertoires of traditional games remains to be seen.
Linda A.Hughes
References
Avedon, Elliott M., and Brian Sutton-Smith. 1971. The Study of Games. New York: John Wiley.
Chick, Garry E. 1984. The Cross-Cultural Study of Games. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews
12:307–337.
Hollis, Susan T., Linda Pershing, and M.Jane Young, eds. 1993. Feminist Theory and the Study of
Folklore. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Roberts, John M., M.J.Arth, and R.R.Bush. 1959. Games in Culture. American Anthropologist
61:597–605.
Sutton-Smith, Brian, Jay Mechling, Thomas W.Johnson, and Felicia McMahon, eds. 1994.
Children’s Folklore: A Sourcebook. New York: Garland.