Mabel Addis was an American teacher, writer, and the first-ever female video game designer. She designed and co-created the very first text-based video game in 1964, long before games like Pong and The Oregon Trail were ever created. Her story is perfect for highlighting the importance of women in gaming, a topic we’ve been covering throughout Women’s History Month.
Early Career
Born on May 21st, 1912, Addis excelled throughout high school and college, graduating from Barnard College in 1933 with a degree in ancient history and a minor in psychology. She then attended Columbia University for her graduate and obtained her master’s in education. In 1937, she began teaching elementary students at Hyatt Avenue School and remained there for 13 years. She finally moved to the Katonah-Lewisboro School District in 1950, where she taught for an additional 26 years.
While at the Katonah-Lewisboro School District, Addis was incredibly active within her community. She published various historical articles and co-authored a book entitled Katonah: a History of a New York Village and Brewster Through the Years. However, Addis’ most noteworthy accomplishment occurred in the 1960s.
The Sumerian Game
During the Summer of 1966, Addis helped with the creation of an interactive game entitled The Sumerian Game. Beginning as a project from IBM’s Bruse Moncreiff and programmed by William McKay, Addis brought the game to life by contributing as the main writer. While the game was originally conceived as a simple educational tool, Addis’ writing transformed it into something that had never been seen before - the first-ever story-driven computer game.
The Sumerian Gametasked its players with managing various resources of the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash, ruling it with an advisor’s aid. The game was played by students on an IBM 1050 terminal, which was connected to a time-shared IBM 7090 mainframe computer, as well as a sliding projector. Before the students would start playing, however, they were introduced to the world of Sumer through a slideshow that was synchronized to a cassette (which, technically, was the very first video game cutscene).
While technically a video game, players did not play the game via a monitor: instead, students would play by inputting commands on their typewriters, which would go into the mainframe computer, which then sent back responses to the students via another piece of paper. While not the very first resource-management game created for computers, it was the first one created for educational purposes and is the very first “edutainment” game as it’s now known.
Legacy
While she was not the very first person to work on an interactive computer-based game, Addis was the first game designer, and more specifically, the first video game writer ever, which is quite an accomplishment. So with that said, it’s sad that Addis has not been given more credit or notoriety by the gaming industry. While The Sumerian Game was a title that helped pioneer the games industry, it was largely overshadowed by later games that came after it, such as The Oregon Trail.
After the creation of The Sumerian Game, the first segment of the title was recreated by programmer Jimmer Leonard for the IBM 1401 in order to be used as a demonstration at a terminal in the BOCES Research Center. The project received notoriety in both Life and Time magazines. However, after concluding the second project in 1967, BOCES did not receive additional funds to extend the project any further. The title became company property, with no further plans of using it as part of any further educational purposes. From there, The Sumerian Game largely faded into obscurity with no plans for the game to be released commercially.
Addis continued her work as an elementary school teacher until her eventual retirement in 1976 and passed away in 2004. She unfortunately never received her due credit from being a pioneer in the games industry, but those of us who enjoy history as much as she did will remember truly how big of an impact she had on the games industry. As fellow lovers of history, we should appreciate Mabel Addis and the contributions that she brought to the world of video games.
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(This article is credited to Ben Price. For as long as he can remember, Ben has always loved playing, discussing, and writing about video games. Since receiving his B.A. in English, he now writes about them for a living.)