A Visit to Sid Sackson's Archives

After legendary designer Sid Sackson passed, the Strong Museum of Play became the home of his personal papers. This collection includes correspondences, journals, prototypes, sketches, and a bunch more ephemera from his long career. His diaries alone spanned 35 years and were intricately indexed. It will take years to transcribe and digitize them all, but the early parts of his career are up on the Sid Sackson Portal here: https://sacksonportal.museumofplay.org/s/sackson-portal/page/welcome

A year after the portal's launch, Julia Novakovic posted an update on the project's ongoing road map for future transcription and public display: https://www.museumofplay.org/blog/the-sid-sackson-portal-one-year-later/

But before the portal went online, the only way to see any of these papers was to go personally to the Strong Museum and schedule a visit with the curator. (Many thanks to Julia for giving a rando like me access to these artifacts!) My wife and I paid a visit to Rochester to see a few museums, but I had carved out an hour or two to peruse and photograph as much as I could and share it on twitter.

Below is the unspooled thread of those posts. Forgive the brevity of these tweets. Since I knew they would soon be launching the portal and I only had a brief window, I didn't devote much time to documenting his diaries. I instead looked at the correspondences, invoices, and other documents relating to the day-to-day business of being a professional game designer.

Hope you dig this peek into history!

That's... A lot of historical archives. This might take a minute.

My god. Sid Sackson's hand drawn diagrams for Playing Cards Around The World.

So many questions already, like why was the game Tresette cut from the book?

I can't imagine writing and diagramming one solid rulebook by hand, let alone an entire collection. Incredible.

Manuscript preface from GAMUT OF GAMES. Gosh, if he felt like there wasn't enough selection back in the day, I wonder what he would say to the flood of new games we have now.

Oh, you're a game designer? Tell me the proper usage of the verb "foreplace." (Manuscript excerpt from MATE in GAMUT OF GAMES.)

My man Sid was out here playing Indiana Jones, parleying with a book dealer's wife to find a dusty unpublished booklet from an obscure German designer.

A sample of hand drawn diagrams from GAMUT OF GAMES manuscript.

At the request of @CCGHistory I checked what was the correspondence between WotC and Sid Sackson. WotC thanked Sid for visiting, included several Fallen Empires boosters and a rules booklet. Couldn't find a diary entry about this trip, but Sid's diaries will be public in Oct.

Back when gamers wore a full suit, pearls, and diamond earrings for game night.
(From the box of ACQUIRE correspondence.)

I'm running out of time so I'm taking as many pics as I can while I'm here. I have to share this remarkable correspondence from 3M to Sid about ACQUIRE. Can you imagine a publisher today waiting "several years" for a game to go "full tilt."?

Letters from Feb-July 1964, finalizing the rules of ACQUIRE. Can you imagine game dev limited to the speed of postal mail these days?

Then again, 3M pre-selling the game before the rules were done sounds like a modern Kickstarter to me. HEYOOO🔥

I was delighted to find Strong Museum has the actual royalty invoices from 3M for ACQUIRE. How much did Sid get paid? In Q4 1964, adjusted for inflation, he earned $25,292.23 that quarter alone. Seems like a very different industry back then.

Even after that apparent success, Sid still had to submit his new games with the proper forms like any old schmuck. Here's the submission form for his game SPECTRUM, submitted July 1965.

I got to hold the actual galley of ACQUIRE's cover art. That's my hand besmirching that artifact!

In case you're curious, here's the first royalty advance invoice for ACQUIRE from Q4 1963. $75 or about $660 in today's dollars. I dunno if this stuff is as interesting to anyone else. Game design is one thing, but I like seeing how the guy made a living of this business.

Earlier in this thread I said I couldn't find a note in Sid's diary about visiting WotC. However, I did see this Jan 1995 note anticipating "the collectable card game market" at the next GAMA in March 1995. However WotC's thank you note was sent in February. Mysterious.

The editor's red line notes from the typescript preface of PLAYING CARDS AROUND THE WORLD. July 4, 1981. I was a baby when this was written.

I didn't take many photos of the diaries since they will be going live online in a couple months. I did see an entry where he literally wrote that he was up in bed, right then, thinking about overhauling his old prototype TRADE. The next week's entries document playtest results. 

That's the moment where it became very real for me. Here's this guy in his final years, a long career already accomplished, and yet still kept up awake thinking about his next game. That used to happen to me, but not in a very long time. I dunno which is the healthier path. Hm. 

It was so wonderful getting this brief glimpse of Sid Sackson's life and career in game design. Countless thanks to @archivesjulia for arranging this access. I hope I can do it again some time. Thank you!