The Decade America Went Mahjong Crazy, And Why We’re No Different Today
What Gaming’s Biggest Fads Say About Our Culture
Imagine decorating your entire house based on the color scheme of your Nintendo WiiU. In the 1920s, people did something just like that: they designed their lives around mahjong. It was common for wealthy Americans to have elaborate Chinese masks, robes, and furniture that evoked the Far East, and mahjong was always at the center of their obsession. Playing mahjong wasn’t cheap, either—with a $20 price tag for the best sets, it would have cost over $250 today. Decorating around your WiiU might actually be cheaper.
Every decade has a gaming obsession that becomes more than a past time—it defines an era. A game becomes successful thanks to a complex mix of pricing, distribution, and execution, but ultimately, a breakout game makes it big because it says something about who we are at that time. A great game provides catharsis for the urges we didn’t even know we had. And that’s as true now as it was in the 1900s and the 1920s.
Before there was mahjong, there was an early 1900s hit called Pillow-Dex. You may not have heard of the game, but you have heard of the company that made it. Pillow-Dex was Parker Brothers’ first big hit, and the rules were astonishingly simple: players hit a balloon (the “pillow”) over a net. Players could invent more complex rules if they wanted, but the simplicity of the game was part of its appeal.
There were particulars that made Pillow-Dex a hit. Parker Brothers hired socialites to promote the game, it wasn’t too expensive, and the game market was huge. But it became a breakout hit because it tapped an unmet desire in the culture. 1890s society was marked by decorum and restraint. What better way to release all that tension than by hitting a balloon over a net? It was childishness with the glamour of society included, no extra charge.
Two decades later, Mahjong became a hit when Ezra Fitch imported it from China in 1920 (you may recognize his company, Abercrombie & Fitch). The same way Pillow-Dex let socialites bust loose, mahjong helped people play out their fantasies. The gameplay and pleasant click of the ivory tiles made it fun, but there’s a bigger reason mahjong became a phenomenon. In the 1920s, Shanghai was the Paris of the East. China represented pure exoticism without unseemly political threats. In a decade that became known for escapism, China was the farthest escape of all. Though some of the marketing and hype around China in the 1920s is distasteful to modern eyes, it emerged because of keen interest in a country that felt as distant as Mars feels today.
It’s easy to go through the decades and create tiny, lightly-researched theses about why a game made it big: Monopoly was a product of Depression-era escapism, and maybe the game of Life represented a desire to conform to a modern American Dream. Perhaps the Pet Rock exposed a fresh embrace of the absurd while the Rubik’s Cube represented the success-driven pragmatism of the 80s. Obviously, all of these theories run a risk of being pop-psychology babble, so it’s important to come to such conclusions carefully. Still, each phenomenon sheds a little light on the decade it describes. But there’s no need to go back in time when we have our own fad to contend with.
It’s not just the gameplay that made Cards Against Humanity the #1 selling game on Amazon—you can find that in Apples to Apples. And while the execution behind the game is blazingly innovative, from its free-to-print versions to its Amazon-only retailing, new business models don’t excite an entire culture. It’s the offense that made it a hit. Today, our society has exactingly enforced rules about what can be said in public. So Cards Against Humanity breaks them. Whether the gameplay leads to civilized discussion about social mores or crude crosstalk is irrelevant. What matters is that it lets you do the things you can’t do anywhere else.
The way Cards Against Humanity lets a table full of friends offend each other is just like the “outrageous” behavior of Pillow-Dex. The escapism of mahjong is the same escapism we indulge in when we play any game that breaks the rules of our daily lives. The next time you find yourself with a hand full of cards with unmentionable phrases, try to remember that it’s not that different from palming some ivory tiles or, even better, laughing while hitting a cheap balloon over a flimsy net. Just don’t use any of them to inspire your interior design.
If you’re interested in the history of games, Marvin Kaye’s A Toy is Born is a great history though, sadly, it’s out of print. In The Game Makers, Philip Orbanes provides a fascinating history of Parker Brothers, from Pillow-Dex to Monopoly. These books were both used for research for this article and for Trivia Happy, a site where you can play trivia with your friends and learn amazing things. You can get started by playing this gaming trivia question.
