We spoke with historian Andrea Contato about The Sumerian Game from 1964.
I am the ruler of the city of Lagash, in ancient Sumer. Year after year, we have suffered disasters that have caused the crops to fail or rot away, and the population of Lagash is now nearly halved. I have 4,600 bushels of grain left and 230 people who rely on food. And now the question is: How much should I use to plant for the next season, how much should I use to feed my people, and how much should I store for the future? I suspect that no matter what I choose, it will end badly.
What I have just described is a typical scenario in The Sumerian Game, the oldest strategy computer game we have a decent amount of information about. The game was first made available to a limited number of American schoolchildren in 1964, where it was played on mainframe computers via printer terminals. Later versions were accompanied by slides and audio recordings, which thus became a form of cutscenes.
Storytelling through simple choices
The Sumerian Game is not a very advanced game, though it does have a certain depth. Through the game and the text-based messages that appear along the way, players are able to construct a kind of story together with the computer’s algorithms – albeit one that often ends badly – and in the dilemmas they face can be recognized as the core of even modern strategy games. Every choice they make is interesting, in the sense that it has significant consequences for what happens next.
The experiment with The Sumerian Game didn’t last very long, and it wasn’t played by many students. But it still had a major influence on the evolution of the gaming medium, as it was a direct inspiration for a game that became very popular in the early computer community: Hamurabi. This game is considered a foundational pillar in the strategy genre and an ancestor of today’s city-building and empire-management games.
Of course, it would be unwise to say that these genres wouldn’t have existed in anything like their current form without Hamurabi (and thus The Sumerian Game), because text-based simulations were relatively obvious uses for early computers and appeared independently in other places too. But as it happened, these particular games ended up in very significant positions in gaming’s large and complicated family tree.
Despite this, The Sumerian Game was virtually unknown until around ten years ago. The original game is unfortunately gone forever, and the same seems to apply to the source code. As mentioned, it was only played by a handful of people, and most of those involved in creating The Sumerian Game had already passed away by that point (today, none of them are still alive). So there was really no one left to tell the game’s story.
But about ten years ago, traces of the game were discovered, sparking a historical investigation that is still ongoing. Because of that, we now know much more about The Sumerian Game.
The Italian game historian Andrea Contato is one of those who has devoted great attention to the game, and in addition to writing a book about it, he has also managed to recreate several versions of the game. These are available on Steam and completely free to play. His The Sumerian Game on Steam also includes several early strategy games that were built on the same concepts, including Hamurabi.
So we reached out to learn more about The Sumerian Game, as well as his projects related to the game.
The story of the Sumerian Game
What is the historical significance of the game?
Before diving into the history of The Sumerian Game, I think it’s worth explaining why this game is so important. For video game history enthusiasts, one of the most intriguing aspects is identifying «firsts»: the first console, the first arcade game, the first video game, and so on. Often – but not always – these «firsts» are products that were hugely influential and widely known.
The Sumerian Game holds several of these «firsts» and was indeed influential, yet until about ten years ago, it was completely forgotten and even believed to be lost forever. It’s quite a curious situation: a game that was groundbreaking in many ways and paved the road for countless others, nearly vanished from memory—if not for an American researcher named Devin Monnens, who uncovered newspaper articles from the 1960s that mentioned it.
Naturally, a story like this is extremely compelling. So, I and several other researchers started digging to find as much information as possible and understand what had really happened.
Can you give us a brief history of The Sumerian Game?
Here’s a summary of the story: in the early 1960s, a school superintendent named Noble Gividen had the idea of using computers to enhance education in rural New York schools. His thinking was something like this: these are small schools that can’t afford to have a teacher and a lab for every subject, but if we connect them via teletype to a central computer programmed with educational content, we can lighten the teachers’ load and let computers handle some of the instruction, while human teachers focus on more complex tasks.
Gividen’s district was in Westchester County – where IBM’s headquarters are located in Armonk. When he thought about computers, he naturally thought of IBM and reached out. As it happened, IBM employed a philosopher named Bruse Moncreiff, who had been traveling the U.S. working on projects involving computers in education. He had done some work at Stanford with a computer to teach music and singing and was soon to be involved in similar efforts in Texas and Illinois for a virtual chemistry laboratory.
Moncreiff was called to New York and showed up in the summer of 1962 with an idea: create simulation games to both teach and entertain 11- and 12-year-old students. At that meeting were several district educators, including a history teacher named Mabel Addis, who had already developed her own interactive teaching method based on games, role-playing, and engaging activities.
From the collaboration between Moncreiff and Addis came the idea to create a turn-based strategic and management simulation set in ancient Sumer around 3500 BC. That became The Sumerian Game: a game in which the student plays the role of a king managing grain supplies to keep the population alive and help the city grow.
The story could have ended around 1967 when the project ran out of funding, but a new chain of events kept it alive. A copy of the game made its way to the University of Calgary in Canada, where it was studied and used to teach mathematics. A programmer from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), visiting the university (a client of DEC, having purchased several PDP-8 minicomputer), saw the game and decided to port it to FOCAL, making it work on the computers DEC sold. These were smaller machines than the original ones used for The Sumerian Game, and the programmer – Douglas Dyment – wasn’t interested in teaching math. His goal was to impress DEC’s clients and offer engaging software to attract potential buyers.
Dyment made some changes and turned the software into a full-fledged game, complete with a land market and the ability to buy low and sell high (if all went well). His version, initially called King of Sumeria and later renamed Hamurabi (with only one «m» [unlike the real Hammurabi]), spread quickly. It became even more widespread when David Ahl, author of the book 101 BASIC Computer Games, converted it into BASIC and made it available to the growing number of computers equipped with a BASIC interpreter.
The rest is fairly well known: Hamurabi became one of the most played games of the era, much like Advent and Spacewar! Many played it, modified the code, and created alternate versions—some more complex than others. Others used it as inspiration to build derivative games, and the city/empire simulation-management genre became highly popular, leading to titles like SimCity and eventually Civilization, much later.
You mentioned «firsts»; what are the «firsts» of The Sumerian Game?
As simple as the question may seem, it’s actually not at all. When digging into the history of computing and video games, one of the first challenges is to clearly define the meaning of the words we’re using. Take the term video game, for instance – one of the most commonly used. A quick search online reveals several definitions that may appear similar but actually diverge significantly.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, for example, a video game is «an electronic game in which players control images on a video screen.» By this definition, The Sumerian Game – which printed its output on paper and had no screen – wouldn’t qualify. Neither would one of the earliest arcade machines in history, Computer Quiz by Nutting Associates, the company that briefly partnered with Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney to produce Computer Space in 1971, a year before Pong.
The Oxford Dictionary defines it instead as «a game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a monitor or other display.» But this too poses problems—for example, it excludes Pong, one of the first video games ever and universally recognized as the arcade that launched the industry. To display the paddles and ball, Allan Alcorn didn’t write a computer program; he wired together a number of integrated circuits. It was entirely hardware – no software involved.
This kind of definitional nitpicking could go on forever, but I’ll stop here. What matters is that before we talk about «firsts,» we need to be very clear about what we’re trying to describe.
The Sumerian Game was certainly one of the earliest computer games, preceded only by Spacewar! and perhaps by a few other economic simulation programs developed at various American universities – of which almost nothing is known, aside from the fact that they once existed. Often, not even their titles have survived, and they were likely played by only a handful of students, leaving no impact on the games that followed.
Within this context, The Sumerian Game was also one of the first attempts at edutainment—and while perhaps not the most effective (its use was limited to New York schools and the University of Calgary), it was certainly the most influential. It even gave rise to the genre of strategic/management and simulation games. As far as we know, it was also the first multimedia game, combining printed output with projected slides – described by researcher Kate Willaert as the first cutscenes in video game history – and even audio recordings of teachers playing the role of advisors, providing the student with information to reflect on between turns.
Mabel Addis, the history teacher who worked on The Sumerian Game, has been referred to as the first writer and game designer. It’s true that earlier games existed, such as The Carnegie Tech Management Game, but the true innovation in Addis’s work lies in the narrative element—the engaging, playful texts she created specifically to entertain and educate 11- to 12-year-old students.
I believe that rather than focusing on The Sumerian Game’s claim to various «firsts,» it’s more worthwhile to reflect on the importance and immense positive influence this game had on an entire generation of students, amateur programmers, and future aspiring game designers. More than any other game, The Sumerian Game convinced countless people that playing with a computer was possible – and that creating games might even be more fun than playing them.
Do you know if the creators of The Sumerian Game, including Mabel Addis, ever got any recognition for their pioneering work while alive?
The answer to this question, unfortunately, is a very sad one. As far as I know, none of the many people involved in the development of The Sumerian Game were ever officially credited or recognized for their work during their lifetimes. Most of the key figures I write about in my book have already passed away. The last to do so was Walter Goodman, in 2023—the author of the Sierra Leone Game and the final custodian of the game library created by BOCES at Yorktown Heights. The others had died many years – or even decades – earlier. And, to my knowledge, none of them were ever contacted while they were still alive, largely because The Sumerian Game’s importance was only recognized toward the end of the last decade.
That’s why I dedicated a significant part of my book to giving a name, a face, and a biography to all the people involved. Even if we can no longer thank them in person, we can still remember them for the extraordinary achievement they accomplished.
I would like to say their names, because too often people only mention Mabel Addis – who certainly played a key role – but she was not the only protagonist in the story of The Sumerian Game.
Their names, in alphabetical order, are:
| Addis, Mabel Bratman, Audrey Cassetta, Frank Forsythe, Harriet Greenberg Gividen, Noble Goodman, Walter Greenberg Forsythe, Harriet Guisti, Milo Hartz, Christine Jass, Andrew Edward Rudolph Kellerhouse, Stanley |
Leonard, Jimmer Lundberg, Ronald Martin McKay, William Mergardt, Gerard Moncreiff, Bruse Nuccio, Donald Joseph Robinson, Mary Grace Pethick Tice, Kenneth Roswell Sr. Schmidt, Otto Taylor, Robert E. Wing, Richard |
Recreating The Sumerian Game
What’s your background and how did you get involved with The Sumerian Game?
I’m a researcher in the history of computing and video games, as well as the author of several books on these subjects. One of my favorite areas – besides computer role-playing games, to which I dedicated the two-volume book Through the Moongate: The story of Richard Garriott, Origin Systems Inc and Ultima – is the pioneering phase of video game history, before the industry as we know it was born. This period is now quite distant in time and, in my opinion, has not been studied adequately. That’s why I’ve devoted a lot of time to researching it.
The Sumerian Game is one of the stories I’ve followed with particular attention (the other is the birth of video game consoles between 1974 and 1978, with a focus on the often-overlooked but highly influential European and Italian industry—but that’s another topic).
What kind of process was used to recreate it?
In 1964 – when the first lines of The Sumerian Game were written in Fortran IV – computers accessible to students didn’t have monitors. Users interacted with the machines through automated typewriters connected via modem, known as teletypewriters. Output wasn’t displayed on a screen, but printed on paper by small mechanical hammers. And this turned out to be a great stroke of luck, because while the source code for all versions of The Sumerian Game has been lost over the decades, some of the printed output has survived.
Reconstructing The Sumerian Game is therefore a bit like recreating a video game based solely on a YouTube gameplay video. Something similar was recently done with Doom using AI. In this case, I did everything myself, starting from five printed listings (not all of them complete, by the way).
These output listings alone wouldn’t have been sufficient if not for other supporting materials. Fortunately, the project that led to the creation of The Sumerian Game was funded by the BOCES of New York, a public body that had a vested interest in monitoring how funds were being used. A researcher named Richard Wing was the project supervisor, and he wrote a series of very precise and detailed reports, which were compiled into a final report in 1967. Thanks to his work, many of the game mechanics are known today.
By analyzing the listings and cross-referencing the available data – like assembling a giant puzzle – I was able to reconstruct the game. And I released it on Steam.
How accurate would you say your version is compared to the original?
First of all, it’s important to clarify that there is no single Sumerian Game. There were definitely at least two distinct versions: one developed at IBM’s Mohansic Laboratory—now known as the Thomas J. Watson Research Center—and another at the BOCES research center in Yorktown Heights. Both versions stemmed from Mabel Addis’s original work, but they evolved in notably different directions. The IBM project, as far as we know, was never fully developed and remained at a prototype stage, while the BOCES version was modified several times over the years until 1967.
These numerous revisions altered various aspects of the game: the text was changed, the number of turns was reduced, the amount of information provided to the player was decreased, and multimedia content was added or modified. These included audio recordings of teachers acting as advisors to the player-king and visual slides projected to depict events such as famine, floods, or even daily life in Sumerian times.
Furthermore, the original program—initially written in Fortran IV for the IBM 7090 – was later ported to Assembly for the IBM 1401 and eventually to Coursewriter III. When The Sumerian Game arrived in Canada, it was once again modified and rewritten in APL and FOCAL. It was in this context that Douglas Dyment encountered the game and used it as the foundation for King of Sumeria, which eventually became Hamurabi in BASIC.
Out of all these versions, I chose to recreate only two: Sum9rx (the IBM version) and Suilxr (the BOCES version). The reason is simple: these were the only two versions for which enough information was available. The others, at least for now, appear to be truly lost forever.
The level of fidelity in the reconstruction of Suilxr is high, with the exception of one detail: it’s unclear how the slides were projected during the game. The projection was automatic, triggered by a projector connected to the computer, but we don’t know the exact order in which the slides were loaded. Some phrases were also permanently lost because they referred to in-game events that never occurred during the printed sessions we have. Aside from that, the reconstruction is very accurate.
For Sum9rx, on the other hand, I had to make several assumptions regarding the mechanics, since Wing did not include detailed documentation about this version in his reports—understandably so, as it was the internal IBM prototype and not part of the BOCES-run program.
What are your plans for The Sumerian Game going forward?
In the Steam release, alongside Suilxr and Sum9rx, several later versions are also included – such as King of Sumeria by Douglas Dyment, Bob Becker’s modified version, the Pollution Game (written by Jim Storer, also known for Lunar Lander), and others. However, The Sumerian Game was only one of three simulation games developed by BOCES as part of the research project. The other two were the Sierra Leone Game – set in the African nation of Sierra Leone in 1961, with the player acting as a United Nations advisor – and the Free Enterprise Game, in which the player takes on the role of an entrepreneur managing a toy store and later a surfboard factory.
Unfortunately, like The Sumerian Game, the source code and most output listings for these games have also been lost. However, I’m currently working to reconstruct them, and I’ve already begun with the Sierra Leone Game.
One of the reasons I decided to take on this challenge is that the Sierra Leone Game is, as far as we know, the first computer game in history to include an intro, a tutorial, and even tooltips (referred to in the game as «keywords»), a player quiz to assess learning, and an internal ranking system that could promote the student on the spot if they effectively managed the onion plantation, rice market, or Ministry of Economic Development.
I’m also working on a virtual reconstruction of Nimrod, another early ancestor of today’s video games. And of course, I continue to write books on the history of video games.
We’d like to thank Andrea Contato for answering our questions, and for his patience during the production of this article.
You can find his book, The Sumerian Game: A Digital Resurrection on Amazon, and via his own webstore. His recreated version of The Sumerian Game is available on Steam.
Please visit his website for more on his various projects.
While Spillhistorie.no is a Norwegian site, we have a number of stories available in English. Find them here.