Although it may seem like an old game, Jenga is only around 40 years old. It was created by a British immigrant in Ghana.
The rules are very simple.
They are 54 wooden blocksall the same size, which must be stacked horizontally on a flat surface, in groups of three, to form a tower.
Each player, when their turn comes, must remove a block from the tower and place it at the top, until the structure, at some point, lose your balance and collapse.
Then the game ends. Whoever causes the fall is the loser. And the winner? In the end, gravity.
You probably already know what game it is: with around 100 million units sold Around the world, the game Jenga needs no introduction.
Although the simplicity of the purpose and materials may suggest an ancient origin, hundreds or thousands of years old, Jenga emerged about 40 years agothe brainchild of Leslie Scott, a British designer who spent her childhood in East Africa.
“We are a very competitive familyin the sense that, in any meeting, we ended up playing a game”, she told the BBC’s Witness program.
“If we were eating olives, for example, we would compete to see who could spit the pit the furthest away, or things like that,” he recalled.
At age 18, his family moved to Ghana. There, she and her younger brothers were always in search of new ways to have fun.
“My brother, who was much younger, had a set of wooden blocks that he played with. They were rectangular scraps from a sawmill in Ghana,” Scott said. “As we played, We turned it into a game to stack the blocks, taking one out and placing it on top. This was, let’s say, the first version”, he explained.
“Eureka” moment
After completing his studies, Scott decided to move to the United Kingdom. He left with some boxes and, in one of them, was your beloved childhood gamewhich he never stopped playing with.
“We’re talking about the 1980s. My boyfriend at that time had just graduated from Oxford and become a professional tennis player,” Scott recalled. “He was in charge of a tennis court at Merton College (one of the colleges at the University of Oxford), along with other professional tennis players who loved my game.”
“So much so that they asked me to be in charge of the entertainment part at a fundraising event.”
Scott was responsible for hiring jugglers and, in addition, led to its creation.
“It wasn’t supposed to be the center of attention, but it was what stayed most in people’s memories: my block game“, he stated.
This was, for her, the “eureka” moment: when she realized the true potential of her childhood hobby.
Fiasco
Scott then decided to turn his board game into a commercial product. He founded his own company, but to do so, he needed money.
“I went to the bank, convinced the managers that [com o meu projeto] I would make a fortune, I borrowed money from my boyfriend and, worst of all, my mother was guarantor of a second loan which I requested from the bank. I needed a guarantee, and it was my mother’s house,” he said.
Under enormous pressure, Scott managed to find a local workshop in the north of the UK and, in 1983, she was ready to launch her game at its first appearance at the London Toy Fair.
“I thought I was doing really well, but I didn’t receive any orders“, Scott told the BBC. “No orders from all those people who left their cards after the fair.”
From a commercial point of view, at least, the experience was a fiasco.
What he received, in return, were many questions. And that made her realize that, being an unknown company with just one product, no one would risk investing in her.
Without hesitation, he wrote down the advice he heard and started creating other games, with the aim of developing a portfolio.
Scott — who then began to define himself as a game designer, an unusual profession at the time — continued to offer his main product and even traveled to the United States in search of a buyer. Nothing seemed to work around 1985, a period when video games were beginning to gain popularity.
“I was lose a lot of money and getting more and more in debt”, he stated.
Lucky break
Until a stroke of luck — in addition to her persistence — took her out of the bad moment she was going through.
“I received a message from a friend’s brother who was living in Canada, asking if I could present the game in a shopping mall in the country”, he says.
There, a key sales executive at the country’s largest toy company, Irwin Toy, saw the game and took it to the directors, who expressed interest in acquiring the license to produce Jenga.
The name Jenga, however, was a problem. The company didn’t like him, but Scott didn’t give in.
Despite the passage of years, she vividly remembers the phone conversation with Irwin Toy management.
“They said they really liked the game, that they loved it (…) but they hated the name. It was a turning point. I simply said I couldn’t allow them to change the name. It had to be Jenga.”
But why so much insistence on this strange name, which at least in English has no meaning or reference?
“I was born and raised in East Africa and I grew up speaking Swahili. My mom had a dog named Kucheza, which in Swahili means ‘play,’” Scott said.
“I thought it would be a great name for my game, but it was already the dog’s name. Kujenga means ‘build’ in Swahili. So it seemed like a perfect name for the game.”
And so was Jenga.
Little by little, the game’s popularity spread. Scott managed to pay his debtsand your mother didn’t have to sell the house.
Today, the game integrates the National Toy Hall of Famea space in the USA that recognizes toys and games that have maintained their popularity over the years.
And since then, Scott has designed and released more than 40 games.
