It's not funny if you're from Central Europe which suffered because of its poverty and resulting government. On 1/3/07, Kurt Maxwell Weber <kmw(a)armory.com> wrote:

The Cunctator wrote: It's much older than. It appeared on pinball machines before video games ever existed. Ec

Thursday, January 4, 2007, 3:47:10 PM, The wrote: But you don't need an electronic display for that: all you need is a small lightbulb behind a coloured glass: when the game is over, the light bulb lights up. These "electromechanical" pinball machines have been made from the 1930s until the advent of electronics.

Steve Block wrote: I mean Thackery wrote in Vanity Fayre that "The Game, in her opinion, was over". That's a century before pinball culture. Did Americans invent sex too? -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.5/616 - Release Date: 04/01/07 13:34

Ray Saintonge wrote: Oh I got one of those. But I think we are talking about different things here. I'm simply stating that it seems to me to be somewhat original research to postulate that the concept behind the phrase "Game over", was established by it's usage in the video games of the seventies. The concept, that of using the term "game over" to imply that something was finished, has been around for a long time, which I think the Thackeray quote shows. You've got James Parton. Life of Voltaire, 1881. "That game over, Madame du Châtelet, who was on the losing side, asked her revenge. Another game was begun." I mean, the phrase "the game was afoot" is a long established one, which implies the game would, at some point be over. I don't dispute that video games have used the term "game over", but I think it is dangerous to associate any cultural impact solely with the video game's usage of the phrase, and also to ignore the wider context of the phrase and variations of it, as the article currently does, without any concrete sourcing. The OED doesn't currently define the term, which to me implies the whole article is defining a new term. Which merely demonstrates how tricky all this sourcing is. I'd rather see an article which said in the 1800's the term Game over was used in such manners as these. Then detail it's usage in patents of the fifties, which we have, and then detail the usage in the seventies. I think it is a mistake to associate all examples of it to video game influence. I would hope we can all accept the concept and the phrase have been around longer than the seventies, and that whilst video game usage influenced a generation, it was borrowed from elsewhere. I feel presenting it as derived from video games gives undue weight to that usage. I've yet to find a good source which states it was a new term created by the video game industry, but I have yet to find a good source to state otherwise also. So it seems to me that without such sources, we have to be very careful what we write. Anyway, on and off I will keep looking. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.7/619 - Release Date: 07/01/07 18:29