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[Steve Block]

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Steve Block wrote:
> 
>> Steve Block wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>>    
>>>
>>>> On 1/4/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>>>      
>>>>
>>>>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>>>>        
>>>>>
>>>>>> I would note that "Game Over" comes from American video game culture
>>>>>>          
>>>>>>
>>>>> It's much older than.  It appeared on pinball machines before video
>>>>> games ever existed.
>>>>>        
>>>>>
>>>> Hmmm... you're going to have to edit
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_over then...
>>>>      
>>>>
>>> Oh for crying out loud, what on earth does a referee's whistle mean at 
>>> the end of a footie match if not game over?  Christ, how many PE 
>>> teachers around the world have called out come on in boys, game over...
>>>    
>>>
>> 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?
>>
> There are many examples like the one from Thackery.  "The game was over" 
> is somewhat different because of the "was".  I looked at Google Books 
> and kept getting a lot of different situations where a sentence ended 
> with "game", and the next one began with "Over".  We are looking for its 
> use as an interjection.  Perhaps in something like this hypothetical 
> sentence: "As he lay on his deathbed he realized it would soon be game 
> over."  The problem is not as easy as it seems.

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.


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