Links: Africana Online, BGG Auctions Aggregated & Connecting Designers to Their Creations

Didier Bonvin, multimedia journalist, and Manuel Rozoy, game designer at Ubisoft France and former editor-in-chief of the late JsP magazine will talk about "Video games / board games: a strange love affair". Didier will tell us about the various attemps of video games to get closer to board games through the last three decades, while Manuel will tell us about similarities and divergences between designing video games and board games.

By Jeanne and Michael Strongin, April 27, 2012

We are Ned Strongin's children, writing in response to a series of articles and interviews in which Howard Wexler has been taking all of the credit for creating the Connect-4 game. From our observation, Howard's self-promotion seems to have begun in earnest a few years ago when Ned's health was deteriorating and has continued more aggressively after Ned's death last year shortly before his 92nd birthday. We can't sit quietly and see these claims made without challenging them any longer. Though our perspective is very different from Howard's, we believe it is factually accurate based on existing documentation, discussions with our dad from the time Connect-4 was licensed until his death, and our own personal observations. We feel it's our responsibility to set the record straight since Ned isn't around to speak for himself.

In the early 1970s, Ned Strongin, an established independent toy designer, formed a company with Howard Wexler called "Strongin & Wexler Corp.", owned equally by him and Howard. Ned was a street smart, informal, self-made businessman who had not graduated high school and had pretty much always been his own boss. Howard was a formally educated Ph.D. who insisted on being addressed as "Dr. Wexler" and who came to the partnership with a large corporate mindset after having worked at Hasbro for several years. Because Ned had reservations about having a partner (particularly one with such a different background and business style), he kept his already existing company, Ned Strongin Associates, together with its existing toy designs, office lease and employee artists, designers and model makers, separate from the newly formed Strongin & Wexler Corp. Their partnership was short lived and would have been considered a failure except for one thing: it produced Connect-4.

Strongin & Wexler Corp. licensed Connect-4 to Milton Bradley (which was later acquired by Hasbro) in 1973. Ned and Howard dissolved Strongin & Wexler Corp. shortly thereafter. To this day: (a) Connect-4 continues to be owned equally by Ned Strongin Creative Services (the successor in interest to Ned Strongin Associates) and Howard; (b) Hasbro continues to manufacture and sell the original version of Connect-4, expanding upon and updating it with a variety of spin-off versions, thereby maintaining its uniqueness and relevance; and (c) royalties from such sales continue to be shared equally between Ned Strongin Creative Services and Howard. These are undisputed facts.

Ned always acknowledged that the initial idea for Connect-4 was Howard's, but told us that Howard presented Connect-4 to him as a horizontal game, like checkers, to which he said "the world doesn't need another board game, let's make it vertical" – and really isn't that the underlying uniqueness of Connect-4? Ned's design process was collaborative in nature. The centerpiece of Ned's office was a big white round table, where Ned and his artists, designers and model makers would present and discuss ideas. Some of these ideas came from him, some from one or more of his employees and some from one of the many independent designers who came to him with unfinished ideas who didn't have the expertise or wherewithal to complete them and bring them to market. By the end of a discussion the resulting product was often a true collaborative effort. Connect-4 was redesigned and developed by Ned and Howard via this collaborative process until a final design was agreed upon, artwork was produced, a model was made and Connect-4 was presented and licensed to Milton Bradley.

Ned was active in the toy business through the late 1990s, including all discussions and negotiations with Hasbro regarding a variety of Connect-4 issues that arose over the years. During that time he was responsible for the design of many other successful toy products through that same collaborative process. If our dad were alive today, he'd get a chuckle out of Howard's Connect-4 claims. He'd tell us to leave it be, the truth is the truth, anyone old enough to care already knows the truth and the 50/50 ownership and royalty split speak for themselves. Nevertheless, we believe Ned Strongin's contributions to Connect-4 should be acknowledged and hope this letter promotes that in some way.