She was a teacher when she participated in an educational experiment with IBM. As a result, she became the first female video game designer.
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
In the 1960s, Mabel Addis was an elementary-school teacher in a small town in New York State when she was offered a unique opportunity that would make history: Create an educational game with IBM.
What resulted was the Sumerian Game, an early video game that taught the basics of economic theory to sixth graders. In it, a student would act as the ruler of the Mesopotamian city-state of Lagash, in Sumer, in 3500 B.C. In Level One, the primary focus was on growing crops and developing tools; Level Two oversaw a more diversified economy; and in Level Three, Lagash interacted with other city-states. In each round, students responded to prompts issued by Urbaba, the royal steward.
The video game was text-based, but it is believed to be the first to introduce storytelling and characters, and the first in a genre now known as edutainment. It also made Addis the first known female video game designer, according to several game historians.
The Sumerian Game “is pretty rudimentary by today’s standards, but the thing about being ‘first’ is that just existing at all becomes innovative,” Kate Willaert, the author of the blog “A Critical Hit!,” who has studied the game extensively, said in an email. Addis, she maintained, was the first video game writer ever.