ITEM 170: Silicon Valley Board Game Found on: 7/22/15 Materials: cardboard, paper Damage/wear: water-damaged and warped box Provenance: The Box Factory, 539 Railroad Ave., South San Francisco, CA Production details: This game was published by Tega, a game company about which there is little information available. Presumably it was in the business of copyrighting and producing board games. The Silicon Valley game was invented in 1980 by Terry Bohme, a Palo Alto native whose mother worked at various local tech companies (Apex, Hewlett Packard, Memorex, etc.) and who went to Monta Vista High School with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple. He formally met “the Steves” at the Focus Camera shop in Cupertino, and did some early photography for Apple. Bohme developed the game with his cousin, Gary Suda, and Bob Moog, a freelancer who was studying at Stanford. The game was manufactured at The Box Factory in South San Francisco. There is even less information about this facility. It’s mentioned once in a 1972 San Mateo Times article about the factory’s lawsuit against South San Francisco for failing to maintain the banks of Colma Creek. Flooding of the creek had caused millions of dollars of damage to the Box Factory, including its paper stock. The Box Factory clearly made games, and may have made other paper products or offered other services such as printing and finishing. The building is now a warehouse for La Bouquetiere, a handmade cosmetics and personal care company whose owner lives on the premises. Date or date range: 1980 Still in production: no Rare: yes Still attainable from: eBay Value: $10-15 used Use: This is a game similar to Life – each player takes turns rolling the dice, taking and using cards, and moving his or her player along the pathway. The text in the instruction booklet reads: Welcome to the Silicon Valley! Soon you’ll be traveling through the Santa Clara Valley on its main highways, earning an income, buying a car, buying a home, and making investment decisions. Naturally, you can succeed or fail; just like reality, some of the decisions are up to you! Another separate instructional page reminds you, “the person with the most money wins the game.” This game was most popular in the Bay Area because it references real Bay Area entities: highways 17, 101, and 280; sites like the Winchester Mystery House, Moffett Field, and Great America (where the archivist worked for two eternal summers drawing caricatures); actual car dealerships and places like Vallco, the seemingly-ever-defunct mall of the archivist’s childhood; and companies such as Hewlett Packard (where the archivist’s mother worked), Atari, and National Semiconductor. Players drew from four different types of cards: 1) car cards - player can buy a car (e.g. a Toyota Celica GT from Toyota of Palo Alto, a Honda Civic from Don Lucas BMW-Honda, a Plymouth Reliant from Mancini, etc.) 2) home cards - player can buy a house (e.g. a $140,000 house in Cupertino, a $240,000 house in Almaden Valley, a $96,000 house in Mountain View, etc.) 3) opportunity cards - player can invest in a business (”Bookstore – throw out your library card and look for a best seller,” “Travel agency – now you can see the world as a business expense. Write it off!” “Dry cleaners - offer exceptional service and you can hang the competition up to dry,” etc.) 4) San Jose Mercury News cards - various news events cause the player to gain or lose money (”Cupertino resident receives notification of winning this year’s Irish Sweepstakes – collect: $100,000,” “Fabulous alumnus establishes college scholarships to Sunnyvale high schools – pay: $20,000,” “Suburban cowboy from Almaden Valley loses mount at Salinas rodeo – pay: $5000″) Because the game was made in 1980, several of the figures may seem jarring – for instance, a $35,000 salary at HP or a $280,000 house in Saratoga. Much of this can be attributed to inflation, but the game also ironically captures a simpler time in Silicon Valley – when the hype was just getting off the ground. It’s telling, for instance, that the opportunity cards don’t reference anything like startups but instead invite one to start bookstores and dry cleaning businesses, and that money is gained by winning radio contests, collecting insurance money on an injury, and renting your Lake Tahoe cabin. The car models are pedestrian and the most luxe-sounding square on the board is “purchase hot tub - $2,000.” Perhaps what this game most accurately portrays, then, is the pre-Silicon-Valley Silicon Valley. This game was played twice, once by “P”, “K,” “D”, and “B” (P won), and once by “F”, “D”, and “P” (F won). The game doesn’t have great reviews on Boardgamegeek.com, though most admit it’s a good piece of nostalgia. “Own this game only because my wife and I went to high school with one of the game’s developers,” says user richtoosoon.
