Play and Curation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Interview with Christopher Bensch, Andrew Borman, Michelle Parnett-Dwyer, and Nicolas Ricketts

This interview with four curators from The Strong National Museum of Play examines how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped play, the toy and game industries, and the museum's collecting and preservation work during 2020. The curators describe personal play routines that shifted toward home-based and outdoor activity, gardening, cooking, puzzles, and online gaming. They report that the toy industry responded with charitable donations, digital play platforms, and growing demand for educational and inclusive toys, with sports toys rising 31 percent, while jigsaw puzzles and Eurogames saw sales surges and video game revenues in 2020 reportedly exceeded those of the movie and sports industries combined.

The discussion highlights standout titles such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Among Us, and Ring Fit Adventure, which drew players through social connection, routine, and streaming. The curators also place pandemic-era play in historical context, citing health-themed toys like Martha Chase's hospital dolls, Candy Land's origins during the polio epidemic, and the long history of networked and long-distance play, from chess by mail to early MUDs and massively multiplayer games.

On collecting, the museum launched a "Play Stories" project to gather firsthand personal videos, collected neighborhood photographs and homemade games, and reached out to streamers and developers to document gameplay and community conversations. The curators acknowledge that such crowdsourced collecting yields a sample skewed toward those with time, technology, and motivation, not a representative picture. The interview also describes the museum's hygiene and social-distancing changes and its shift to free online content and exhibits, closing with artifacts the curators still hope to acquire, including family play photographs and game industry records.