Connecting the dots: Connect Four through history

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In Connect Four, participants pit their strategic prowess against one another in a six-row, seven-column grid.

It’s become one of the classic two player board games – an almost iconic way to pass the time with family and friends – it’s in classrooms, it’s in games cupboards, it’s in cafes, it’s online, and it’s even the primary game mechanic used in some marketing games.

But what is perhaps most surprising is the apparent youth of its existence.

Would you believe this board game staple was predated by the moon landing, Roe v. Wade, and the break-up of the Beatles?

Debunking the urban myth: David Bowie or Milton Bradley?

Connect Four was officially invented by a man called Howard Wexler, and first sold by Milton Bradley (who would become Hasbro) in 1974 in the United States.

However, journalist Stuart Maconie, while working for NME, wrote a spoof “Did you know?” section that stated that David Bowie invented Connect Four – a factoid which in a bygone era before smartphones was believed by a not insignificant number of people to be true.

Can you imagine? What a crazy addition to a generational CV. “Diamond Dogs,” “Hunky Dory,” AND Connect Four?

Clues in the names: Alternative monikers for four in a row

Connect Four isn’t just Connect Four depending on who you speak to. To some, it’s four in a row, to others “find four” (apparently), four balls, and even “Gravitrips” in the former Soviet Union. But have you heard it called the captain’s duel or captain’s mistress before?

Supposedly, British explorer Captain James Cook was so engrossed by the game on long voyages, obsessed with perfecting his four in a row strategy, that these more fanciful, nautical names originated to describe the game. While we couldn’t find any proof of this, it’s equally difficult to disprove, too. (If indeed a Stuart Maconie-type did make this up for a laugh, they haven’t been forthcoming in giving up the jig.)

There are also suggestions of four in a row games dating back to the early 1900s, but again, there is no proof of this.

A patent combining the alignment mechanic with the stacking restriction

The Connect Four board game as we know it boils down to two elements:

• The stacking on the grid, meaning only the lowest position in a column can be taken
• The “in a row” aspect, of lining up the playing pieces to a defined length

The earliest hard evidence for a stacking game dates back to 1946. A patent was filed by a Theodore R. Duncan for a 3D version of tic-tac-toe, from which a 2D version where instead of aligning three counters, players had to line up four counters instead could have been derived.

But of course, a patent doesn’t prove that this is when such a concept was invented…

The likelihood of four in a row variations pre-dating Connect Four

Chess and checkers are both over 1,000 years old, and are extensively more complicated than Connect Four, which is a solved game. Tic-tac-toe – or noughts and crosses – is over 3,000-years-old, and is a simpler stacking/ alignment-based strategy game.

It’s purely conjecture, but logically, something resembling a four in a row game could well have existed a-synchronously with Captain Cook’s charting of the uncharted. It likely wasn’t a stacking game, but in the absence of a chessboard a game of tic-tac-toe would lack the complexity to entertain minds powerful enough to navigate the seas by stars and wits.

Connect Four’s true origin almost certainly belongs to Howard Wexler

While it could be a classic case of game manufacturers trying to take credit for the creation of an original and successful game and burying its true origin (like with Monopoly), it seems more likely that Howard Wrexler genuinely did catch lightning in a bottle and strike upon an original(ish) idea.

In his own words, on his website, he even said:

“Why didn’t we have games that were vertical before Connect Four? Even today, 50 years later, there are very few vertical strategy games. There are plenty of Connect Four imitations, but no real breakthrough vertical strategy games. I suggest that is why Connect Four is so special. It’s because it’s so basic, so simple.”

Evolution of Connect Four in pop culture

Connect Four has gone way beyond the simple game of strategy for family and friends to have fun and unwind over (or for 18th century sailors to kill time). In fact, it’s become such a big deal that there are even professional tournaments, leagues, and tours scattered throughout the world where players compete for money.

It was also featured in The Hub’s Family Game Night and forms a mini game in the 2018 videogame, A Way Out.

The digital evolution of Connect Four

Of course, like everything else, Connect Four would find its way into digital formats and eventually online.

Apps and AI: Connect Four gets the “Deep Blue” treatment

Apps enabled Connect Four enthusiasts to play perfect strangers at the game, and online Connect Four solvers, or programmes, allow you to enter counters to recreate games, and have them literally show you the solution – or indicate possible outcomes and the number of moves they can be executed in.

Connect Four is what is known as a “solved game,” so while it’s entirely possible for the player who goes first to win every time, there are still 42 possible ways a game can be won. It still has an impressive amount of complexity involved that playing against, or learning from AI is valuable to most players.

Connecting users to objectives: Becoming gamification

And because of this still inherent level of complexity, it’s a game mechanic that’s been claimed by modern gamification – the application of game mechanisms to typically less playful tasks for better results.

It’s simple enough for someone to play a game against an average algorithm in less than five minutes on their phone, but not so easy as to be boring.

Customised online Connect Four games can be tailored to any number of objectives, from marketing new products or IPs, to adding some fun to employee experience campaigns (EX), and even for brain training programmes and education.

The addictive power of the gameplay maximises user focus, and this focus can be redirected through intermediate content and calls to action (CTA) to further a business’s ultimate objectives.

The future of Connect Four

Whether Connect Four had been invented by David Bowie, or was invented early enough to have been enjoyed aboard the HMS Endeavour, or – in near certainhood – invented in the early 1970s by Howard Wexler, it’s proved an enduring and popular game mechanic that can be adapted to the time it’s in.

Make it gigantic and wooden, and use it to entertain at events, build small travel versions to keep people entertained on the move, or customise your own online four in a row game and integrate branded messaging for gamification purposes – however it has been used, it will continue to be used.

Chess, checkers, and tic-tac-toe have endured for over a thousand years, and alongside their much younger stacking cousin, they will continue to do so until the end of human civilization.

There’ll no doubt be a Connect Four feature film sometime soon given the trend for any original ideas to require a recognisable IP to lean on. Watch this space…

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