It did well in the UK and US, retaining its potency as a childhood game that, at least in part, furthered the moral vision of its host culture. These games are vehicles for culture, another reason the chameleonic nature of Snakes and Ladders is so interesting — it provides a window into numerous places and times in world history. In their look, feel, and design, we see the priorities, values, aesthetics, and mentality of people we’ll never get a chance to meet.
Today the game continues to demonstrate its value as an educational tool, in promoting linear thinking, and concepts of sequence. It’s a format that’s still being innovated upon. Versions have been designed to educate communities facing the consequences of climate change, on how to face conflict, or to learn local farming cycles. The PET Lab mentioned earlier uses the cultural adaptability of simple games to foster disaster preparedness education in places where people have little access to technology, or even weather forecasts.
Games like these aren’t designed to be won, but to teach and communicate through experience. In our time, games are still as much an amplifier of culture as films, music or literature. A game like Grand Theft Auto probably says a lot about our culture — not all of it good — but little of that message really comes from the mechanics or design of the game itself.
As a design, this game model is robust enough to last for centuries precisely because of its simplicity and adaptability. The reason today’s most popular video games are unlikely to survive for another century, let alone another few decades, is largely because the complexity of their underlying code renders it impossible to adapt them to new ideas and perspectives. They’re closed systems, whereas games like Snakes and Ladders — whose underlying mechanism is akin to guided reading — allows any message or idea to be tooled to fit its time and place.