A 'board game' is a
game played with counters or pieces that are placed on, removed from, or moved across a "board" (a premarked surface, usually specific to that game). Simple board games often make ideal "family entertainment" since they are often appropriate for all ages. Some board games, such as
chess,
go/weiqi,
xiangqi,
shogi, or
oware, have intense strategic value and have been classics for centuries.
There are many different types of board games. Many games simulate aspects of real life. Popular games of this type include:
★ ''
Monopoly'', which simulates the
real estate market
★ ''
Cluedo/Clue'', which simulates a
murder mystery
★ ''
Risk'', which simulates warfare
Other games only loosely, or do not at all, attempt to imitate reality. These games include:
★
abstract strategy games like
chess,
checkers or
go
★
word games, like ''
Scrabble''
★
trivia games, like ''
Trivial Pursuit''.
★ combination games, like ''
Brain Chain'', which mix
abstract strategy with
trivia.
History
Board games have been played in most cultures and societies throughout history; some even pre-date literacy skill development in the earliest civilizations. A number of important historical sites, artifacts and documents exist which shed light on early board games. Some of these include:
★
Senet has been found in
Predynastic and
First Dynasty burials of
Egypt, c.
3500 BC and
3100 BC respectively.
[1] Senet is the oldest board game known to have existed, having been pictured in a fresco found in
Merknera's tomb (
3300-
2700 BC).
[2]
★
Mehen is another ancient board game from
Predynastic Egypt.
★
Go is an ancient strategic board game originating in
China
★
Patolli is a board game originating in
mesoamerica and played by the ancient
mayans.
★ The
Royal Tombs of Ur contained, among others, the
Royal Game of Ur. They were excavated by
Leonard Woolley, but his books document little on the games found. Most of the games he excavated are now housed in the
British Museum in
London.
★
Buddha games list is the earliest known list of games.
Timeline
★ c. 5870 BC -- board game resembling
mancala found at Ain Gazal Jordan. (Rollefson)
★ c.
3500 BC -
Senet found in
Predynastic Egyptian burials;
also depicted in the tomb of
Merknera.
★ c.
3000 BC -
Mehen, board game from
Predynastic Egypt, played with
lion-shaped game pieces and
marbles.
★ c.
3000 BC - Ancient
backgammon set, found in the
Burnt City in
Iran[3]
★ c.
2560 BC - Board of the
Royal Game of Ur (found at Ur Tombs)
★ c.
2500 BC - Paintings of
senet and han being played made in the tomb of
Rashepes
★ c.
2000 BC - Drawing in a tomb at Benihassan depicting two unknown board games being played (depicted in Falkner). It has been suggested that the second of these is
tau.
★ c.
1500 BC -
Liubo carved on slab of blue stone. Also painting of board game of
Knossos.
[4]
★ c.
1400 BC - Game boards including
alquerque,
three men's morris,
nine men's morris, and a possible
mancala board etched on the roof of the
Kurna temple. (Source: Fiske, and Bell)
★
548 BC The earliest written references to
Go/Weiqi come from the ''
Zuo Zhuan'', which describes a man who likes the game.
★ c.
500 BC - The
Buddha games list mentions board games played on 8 or 10 rows.
★ c. 500 BC - The earliest reference to
Chaturaji or
Pachisi written in the ''
Mahabharata''.
★ c.
200 BC - A
Chinese Go/Weiqi board pre-dating 200 BC was found in
1954 in
Wangdu County. This board is now in
Beijing Historical Museum.
[5].
★
116-
27 BC -
Marcus Terentius Varro's Lingua Latina X ('II, par. 20') contains earliest known reference to ''
latrunculi''
[6] (often confused with
ludus duodecim scriptorum,
Ovid's game mentioned below).
★
79-
8 BC - Liu Xiang's (劉向) 'Shuo yuan,' contains earliest known reference to
Xiangqi.
★
1 BC-
8 AD -
Ovid's
Ars Amatoria contains earliest known reference to
ludus duodecim scriptorum and the
smaller merels.
★
220-
265 -
Nard enters
China under the name ''t'shu-p'u'' (Source: ''Hun Tsun Sii'').
★ c.
400 onwards -
Tafl games played in Northern Europe.
★ c.
600 The earliest references to
Chaturanga written in Subandhu's ''Vasavadatta'' and
Banabhatta's ''
Harsha Charitha''
★ c. 600 - The earliest reference to
Chatrang written in ''Karnamak-i-Artakhshatr-i-Papakan''.
Board games first became widely popular among the general population early in the
20th century when the rise of the
middle class with disposable income and leisure time made them a receptive audience to such games. This popularity expanded after the
Second World War, a period from which many classic board games date.
Many board games are now available as
computer games, including the option to have the computer act as an opponent; and many acclaimed computer games such as ''
Civilization'' are based upon board games. The rise of computers has also led to a relative decline in the most complicated board games, as computers require less space, and the games don't have to be set up and cleared away. With the
Internet, many board games can now be played online against a computer or other players. Some web sites allow play in real time and immediately show the opponent's moves, while most use e-mail to notify the players after each move (see the links at the end of this article).
Some board games make use of additional components, aside from the board and playing pieces. Some games use CDs, video cassettes and more recently DVDs to provide an accompaniment to the game. A genre of
DVD games makes use of the interactive features of DVDs, often to provide a "quizmaster" for trivia games.
The modern board game industry is rife with corporate mergers and acquisitions, with large companies such as
Hasbro owning many subsidiaries and selling products under a variety of brand names. It is difficult to successfully market a new board game to the mass market. Retailers tend to be conservative about stocking games of untested popularity, and most large board game companies have established criteria that a game must meet in order to be produced. If, for instance, ''
Monopoly'' were introduced as a new game today, it might not meet the criteria for production.
Psychology
While there has been fair amount of scientific research on the psychology of traditional board games (e.g.,
chess,
Go,
mancala games), much less has been done on more recent board games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, or Risk.
[7]. Most of the research has been carried out on chess, in part because chessplayers are ranked in national and international rating lists, which makes it possible to compare their level of expertise precisely. The classical works of
Adriaan de Groot, William Chase and
Herbert Simon have established that knowledge plays an essential role in chessplaying, more than the ability to anticipate moves. This seems to be the case in other traditional games such as Go and oware (a type of mancala game), but data are lacking with more recent board games.
Luck, strategy and diplomacy
One way to categorize board games is to distinguish those based primarily upon
luck from those that involve significant
strategy. Some games, such as
chess, are entirely deterministic, relying only on the strategy element for their interest. Children's games, on the other hand, tend to be very luck-based, with games such as ''
Sorry!'', ''
Candy Land'' and
chutes and ladders having virtually no decisions to be made. Most board games involve both luck and strategy. A player may be hampered by a few poor rolls of the
dice in ''
Risk'' or ''
Monopoly'', but over many games a player with a superior strategy will win more often. While some purists consider luck to not be a desirable component of a game, others counter that elements of luck can make for far more diverse and multi-faceted strategies as concepts such as
expected value and
risk management must be considered. Still, adult game players prefer to make decisions during play and find purely luck based games such as
snakes and ladders quite boring.
The third important factor in a game is
diplomacy, or players making deals with each other. A game of
solitaire, for obvious reasons, has no player interaction. Two player games usually do not have diplomacy, with ''
Lord of the Rings'' being a notable exception where players compete against an automatic opponent (see
cooperative games). Thus, this generally applies only to games played with three or more people. An important facet of ''
Settlers of Catan'', for example, is convincing people to trade with you rather than with other players. In ''
Risk'', one example of diplomacy's effectiveness is when two or more players team up against others. Easy diplomacy consists of convincing other players that someone else is winning and should therefore be teamed up against. Difficult diplomacy (such as in the aptly named game ''
Diplomacy'') consists of making elaborate plans together, with possibility of betrayal.
Luck is introduced to a game by a number of methods. The most popular is using
dice, generally six-sided. These can determine everything from how many steps a player moves their token, as in ''Monopoly'', to how their forces fare in battle, such as in ''Risk'', or which resources a player gains, such as in ''
Settlers of Catan''. Other games such as ''Sorry!'' use a deck of special
cards that, when shuffled, create randomness. ''Scrabble'' does something similar with randomly picked letters. Other games use spinners, timers of random length, or other sources of randomness. Trivia games have a great deal of randomness based on the questions a person gets.
German-style board games are notable for often having rather less of a luck factor than many North American board games.
Common terms
Although many board games have a
jargon all their own, there is a generalized
terminology to describe concepts applicable to basic
game mechanics and attributes common to nearly all board games.
★ 'Game board' (or 'board') — the (usually
quadrilateral) surface on which one plays a board game; the
namesake of the board game, gameboards are a
necessary and sufficient condition of the
genre
★ 'Game piece' (or 'token' or 'bit') — a player's representative on the game board. Each player may control one or more game pieces. In some games that involve commanding multiple game pieces, such as chess, certain pieces have unique designations and capabilities within the
parameters of the game; in others, such as Go, all pieces controlled by a player have the same essential capabilities. In some games, pieces may not represent or belong to a particular player.
★ 'Jump' — to bypass one or more game pieces and/or 'spaces'. Depending on the context, 'jumping' may also involve capturing or conquering an opponent's game piece. (''See also:''
Game mechanic: capture)
★ 'Space' (or 'square') — a
physical unit of progress on a gameboard delimited by a distinct
border (''See also:''
Game mechanic: Movement)
★ 'Hex' In hexagon-based board games, this is the common term for a standard space on the board. This is most often used in war games.
References
Further reading
★
Moves in mind: The psychology of board games, Gobet, Fernand, de Voogt, Alex, & Retschitzki, Jean, , , Psychology Press, 2004, ISBN 1841693367
★ Rollefson, Gary O., "A Neolithic Game Board from Ain Ghazal, Jordan,"
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 286. (May, 1992), pp. 1-5.
★
Fiske, Willard. ''Chess in Iceland and in Icelandic Literature—with historical notes on other table-games)''. Florentine Typographical Society,
1905.
★ Falkener, Edward. ''Games Ancient and Oriental, and How To Play Them''. Longmans, Green and Co.,
1892.
★ Austin, Roland G. "Greek Board Games." ''Antiquity'' 14. September
1940: 257–271
★
Murray, Harold James Ruthven. ''A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess''. Gardners Books,
1969.
★ Bell, Robert Charles. ''The Boardgame Book''.
London: Bookthrift Company,
1979.
★ Bell, Robert Charles. ''Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations''.
Mineola, New York: Dover Publications,
1980. ISBN 0-486-23855-5
★
★ Reprint:
New York: Exeter Books,
1983.
★
Sackson, Sid. ''
A Gamut of Games''.
Arrow Books,
1983. ISBN 0-09-153340-6
★
★ Reprint: Dover Publications,
1992. ISBN 0-486-27347-4
★ Schmittberger, R. Wayne. ''New Rules for Classic Games''.
John Wiley & Sons,
1992. ISBN 0-471-53621-0
★
★ Reprint:
Random House Value Publishing,
1994. ISBN 0-517-12955-8
★ Parlett, David. ''Oxford History of Board Games''.
Oxford University Press,
1999. ISBN 0-19-212998-8
Note that some these works may suffer from cultural bias—especially Murray's work which, despite being the standard reference, tends to assume
Western cultural superiority.
See also
★
List of board games
★
List of game manufacturers
★
DVD games
★
Card game
★
Tabletop game
★
Wargaming
★
German-style board game
External links
★
Boardgames in the Open Directory
★
BoardGameGeek - A board game database with discussion forums.
★ [news:rec.games.board rec.games.board] - A
Usenet newsgroup dedicated to board games
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