Board game
A board game is a
game played with counters or pieces that are placed on, removed from, or moved across a "board" . Simple board games often make ideal "family entertainment" since they are often appropriate for all ages. Some board games, such as
chess, go ',
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
Encyclopedia
A
board game is a
game played with counters or pieces that are placed on, removed from, or moved across a "board" . Simple board games often make ideal "family entertainment" since they are often appropriate for all ages. Some board games, such as
chess, go
', 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 include:
A new genre of board games,
DVD games, was introduced into the marketplace in 2002 with the launch of the first edition of
Scene It? , and have spawned their own game category.
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 . Senet is the oldest board game known to have existed, having been pictured in a fresco found in Merknera's tomb .
- Mehen is another ancient board game from Predynastic Egypt.
- 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
- 3500 BC - Senet found in Predynastic Egyptian burials.
- 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.
- 200 BC - A Chinese go board pre-dating 200 BC was found in 1954 in Wangdu County. This board is now in Beijing Historical Museum. .
- 116-27 BC - Marcus Terentius Varro's Lingua Latina X contains earliest known reference to latrunculi .
- 79-8 BC - Liu Xiang's 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
- c.400 onwards - Tafl games played in Northern Europe.
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.
Computer games are closely related to board games, and many acclaimed computer games such as
Civilization are based upon board games.
Many board games are now available as computer games, including the option to have the computer act as an opponent. 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 .
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.
Luck, strategy and diplomacy
One way of defining board games are between those based upon
luck and strategy. Some games, such as
chess, have no luck involved. Children's games tend to be very luck based, with games such as Sorry!,
Candy Land and
snakes and ladders having virtually no decisions to be made. Most board games have 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 complex and multi-faceted strategies as concepts such as expected value and risk management must be considered. Still most adult game players prefer to make some decisions during play, and find purely luck based games such as
Top Trumps 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, as cooperation between the two players does not occur. 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 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, 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 which question a person gets.
German-style board games are notable for often having rather less luck factor than in 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.
- gameboard — the 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 — 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.
- 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.
- Space — a physical unit of progress on a gameboard delimited by a distinct border
References
Further reading
- 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
- 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
- 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
External links
- [news://rec.games.board rec.games.board] - A Usenet newsgroup dedicated to board games
