Board game
A
board game is any
game played on a board (that is, a premarked surface) with counters or pieces that are placed on, removed from, or moved across the board. Simple board games are often seen as ideal "family entertainment" as they can provide entertainment for all ages. Some board games, such as
Chess,
Weiqi (Go),
Xiangqi (Chinese Chess),
Shogi, or
Oware, have intense strategic value and have become lasting classics.
There are many different types and classifications of board games. Some games are simplified simulations of real life. These are popular for they can intermingle make-believe and role playing along with the game. Popular games of this type include
Monopoly, which is a rough simulation of the
real estate market;
Cluedo/
Clue, which is based upon a
murder mystery; and
Risk, which is one of the best known of thousands of games attempting to simulate warfare and geo-politics.
Other games only loosely, or do not at all, attempt to imitate reality. These include
abstract strategy games like
chess and
checkers,
word games, such as
Scrabble, and
trivia games, such as
Trivial Pursuit. Also,
DVD games were introduced into the marketplace in 2002 with the launch of the first edition of
Scene It? (now distributed in the mass market channel by
Mattel), and have spawned their own game category.
Board games have a long history and have been played in most cultures and societies; 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. The most of important of these include:
*
Senet has been found in
Predynastic and
First Dynasty burials of
Egypt, c.
3500 BC and
3100 BC respectively
[http://www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/Archives/Piccione/index.html]. Senet is the oldest board game known to have existed, having been pictured ina fresco found in
Merknera's tomb (
3300-
2700 BC)
[Okno do svita deskovych her].
*
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
; also depicted in the tomb of
Merknera.
*
3000 BC -
Mehen, board game from
Predynastic Egypt, played with
lion-shaped game pieces and
marbles.
*
2560 BC - Board of the
Royal Game of Ur (found at Ur Tombs)
*
2500 BC - Paintings of
Senet and
Han being played made in the tomb of
Rashepes*
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.
*
1500 BC -
Liubo carved on slab of blue stone. Also painting of board game of
Knossos[http://www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/Archives/Brumbaugh/index.html].
*
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)
*
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.
[John Fairbairn's Go in Ancient China].
*
116-
27 BC -
Marcus Terentius Varro's Lingua Latina X (
II, par. 20) contains earliest known reference to
latrunculi[http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/varro.ll10.html ] (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.
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 (like the classic board games available on
Yahoo,
Lycos and other big Internet sites). 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).
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 would not meet the criteria for production.
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
Chutes 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 (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, 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.
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 (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.
*
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)
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 0486238555
**Reprint:
New York: Exeter Books,
1983.
*
Sackson, Sid.
A Gamut of Games.
Arrow Books,
1983. ISBN 0091533406
**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 0517129558
*Parlett, David.
Oxford History of Board Games.
Oxford University Press,
1999. ISBN 0192129988
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.
*
DVD games*
Card game*
Wargaming*
Boardgames in the Open Directory*[news://rec.games.board rec.games.board] - A
Usenet newsgroup dedicated to board games
