Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance (e.g. rolling dice) or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve. Early board games represented a battle between two armies and most current board games are still based on beating opposing players in terms of counters, winning position or accrual of points (often expressed as in-game currency).

There are many different types and styles of board games. Their representation of a real-life situation can range from having no inherent theme, such as checkers, to having a specific theme and narrative, such as Cluedo. Rules range from the very simple, such as in tic-tac-toe, to ones which describe a game universe in great detail, such as in Dungeons & Dragons, although most of these are role-playing games and the board is secondary to the game, serving to visualize the scenario. The length of time it takes to learn to play or master a game can vary greatly from game to game. Learning time does not necessarily correlate with the amount or complexity of rules; some games, such as chess or go have simple rules that can still lead to complex scenarios.

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:

• The Jiroft civilization gameboards
• 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, and was 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 was played by the ancient Aztec.
• 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.
• The Buddha games list is the earliest known list of games.
• Pachisi and Chaupar are ancient board games of India.

Timeline

• c. 3500 BC: Senet is played in Predynastic Egypt as evidenced by its inclusion in burial sites;^[1] also depicted in the tomb of Merknera.
• c. 3000 BC: The Mehen board game from Predynastic Egypt, was played with lion-shaped game pieces and marbles.
• c. 3000 BC: Ancient backgammon set, found in the Burnt City in Iran.^[3][4]
• c. 2560 BC: Board of the Royal Game of Ur (found at Ur Tombs)
• c. 2500 BC: Paintings of Senet and Han being played depicted in the tomb of Rashepes
• c. 1500 BC: Painting of board game at Knossos.^[5]
• c. 500 BC: The Buddha games list mentions board games played on 8 or 10 rows.

• c. 500 BC: The earliest reference to Pachisi in the Mahabharata, the Indian epic.
• c. 400 BC: Two ornately decorated liubo gameboards from a royal tomb of the State of Zhongshan in China.^[6]
• c. 400 BC: The earliest written reference to go (weiqi) in the historical annal Zuo Zhuan. Go is also mentioned in the Analects of Confucius (c. 5th century BC).^[7]
• 116–27 BC: Marcus Terentius Varro's Lingua Latina X (II, par. 20) contains earliest known reference to Latrunculi^[8] (often confused with Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum, Ovid's game mentioned below).
• 1 BC–8 AD: Ovid's Ars Amatoria contains earliest known reference to Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum.
• 1 BC–8 AD: The Roman Game of kings is a game of which little is known, and which is more or less contemporary with the Latrunculi.
• c. 43 AD: The Stanway Game is buried with the Druid of Colchester.^[9]
• c. 200 AD: A stone go board with a 17×17 grid from a tomb at Wangdu County in Hebei, China.^[10]
• 220–265: Backgammon enters China under the name t'shu-p'u (Source: Hun Tsun Sii)
• c. 400 onwards: Tafl games played in Northern Europe.^[11]

• c. 600 The earliest references to chaturanga written in Subandhu's Vasavadatta and Banabhatta's Harsha Charitha early Indian books.
• c. 600: The earliest reference to shatranj written in Karnamak-i-Artakhshatr-i-Papakan.
• c.1283: Alfonso X of Castile in Spain commissioned Libro de ajedrez, dados, y tablas (Libro de los Juegos (The Book of Games)) translated into Castilian from Arabic and added illustrations with the goal of perfecting the work.^[13][14]
• c. 1930: Monopoly stabilises into the version that is currently popular.
• 1957: Risk is released.
• c. 1980: German-style board games begin to develop as a genre.

Many board games are now available as video games, which can include the computer itself as one of several players, or as sole opponent. The rise of computer use is one of the reasons said to have led to a relative decline in board games. Many board games can now be played online against a computer and/or other players. Some websites allow play in real time and immediately show the opponents' moves, while others use email to notify the players after each move (see the links at the end of this article). Modern technology (the internet and cheaper home printing) has also influenced board games via the phenomenon of print-and-play board games that you buy and print yourself.

Some board games make use of components in addition to—or instead of—a board and playing pieces. Some games use CDs, video cassettes, and, more recently, DVDs in accompaniment to the game.

Psychology

While there has been a fair amount of scientific research on the psychology of older board games (e.g., chess, go, mancala), less has been done on contemporary board games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, and Risk.^[15] Much research has been carried out on chess, in part because many tournament players are publicly ranked in national and international lists, which makes it possible precisely to compare their levels of expertise. The works of Adriaan de Groot, William Chase, and Herbert Simon have established that knowledge, more than the ability to anticipate moves, plays an essential role in chess-playing. This seems to be the case in other traditional games such as Go and Oware (a type of mancala game), but data is lacking in regard to contemporary board games.

Additionally, board games can be therapeutic. Bruce Halpenny, a games inventor said when interviewed about his game, “With crime you deal with every basic human emotion and also have enough elements to combine action with melodrama. The player’s imagination is fired as they plan to rob the train. Because of the gamble they take in the early stage of the game there is a build up of tension, which is immediately released once the train is robbed. Release of tension is therapeutic and useful in our society, because most jobs are boring and repetitive.”^[16]

Linearly arranged board games have been shown to improve children's spatial numerical understanding. This is because the game is similar to a number line in that they promote a linear understanding of numbers rather than the innate logarithmic one.^[17]

Luck, strategy and diplomacy

Most board games involve both luck and strategy. But an important feature of them is the amount of randomness/luck involved, as opposed to skill. Some games, such as chess, depend almost entirely on player skill. But many children's games are mainly decided by luck: eg Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders require no decisions by the players. A player may be hampered by a few poor rolls of the dice in Risk or Monopoly, but over many games a good player will win more often. While some purists consider luck not to 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.

A second feature is the game information available to players. Some games (chess being the classic example) are perfect information games: every player has complete information on the state of the game. In other games, such as Tigris and Euphrates, some information is hidden from players. This makes finding the best move more difficult, but also requires the players to estimate probabilities by the players. Tigris and Euphrates also has completely deterministic action resolution.

Another important feature of a game is the importance of diplomacy, i.e. players making deals with each other. A game of solitaire, for obvious reasons, has no player interaction. Two player games usually do not involve diplomacy (cooperative games being the exception). Thus, negotiation generally features only in games for three or more people. An important facet of The Settlers of Catan, for example, is convincing people to trade with you rather than with other players. In Risk, two or more players may team up against others. Easy diplomacy involves convincing other players that someone else is winning and should therefore be teamed up against. Advanced diplomacy (e.g. in the aptly named game Diplomacy) consists of making elaborate plans together, with the possibility of betrayal.

Luck may be introduced into a game by a number of methods. The most common method is the use of dice, generally six-sided. These can decide 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 The 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 player has to answer. 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.

• Gameboard (or simply board)—the (usually quadrilateral) surface on which one plays a board game. The namesake of the board game, gameboards would seem to be a necessary and sufficient condition of the genre, though card games that do not use a standard deck of cards (as well as games which use neither cards nor a gameboard) are often colloquially included. Most games use a standardized and unchanging board (chess, Go, and backgammon each have such a board), but many games use a modular board whose component tiles or cards can assume varying layouts from one session to another, or even while the game is played.
• Game piece (or counter or token or bit or meeple or mover or pawn or man)—a player's representative on the gameboard. 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 capabilities. In some modern board games, such as Clue, there are other pieces that are not a player's representative (i.e. weapons). In some games, pieces may not represent or belong to any particular player.
• Jump (or leap)—to bypass one or more game pieces 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. Alternatively, a unique position on the board on which a game piece may be located while in play. (In Go, for example, the pieces are placed on intersections of lines on the grid, not in the areas bounded by borders, as in chess.) (See also: Game mechanic: Movement)
• Hex (or cell)—in hexagon-based board games, this is the common term for a standard space on the board. This is most often used in wargaming, though many abstract strategy games such as Abalone, hexagonal chess, and connection games use hexagonal layouts.
• Card—a piece of cardboard on which instructions are given.
• Deck—a stack of cards.
• Capture—a method that removes another player's game piece(s) from the board. For example: in checkers, if you jump your opponent's piece, that piece is captured.

Categories

There are a number of different categories that board games can be broken up into, although considerable overlap exists, and a game may belong in several categories. The following is a list of some of the most common:

• Abstract strategy games like chess, checkers, go, Reversi or modern games such as Abalone or Stratego
• Dexterity games like Tumblin' Dice and Pitch Car
• German-style board games, or Eurogames, like The Settlers of Catan, Carson City or Puerto Rico
• Educational games like Arthur Saves the Planet, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, and Shakespeare: The Bard Game
• Family games like Roll Through the Ages, Birds on a Wire or For Sale
• Historical simulation games like Through the Ages and Railways of the World
• Large multiplayer games like Take It Easy and Swat (2010)
• Musical games like Spontuneous.
• Race games like parchisi, backgammon or Worm Up
• Roll-and-move games, like Monopoly or Life
• Share-buying games (in which players buy stakes in each others' positions; these are typically longer economic-management games)
• Spiritual Development games that have no winners or losers, like Transformation Game or Psyche's Key.
• Two-player only games like En Garde and Dos de Mayo
• Trivia games, like Trivial Pursuit
• Train games
• Wargames, ranging from Risk to Attack or Conquest of the Empire
• Word games, like Scrabble, Boggle or What's My Word? (2010)

See also

• Card game
• DVD games
• History of games
• List of board games
• List of game manufacturers
• Tabletop game

References

Further reading

• Austin, Roland G. "Greek Board Games." Antiquity 14. September 1940: 257–271
• 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.
• Falkener, Edward. Games Ancient and Oriental, and How To Play Them. Longmans, Green and Co., 1892.
• Fiske, Willard. Chess in Iceland and in Icelandic Literature—with historical notes on other table-games. Florentine Typographical Society, 1905.
• Gobet, Fernand, de Voogt, Alex, & Retschitzki, Jean (2004). Moves in mind: The psychology of board games. Psychology Press. ISBN 1841693367. 
• Golladay, Sonja Musser, "Los Libros de Acedrex Dados E Tablas: Historical, Artistic and Metaphysical Dimensions of Alfonso X’s Book of Games" (PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2007)
• Gordon, Stewart (July/August 2009). "The Game of Kings". Saudi Aramco World (Houston: Aramco Services Company) 60 (4): 18–23. http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200904/the.game.of.kings.htm.  (PDF version)
• Murray, Harold James Ruthven. A History of Chess. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1913.
• Murray, Harold James Ruthven. A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess. Gardners Books, 1969.
• Parlett, David. Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-19-212998-8
• 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.
• 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

External links

• Board Games at the Open Directory Project
• International Society for Board Game Studies