A History of Board Games

'A game of strategy, such as chess or backgammon, played by moving pieces on a board and sometimes involving dice.'

Board Games have been a massively popular in many cultures and societies for a very long time and have been around a lot longer than people may think. The earliest signs of the first board game date back to around 3100 B.C. Since then, board games are constantly being developed and evolved whether it be the simplicity of snakes & Ladders to the brutal and unforgiving pandemic, people have and will continue to play these types of games for a very long time. 

3100 B.C is said to be the earliest known existence of board games with a board game called Senet being played as far back as Predynastic and Ancient Egyptian dates and is still even popular today in Egypt. The word Senet roughly translates in Egyptian to 'Game of Passing.'

The game board consists of thirty grid squares, arranged in three rows of ten. A Senet board has two sets of pawns. Due to the game being played as far back as 3100 B.C nobody is completely sure how to correctly play the game but a number of people and countries have created their own specific sets of rules for the board game.

Mehen is another example of a board game played in the ancient Egyptian period. The board game which dates back to 3000 B.C, is a reference to Mehen, a mythological snake-god and is played on a coiled up snake shaped board. Images of four players playing the game are found depicted on tomb walls.  Some of the scenes include inscriptions above the players translating to phrases such as, “I am playing Mehen against you” or “seizing Mehen.”

The board as previously stated is in the shape of a coiled  up snake which is divided into a number of rectangular spaces but due to how old the game is, no rules for playing the board game have ever been discovered.  However, a similar Arab game, known as the Hyena Game, which will be discussed later on share remarkable characteristics for the board and pieces to Mehen. 

Another game which dates back to 3000 B.C which is a lot more well known and is still, after 5000 years being played today and that is the board game, Backgammon. Backgammon is one of the oldest board games for two players and is played all around the world even to the present day. The playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice, and players win by removing all of their pieces from the board. There are many variants of backgammon, most of which share similar traits. Backgammon is a member of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of board games in the world.

Although this is the case the board game is still very much in circulation with the game still being played all over the world as well as in competition. The first ever  world championship competition in backgammon was held in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1967 and ever since the World Backgammon Association (WBA) have been holding a number of huge tournaments and opens with the tournament payout more often than not being a staggering $1,000,000 for first place.

2560 B.C : THE ROYAL GAME OF UR

The Royal Game of Ur, also known as the Game of Twenty Squares, refers to two game boards found in the Royal Tombs of Ur in Iraq by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s.

The two boards date from the First Dynasty of Ur, before 2600 BC, thus making the Royal Game of Ur one of the oldest examples of board gaming equipment found, although Senet boards found in Egyptian graves predate it as much as 900 years.

The game is still played. One of the two boards is exhibited in the collections of the British Museum in London.

The Royal Game of Ur was played with two sets, one black and one white, of seven markers and four tetrahedral dice. The rules of the game as it was played in Mesopotamia are not known.

The game is said to be a predecessor of the previously mentioned Backgammon

500 B.C : MAHJONG

Mahjong is a game that originated in China, commonly played by four. Mahjong is a game of skill, strategy and calculation and involves a certain degree of chance.

One of the myths of the origin of mahjong suggests that Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, developed the game in about 500 BC.

The game is played with a set of 136 tiles based on Chinese characters and symbols, although some regional variations use a different number of tiles.

Many historians believe it was based on a Chinese card game called Mǎdiào in the early Ming dynasty. This game was played with 40 paper cards similar on size and characteristics to Mahjong tiles.

600 A.D: Chess

Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid.

Chess is believed to have originated in northwest India during the Gupta empire, where its early form in the 6th century was known as chaturaṅga, infantry cavalry, elephants, and chariotry, represented by the pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook.

It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online and in tournaments.

All over the world people compete in a number of different tournaments and championships in order to become the chess ‘grandmaster’.

The first official World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886 with the current World Champion is Indian chess Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand.

700 A.D: Mancala

Mancala or Awele is a board game of pure skill for two or more players depending upon the variation of the game being played. Some variants of the game can be played by as many as six players.

There is evidence from temple carvings that the game was played in the Egypt of the Pharaohs at least 3,000 years ago and today it is widespread over the continent as well as many parts of the East and throughout the Caribbean.

Mancala is not one game, but at least two hundred games linked by similar equipment and a fundamental system of play. The games vary in board arrangements and rule details and are generally different depending on country.

The basic rules are very simple to learn and therefore it is easy to play, but it takes many years to master. 

1874 : Parcheesi

Parcheesi is a brand name American adaptation of the Indian Cross and Circle game Pachisi

Created in India perhaps as early as 500 AD, the board game is subtitled Royal Game of India because royalty played using colour-costumed members of their harems as pieces on large outdoor boards.

The game and its variants are known worldwide; for example, a similar game called Parchís is especially popular in Spain as well as a version being available in the United Kingdom under the name of Ludo.

Parcheesi is played with one or two dice and the goal of the game is to move each of one's pieces home to the center space. The most popular Parcheesi boards in America have 68 spaces around the edge of the board, twelve of which are darkened safe spaces where a piece cannot be captured.

The first player to get all four pieces home wins.

1938 : Scrabble

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a gameboard marked with a 15×15 grid.

In 1938, American architect Alfred Mosher Butts created the game as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko

The new game, which he called "Criss-Crosswords," added the 15×15 gameboard and the crossword-style game play. He manufactured a few sets himself, but was not successful in selling the game to any major game manufacturers of the day.

Selchow and Righter bought the trademark to the game in 1972. JW Spears began selling the game in Australia and the UK on January 19, 1955. The company is now a subsidiary of Mattel. In 1986, Selchow and Righter was sold to Coleco, who soon after went bankrupt. The company's assets, including Scrabble and Parcheesi, were purchased by Hasbro.

Tens of thousands play club and tournament Scrabble worldwide. The National Scrabble Championship: an open event attracting several hundred players, held around July/August every year or two, most recently in Orlando, Florida in 2012.

1957 : Risk

Risk is a strategic board game, produced by Parker Brothers (now a division of Hasbro). It was invented by French film director Albert Lamorisse and was originally released in 1957 as La Conquête du Monde which translates to "The Conquest of the World" in English.

The standard version is played on a board depicting a political map of the Earth, divided into forty-two territories, which are grouped into six continents. The primary object of the game is "world domination," or "to occupy every territory on the board and in so doing, eliminate all other players.

Players control armies with which they attempt to capture territories from other players, with results determined by dice rolls.

Like Monopoly, the board game has gained mass popularity and because of which, a number of versions of the game have been made  including one for the incredibly popular video game; Metal Gear Solid.

1980 : THE BIRTH OF GERMAN-STYLE BOARD GAMES

A German-style board game, also referred to as a German game or Euro-style game, is a class of tabletop games that generally have simple rules, short to medium playing times, indirect player interaction, and usually keep all the players in the game until it ends.

Contemporary examples of modern German-style board games referred to as German-style, such as Acquire, appeared in the 1960s. The recent genre as a more concentrated design movement began in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Germany.

Today, Germany publishes more board games than any other country per capita.

The phenomenon has spread to other European countries such as France, the Netherlands,

and Sweden.

The Settlers of Catan, first published in 1995, paved the way for the genre in the United States and outside Europe. It was neither the first "German game" nor the first such game to find an audience outside Germany, but it became much more popular than any of its predecessors. It quickly sold millions of copies in Germany, and in the process brought money and attention to the genre as a whole.

1995: Settlers Of Catan

The Settlers of Catan is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber and first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag.

Players assume the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop holdings while trading and acquiring resources. Players are rewarded points as their settlements grow; the first to reach a set number of points is the winner. At no point in the game is any player eliminated.

The Settlers of Catan was one of the first German-style board games to achieve popularity outside of Europe. By 2009, over 15 million games in the Catan series had been sold, The game has been translated into thirty languages from the original German. It is especially popular in the United States where it has been called "the board game of our time" by the Washington Post.

The enduring popularity of The Settlers of Catan has led to the creation of a great many spinoff games and products, starting in 1996 with The Settlers of Catan card game and including a novel by Rebecca Gablé set on the island of Catan.

2000 : CARCASSONNE

Carcassonne is a tile-based German-style board game for two to five players, designed by Klaus- Jürgen Wrede and published in 2000 by Hans im Glück in German

It is named after the medieval fortified town of Carcassonne in southern France,

famed for its city walls.

The game board is a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses.

The game starts with a single terrain tile face up and 71 others shuffled face down for the

players to draw from. On each turn a player draws a new terrain tile and places it

adjacent to tiles that are already face up.

The game ends when the last tile has been placed. At that time, all features

 (including fields) score points for the players with the most followers on them. The

 player with the most points wins the game.

Due to its extreme popularity several official expansions for Carcassonne have

been published, which add numerous additional rules, tiles and new kinds of figures.

Together, they can more than double the length of the game. These expansions are

generally compatible with each other and may be played together.

2008 : Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative board game designed by Matt Leacock and published by Z-Man Games in 2008.

Pandemic is based on the premise that four diseases have broken out in the world, each threatening to wipe out a region. The game accommodates 2 to 4 players, each playing one of five possible specialists: dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher, operations or expert.

The game is unlike most board games as the game play is cooperative, rather than competitive. Through the combined effort of all the players, the goal is to discover all four cures before any of several game-losing conditions are reached.

The game has been so popular that It has won a number of awards including the following:

--GAMES Magazine – Best New Family Game – 2009

--Golden Geek Award – Best Expansion – 2009 (for Pandemic: On the Brink)