A board game is a game in which counters or pieces are placed, removed, or moved on a premarked surface or "board" according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance 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 and Go, have simple rules that can still lead to complex scenarios.

History

is among the oldest known board games.]] hoplites playing a board game, ca. 520 BC, Olympia, Greece.]] .]]

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 game boards

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, and was pictured in a fresco found in Merknera's tomb (3300-2700 BC).

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.

Timeline

c. 3500 BC: Senet found under Predynastic Egyptian burials;

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.

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, the Indian epic.

c. 400 BC: Two ornately decorated Liubo game boards from a royal tomb of the State of Zhongshan in China. c. 400 BC: The earliest written reference to Go/Weiqi in the historical annal Zuo Zhuan. Go/Weiqi is also mentioned in the Analects of Confucius (c. 5th century BC). 116-27 BC: Marcus Terentius Varro's Lingua Latina X (II, par. 20) contains earliest known reference to Latrunculi (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. c. 200 AD: A stone Go/Weiqi board with a 17×17 grid from a tomb at Wangdu County in Hebei, China. 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.

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 Chatrang 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.

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 computer 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. 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. 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.”

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, depend entirely on player skill. Children's games, on the other hand, tend to be very luck-based, with games such as Candy Land and Snakes and ladders having 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.

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 (cooperative games being the exception). Thus, this generally applies only to games played with 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, 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 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 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

board game.]] 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 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 game board) are often colloquially included. Most games use a standardized and unchanging board (chess, Go, and backgammon all 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 as the game is played.

Game piece (or counter or token or bit or mover or pawn)—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 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 a particular player.

Jump—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. Alternately, a unique, atomic 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 the grid lines as is seen in chess). (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 wargaming, though some abstract strategy games such as Abalone use hexagonal layouts.

Card—a piece of cardboard on which instructions are given

Deck—a stack of cards

Capture—a method in which one removes another players game piece from the board, for example: in checkers if you jump another player's piece, that piece is captured.

Categories

There are a number of different categories that board games can be broken up into. The following is a list of some of the most common:

Abstract strategy games like chess, checkers, Arimaa, irensei, Pacru, Uptown or Go

German-style board games, or Eurogames, like The Settlers of Catan, Carson City or Puerto Rico

Race games like parchisi, backgammon or Worm Up

Roll-and-move games, like Monopoly or Life

Trivia games, like Trivial Pursuit

Wargames, ranging from Risk to Attack or Conquest of the Empire

Word games, like Scrabble, Boggle or What's My Word? (2010)

Family games like Roll Through the Ages, Birds on a Wire or For Sale

2-player games like En Garde and Dos de Mayo

Large multiplayer games like Take it Easy and Swat (2010)

Educational games like Arthur Saves the Planet, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, and Shakespeare: The Bard Game

Dexterity games like Tumblin' Dice and Pitch Car

Historical simulation games like Through the Ages and Railways of the World

See also

Card game

DVD 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.

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)

(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

International Society for Board Game Studies

BoardGameGeek

BoardGameInfo Reviews, Articles, News

Hong Kong Board Game Society

Name	Reiner Knizia
Caption	Knizia at Essen 2008
Nationality	German
Known for	Game designer

Reiner Knizia () is a prolific German-style board game designer. Born in Germany, he developed his first game at the age of eight. He has a PhD in mathematics, and has been a full-time game designer since 1997, when he quit his job from the board of a large international bank. Knizia has been living in England since 1993.

In addition to being quite prolific, with over 500 published games, he is highly acclaimed as a designer, having won the Deutscher Spiele Preis four times, a Spiel des Jahres (in addition to a Kinderspiel des Jahres and a special award) and numerous other national and international awards. At the Origins Game Fair in 2002 he was inducted into the Gaming Hall of Fame. His games frequently make appearances on various "top games" lists: including the GAMES 100 list, the BoardGameGeek top 100, and the Internet Top 100 Games List. Several gaming conventions host "Kniziathons", which are tournaments dedicated to celebrating Knizia-designed games.

Reiner Knizia started developing games for his play-by-mail game zine Postspillion, founded in 1985. The zine still exists and the game Bretton Woods (also a Reiner Knizia design), which was started in 1987, is still going.

According to Knizia, his best selling game is Lord of the Rings, published in 17 languages with over one million copies sold. However, it is anticipated that his hit game Ingenious, already published in over 20 languages, will soon take top spot.

A number of Knizia designs have been redeveloped for the electronic gaming & console markets. Ingenious (aka Einfach Genial) and Keltis have both appeared in CD-ROM versions; Lost Cities was adapted for Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade. An original game for the Nintendo DS, Dr. Reiner Knizia's Brainbenders was published in 2008; Keltis for the NDS followed in 2009. Knizia has also designed various game applications specifically for the iPhone, including Monumental, Roto and Robot Master.

Publishing philosophy

Reiner Knizia emphasises that he is a game designer, not a game publisher. "Designing games and publishing games are two very different disciplines. The designer creates the original game with its theme, its game system and its principal components, delivering a complete single prototype to the publisher. On the basis of this prototype, the publisher manages the production of the game, and promotes and markets it", explains Knizia. He continues "I concentrate on doing what I do best: designing games. This means that I can only be successful in cooperation with strong and competent publishers who do their job as professionally as I believe I do mine. I am always looking for new publishers all over the world, large or small, in the traditional games market as well as the electronic games market. I have lots of new and unpublished designs waiting for their opportunity to come to life."

Game characteristics

Knizia's games cover a huge range of characteristics: he has designed small two-player card games, children's games, simple games, sophisticated games, and even a live-action roleplaying game.

One element of modern game design that Reiner Knizia has pioneered is abstract theme. Older themed games like Monopoly have traditionally developed their themes by trying to model or emulate the environment or situation they are thematically tied to. So Monopoly has players buying and developing properties as a real developer might. Knizia's thematic game designs tend not to try to model a specific environment, but instead try to invoke the thought and decision-making processes that are key to the theme. For example, his game Medici has a fairly abstract game system of drawing and buying cards which does not try to model any particular environment, but in the game-world the players are always attempting to price risk, the key success factor in the investment banking business in which the Medicis made their fortune. This approach has allowed Knizia to develop games which are comparatively simple but require thoughtful game-play, while still retaining strongly thematic elements.

Using his understanding of principles in mathematics to full effect, pricing and evaluating risk are frequently recurring elements in Reiner Knizia games. Many of his most successful designs use auctions as a vehicle to price risk, as in Ra, Medici, and Modern Art.

Games

Abandon Ship

Amun-Re

* Winner, Deutscher Spiele Preis 2003

Auf Heller und Pfennig (released in English as Kingdoms)

* Winner, Origins Award for Best Abstract Board Game of 2002

Battle Lines

Blue Moon

Blue Moon City

Einfach Genial (released as Ingenious in the US and Mensa Connections in the UK)

* Winner, Schweizer Spielepreis best strategy game 2004

Keltis

* Spiel des Jahres 2008

Lord of the Rings

* Winner, Spiel des Jahres 2001 special prize for best use of literature in a game

Lost Cities

* Winner, International Gamers Award 2000 for Best 2-player strategy game

Medici

Modern Art

* Winner, Deutscher Spiele Preis 1993

* Winner, Finnish Game of the Year 2008

Ra

Samurai

Taj Mahal

* Winner, Deutscher Spiele Preis 2000

* Winner, Essen Feather 2000

Through the Desert

Tigris and Euphrates

* Winner, Deutscher Spiele Preis 1998

Tower of Babel

* Winner, Schweizer Spielepreis best strategy game 2005

Vampire

Wer war's

* Winner, Kinderspiel des Jahres 2008

* Winner, Deutscher Kinderspiele Preis 2008

References

External links

Knizia Games

Knizia@Convivium Semi-official site with full Knizia ludography, downloads, articles & Kniziathon details

Postspillion (includes complete list of games)

Reiner Knizia at Math Genealogy Project

Reiner Knizia by the Numbers, interview with Reiner Knizia, 12 April 2006

Category:Living people Category:Board game designers Category:1957 births