Cranium, Inc. was a company founded in 1998 by two former Microsoft executives who created the Cranium (board game). Richard Tait and Whit Alexander are the “brains” behind the board-game Cranium. After realizing that he always won at the game Pictionary, but lost more than frequently at the game Scrabble, Tait decided to make a game where everyone could win at something. Taking certain aspects of other favorite games, Cranium (board game) requires players to spell, draw, mold clay, and answer trivia questions. Tait and Alexander “create a board-game where everyone has heroic moments” ^[1] Cranium, Inc. tested and modified their new game over and over. They knew they had a hit game on their hands when one day game the game testers tried to steal the game ^[2] Without having a retail outlet to sell their game, Cranium, Inc. ordered 20,000 units to be manufactured in China. Cranium, Inc. did have big name investors, such as Starbucks, where they were able to raise 35 million dollars ^[3] . Cranium, Inc. went on to win over 130 awards and sell over 22 million games and toys ^[4]. Despite Cranium Inc.’s success, the company was bought out by Hasbro, Inc. on January 4, 2008 for 77.5 million dollars^[5].

Marketing and Advertising[link]

Cranium, Inc. marketing strategies were considered unorthodox by traditional game marketing standards ^[6]. Because the Cranium (board game) came out after Christmas, and Cranium, Inc. did not want to compete in the traditional game buying market of toy stores, Cranium, Inc. decided to sell their game where there target audience would be. The target audience for Cranium (board game) was “25-35 year old, dating yuppies who wanted to connect to each other.” Cranium, Inc. partnered with its investor, Starbucks, and sold the game at over 1500 Starbucks locations ^[7]. Cranium, Inc. then partnered with Barnes & Noble to have their games sold at their locations. Cranium (board game) became the first game sold at the bookstore chain. In 1998, Cranium, Inc. only spent 15,000 dollars, a relatively low figure, on marketing and advertising ^[8]. While most other games advertise on TV, Cranium, Inc. advertised Cranium (board game) on the radio ^[9]. Radio jocks would ask its listeners Cranium (board game)'s trivia questions and winners got the game for free. Also, Cranium, Inc. made partnerships where Cranium questions were featured on Delta Song Airlines napkins, Dr. Pepper bottles at KFC, and on packages of Land O’ Lakes butter ^[10]. Bill Furlong, Cranium, Inc.’s Director of Marketing had said that the game company “was giving people a chance to try their game everywhere from the grocery store, to 30,000 feet in the air on Delta Song Airplane” ^[11]. Cranium, Inc. also found advertisement in celebrity endorsements. On the Oprah Winfrey Show, Julia Roberts stated that Cranium “was the most fun game ever” and that she and boyfriend Benjamin Bratt “could not stop playing it ^[12]. Al gore and Bill Gates, Tait and Alexander’s former boss, even endorsed Cranium (board game).

Cranium, Inc. Toys and Games[link]

• Connect-O-Round
• Super Fort™ Carnival Clubhouse
• Doodle Tales
• Hullabaloo DVD Game
• Cranium Wonder Works Talking Picture Book
• Pop 5
• Cariboo
• Giggle Gear Mega Mask
• Zooreka
• Whoonu
• Balloon Lagoon
• Bumparena
• Family Fun
• Let’s Play Neighborhood Family Fun Game
^[13]

Cranium[link]

Cranium is a party board game based on Ludo. Cranium is billed as "The Game for Your Whole Brain." Unlike many other party games, Cranium includes a wide variety of activities. Giorgio Davanzo created the packaging and brand identity for the game, and Gary Baseman, creator of the animated series Teacher's Pet, did the art.

Rules[link]

Players form teams (minimum of 2, maximum of 4); each team picks a playing piece and puts it on the "Planet Cranium" Start space. The board is laid out as a circuit, consisting of different coloured spaces. Each colour corresponds to a question card category. The team with the player whose birthday is coming up next starts the game. Play then continues clockwise to the next team.

Card Categories[link]

Creative Cat These blue cards are creative activities. They include activities similar to Pictionary; a team member must draw a picture representing a word or phrase while their other team members guess (Cloodle). Other cards require the artist must keep their eyes closed while drawing (Sensosketch). Team members may also be required to make putty sculptures which represent a word or phrase (Sculpturades).

Data Head These red cards revolve around the knowledge of data and facts. They include multiple choice (Selectaquest), true or false, and question & answer (Factoid).

Word Worm These yellow cards are themed around words, spelling, and anagrams. Team members may be required to spell a word correctly without writing it down, spell a word backwards (Gnilleps), identify a definition of a word (Lexicon), guess words which have certain letters blanked (Blankout), or re-arrange the letters in an anagram to form the correct word or phrase (Zelpuz).

Star Performer These green cards are themed around acting out clues with a vague hint such as in charades, acting and speaking like a famous person or fictional character but without using proper names, or humming or whistling a popular tune to get your group to guess the song, such as with Hummdingers.

Club Cranium[link]

On some of the Creative Cat and Star Performer cards, there is a "Club Cranium" symbol. For these activities, every team competes and has one of its members do the activity for them. Whichever team gets it first gets to roll the die and move; if no one guesses the answer before time runs out, no one moves. The play continues with the team who the Club Cranium card was originally for.

Other Spaces[link]

Planet Cranium These purple spaces give the team their choice of category, and do not have cards associated with them.

Cranium Central Around the "Cranium Central" space in the center of the board are four black spaces, each with the name of one of the decks on it. Before a team can go into Cranium Central, they must collect one card from each deck by moving around these spaces.

Gameplay[link]

On each turn, a team has a chance to advance along the board. They pull a category card which matches the space their piece is on and complete an activity. If the team successfully completes the card they have chosen, the die is then rolled to determine what space the team moves to. Whether the activity is completed successfully or not, the turn always ends after one card.

A team's first activity on a Planet Cranium space, including the start space, determines whether they will take the "scenic path" or the "fast track" to the next Planet Cranium space. If they complete their first activity on a Planet Cranium space successfully before time runs out, they will take the inside fast track to the next Planet Cranium space.

When a team reaches the end of the path, they must place their mover on the black space that with the deck name that corresponds to the color of their roll. If they roll purple, they may decide which black space to start on. They continue play in the normal fashion, except that when they complete an activity successfully, they keep the card, and instead of rolling the die, they move clockwise to the next black space.

Once the team has a card from each deck, they may move into Cranium Central. On their following turn, they will receive an activity from the deck that the other teams decide on. If they do not complete the activity successfully, they must wait until their next turn. Once the team successfully completes an activity while in Cranium Central, they have won the game.

Expansions and spinoffs[link]

Booster Boxes

Boxes of cards (and clay) sold separately from the game that contain a new deck of each type of card. As of 2007^[update], Booster Boxes 1 and 2 are available, along with a special New York edition pack.

Cadoo

A kids' version of the game that has some elements of tic-tac-toe.

Conga

A version with a slightly older target audience than Cadoo. Incorporates a musical timer and magnetic drawing pad.

Cranium Turbo Edition

A version of Cranium designed for a faster game.

Cranium The Family Fun Game'

A game similar to the original Cranium with some minor changes.

Cranium Wow

A similar game to the original with new cards and activities from Cranium Turbo.

Cranium Kabookii

A video game version available on the Wii platform. Activities comprise a mixture of some from the original game and new games better suited for a video game environment.

Cranium Hoopla

A timed version of Cranium, designed for two or more players to play cooperatively.

Cranium Scribblish

Played very much like the game of telephone. Players start by drawing a caption card from the deck and must draw the caption, then pass to another player who captions what they believe the other person has drawn, then draw said caption. Winners correctly guess which drawing started as their own.

Awards[link]

Cranium was named "Game of the Year" for 2001 by the Toy Industry Association.^[14]

Cranium Cadoo, a version for kids (7 and up), won the "Game of the Year" award for 2002 from the Toy Industry Association.^[15]

Cranium Hullabaloo, a version of the game aimed at young kids (4 and up), won the "Game of the Year" award for 2003 from the Toy Industry Association.^[16]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Cranium at BoardGameGeek
• Cranium at Boardgaming.com
• Cranium, Inc. at BoardGameGeek

It has been suggested that American board games, 1843–1935 be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Proposed since March 2012.

French earthenware tray and board game, 1720–50

A board game is a game that involves counters or pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games can 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 defeating 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 real-life situations can range from having no inherent theme, as with checkers, to having a specific theme and narrative, as with Cluedo. Rules can range from the very simple, as in tic-tac-toe, to those describing a game universe in great detail, as in Dungeons & Dragons (although most of the latter are role-playing games where the board is secondary to the game, helping to visualize the game scenario).

The amount of time required to learn to play or master a game varies greatly from game to game. Learning time does not necessarily correlate with the number or complexity of rules; some games, such as chess or Go, have simple rulesets while possessing profound strategies.

History[link]

Men Playing Board Games – from The Sougandhika Parinaya Manuscript (1821 CE)

Senet is among the oldest known board games.

Board game with inlays of ivory, rock crystal and glass paste, covered with gold and silver leaf, on a wooden base (Knossos, New Palace period 1600–1500 B.C., Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete)

Ancient Greek hoplites playing a board game, ca. 520 BC, Olympia, Greece

Another gameboard found in the Jiroft civilization

Board games have been played in most cultures and societies throughout history; some even pre-date literacy skill development in the earliest civilizations.^{[citation needed]} A number of important historical sites, artifacts and documents exist which shed light on early board games. Some of these include:

• 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, another ancient board game from Predynastic Egypt
• Go, an ancient strategic board game originating in China
• Patolli, a board game originating in Mesoamerica played by the ancient Aztec
• Royal Game of Ur, the Royal Tombs of Ur contain this game, among others
• Buddha games list, the earliest known list of games
• Pachisi and Chaupar, ancient board games of India

Timeline[link]

• 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^{[citation needed]}
• 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.

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Chaturaji: played in India, starting position. Pieces with different colors (some shown as inverted) were used for each of four sides.

• 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)^{[citation needed]}
• c.400 onwards: Tafl games played in Northern Europe.^[11]

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Chaturanga: played in India, starting position.^[12] Note that the Ràjas do not face each other; the white Ràja starts on e1 and the black Ràja on d8.

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Ashtāpada, the uncheckered 8×8 board, sometimes with special markers, on which chaturanga was played

• c.600 The earliest references to chaturanga written in Subandhu's Vasavadatta and Banabhatta's Harsha Charitha early Indian books.^{[citation needed]}
• c.600: The earliest reference to shatranj written in Karnamak-i-Artakhshatr-i-Papakan.^{[citation needed]}
• c.1283:
  

  

  The game of astronomical tables, from Libro de los juegos
  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.^{[citation needed]} 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).^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

Psychology[link]

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 to compare their levels of expertise. The works of Adriaan de Groot, William Chase, Herbert A. Simon, and Fernand Gobet 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.^{[citation needed]}

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[link]

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: e.g. 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.^{[clarification needed]}

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[link]

Simple wooden "pawn-style" playing pieces

Wooden tokens from the Carcassonne 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.

• 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 (gamepiece, counter, token, bit, meeple, mover, pawn, man, playing piece, player piece)—a player's representative on the gameboard made of a piece of material made to look like a known object (such as a scale model of a person, animal, or inanimate object) or otherwise general symbol. Each player may control one or more game pieces. Some games involve commanding multiple game pieces (or units), such as chess pieces or Monopoly houses and hotels, that have unique designations and capabilities within the parameters of the game; in other games, 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.
  See also: Counter (board wargames)
• 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 a player jumps the opponent's piece, that piece is captured.

Categories[link]

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 and Diplomacy to Attack or Conquest of the Empire
• Word games, like Scrabble, Boggle, or What's My Word? (2010)

See also[link]

	Strategy games portal
	Sports and games portal
	Chess portal
	Role-playing games portal
	Dungeons & Dragons portal

• Going Cardboard (Documentary, including interviews with game designers and game publishers)
• Card game
• DVD games
• History of games
• List of board games
• List of game manufacturers
• Mind sport
• Tabletop game

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• 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 1-84169-336-7. 
• 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[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Board games

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

Look up board in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Board may refer to:

Flat surface[link]

• Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat
  • See Category:Engineered wood
  • Cutting board
  • Sounding board, of a musical instrument
• Cardboard (paper product)
• Paperboard
• Corrugated fiberboard
• Fiberboard
• Particle board, also known as chipboard
• A reusable writing surface
  • Chalkboard
  • Whiteboard

Recreation[link]

• Boardsport platform, such as a surfboard, skateboard, or snowboard
• Board (bridge), a device used in playing duplicate bridge
• Level (video games)
• Diving board (disambiguation)
• Board game
  • Chessboard
  • Checkerboard

People[link]

• Mykel Board (b.1950), journalist

Other[link]

• Boards (magazine), a 1999-2010 trade publication for the advertising community
• Board of directors, or a similar governing or advisory committee
• Printed circuit board, in computing and electronics
• Mixing console or sound board, for audio signals
• Bulletin board (disambiguation), where people can leave public messages
• Currency board, monetary authority to maintain a fixed exchange rate with a foreign currency
• Room and board – in exchange for money, labor or other considerations, a person is provided with a place to live as well as meals on a comprehensive basis
• Board examination – a part of education in some countries

See also[link]

• Boarding (disambiguation)
• Board book, a book made more durable by the use of cardboard covers and thicker paper
• Board certification, for medical professionals in the United States
• Board foot, measurement of lumber volume
• Board toilet, toilet room built into a vehicle
• Bored (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (March 2011)

Tug of war is an easily organized, impromptu game that requires little equipment.

The Card Players, a 1895 painting by Paul Cézanne depicting a game of cards.

A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports/games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).

Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational, or psychological role.

Attested as early as 2600 BC,^[1][2] games are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures. The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, and Mancala are some of the oldest known games.^[3]

Definitions[link]

Look up game in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Ludwig Wittgenstein[link]

Ludwig Wittgenstein was probably the first academic philosopher to address the definition of the word game. In his Philosophical Investigations,^[4] Wittgenstein demonstrated that the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition, all fail to adequately define what games are. Wittgenstein concluded that people apply the term game to a range of disparate human activities that bear to one another only what one might call family resemblances.

Roger Caillois[link]

French sociologist Roger Caillois, in his book Les jeux et les hommes (Games and Men),^[5] defined a game as an activity that must have the following characteristics:

• fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character
• separate: it is circumscribed in time and place
• uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable
• non-productive: participation does not accomplish anything useful
• governed by rules: the activity has rules that are different from everyday life
• fictitious: it is accompanied by the awareness of a different reality

Chris Crawford[link]

Computer game designer Chris Crawford attempted to define the term game^[6] using a series of dichotomies:

1. Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money.
2. A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
3. If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
4. If a challenge has no "active agent against whom you compete," it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Video games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)
5. Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.

Crawford's definition may thus be rendered as: an interactive, goal-oriented activity, with active agents to play against, in which players (including active agents) can interfere with each other.

Other definitions[link]

• "A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome." (Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman)^[7]
• "A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal." (Greg Costikyan)^[8] According to this definitions, some "games" that do not involve choices, such as Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, and War are not technically games any more than a slot machine is.
• "A game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context." (Clark C. Abt)^[9]
• "At its most elementary level then we can define game as an exercise of voluntary control systems in which there is an opposition between forces, confined by a procedure and rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome." (Elliot Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith)^[10]
• "A game is a form of play with goals and structure." (Kevin J. Maroney)^[11]

Gameplay elements and classification[link]

Games can be characterized by "what the player does."^[6] This is often referred to as gameplay. Major key elements identified in this context are tools and rules that define the overall context of game and that in turn produce skill, strategy, and chance.^{[clarification needed]}

Tools[link]

Games are often classified by the components required to play them (e.g. miniatures, a ball, cards, a board and pieces, or a computer). In places where the use of leather is well established, the ball has been a popular game piece throughout recorded history, resulting in a worldwide popularity of ball games such as rugby, basketball, football, cricket, tennis, and volleyball. Other tools are more idiosyncratic to a certain region. Many countries in Europe, for instance, have unique standard decks of playing cards. Other games such as chess may be traced primarily through the development and evolution of its game pieces.

Many game tools are tokens, meant to represent other things. A token may be a pawn on a board, play money, or an intangible item such as a point scored.

Games such as hide-and-seek or tag do not utilise any obvious tool; rather, their interactivity is defined by the environment. Games with the same or similar rules may have different gameplay if the environment is altered. For example, hide-and-seek in a school building differs from the same game in a park; an auto race can be radically different depending on the track or street course, even with the same cars.

Rules[link]

Whereas games are often characterized by their tools, they are often defined by their rules. While rules are subject to variations and changes, enough change in the rules usually results in a "new" game. For instance, baseball can be played with "real" baseballs or with wiffleballs. However, if the players decide to play with only three bases, they are arguably playing a different game. There are exceptions to this in that some games deliberately involve the changing of their own rules, but even then there are often immutable meta-rules.

Rules generally determine turn order, the rights and responsibilities of the players, and each player’s goals. Player rights may include when they may spend resources or move tokens. Common win conditions are being first to amass a certain quota of points or tokens (as in Settlers of Catan), having the greatest number of tokens at the end of the game (as in Monopoly), or some relationship of one’s game tokens to those of one’s opponent (as in chess's checkmate).

Skill, strategy, and chance[link]

A game’s tools and rules will result in its requiring skill, strategy, luck, or a combination thereof, and are classified accordingly.

Games of skill include games of physical skill, such as wrestling, tug of war, hopscotch, target shooting, and stake, and games of mental skill such as checkers and chess. Games of strategy include checkers, chess, go, arimaa, and tic-tac-toe, and often require special equipment to play them. Games of chance include gambling games (blackjack, mah-jongg, roulette, etc.), as well as snakes and ladders and rock, paper, scissors; most require equipment such as cards or dice. However, most games contain two or all three of these elements. For example, American football and baseball involve both physical skill and strategy while tiddlywinks, poker, and Monopoly combine strategy and chance. Many card and board games combine all three; most trick-taking games involve mental skill, strategy, and an element of chance, as do many strategic board games such as Risk, Settlers of Catan, and Carcassonne.

Single-player games[link]

Most games require multiple players. However, single-player games are unique in respect to the type of challenges a player faces. Unlike a game with multiple players competing with or against each other to reach the game's goal, a one-player game is a battle solely against an element of the environment (an artificial opponent), against one's own skills, against time, or against chance. Playing with a yo-yo or playing tennis against a wall is not generally recognized as playing a game due to the lack of any formidable opposition.

It is not valid to describe a computer game as single-player where the computer provides opposition. If the computer is merely record-keeping, then the game may be validly single-player.

Many games described as "single-player" may be termed actually puzzles or recreations.

Types[link]

Games can take a variety of forms, from competitive sports to board games and video games.

Sports[link]

Association football is a popular sport worldwide.

Many sports require special equipment and dedicated playing fields, leading to the involvement of a community much larger than the group of players. A city or town may set aside such resources for the organization of sports leagues.

Popular sports may have spectators who are entertained just by watching games. A community will often align itself with a local sports team that supposedly represents it (even if the team or most of its players only recently moved in); they often align themselves against their opponents or have traditional rivalries. The concept of fandom began with sports fans.

Stanley Fish cited^{[citation needed]} the balls and strikes of baseball as a clear example of social construction, the operation of rules on the game's tools. While the strike zone target is governed by the rules of the game, it epitomizes the category of things that exist only because people have agreed to treat them as real. No pitch is a ball or a strike until it has been labeled as such by an appropriate authority, the plate umpire, whose judgment on this matter cannot be challenged within the current game.

Certain competitive sports, such as racing and gymnastics, are not games by definitions such as Crawford's (see above) – despite the inclusion of many in the Olympic Games – because competitors do not interact with their opponents; they simply challenge each other in indirect ways.

Lawn games[link]

Lawn games are outdoor games that can be played on a lawn; an area of mowed grass (or alternately, on graded soil) generally smaller than a "field" or pitch. Variations of many games that are traditionally played on a pitch are marketed as "lawn games" for home use in a front or back yard. Common lawn games include horseshoes, sholf, croquet, bocce, lawn bowls, and stake.

Tabletop games[link]

A tabletop game generally refers to any game where the elements of play are confined to a small area and that require little physical exertion, usually simply placing, picking up and moving game pieces. Most of these games are, thus, played at a table around which the players are seated and on which the game's elements are located. A variety of major game types generally fall under the heading of tabletop games. It is worth noting that many games falling into this category, particularly party games, are more free-form in their play and can involve physical activity such as mime, however the basic premise is still that the game does not require a large area in which to play it, large amounts of strength or stamina, or specialized equipment other than what comes in the box (games sometimes require additional materials like pencil and paper that are easy to procure).

Dexterity and coordination games[link]

This class of games includes any game in which the skill element involved relates to manual dexterity or hand-eye coordination, but excludes the class of video games (see below). Games such as jacks, paper football, and Jenga require only very portable or improvised equipment and can be played on any flat level surface, while other examples, such as pinball, billiards, air hockey, foosball, and table hockey require specialized tables or other self-contained modules on which the game is played. The advent of home video game systems largely replaced some of these, such as table hockey, however air hockey, billiards, pinball and foosball remain popular fixtures in private and public game rooms. These games and others, as they require reflexes and coordination, are generally performed more poorly by intoxicated persons but are unlikely to result in injury because of this; as such the games are popular as drinking games. In addition, dedicated drinking games such as quarters also involve physical coordination and are popular for similar reasons.

Board games[link]

Parcheesi is an American adaptation of a board game originating in India.

Board games use as a central tool a board on which the players' status, resources, and progress are tracked using physical tokens. Many also involve dice and/or cards. Most games that simulate war are board games (though a large number of video games have been created to simulate strategic combat; see "Video Games" below), and the board may be a map on which the players' tokens move. Virtually all board games involve "turn-based" play; one player contemplates and then makes a move, then the next player does the same, and a player can only act on their turn. This is opposed to "real-time" play as is found in some card games, most sports and most video games.

Some games, such as chess and Go, are entirely deterministic, relying only on the strategy element for their interest. Such games are usually described as having "perfect information"; the only unknown is the exact thought processes of one's opponent, not the outcome of any unknown event inherent in the game (such as a card draw or die roll). Children's games, on the other hand, tend to be very luck-based, with games such as Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders having virtually no decisions to be made. By some definitions, such as that by (Greg Costikyan), they are not games since there are no decisions to make to effect the outcome.^[12] Many other games involving a high degree of luck do not allow direct attacks between opponents; the random event simply determines a gain or loss in the standing of the current player within the game, which is independent of any other player; the "game" then is actually a "race" by definitions such as Crawford's.

Most other board games combine strategy and luck factors; the game of backgammon requires players to decide the best strategic move based on the roll of two dice. 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 board games.

Board game groups include race games, roll-and-move games, abstract strategy games, word games, and wargames, as well as the trivia and German-style board games mentioned above. Some board games fall into multiple groups and even incorporate elements of other genres: Cranium is one popular example, where players must succeed in each of four main skills: artistry, live performance, trivia, and language skill.

Card games[link]

Card games use a deck of cards as their central tool. These cards may be a standard Anglo-American (52-card) deck of playing cards (such as for bridge, poker, Rummy, etc.), a regional deck using 32, 36 or 40 cards and different suit signs (such as for the popular German game skat), a tarot deck of 78 cards (used in Europe to play a variety of trick-taking games collectively known as Tarot, Tarock, and/or Tarocchi games), or a deck specific to the individual game (such as Set or 1000 Blank White Cards). Uno and Rook are examples of games that were originally played with a standard deck and have since been commercialized with customized decks. Some collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering are played with a small selection of cards that have been collected or purchased individually from large available sets.

Some board games include a deck of cards as a gameplay element, normally for randomization and/or to keep track of game progress. Conversely, some card games such as Cribbage use a board with movers, normally to keep score. The differentiation between the two genres in such cases depends on which element of the game is foremost in its play; a board game using cards for random actions can usually use some other method of randomization, while Cribbage can just as easily be scored on paper. These elements as used are simply the traditional and easiest methods to achieve their purpose.

Dice games[link]

Dice games use a number of dice as their central element. Board games often use dice for a randomization element, and thus each roll of the dice has a profound impact on the outcome of the game, however dice games are differentiated in that the dice do not determine the success or failure of some other element of the game; they instead are the central indicator of the person's standing in the game. Popular dice games include Yahtzee, Farkle, Bunco, Liar's dice/Perudo, and Poker dice. As dice are, by their very nature, designed to produce apparently random numbers, these games usually involve a high degree of luck, which can be directed to some extent by the player through more strategic elements of play and through tenets of probability theory. Such games are thus popular as gambling games; the game of Craps is perhaps the most famous example, though Liar's dice and Poker dice were originally conceived of as gambling games.

Domino and tile games[link]

Domino games are similar in many respects to card games, but the generic device is instead a set of tiles called dominoes, which traditionally each have two ends, each with a given number of dots, or "pips", and each combination of two possible end values as it appears on a tile is unique in the set. The games played with dominoes largely center around playing a domino from the player's "hand" onto the matching end of another domino, and the overall object could be to always be able to make a play, to make all open endpoints sum to a given number or multiple, or simply to play all dominoes from one's hand onto the board. Sets vary in the number of possible dots on one end, and thus of the number of combinations and pieces; the most common set historically is double-six, though in more recent times "extended" sets such as double-nine have been introduced to increase the number of dominoes available, which allows larger hands and more players in a game. Muggins, Mexican Train, and Chicken Foot are very popular domino games. Texas 42 is a domino game more similar in its play to a "trick-taking" card game.

Variations of traditional dominoes abound: Triominoes are similar in theory but are triangular and thus have three values per tile. Similarly, a game known as Quad-Ominos uses four-sided tiles.

Some other games use tiles in place of cards; Rummikub is a variant of the Rummy card game family that uses tiles numbered in ascending rank among four colors, very similar in makeup to a 2-deck "pack" of Anglo-American playing cards. Mah-Jongg is another game very similar to Rummy that uses a set of tiles with card-like values and art.

Lastly, some games use graphical tiles to form a board layout, on which other elements of the game are played. Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne are examples. In each, the "board" is made up of a series of tiles; in Settlers of Catan the starting layout is random but static, while in Carcassonne the game is played by "building" the board tile-by-tile. Hive, an abstract strategy game using tiles as moving pieces, has mechanical and strategic elements similar to chess, although it has no board; the pieces themselves both form the layout and can move within it.

Pencil and paper games[link]

Pencil and paper games require little or no specialized equipment other than writing materials, though some such games have been commercialized as board games (Scrabble, for instance, is based on the idea of a crossword puzzle, and tic-tac-toe sets with a boxed grid and pieces are available commercially). These games vary widely, from games centering on a design being drawn such as Pictionary and "connect-the-dots" games like sprouts, to letter and word games such as Boggle and Scattergories, to solitaire and logic puzzle games such as Sudoku and crossword puzzles.

Guessing games[link]

A guessing game has as its core a piece of information that one player knows, and the object is to coerce others into guessing that piece of information without actually divulging it in text or spoken word. Charades is probably the most well-known game of this type, and has spawned numerous commercial variants that involve differing rules on the type of communication to be given, such as Catch Phrase, Taboo, Pictionary, and similar. The genre also includes many game shows such as Win, Lose or Draw, Password and $25,000 Pyramid.

Video games[link]

Video games are computer- or microprocessor-controlled games. Computers can create virtual spaces for a wide variety of game types. Some video games simulate conventional game objects like cards or dice, while others can simulate environs either grounded in reality or fantastical in design, each with its own set of rules or goals.

A computer or video game uses one or more input devices, typically a button/joystick combination (on arcade games); a keyboard, mouse and/or trackball (computer games); or a controller or a motion sensitive tool. (console games). More esoteric devices such as paddle controllers have also been used for input. In computer games, the evolution of user interfaces from simple keyboard to mouse, joystick or joypad has profoundly changed the nature of game development.^{[citation needed]}

There are many genres of video game; the first commercial video game, Pong, was a simple simulation of table tennis. As processing power increased, new genres such as adventure and action games were developed that involved a player guiding a character from a third person perspective through a series of obstacles. This "real-time" element cannot be easily reproduced by a board game, which is generally limited to "turn-based" strategy; this advantage allows video games to simulate situations such as combat more realistically. Additionally, the playing of a video game does not require the same physical skill, strength and/or danger as a real-world representation of the game, and can provide either very realistic, exaggerated or impossible physics, allowing for elements of a fantastical nature, games involving physical violence, or simulations of sports. Lastly, a computer can, with varying degrees of success, simulate one or more human opponents in traditional table games such as chess, leading to simulations of such games that can be played by a single player.

In more open-ended computer simulations, also known as sandbox-style games, the game provides a virtual environment in which the player may be free to do whatever they like within the confines of this universe. Sometimes, there is a lack of goals or opposition, which has stirred some debate on whether these should be considered "games" or "toys". (Crawford specifically mentions Will Wright's SimCity as an example of a toy.)^[6]

Online games[link]

From the very earliest days of networked and time-shared computers, online games have been part of the culture. Early commercial systems such as Plato were at least as widely famous for their games as for their strictly educational value. In 1958, Tennis for Two dominated Visitor's Day and drew attention to the oscilloscope at the Brookhaven National Laboratory; during the 1980s, Xerox PARC was known mainly for Maze War, which was offered as a hands-on demo to visitors.

Modern online games are played using an Internet connection; some have dedicated client programs, while others require only a web browser. Some simpler browser games appeal to demographic groups (notably women and the middle-aged) that otherwise play very few video games.^{[citation needed]}

Media audiences' characteristic has been changing in consequence of the social changes and development. They are becoming active and interact more than ever before. The players of the game in this phenomenon are just like the social formation in society. They are both self-regulating, creating their own social norms and subject to regulation and constraint through the code of the game and sometimes through the policing of the game by those who run it. The values that are policed vary from game to game. Many of the values encoded into game cultures reflect offline cultural values, but games also offer a chance to emphasise alternative or subjugated values in the name of fantasy and play. The players of the game at the new century are now apparently expressing their profound self through the game. When they can play with their anonymous status, they are found to be more confident to express and to step out from the position they have never been out from. It offers new experiences and pleasures based in the interactive and immersible possibilities of computer technologies.^{[citation needed]}

Role-playing games[link]

Role-playing games, often abbreviated as RPGs, are a type of game in which the participants (usually) assume the roles of characters acting in a fictional setting. The original role playing games—or at least those explicitly marketed as such—are played with a handful of participants, usually face-to-face, and keep track of the developing fiction with pen and paper. Together, the players may collaborate on a story involving those characters; create, develop, and "explore" the setting; or vicariously experience an adventure outside the bounds of everyday life. Pen-and-paper role-playing games include, for example, Dungeons & Dragons and GURPS.

The term role-playing game has also been appropriated by the video game industry to describe a genre of video games. These may be single-player games where one player experiences a programmed environment and story, or they may allow players to interact through the internet. The experience is usually quite different from traditional role-playing games. Single-player games include Final Fantasy, Fable, The Elder Scrolls, and Mass Effect. Online multi-player games, often referred to as Massively Multiplayer Online role playing games, or MMORPGs, include RuneScape, EverQuest 2, Guild Wars, MapleStory, Anarchy Online, and Dofus. As of 2009^[update], the most successful MMORPG has been World of Warcraft, which controls the vast majority of the market.^[13]

Business games[link]

Business games can take a variety of forms, from interactive board games to interactive games involving different props (balls, ropes, hoops, etc.) and different kinds of activities. The purpose of these games is to link to some aspect of organizational performance and to generate discussions about business improvement. Many business games focus on organizational behaviors. Some of these are computer simulations while others are simple designs for play and debriefing. Team building is a common focus of such activities.

Simulation[link]

The term "game" can include simulation^[14][15] or re-enactment of various activities or use in "real life" for various purposes: e.g., training, analysis, prediction. Well-known examples are war games and roleplaying. The root of this meaning may originate in the human prehistory of games deduced by anthropology from observing primitive cultures, in which children's games mimic the activities of adults to a significant degree: hunting, warring, nursing, etc. These kinds of games are preserved in modern times.^{[original research?]}

See also[link]

Sports and games portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Game

• Game classification
• Game club
• Game theory
• Gamer
• Girls' games and toys
• History of games
• Lawn game
• List of games
• Ludibrium
• Ludology

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Avedon, Elliot; Sutton-Smith, Brian, The Study of Games. (Philadelphia: Wiley, 1971), reprinted Krieger, 1979. ISBN 0-89874-045-2

Professor Richard Tait CBE, is Director of the Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University^[1] and a member of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Tait was a former editor of BBC's Newsnight, Channel 4 News (1987–1995) and Editor-in-Chief of ITN (1995–2002). He is a fellow of the Royal Television Society and the Society of Editors.