

The History of Board Games - attiapete
https://diceygoblin.com/blog/the-full-history-of-board-games/

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kriro
Pretty good article. I think it should have been split in two. Ancient games
and modern games (possibly even three with the current age of KS/youtube
gamsessions etc.). It's really hard to compress the history of board games
into such a short post. Germany is often credited as "the board game country"
(somewhat unfairly in my opinion there's other countries with very strong
board gaming traditions) but I've always wondered why games are so popular
here. My working hypothesis is that it is somewhat related to the post WW2
social climate (escapism?). I'm also curious if a widespread "gaming
tradition" has positive effects on other areas of life. Games tend to require
critical thinking, creativity and most importantly create interesting social
situations.

Disclaimer: I'm a very avid board gamer (collection stands at around 210 games
and 75 expansions). I guess that was inevitable since I'm German and a
graduate of the University of Essen (Duisburg-Essen these days) with an AI
focus in my degree. We always skipped classes to attend the Spiel :D

Oh yeah and just in case someone doesn't know it, the leading board game site
is [https://boardgamegeek.com](https://boardgamegeek.com) (their UI is pretty
"interesting")

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jsloat
_I 'm also curious if a widespread "gaming tradition" has positive effects on
other areas of life. Games tend to require critical thinking, creativity and
most importantly create interesting social situations._

TED Radio Hour podcast just had an interesting episode about the benefits of
play, check it out: [http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-
hour/390249044](http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/390249044)

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BashiBazouk
Interesting history but incomplete without mentioning the mid 70's to early
80's Avalon Hill/Yaquinto/TSR/metagaming era. I think an argument could be
made that the modern euro board game movement would not have happened without
that era preceding it...

~~~
pessimizer
Yeah; it skipped the most important 100 years by skipping from Monopoly to
Catan. People like Sid Sackson, Phil Orbanes, Richard Hamblen, Francis Tresham
and others created the modern era - and amazing, modern-feeling games such as
Square Mile[1962] would sometimes appear out of nowhere.

edit: Seriously - German Family games don't even exist without Kohle, Kie$ &
Knete and Acquire. Lastly, the influence of Gary Gygax on the landscape can't
be overestimated. This is really not useful for understanding modern gaming.

edit2: I want to add so much more to this that it's better to just stop now -
but a history of board games that reduces Parker Brothers to Monopoly (which
they stole), Risk (which is French), Sorry (which is Parcheesi), and Trivial
Pursuit but gives a paragraph to the Conan Board Game is not a good history.

~~~
panglott
Tom Vasel called Sid Sackson "the Jules Verne of modern board gaming", which
is so right.

Focus is just an amazing lightweight abstract strategy.
[http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/789/focus](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/789/focus)

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lloydde
Incredible article! I would not have expected that a 4 sided was an early die
with it so uncommon today. I'm going to introduce my kids to The Royal Game of
Ur.

I was distracted by an early sentence. Does the "That’s higher than Google,
which sees about 20% growth year over year." lead resonate? Does it help
others relate to the growth? I found myself having to restart my enjoyment
engine after that line. Did the hook work on you?

What are related term for this pattern, so I can do further reading on it?

Thinking further on this. I'm trying to picture the relative growth between
gaming and google and haven't figured out a way to stack Google logos and
board games such that I think it would impress. What type of Google growth am
I representing? For board games is it revenue?

For my own purposes I'm going to test if I can sketch such a comparison before
I use it.

/me well down the rabbit hole

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miiiiiike
Not sure where they're getting 25-40%. The North American numbers have been
closer to 10-15% year-over-year for the past 6 years.

[http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/30959/six-straight-
growth...](http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/30959/six-straight-growth-years-
hobby-games)

~~~
kbart
I found this part hard to believe too. After quick googling found this
article, though it doesn't state how it came up with these numbers, so I'm
still sceptical:

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/25/board-
game...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/25/board-games-
internet-playstation-xbox)

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Zikes
Wil Wheaton's TableTop show has gone a long ways towards introducing people to
what board games are capable of. For the longest time I thought that Monopoly
and Risk were the gold standard, that everything else would be gimmicky and
boring, but then I saw the episode for Elder Sign and my whole perspective was
changed.

Now I've got dozens of board games lining my shelves and not nearly enough
opportunity to play them all.

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smutticus
This history misses many important board games. If this topic interests you
check out Tom Vasel's board gaming channel on YouTube.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/thedicetower/search?query=best+...](https://www.youtube.com/user/thedicetower/search?query=best++games+ever)

These guys seem to know more about board gaming then anyone I've ever
encountered. And I've been playing board games for ~30 years.

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panglott
The idea that chatauranga evolved from tafl, rather than tafl being loosely
inspired by chess, seems pretty speculative to me.

Kind of weird to skip straight from mancala to The Landlord's Game to the
Spiel des Jahres. The games of the 19th century were generally pretty bad,
from a contemporary perspective, but there was a lot of important development
that led up to 20th century designs.

George Parker founded his game company in the 1880s and started publishing
games like Chivalry (1887) and Rook (1906) that have continued to be played
since then (Camelot at least sees play despite being out of print for
decades). The Landlord's Game is nice, but it's a footnote to Monopoly (1933).
[http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/117864/chivalry](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/117864/chivalry)

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coldpie
> The game gets it’s name from it’s founding within the Royal Tombs of Ur in
> Iraq.

A very good article, but boy do I find these typos grating in an otherwise
well-written article.

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attiapete
Fixed the "It's" typos, please do let me know if you see anymore :)

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Singletoned
> [Table Top] garnishes several hundred thousand views per video.

It should be 'garners'. Garnish means to put something ornamental on.

