Game

History

The history of games goes back millennia. The Royal Game of Ur, from ancient Mesopotamia in roughly 2600 BCE, is among the oldest known board games. A cuneiform tablet from the 2nd century BCE contained its rules, representing the earliest recorded game design. Senet, a board game played in ancient Egypt, was important enough to be portrayed in tomb artwork with fragments of the board found from approximately 3100 BCE. A game board inscribed for Amenhotep III (c. 1390 – c. 1353 BCE) survives intact. Both were race games and precursors to backgammon. Senet had religious significance with the board representing the pathway through the netherworld.

In East Asia, the board game Go has written accounts as early as the Spring and Autumn period. Go's strategic complexity resisted computation until deep learning advances in AlphaGo. Other ancient games include mancala, a count-and-capture game with Neolithic versions found in Jordan from approximately 6900 BCE.

Chess traces back to the Gupta Empire of India around the 6th century CE with chaturanga a likely ancestor. It spread through Persia as chatrang, and entered Europe via the Moorish Spain, approaching its modern form by the 15th century.

Playing cards may date to Tang dynasty China (618–907 CE), reaching Europe via the Mamluk Sultanate in the 14th century. With mass production, standardized regional decks eventually evolved.

Pachisi, played in the Mughal court, served as the basis for Parcheesi and Ludo. The Aztecs in Central America played a race game called patolli.

In the 20th century, developments included the rise of mass-market tabletop games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, and Trivial Pursuit and the emergence of video games. Pong, the first commercially successful arcade video game appeared in 1972. In the 21st century, the global video game industry had grown to surpass film and music in annual revenue.

Gameplay elements and classification

Games can be characterized by "what the player does". 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.

Tools

Games are often classified by the components required to play them. Common categories include tabletop games (using boards, cards, tokens, dice, or other items), card games (using a standard deck or game-specific cards), dice games, video games (using electronic hardware), and games with no equipment like hide-and-seek.

Game tokens are the means used to manage resources and achieve goals. Pieces in a board game, cards in a card game, and characters in a role-playing game are tokens.

The ball has been a popular game piece for millennia, resulting in a worldwide popularity of ball games such as rugby, basketball, soccer (football), cricket, tennis, and volleyball. Other tools are more idiosyncratic to a certain region. Playing cards in Europe had decks with suits that varied from country to country before standardization. Other games, such as chess, may be traced primarily through the development and evolution of their game pieces.

Rules and aims

Game structures include boundaries, rules, goals, and scoring systems.

Game rules specify how actions are allowed to work. The rules of a game may be distinguished from its aims. For most competitive games, the ultimate aim is winning: in this sense, checkmate is the aim of chess. Common win conditions are being the 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). Intermediate goals can provide motivation when long-term goals may be far off.

An aim identifies a sufficient condition for successful action, whereas the rule identifies a necessary condition for permissible action. For example, the aim of chess is to checkmate, but although it is expected that players will try to checkmate each other, it is not a rule of chess that a player must checkmate the other player whenever possible. Some games include rules about changing rules. In Nomic, invented by philosopher Peter Suber, players' turns include proposing rule changes and voting upon them.

Skill, strategy, and chance

Games are commonly classified along the chance/skill spectrum. Winning in chess is based entirely on skill, while in Candy Land it is based entirely on luck. Most games are in between. Backgammon combines strategy with the chance of dice roll. Settlers of Catan offers several paths to victory, and players may switch strategies, increasing their perceived autonomy.

Types

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

Sports

Sports are competitive games involving physical skill with accepted rules. 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. Association football (soccer) is the world's most popular sport by participation, with 250 million players in over 200 countries.

Spectator sports have been part of human culture for thousands of years. Local and national sports teams are arenas for group identity, promoting civic pride in the home team in municipal rivalries.

Lawn games spread in the late 19th century as outdoor recreation. Croquet, bocce, and boules provide leisurely competition and social interaction.

Tabletop games

Tabletop games are designed to be played on a table, including board games, card games, and dice games.

Board games

Board games use as a central tool a board on which location, interactions, and choices are tracked. Abstract strategy games, such as chess and Go, are entirely determined by player moves not chance. Race games such as Parcheesi and backgammon incorporate dice rolls, while Settlers of Catan involves resource management, trading, and negotiating with other players.

Board games have grown more dynamic in the 21st century, with Eurogames emphasizing efficient resource management over direct conflict. Tens of thousands of tabletop games have launched on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, with projects raising funds to pay for a game's production.

Card games

Card games use a deck of cards as their central tool. Standard 52-card decks support many varieties of games including trick-taking games such as bridge and whist. Uno was originally played with standard decks and has since been commercialized with customized decks. Variations of the standard deck exist across the world such as "French-suited" 32-card decks, tarot-derived 78-card decks, and Italian 40-card decks.

Collectible card games were pioneered by Magic: The Gathering in 1993, where players form decks and compete against others. The market has grown to $1.5 billion in 2021. Collectible card game booster packs are random, while living card game pack contents are known.

Dice games

Dice games use randomized dice rolls as their central element. Examples include Yahtzee, Farkle, and craps. Dominoes, while tile-based rather than using dice, also uses draw-and-play mechanics.

Video games

Video games use electronic devices. Commercial video games were first available in the 1970s, though earlier games included Tennis for Two and Spacewar!. Video games are interactive and may have a game engine simulating complex physics and environments. Genres include action/shooter, fighting, and platform games.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games can support thousands of players simultaneously within a virtual world. As of 2013, the MMORPG World of Warcraft had 36% market share. Esports give away millions of dollars in prize money while millions of viewers watch across the world.

Role-playing games

In role-playing games (RPGs), players enact fictional characters and collaboratively shape a narrative. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created the first RPG Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. Players make choices for their characters, with a dungeon master adjudicating things the rules don't cover.

Video game RPGs tend to run characters through a predetermined story line. Most Final Fantasy games present a fantasy/science fiction narrative with hero's journey, while Dark Souls is known for difficult action sequences.

Games and society

Psychology of play

Psychologists have long recognized play as a fundamental developmental activity. Jean Piaget described play as a way to experiment with different cognitive schemas and assimilate experience. Lev Vygotsky emphasized play's effectiveness in communicative, narrative, and representational competence.

In adults, games serve a range of psychological functions. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called flow a state of intense concentration and total immersion which boosts life satisfaction. To help players achieve flow, games offer clear goals, immediate feedback, and balance challenge with skill.

Research into problematic gaming has grown alongside the video game industry. In 2019, the World Health Organization designated gaming disorder as a mental disorder, with effects such as health problems, sleep loss, and social isolation.

Games as education

Serious games are designed for training, education, or health care rather than entertainment. Flight simulators are used for pilot training, mission rehearsal for military planners, and laparoscopic equipment simulators for surgery.

In formal education, game-based learning has received extensive research. Well-designed educational games can improve knowledge retention and deepen understanding.

Game theory

John Nash proved that games with several players have a stable solution provided that coalitions between players are disallowed. Nash won the Nobel Prize for economics for this important result which extended von Neumann's theory of zero-sum games. Nash's stable solution is known as the Nash equilibrium.

If cooperation between players is allowed, then the game becomes more complex; many concepts have been developed to analyze such games. Cooperative game theory uses coalition formation, joint actions, and payoffs for analysis.

In quantum game theory, it has been found that the introduction of quantum information into multiplayer games allows a new type of equilibrium strategy not found in traditional games. The entanglement of player's choices can have the effect of a contract by preventing players from profiting from what is known as betrayal. Games with many independent players are difficult to analyze formally using game theory as the players may form and switch coalitions.