Ancient Games: Royal Game of Ur

The Royal Game of Ur Also known as The Game of 20 Squares. Is a ancient game named after the Royal Tombs of Ur where it was discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920’s. 

While the exact rules are unknown. It is believed to be a two player game where players role a three sided dice to race to the end of the bored. It is also believed that if a player lands on a square that a opponent is already occupying they return the opponents piece to the start. However some of the squares have symbols on them, these squares are considered to mean safe squares where a opponent cannot take a opponents piece.

The rules we have were translated from a stone tablet of babylonian origin. The stone tablet and one of the two discovered game boards are in the British Museum.

I found this particular ancient game to be one of the best i have seen and played. As a result i later decided to iterate this game and improve its mechanics and winning conditions. 

Defining Games: Caillois’ terminology

James Newman uses Roger Caillois’ idea of Paidia and ludus.

Paidia means Play for pleasure.

Ludus means being constrained by rules, with a clear outcome. 

To simply these meanings Paidia is the ability to play the game freely in whatever way you want for the purpose of enjoying yourself. While Ludus is playing a game while constrained by tight rules for the purpose of winning. 

Newman also talks about aspects of gameplay. These aspects are Agon, Alea, Ilinx and Mimicry.

Agon means competition. Alea means Chance or randomness. Ilinx means movement and Mimicry means Simulation or role play.

Games Britannia Part Three Joystick Generation

In the final part of games britannia it focuses on the rise of digital games. Going from the first digital games back in the 70’s through to the modern day games. 

The documentary talks about games such as Elite, which was a innovative game at the time that involved flying round space on trading missions or you could go fight smugglers to gain there bounty. This game was a big success and even to day has a cult following and has been remade with the 2014 game Elite Dangerous. 

The show then went on to talk about games such as Carmageddon and Grand Theft Auto. Which are games that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable and received media attention as a result. Grand Theft Auto despite its media criticism has gone on to be one of the best selling franchises of all time. The media criticism is also considered to have been god marketing for the game. 

There was also a mention of the game Tomb Raider which was the first game to have a female protagonist. Tomb Raider has also gone on to be a highly successful and well selling game. With the protagonist Lara Croft going on to become a cultural icon.

The show then went on to talk about the game Heavenly Sword. Which was another game a strong female protagonist. The game had a focus on story telling with big name actors such as Andy Serkis, Nolan North and Anna Torv voicing characters and performing there motion capture to make them more realistic and believable. 

Racing games where also a talked about in the episode as they illustrate the mix between fantasy and realism. 

In conclusion i believe that all three episodes of Games Britannia are worth watching as they do a good job of showing the history and cultural significance of games in society. 

Games Britannia Part Two Monopolies and Mergers

Part Two of Games Britannia followed on from the ancient games in part one with the growth of consumer board games industry  in the uk. 

A large part of this episode was spent talking about the well known game monopoly. Which originated as a to illustrate the specifics of Georgism economics. Which is the belief that the value of a community should be split between the community. So the game known as “The LandLords Game” showed how if that did not happen and the current idea of people buying up land and making a profit by charging high tax to the citizens was bad for the economy. So the game showed that by attempting to be unfair to players by charging them high amounts in the hope that they would realise that the system was unfair. However that did not work and eventually the game eventually evolved into the modern day Monopoly which had flipped the origin idea into a game that encouraged the idea of gaining wealth. 

In the documentary the shows presenter Benjamin Woolley played a game of monopoly at the uk monopoly championship where the winner would go on to play in the world monopoly championships in las vegas. This shows the size and importance of games in society just like how in part one the significance of games where shown. 

Also in the documentary Woolley a group of independent developers who are making a game called war on terror that is highly satirical. However because of its content no publisher will make it. However that dose not deter these developers which shows the detection amongst those in the industry. 

This episode also talks about the rise of role-playing games such as dungeons and dragons and how they helped making gaming the cultural phenomenon it has become. 

Games Britannia - Part One - Dicing With Destiny

Games Britannia is a three part documentary series that was shown originally shown on BBC Four in 2009. It was presented by author and journalist Benjamin Woolley. 

Part one “Dicing with destiny” focused on the origin of games in ancient times. Something that was interesting was that most of these games had religious connections. Some games such as the modern day snakes and ladders are derived from an ancient indian game about spiritual enlightenment. 

Other games while not directly related to religion could still be found in religious buildings. This was because when people went to churches to see the priest they would have to wait a long time. Therefore they would carve game boards into beaches and other similar items to give them something to do while they wait. Game boards had even been carved into the top of tomes. 

Another interesting thing in the documentary is that a law was passed to ban dice. As they where being used for gambling games and gambling was considered evil by the church. This however did not stop people playing the games they either continued playing in secrecy or found alternatives to dice such as spinners as they where not banned but could do the same job. 

In conclusion part one of this documentary showed that games have been a part of peoples lives for far longer than you would expect. Yet the specifics of the games say a lot about the clutter of society at the time. 

British Museum Trip

On the 4th of December we visited the British Museum. The aim of the trip was to see the ancient games in there collection. We were privileged enough to be shown around by Irving Finkel. Who is the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures at the museum. 

The games we got to see included The royal game of UR, Tabula and hnefetafl. Which are all ancient games we had been studying for our course. It was interesting to see the games in person but being able to here Finkel talk about these games was an honour as he is one of the leading expert on ancient games. So i would like to thank him for taking the time to show us around and answer our questions. 

After seeing these games I also had a chance to look at other areas of the museum such as the Japanese exhibition. Which was also really interesting. 

I enjoyed the trip to the museum and would defiantly like to return to see the other exhibitions that I  did not have chance to see. 

Bibliography

Full Books

Bogost, I. (2011). How to do things with videogames. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Schell, J. (2008). The art of game design. Amsterdam, Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.

Koster, R. (2005). A Theory Of Fun For Game Design. Scottsdale, AZ, Paraglyph Press.

Contribution to a Book

Schules, D. When language Goes Bad: Localization Effect on the Gameplay of Japanese RPGs. In: Voorhees, G, Call, J. and Whitlock, K. (2012), Dungeons, Dragons, And Digital Denizens: The Digital Role-Playing Game, New York: Continuum, 88-112.

Bartle, R, (2009), Understand The limits Of Theory. In: Bateman, C. Beyond Game Design, Boston, Charles River Media, 117-134.

Journal Articles 

Browne, C. (2014). Evolutionary game design: automated game design comes of age,

ACM SIGEVOlution, 6(2), 3-16.

Parsons, S. (2010). Critical Play: Radical Game Design, The knowledge Engineering review, 25(3), 353-254.