Board game

A board game is a type of tabletop game^[2][3] that involves small objects (game pieces) that are placed and/or moved in particular ways on a specially-designed patterned board (game board),^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]} potentially including other components, e.g. dice.^[6] The earlest known uses of the term "board game" are between the 1840s - 1850s.^[7][4][9]

Whilst game boards are a necessary and sufficient condition of this genre, card games that do not use a standard deck of cards, as well as games that use neither cards nor a game board, are often colloquially included, with some referring to this genre generally as "table and board games" or simply "tabletop games".^[2][3]

Board games have been played, traveled, and evolved in most cultures and societies throughout history^[11] Board games have been discovered in a number of archeological sites. The oldest discovered gaming pieces were discovered in southwest Turkey, a set of elaborate sculptured stones in sets of four designed for a chess-like game, which were created during the Bronze Age around 5,000 years ago.^[12][13] Numerous archaeological finds of game boards exist that date from as early as the Neolithic period including, as of 2024, a total of 14 Neolithic sites reporting 51 game boards, ranging from mid-7th millennium to early 8th millennium.^{[14][15][16][17]}

The Royal Game of Ur, estimated to have originated from around 4,600 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, an example of which was found in the royal tombs of ancient Mesopotamia (c. 2600 BC – c. 2400 BC),^[18][19][20] is considered the oldest playable boardgame in the world, with well-defined game's rules discovered written on a cuneiform tablet by a Babylonian astronomer in c. 177 BCE – c. 176 BCE.^[21][15]

Currently, Senet is argued to be the oldest known board game in the world, with possible game board fragments (c. 3100 BCE)^[22] and undisputed pictorial representations (c. 2686;BCE – c. 2613 BCE)^[23] having been found in Predynastic and First Dynasty burials dating as far back as 3500 BCE.^[24] However, whilst Senet was played for thousands of years, it fell out of fashion during the Roman period,^[23] sometime after 400 A.D., and the rules were never written down, therefore they are not decisively known.^[25] Similarly, Mehen is one of the oldest games dated with reasonable confidence, i.e., c. 3000 BCE – c. 2300 BC BCE,^[26][21] with some estimating it dates back to c. 3500 BCE,^[27] however, the rules, scoring system, and game pieces are unknown or speculative.^[27][21]

The title of the oldest known board game has been difficult to establish.^[27] An example of this is Mancala, which includes a broad family of board games with a core design of two rows of small circular divots or bowls carved into a surface, which has had numerous estimations of its generic age, due to the many variants that have been discovered in different locations, across Africa, the Middle East and southern Asia,^[27] and dated across many different historical periods, from archaeological archeological sites dating the game at c. 800 BCE – c. 200 BCE (Roman Settlements); c. 2500 BCE – c. 1500 BCE (Egypt); and even c. 7000  BCE – c. 5000  BCE (Jordan). The later based on divots carved out of limestone in a Neolithic dwelling from c. 5870  BCE ± 240 BCE,^[16][27][28] although this later dating has been disputed.^[29] Furthermore, when considering the Neolithic period game boards discoveries, caution has been given against considering these finds as representing earliest human game playing, as the absence of evidence of such games does not equate to evidence that no games were played during earlier periods.^[30]

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  Men Playing Board Games, from The Sougandhika Parinaya Manuscript.
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  Mehen game with game stones, from Abydos, Egypt, 3000 BC, Neues Museum
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  Painting in tomb of Egyptian queen Nefertari (1295–1255 BCE) playing senet.

The 1880s–1920s was a board game epoch known as the "Golden Age", a term coined by American Margaret Hofer^[31] where the popularity of board games was boosted through mass production making them cheaper and more readily available.^[32]: 11 The most popular of the board games sold during this period was Monopoly, with 500 million games played as of 1999.^[33]

In the late 1990s, companies began producing more new games to serve a growing worldwide market.^[34][35] The early 20th century saw the emergence of a new "Golden Age" for board games called the "Board Game Renaissance".^[34][36][37] This period of board games industry development, of which board games such as Ticket to Ride and were a major part, saw a shift away from the 20th-century domination by well-established standby Golden Era board games like Monopoly and Game of Life.^[38]

Board games have a long tradition in Europe. The oldest records of board gaming in Europe date back to Homer's Iliad (written in the 8th century BC), in which he mentions the Ancient Greek game of petteia.^[39] This game of petteia would later evolve into the Roman game of ludus latrunculorum.^[39]

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  Achilles and Ajax playing a board game overseen by Athena, Attic black-figure neck amphora, c. 510 BCE
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  Box for Board Games, c. 15th century, Walters Art Museum
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  An early games table desk (Germany, 1735) featuring chess/draughts (left) and nine men's morris (right)

The board game Patolli originated in Mesoamerica and was played by a wide range of pre-Columbian cultures such as the Toltecs and the Aztecs.

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  Patolli game being watched by Macuilxochitl as depicted on page 048 of the Codex Magliabechiano.
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  The Mansion of Happiness (1843)

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  Han dynasty glazed pottery tomb figurines playing liubo, with six sticks laid out to the side of the game board.
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  The Royal Game of Ur, southern Iraq, about c. 2600 BCE – c. 2400 BCE.

In Africa and the Middle East, mancala is a popular board game archetype with many regional variations.

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  Hounds and jackals (Egypt, 13th Dynasty).
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  Mancala board and clay playing pieces
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  Senet set inscribed with the Horus name of Amenhotep III (r.  1391–1353 BCE).

Some games, such as chess, depend completely on player skill, while many children's games such as Candy Land and snakes and ladders require no decisions by the players and are decided purely by luck.^[76]

Many games require some level of both skill and luck. A player may be hampered by bad luck in backgammon, Monopoly, or Risk; but over many games, a skilled player will win more often.^[77] The elements of luck can also make for more excitement at times, and allow for more diverse and multifaceted strategies, as concepts such as expected value and risk management must be considered.^[78]

Luck may be introduced into a game by several methods. The use of dice of various sorts goes back to the one of the earliest board games, the Royal Game of Ur. These can decide everything from how many steps a player moves their token, as in Monopoly, to how their forces fare in battle, as in Risk, or which resources a player gains, as in Catan. Other games such as Sorry! use a deck of special cards that, when shuffled, create randomness. Scrabble creates a similar effect using randomly picked letters. Other games use spinners, timers of random length, or other sources of randomness. German-style board games are notable for often having fewer elements of luck than many North American board games.^[79] Luck may be reduced in favour of skill by introducing symmetry between players. For example, in a dice game such as Ludo, by giving each player the choice of rolling the dice or using the previous player's roll.

Another important aspect of some games is diplomacy, that is, players, making deals with one another. Negotiation generally features only in games with three or more players, cooperative games being the exception. An important facet of Catan, for example, is convincing players to trade with you rather than with opponents. 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.^[80][81]

In perfect information games, such as chess, each player has complete information on the state of the game, but in other games, such as Tigris and Euphrates or Stratego, some information is hidden from players.^[82] This makes finding the best move more difficult and may involve estimating probabilities by the opponents.^[83]

Many board games are now available as video games. These are aptly termed digital board games, and their distinguishing characteristic compared to traditional board games is they can now be played online against a computer or other players. Some websites (such as boardgamearena.com, yucata.de, etc.)^[84] allow play in real time and immediately show the opponents' moves, while others use email to notify the players after each move.^[85] The Internet and cheaper home printing has also influenced board games via print-and-play games that may be purchased and printed.^[86] Some games use external media such as audio cassettes or DVDs in accompaniment to the game.^[87][88]

There are also virtual tabletop programs that allow online players to play a variety of existing and new board games through tools needed to manipulate the game board but do not necessarily enforce the game's rules, leaving this up to the players. There are generalized programs such as Vassal, Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia that can be used to play any board or card game, while programs like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds are more specialized for role-playing games.^[89][90] Some of these virtual tabletops have worked with the license holders to allow for use of their game's assets within the program; for example, Fantasy Grounds has licenses for both Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder materials, while Tabletop Simulator allows game publishers to provide paid downloadable content for their games.^[91][92] However, as these games offer the ability to add in the content through user modifications, there are also unlicensed uses of board game assets available through these programs.^[93]

While the board gaming market is estimated to be smaller than that for video games, it has also experienced significant growth from the late 1990s.^[36] A 2012 article in The Guardian described board games as "making a comeback".^[94] Other expert sources suggest that board games never went away, and that board games have remained a popular leisure activity which has only grown over time.^[95] Another from 2014 gave an estimate that put the growth of the board game market at "between 25% and 40% annually" since 2010, and described the current time as the "golden era for board games".^[36] The rise in board game popularity has been attributed to quality improvement (more elegant mechanics, components, artwork, and graphics) as well as increased availability thanks to sales through the Internet.^[36] Crowd-sourcing for board games is a large facet of the market, with $233 million raised on Kickstarter in 2020.^[96]

A 1991 estimate for the global board game market was over $1.2 billion.^[97] A 2001 estimate for the United States "board games and puzzle" market gave a value of under $400 million, and for United Kingdom, of about £50 million.^[98] A 2009 estimate for the Korean market was put at 800 million won,^[99] and another estimate for the American board game market for the same year was at about $800 million.^[100] A 2011 estimate for the Chinese board game market was at over 10 billion yuan.^[101] A 2013 estimate put the size of the German toy market at 2.7 billion euros (out of which the board games and puzzle market is worth about 375 million euros), and Polish markets at 2 billion and 280 million zlotys, respectively.^[102] In 2009, Germany was considered to be the best market per capita, with the highest number of games sold per individual.^[103]

Some academics, such as Erica Price and Marco Arnaudo, have differentiated "hobby" board games and gamers from other board games and gamers.^[104][105] A 2014 estimate placed the U.S. and Canada market for hobby board games (games produced for a "gamer" market) at only $75 million, with the total size of what it defined as the "hobby game market" ("the market for those games regardless of whether they're sold in the hobby channel or other channels,") at over $700 million.^[106] A similar 2015 estimate suggested a hobby game market value of almost $900 million.^[107]

Board games serve diverse interests. Left: kōnane for studious competition. Right: kōnane for lighthearted fun.

A dedicated field of research into gaming exists, known as game studies or ludology.^[108]

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,^[109] and especially modern board games such as Catan, Agricola, and Pandemic. Much research has been carried out on chess, partly 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 ability.^[110]

Linearly arranged board games have improved 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.^[111]

Research studies show that board games such as Snakes and Ladders result in children showing significant improvements in aspects of basic number skills such as counting, recognizing numbers, numerical estimation, and number comprehension. They also practice fine motor skills each time they grasp a game piece.^[112] Playing board games has also been tied to improving children's executive functions^[113] and help reduce risks of dementia for the elderly.^[114][115] Related to this is a growing academic interest in the topic of game accessibility, culminating in the development of guidelines for assessing the accessibility of modern tabletop games^[116] and the extent to which they are playable for people with disabilities.^[117]

Additionally, board games can be therapeutic. Bruce Halpenny, a games inventor said when interviewed about his game, The Great Train Robbery:

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.^[118]

Playing games has been suggested as a viable addition to the traditional educational curriculum if the content is appropriate and the gameplay informs students on the curriculum content.^[119][120]

Harold Murray's A History of Board Games Other Than Chess (1952)^[121] has been called the first attempt to develop a "scheme for the classification of board games", in which he separated board games into five categories: "race"; "war"; "hunt"; "alignment" / "configuration", and "mancala" games.^[122][56] Robert Bell's Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations (1869)^[123] similarly espoused a classification of board games, this time divided into four categories, "race", "war", "positional" and "Mancala" games.^[56] In David Parlett's "The Oxford History of Board Games" (1999),^[124] based on the work of Murray and Bell,^[56] he described a "classical" categorisation of board games which consisted of four primary categories: "race", "space", "chase", and "displace" games.^{[125][126]: 17}

Modern board games have been classified in a variety of ways, a classification that can be based on the board game's mechanics, theme, age range, player number, and promotion. The diversity of board games means that some games belong to several categories.^[127]: 13

A board game's mechanics usually involves an assessment of a player or player/s achievements whilst adhering to a series of pre-established rules, i.e. gameplay, such as capturing opponents pieces; calculation of a final score; and/or achieving an outcome.^{[citation needed]} Board games have a range of rule complexity but also a range of strategic depth, both of which determine the ease of mastering the game, i.e., hard-to-master games like chess possess a relatively simple rule set but have great strategic depth.^[128] Examples of categories based on a modern categorisation of a board game's mechanics include:^[58]

Parlett also distinguishes between abstract and thematic games, the latter having a specific genre or frame narrative, for examples regular chess versus Star Wars-themed chess.^[122][58] The board games often have themes that emulate concepts in real-life situations and/or fictional scenario, but can also have no evident theme.^{[citation needed]}

Such games have come under criticism, usually when trending thematic concepts, such as those based on popular television show licenses, have been used to supplement deficiencies in the game mechanics. When discussing this practice, Edwards wrote "A bad game, however, remains a bad game even if it has been themed to a favorite television show.".^[127]: 11 Parlett went so far as to describe these promotional and TV spin-off games as being “of an essentially trivial, ephemeral, mind-numbing, and ultimately soul-destroying degree of worthlessness.".^[124]: 7

The prominent themes found in board games of the Golden Era included: "travel", "sports", "courtship", "racism", "city life", "war", "education" and "capitalist enterprise".^[31] Common modern thematic game categories include:

Board games can also be categorized by their components, including:^[58]

The recommended age range of board game’s target player market impacts of the categorisation of that board game:

Board games can be characterised by the number of players they are designed for. Board games can be; solitaire puzzle games, where a player's performance is assessed against a specified target; or multiplayer games such as competitive games, where a comparison is made between two or more players' achievements, or Cooperative board game where players all players win or lose as a team.^{[citation needed]} :

The following categories of board games are not board game types but rather paths board game creators take to promote their game:^[58]

Although many board games have a jargon all their own, there is a stardard terminology that is developed and recognised by gamers and the gaming industry.^{[citation needed]}