History of games: ancient Greeks played dices in the Parthenon
Posted by: clevergames on: November 8, 2009
Acropolis of Athens
Once, on the Acropolis of Athens ancient Greeks used to play board games. They used to roll the dices and play in the Parthenon, the great temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, protector of the city.
Ancient Greeks played Board games very similar to our checkers or chess, with game boards engraved on the floor.
The archaeologist Eleni Karakitsou reveals that during the work of restoration of the Parthenon were found about 50 boards carved on the stairways and the floor, but they used to be certainly more.
The famous image of Achilles and Ajax playing dices under the walls of Troy, painted on many Greek vases, prove that dices games were ancient Greeks favourite pastime .
Achilles and Ajax playing dices
Ancient Greeks dices were called Astragals and were made of little animal bones with four sides.
It’s not a coincidence that ancient Greeks attributed the invention of dices and game to the Homeric hero Palamedes, who used to spent in this way the idle days in Troy.
According to Sophocles, Palamedes invented the Tavli game, a board game similar to our backgammon which is still played in Greece today.
But we know that backgammon game boards are even older: there are finds from the third millennium BC in Mesopotamia and other even more older in Iran.
Another popular game in ancient Greece was the “Pentagram”, derived from the five pointed star famous symbol (misrepresented in history and movies for years), improperly called “Pentacle” in the bestseller “Davinci Code”. In ancient Geece the Pentagram, found engraved on the Parthenon floor, was a board game very similar to modern chess.
Many researchers doubt that the game boards on the Parthenon floor belong classic age, because was forbidden to play in the temples. Probably the game boards were engraved when the Parthenon was no longer a temple.
Unfortunately it is difficult if not impossible, to date the engravings. However the historian Plutarch says that in his time, (the first century AD) the floor of the Parthenon was still clean. But surely ancient Greeks were playing just outside the temple, on the hills, just like in the other ancient Hellenic city-states. Archaeologists have found several game boards engraved on the stone in various places of Greece, but unfortunately we know too little, because there is not a study or systematic collection and probably many other games have been lost with the time.
But the certain thing is that even in the past, ancients Greeks loved to spent their free time rolling the dices and playing board games.
Scale model of the Acropolis
Board games history: the Viking game of Tafl
Posted by: clevergames on: November 5, 2009
Vikings
The Tafl is an ancient Viking board game and also one of the oldest board games ever invented.
Talfl board game is the Nordic answer to the game of chess, but its board is larger and the high number of odds leads to a high number of variants to be considered at every move; this turns this board game into into a true exercise of skill and strategy.
References to Tafl and other board games abound in many famous Viking Sagas, however some of the rules are still uncertain.
You can find here a modern reconstruction of the rules of this ancient board game.
For sure we know that Tafl was a board game for two players very popular among Viking, Norse, Celtics and other Northern Europe populations, and we also know that the game consists of:
a game board of 19 x 19 ;
24 white pawn pieces
1 white King piece
48 black pieces.
Tafl it’s a strategy board game; a wargame based on attack and defence: like in the game of chess, there are whites and blacks pieces; whites comes with a king while blacks do not. The goal for whites is to liberate their king frome black threat making him arrive at one edge of the board, while for blacks, the aim is to capture the enemy king. With the exception of the king the other pieces are all the equivalent of a pawn in chess and can move how many boxes they want until you meet an obstacle and it is forbidden to move diagonally (like the rook in chess). As regards the positions of the king occupies the middle box and is surrounded by his pawns instead blacks are positioned at the edge of the board. To “eat”, a pawn must close between two pieces while the king must be closed in four pieces.
The first evidence of the existence of this Viking board game is given to us from the discovery of a Roman tomb dated 400 AD in the Danish island of Wimose: inside the tomb, researchers fount a little fragment of the Tafl board. In an English manuscript of the tenth century (more correctly dated to the reign of King Athelstan of Wessex, 925-940) is instead shown a table with the initial layout of all pieces and some brief rules for the game.
The full name of this board game is Hnefatafl which probably means “the king’s board”: The term “Tafl” comes from the Latin “tabula” which stands for board.
The prevalence of board games in ancient Norse culture is mainly associated with migration of the people of Viking and the “playful culture” of these people is evidenced by a written Rögnvaldr Kali, dated between 1135 and 1158, in which appears a verse that refers to the Tafl board game.
We report the translation in English, from ancient Norse language:
The Tafl board game
I can play at Tafl,
Nine skills I know,
Rarely forget I the runes,
I know of books and smithing,
I know how to slide on skis,
Shoot and row, well enough;
Each of two arts I know,
Harp-playing and speaking poetry
The Tafl board game perfectly suites the mentality of the Viking people and deeply reveals the “Viking spirit”: The starting position in the board reflects the technique favored by these sailors of northern Europe: a sudden assault to overcome the enemies.
once the playerwith the king is attacked, is very difficult for him to defeat the “attackers” that surround his pieces: the goal of the game, for defenders, is just to rescue the king, a symbol of the entire Vikng stock. The capture of the king represents the destruction of the whole people, instead his salvation means hope.
It seems, according to some authors, that the game of Tafl is related to even older board games: the Greek game “Penthe Grammai” (cited by Sophocles, fifth century BC), with which it shares the capture mode, the “Plinthion” or “Game of city “ (quoted by Cratinus) and the ancient Roman game “Latrunculi” . Other authors also found some relationships between Tafl board game and the Egyptian game ” Seega”.
Board games history: Greek and Roman skill games
Posted by: clevergames on: October 30, 2009
Greek and Roman games are one of the little known aspects of these ancient societies.
In Hellenistic and Roman culture skill games were a recreational activity both for children and adults. Since prehistoric times is possible to recognize the so-called ancestors of games and toys among the archeological finds and in the works of Hellenic and Romans artists and poets:
We know for sure that in the fifth century BC, Crater, an Athenian playwright, wrote a play dedicated to skill games. In ancient Rome writer Suetonius wrote two different books one on Greek kids games, and the other on the Romans ones: unfortunately all these works got lost and we know only a few certain things about ancient Greek and Roman skill games.
A lot of references are traceable in the works of philosophers, poets, playwrights who, helped us to understand that in every ancient game there was a deep educational theory to help and support kids development through the use of their skills.
In the ancient Roman world the expression “nuces relinquere” (leave the nuts), meant leaving childhood and becoming adult, because nuts were used by kids to play one of the most popular skill game in ancient Rome . The nuts were used like balls and thrown to to smash other nuts, just like in the modern bowling game.
Equally fascinating for the boys was the game of Astragals, considered the ancestor of dices, a pastime practiced since since the Egyptians and Greeks. The astragal is a small bone of the foot of the goat used by kids and adults to play many skill games.
In the Hellenistic world a skill game with these little bones dates back to the Homeric work the Iliad (23, 88) when the angry Patroclus kills her friend for a quarrel arose during the game of Astragals.
Greek and Roman girls use them for the game called the five stones, which is to launch the little bones in the air and then trying to catch them as quick as possible with the back of the hands. Every kid had a bag of Astragals to play different skills games during the free time.
Sometimes, at school, teachers used to give Astragals to the good scholars and often these ancient dices were part of the funeral of the children died prematurely.
Adults, used these small bones as dices to play different skill games:
the Astragal has four sides: two flat, one concave and the other convex. Each side has a different value: 1-3-4 and 6, players roll the “dices” and the one with the highest score is the winner .
In the ancient game of Aliossi instead, four Astragals were used without the numerical value and the aim was to form different combinations from the simultaneous launch of the pieces.
A very special combination was the so-called Venus (all the four little bones with a different side face up),on the contrary, the “dog” combination was the worst (all the same sides of the pieces face up).
Famous board games history: the invention of Scrabble
Posted by: clevergames on: October 29, 2009
Scrabble is probably one of the most famous board games ever invented with over 100 million sets sold in all the world.
Today everyone knows Scrabble and have played this linguistic clever game once at least, but few people know the real story of its invention.
In fact not everyone knows that Scrabble before becoming a famous board game was first a commercial flop.
Year 1931; The city of Poughkeepsie, upstate New York, was facing the worst years of the great depression. This was the situation when an architect, Alfred Mosher Butts, lost his job and decided to devote himself to his biggest passion: board games and words. Soon Butts decided to invent a board game to play with words and improve the linguistic skills of the player. Towards the end of 1931 Butts had already developed the basic idea of the board game, which was initially called Lexico. This game was initially played without the board and players calculated their scores according to the length of the words formed. There were also reward points for words formed with less frequent letters (B, F, H, M, P, V, W, Y) and bonus points even higher for those containing unusual letters (J, K, Q, X, Z).
In 1933, Butts tied to register the trademark of is new board game but his request was refused. Similarly, when he proposed the new board game to the two top gaming company In United States, (Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley), he received only polite refuse.
scrabble inventor Alfred Mosher Butts
Undeterred, Butts started a small scale production of his board game (nearly 200) and begun to sold them to his friends. But here ends the story of Lexico. It was not a commercial success and probably this board game would end up in the oblivion if wasn’t for an entrepreneur named James Brunot, quite intrigued by this new clever game invention, who decided to market the product. Brunot made a deal with Butts for the distribution of this new linguistic board game: In exchange for permission to produce the game, Butts would receive a percentage for each board game sold.
Brunot had great entrepreneurial skills and soon realized that to make his new business work he would have had to change enrich and expand Mosher’s original idea:
Soon Brunot reorganized the board game box, the prizes, simplify the too long original rules, and after some researches changed the name Lexico in Scrabble ®, registering the board game trademark in December 16, 1948. In that exact day the modern board game of Scrabble as we all know it nowadays was born.
In the aftermath of this new product concept, Scrabble begun a big commercial success with more than 6000 board games sold each week at the beginning of fifties. Soon it became clear that Brunot company could not meet the global high demand of Scrabble ®. So the games was licensed to Selchow and Righter, a leading American producer who had previously rejected Lexico board game offer.
Brunot ceded the rights to Scrabble ® in 1968 and the Spear company bought them for the whole world except the United States, Canada and Australia. Rights of Scrabble board game are still divided in this way.
In 1987, after 53 years from the initial refusal of the game, the rights of Scrabble ® in the United States and Canada were purchased by Milton Bradley (MB now owned by Hasbro)
1991 was the year of the first World Championship in London, the second took place in the city of New York in 1993.
Today scrabble is still popular among adults and teenagers and there are many versions and variants like the Math Scrabble a game based on the original game, in which players must deal with numbers and make equations instead of words
Now days is even possible play Scrabble online with the flash version of this world wide famous board game.
Toys history: construction toy and educational games for kids
Posted by: clevergames on: October 25, 2009
Construction toys and creative games encourage creativity, curiosity, manual abilities and meets the incredible thirst for knowledge of the human nature. In the past, due to the fragility of the materials used to make toys, we have few traces to identify a precise date for the invention of construction toys. One of the first appearance of constructions toys dates back to medieval times, around 1245, when a Franciscan monk, around 1245 , reported about an Arab game he had learned in the Holy Land, consisting of modular elements to form a sphere.
Other historical finds and ancient books, prove the Arab origins of constructions toys and modular board games, usually composed of elements of geometric form. In 1500 constructions where not only tooys, but olso ornamental building miniatures in the royal courts, a game of ability for jesters and a nice hobby for the ladies. In fact in the Middle Age, constructions toys and other games where not designed for children but for adults.
Construction toys follow the same history of tales, narrations created to entertain kings and nobles during ancient times and later become (1700-1800) stories for kids. Just like the Grimm Brothers’ tales in these period construction toys became for the first time an educational pastime for kids.
Many pedagogues and social scientists started writing essays on constructions and educational games for kids to promote healthy activities and stimulate the ability and the cleverness of the children. In this period toys became the most serious actions of children and between the end of ‘800 and early ‘900 the Liberty art movement also involved the construction games in many artworks.
The first construction toys ever realized in modern times were however limited to the skeleton and the lack of details had favored the critics’ accuses of lack of realism. But, according to German pedagogues, this lack of excessive realism allows the child to explore all the potentiality of the game, just like the dolls, whose faces are so expressionless, but the child can make them laugh or cry second his sentiments.
At the beginning of ‘900, in England, with the positivism and scientific revolution, is given top priority to scientific and technical aspects of educational games and realistic engineering constructions toys are the new clever games for kids. With the invention of the plastic, construction toys became lighter and easier to play and the educational toys market is enriched with new models, shapes and pieces more and more similar to a small scale wonderland.
Compared to the structured games or one piece toys construction have, undoubtedly, different characteristics that invest the intellectual and the emotional sphere of the child. If every form of play has the function of an educational experience for its players, the game of construction and reconstruction of any kind of object is still nowadays one of the most creative way of playing.
Eco-games top list: new “green” online games for the environment
Posted by: clevergames on: October 22, 2009
green world and ecological games
Some online games creators have realized many fun and educational flash games, to support the the environmental cause and here you can find the green online games top list.
I think these are among the cleverest flash games available online, because help people to “go green” and face many of the critical environmental issues of our time, such as sustainable way of life, energy savings and waste reduction. Green online games also give many tips and info about global warming and environmental pollution.
Online gaming industry endorsed environmental protection creating new ecological flash games to save the planet with the best weapons available: commitment and political activism.
All the green flash games in the following online eco-games top list are free to play and share:
Energyville and Electrocity are the best flash online games to challenge yourself with this big issue. Players can find different solutions: for example they can ban air conditioning from the public buildings to reduce the energy consumption, or build a new electrical plant using sustainable energy like sun and wind.
Board games History: the Japanese game of Gomoku
Posted by: clevergames on: October 20, 2009
the board and the pieces of Gomoku
Gomoku (五目並べ) is a Japanese traditional logic board game, related with the game of Gobang (which uses the same board and pieces), and it’s also know in English countries as Five in a Row.
The rules of the game of Gomoku are in fact different and much simpler than the Gobang game and for this reason it’s a board game played mainly by children. But despite its simples rulres Gomoku is a strategy and logic board game more complex and difficult than Tic Tac Toe (also called Nine Mens Morris) and the modern Connect Four.
It seems that this ancient strategy board game is more than 4000 years old and that its rules have been developed in ancient China.
But we can find a similar board game with same rules, also in the findings of ancient Greece and pre-Columbian civilties of America.
The Gomoku board game was brought to Japan around 270 BC, with the name of Kakugo (which means something like “five steps” in Japanese), and soon became a national pastime, at least is described in this way by a book of 100 AD and it seems that every Japanese of the eighteenth century knew its rules. The first modern volume on this board game, called Kakugo, appeared in 1858.
The Gomoku game , It’s a classic board game of alignment, like the the modern Connect four, and has also many variants, called with different names. The Gomoku board game was introduced into Europe around 1885 and became known in England by the name of Spoil Five, another popular variant of this classic board game in wich the pieces are played in the boxes instead of in the intersections.
The Gomoku board game is a very easy and quick game to play and if you want give it a try you can play the flash version clicking here.
Monopolygate: the real story behind Monopoly and Anti-Monopoly
Posted by: clevergames on: October 14, 2009
Anti Monopoly board game
Ridley Scott announced his commitment into a new movie based on the Monopoly board game.
The script is not ready yet, so we can’t give you an overview of the plot, but we can tell you about the real story behind the invention of Monopoly.
A story of money, success, plagiarism and legal fights revealed to the pubblic only in the eighties after the so called Monopolygate:
The Monopolygate started long time ago, when, in Germantown, in the suburbs of Philadelfia, during the years of the Great Depression, an unemployed engineer named Charles Darrow, created the first prototype of Monopoly one of the most famous board games of the world.
Charles first started a small-scale in house production of the new board game and after its first success, registered the copyright and closed a millionaire deal with Parker Brothers for the distribution of the new Monopoly.
In that period Parker Brothers was part of the big and powerful General Mills, one of the top companies in the United States.
This was the official story of Monopoly since the beginning of the seventies, when the professor Anspach, tired of a board game that from his point of view favoured only wild capitalism, invented and produced a new version of Monopoly inspired by the free market:
Anspach called this new board game Anti-Monopoly.
Anspach wasn’t the only one to think that Monopoly with all its proprieties speculations has a really bad influence on western morals; during the first days of the economic crisis a lot of people have suggested that the subprime crisis was like a “crazy but real Monopoly” that encouraged players to put every last penny of their savings into a property.
When Anspach firstly released the Anti-Monopoly (1973), Darrow was already very rich and famous for his invention, was something like a national hero, a great example of self made American man.
Immediately Parker Brothers, accused Anspach of plagiarism and took him to court.
But Anspach, like a modern Don Quixote, exposed to the public the skeletons in Darrow’s closets:
In fact it seems that Monopoly was invented long way before Darrow’s first release by a group of Quakers friends in Atlantic City who used to pass the time playing this game on an handmade drawn board.
The Monopoly trial was a long legal fight of a giant company against one man, but Parker Brothers’ accusations fell in the eighties, when professor Anspach was invited to a talk show and recieved a live call of a woman affirming that the mother of a friend of her had played Monopoly in 1920.
Visual logic games: how to solve the Rubik’s cube
Posted by: clevergames on: October 6, 2009
The Rubik’s Cube is a famous visual logic game and a really complicate puzzle invented by Hungarian sculptor and architect Ernő Rubik in 1974.
Originally called Magic Cube from its inventor, this visual logic game was renamed Rubik’s Cube and marketed by Ideal Toys in 1980 and soon became one of the best-selling game in history, with about 300 million units sold.
A lot of people went mad trying to solve the Rubik’s cube because it’s one of the hardest visual logic puzzle ever invented, and if you suffer of anger attacks this puzzle game is definitely not for you.
You may have a Nervous Breakdown!
Rubik’s cube solution involves a long and complicated logic method, but if you want a quicker way to solve it you can check this website clicking here.
You must select the colours and recreate your puzzle in the Rubik’s cube solver and the game is done in few moves. With this program solve this intricate puzzle game is really easy.
No matter how bad you’ve messed up with your cube, with this little help you will to find the way out and win.
So now you can easily impress your boss or show off with your friends…
Skill games are the new stars of the web
Posted by: clevergames on: September 28, 2009
A research show how online games growth is lead by skill games.
As part of a global study on the gaming sector, Ernst & Young presented the results of an investigation into the online gaming market.
The Market analysis shows how the online gaming sector registers an average growth of 13% per year.
The study confirms the acceleration of the development of online gambling and the rise of many skill games like Sudoku puzzles, strategy games, board games.
Internauts seem to fancy in particular chess and billiard and the more traditional card games.
In the first 6 months of 2009 59% of web users has played a skill game online.
On average, the total value of the online gaming market is around $ 5 billion per year; 150% more than in 2008. Of these 5 billion, 2.2 billion are due to skill games.
Several factors support the growth of online games.
First, the high propensity of everyone on the world to play a game, which is further emphasized by the situation of economic crisis.
Second the social networking tendencies that are transforming the web, that point even more trough interactive widgets and applications.
And what’s better than addicting game to retain visitors on the web pages?
For this reason many companies are investing on advert-games, those small applications on the web pages with interactive playable games promoting services or products.
I don’t know if it’s worth invest on the online gaming market, I’m not a financial consultant, but I do know that in a way or in another, both online and offline we will always play games to have fun and laugh together.
Enjoy Shopping
World bloggers
Share this blog!
Recent Comments