Posts Tagged ‘Random’
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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…
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.
- In: Curiosities | Educational | History | Psychology
- 1 Comment
Jacob L. Moreno
The term role-playing game has roots in the history of psychology.
In fact, The first to coin the term “Role Play” was Jacob L. Moreno in 1934, after experimenting in 1921 the “theatre of spontaneity”.
Jacob Levy Moreno was a leading psychiatrist, thinker and educator and has been recognized as one of the pioneer of group psychotherapy.
In 1930 Moreno emigrated to the United States and began to develop the technique of psychodrama which is still used in psychotherapy: in the psychodrama technique the patient has to recall and act (like he is on a stage) a past conflict he had against someone.
Then the roles are switched and the patient plays the part of his opponent to try to understand what the other person has felt in that occasion.
But this first sense of the word role-play has no relation with the role play intended as recreational activity, derived from war–games. 
The role-playing games were played for the first time in the late sixties at the University of Minnesota war-game society.
In 1971, one student Gary Gygax developed in a war-game with medieval setting called Chainmail, wich become very popular among all Minnesota undergratduates.
But was only in 1974, when Gygax and his mate Dave Arneson invented and released the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons that that role-playing games became worldwide famous.
For this reason, D & D is considered the first modern role-playing game and had a lot of influence on later role-playing games.
Classic board games memories
Posted on: September 8, 2009
Once upon a time families used to have fun playing classic board games, this was before the tv and the digital revolution where fun and games are always condensed into a screen.
Some of us seem really nostalgic for those happy days, when families had fun together sitting around a table and playing classic board games, because they’re ready to spend a lot of money for classic board game.
The board games market begun in the early 20th century along with the rise of the new middle class demand for family entertainment. Soon many games designed by the most creative minds of that period became the favourite pastime
for children and adults and nowadays some of them are considered like pieces of art.
For a rare classic board game of the Georgian period, with illustrations and board in good conditions, like the one in the picture below, collectors are ready to pay up to 500£.
old board game
Classic board games are so called because some of them are still popular nowadays despite their old age.
Monopoly, for example, was launched in the UK market in 1935 and sold 200 millions of sets since then. Classic board games like monopoly, risk, connect four and many others remain one of the best options for all those parents who want to involve their children in a fun and recreational activity for all the family, instead of leaving them always alone in front of a computer screen.
In this sense classic board games can build strong and deep family relations and bring harmony and fun in your house, while you can teach always something new to your son.
For this reason classic board games are timeless, because they’re one of the funniest way to teach children about rules, loyalty, honesty, challenge, logic, problem solving and many other skills.
A new level of enjoyment for all the family can be reached with classic board games.
There are so many models that everyone of us can find the right one:
Could be a strategy game, a brain teaser or just a parlour game, the important thing is classic board games can get families around a table and offer an alternative way to confront themselves and learn about life.
I think this is something remarkable and worth to play if we don’t want to miss the best years of our life with our children.
Party gamesare usually played in family or during friends’ gathering. In England people like to play party games in the pubs, for example during a quiz night contest, in USA these games are usually played during private parties and festivities and in the rest of the world in every country we can find different kinds of popular party games. Gaming is an universal language with different styles in different places but the essence and the spirit of the activity remains the same:
Party games are played for fun during social gatherings and family parties because are a good way to create happy memories, and to bring different generations together in a non competitive and stress free recreational activity. Involving everyone in a fun situations, party games are experiencing a great comeback in our society, probably because we tend to go out less after the credit crunch or maybe that with our busy and frenetic life styles sometimes we need just an old fashion ritual like a party game night In the comfort of our home.
Party games weren’t so popular five or ten years ago but they were deeply played during the great depression when they were used to teach and entertain kids and relief them from the stress and the fear of a poor life. Maybe this renewed popularity of party games will decrease with the economy recovery, but for sure it’ll remain for particular and special occasion like a family game after dinner during the holidays or a quiz night competition in a crowded pub.
- In: Curiosities | History
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Modern reproduction of the ancient Mesoamerican ball game
The Mesoamerican ball game was a sport practiced by ancient Pre-Columbian cultures of Central America.
More than 3000 years ago The Mesoamerican ball game was very popular, the Maya called it pitsl, the Aztec name was ullamaliztl, but the game is the same.
This game was played with heavy rubber balls in open ended ball courts of different size with two vertical stone rings, one for each side of the court.
The aim of the game was to pass the ball in the stone goal and score the point.
We don’t know exactly the rules of this anciet game, but we know that Mesoamerican ball game could be really violent. In fact some games were played just for fun and recreation, some others were part of a ritual involving human sacrifice; for this occasions the game was played in Huge ball courts by two team of captives and the losers were sacrificed in a mystic/religious ritual.
The importance of the Mesoamerican ball game in ancient Pre-Columbian society is proved by all the diufferent use this game by the Maya: the ball game was used as a recreational sport, as part of a spiritual ritual and as well to solve the disputes among tribes and prevent the warfare.
Sometimes head of tribes play (but was more like a fight) the ball game to re-establish tribes hierarchy, and impose supremacy; this game was so important because it was like a social conflicts relief valve, it was a place where the disputes could be solved with a ball game match instead of a battle.
Probably the spiritual symbolism behind the ball game is the reason of the human sacrifices: the bal represents the sun and the scoring rings the sunrise; the solar movement is tied on fertility and the sacrifice of the player is the ritual of the death and the reborn of the sun. The game was a battle between day and night, born and death, life and the underworld.
This video is a modern reproduction of the ancient Mesoamerican ball game and of the Maya ball game rituals
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- In: board games | Curiosities | Educational | History
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In ancient Greece, board games where very popular, especially among the philosophers and their pupils. Plato once said “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation”.
Hellenistic culture gave a lot of importance to games, ancient Greeks invented the Olympics and athletes were considered like heroes.
Philosopher used to teach their scholars using linguistic game and games simulations; philosophy itself was a form of game: to quote Plato once again Philosophy is “like playing an hard game”.
Like Dutch philosopher J. Huizinga suggests In his book ”Homo ludens” all the stages and the development of philosophy manifest a recreational linguistic activity in its deep essence: Philosophic rhetoric play on words during the debates and the clash between the debaters assumed in public speeches the form of a win or lose game. Even in the written form, many ancient Greeks script are a sophistic game of question an answer.
Word games and speech competitions where a sort of recreational activity, used by Hellenic people to shape and rule their ancient society.The winners of those linguistic games where often famous philosophers like Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, great politicians like Themistocles and genial playwrights like Aristophanes.
This fundamental role of playing activities in the Hellenistic culture is manifested also in the Mythology, like in the Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.
The Labyrinth and the Theseus myth seems like a perfect representation of a gaming scenario that today could be easily used to develop a videogame:
Theseus (the player) must overcome different stages in a labyrinth scenario to fight and defeat the final Minotaur monster.
The connection between this myth and gaming was so strong that ancient Greeks invented a board game version of this myth called “labyrinth”, a game for two, three or four players.
Like in the original Myth, the gameboard represents the labyrinth of King Minos where the monster half men and half animal is trapped. The player acting as Theseus must save the youths Athenians sent as tribute to King Minos who used them to feed the Minotaur.
Each player has 4 pawns, one for each youth Athenian, the first player to bear off all the pieces at the centre of the board is the winner because, like Theseus, he has saved all the youths Athenians from certain death.
- In: board games | Curiosities | Educational | History | Role Games
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In 1920 British archaeologist Sir Charles Leonard Woolley, during some excavations in the Royal Cemetery of Ur in Mesopotamia, found the rests of a Royal tomb full of ancient and beautiful finds.
In this mausoleum Wodley discovered several incredibly well conserved exemplars of an ancient board game.
This artefact was called the Royal Game of Ur and was made more than 2600 years before Christ:
The Royal Game of Ur is one of the oldest board game in history and is composed by two decorated boards and two different sets of seven pieces each.
This incredible piece of game’s history is part of the British Museum’s Mesopotamia collection and was played with pyramidal dices.
Like the Faraons’ board game named Senet, the Royal Game of Ur was a race board game in which the players had to reach the other end of the board with their pieces.
This game had a mistyc power for Ancient Sumers; they believed that the dead person must play The Royal Game of Ur vs a spiritual entity in order to acess the reign of death.
This ancient Sumerian game can be played on the British Museum’s Mesopotamia website.
The word advergame derives from the fusion of the words advertising and game.
Advertgames are interactive games created to broadcast commercial messages, develop the brand awareness and bring traffic to consumer oriented websites.
The advergame marketing strategy begun in USA in 1998 when the firsts advertising expert start to test an different ways to promote their partners’ products.
The goal was to find a way to reach the audience and avoid the risk of annoying them with boring messages.
And the advert game was the perfect tool for this job because of its addicting and viral nature.
Was soon clear thar Advertgames can capture the target attention and create a more involved and complex relationship. In this way people remember the games and the products and advertisers push their brands.
Brand awareness, retention, brand loyalty and all the others marketing concepts shaped advergames through these Years.
Nowadays there are different advergames categories for different types of products and markets.
the most interestings are:
- Health advergames, created to reach the cosumer and built the brand equity of a pharmaceuticals industry;
- Exergames , developed to teach the children like Disney’s Hig School Musical Dance Math;
- Healthy behaviour games, like the one sponsored by Anderson Cancer Centre in Huston, who ordered a 32 million dollars anti-smoking videogame.
This last category shows how advergames can be used by media educators to inform, entertain and teach.
Brand engagement leads, are you ready to get in the advert-game?
Games for your mind 
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