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I know this offer is coming too late in the year to be useful, but here’s a gift idea for next Christmas: get the board game enthusiast in your life the Royal Game of Ur, the oldest board game in the world. can be played in the world.
This ancient Mesopotamian game of strategy and movement is the oldest whose rules have survived to the present day, thanks to a tablet written by a Babylonian astrologer in 177BC, and the hard work reconstruction by Irving Finkel of the British Museum. (You can see pieces of the original game on display in the museum.)
Although Game of Thrones will never replace Twilight Struggle in our household (the latter is an exciting two-player cold war game that I love play as the USSR, while my partner chooses the Great Satan), seeing the first pieces on display always makes me happy. They bring an unexpected sense of communion with the long dead, a shared sense of our common humanity through something as simple and silly as playing a game.
Why do we play? Why would I spend so much party time losing Battle of the Night to my partner, participating in endless games of Monopoly Deal (an addictive, fast-paced card game that adds much-needed speed to its board ancestor) , playing old games on Nintendo Switch or modern ones on PlayStation? Why are the old digs full of backgammon and mancala pieces? Why do ancient urns show Achilles and Ajax focused on a game of dice?
I think there are two answers. The first is that the game is very fun: whether you prefer poker, Dungeons & Dragons, or FIFAAn evening where friends play – or compete – over food and drink is an evening well spent. Whether it’s now or on vacation from that distant Trojan war, we all have a desire to escape happily.
But the second reason is that the game is not only fun: the game is often revealing. The kind aunt, it seems, turns into a mean type, who wins every time they play Scrabble or poker. The arch-cynic who points out about three words to your younger relative. A fun-loving friend wins a game of Chameleon. Yes, sports make us laugh but they also tell us truths about our players that are often hidden.
In fact, another important change between us and ancient Mesopotamia is that now there are many other games that can be played alone, thanks to the rise of home games. Solitaire games aren’t new either – jigsaw puzzles were being played at least as far back as the 18th century, when a version of “choose-your-own” books (“to look at the door, turn to page 24 .To ignore the worm and sleep, turn to page 122”) goes back to at least 1930.
Many modern games are clearly guilty of both of these types. Games from Tetris at Wordle is part of that very old tradition. Sports are as diverse as political entertainment Suzerain or a strange love story Kill the Princess in most cases they are more complex books than you choose.
But the important difference is that we have never been able to record exactly how much time we spend playing these games or reading these books. We had fun, maybe learned something about our interests, but we didn’t learn much about each other. Today, thanks to the extensive data collected by various game consoles, and digital distribution platforms like Steam, we now know a great deal about the choices we make in games.
Some of them aren’t very interesting: I don’t think they’re the decisions people make about creating their own team. Football manager reveal so much about the human condition.
But some are. I think games tell us something about ourselves when the choices we make in them are between good and bad. Take video games like I was a Young Exocolonistor Baldur’s Gate 3where you can choose between villainy or heroism.
The two games and the backgrounds they come from are very different: I was a Young Exocolonist was created by a small studio run by a husband and wife, while Baldur’s Gate 3 it is made by a multinational company. They have two things in common: the first is that both are a good use of the afternoon. Second, and more important, is that in both games, most players seem to choose good over evil. About twice, I believe, counting from success for “good” results instead of “bad” on Steam. Indeed, the levels of bad choices are often inflated by people (myself included) who have already played it once and want to see what happens when they make bad choices instead.
In the real world, of course, history tells us that, in addition to our lifelong love of sports, we have the ability to choose cruelty over kindness. But it still says something good, I think, that our willing people can have a chance to choose the good.
