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I know it’s way too late in the year for this suggestion to be useful, but here are some gift ideas for next Christmas. Give the board game lover the gift of Royal Game of Ur, the world’s oldest playable board game.
This ancient Mesopotamian game of strategy and movement is the oldest whose rules have survived to modern times, thanks to stone tablets carved by Babylonian astronomers in 177 BC and painstaking reconstruction work by Irving Finkel at the British Museum. It’s a game. (Original game works are on display at the museum.)
Although Royal Game of Ur is unlikely to replace Twilight Struggle in my household (the latter is a thrilling two-player game of Cold War intrigue, I played on the Soviet side). (but my partner usually chooses the side of the Demon King), I’m always excited to see original works on display. They bring us a sense of unexpected communion with those long gone, and a shared sense of our common humanity, in something as simple and silly as playing a game.
Why do we play games? Why do I spend a good portion of this festive period losing to my partner in Twilight Struggle or playing Monopoly Deals, an addictive, fast-paced card game that adds some much-needed speed and spunk to its heavy-handed ancestors? ) will be spent participating in endless rounds of games? , do you play classic games on Nintendo Switch or modern games on PlayStation?Why are ancient excavation sites littered with backgammon sets and Mancala shards?Why? Could the ancient vase depict Achilles and Ajax concentrating on some kind of dice game?
I think there are two answers. The first is poker, Dungeons & Dragons, or FIFAan evening spent playing cooperatively or competitively with friends over food and drinks is a great way to spend quality time. We all crave some fun escapism, whether it’s in the present or as a respite from that distant Trojan War.
But the second reason is that games are not just about having fun. The game reveals many things. It turns out that when my kind aunt plays Scrabble or poker, she’s the type of person who wants to win at all costs. A great cynic who points out the possibility of a triple word score to a younger relative. A friend who loves to win and rejoice in the Chameleon game. Sure, games entertain us, but they also teach us truths about characters that are often hidden.
Of course, one of the key changes between us and the ancient Mesopotamians is that, thanks to the rise of home video games, there are now many more games that can and often can be played alone. . Single-player games aren’t new either. Jigsaw puzzles have been played since at least the 18th century. Also in play was a version of the Choose Your Own Adventure novel (see page 24 to see the door). If you want to ignore the howling and go to sleep, read page 122.”) dates back to at least 1930.
Many modern games consciously owe a debt to both of these genres. games from Tetris The transition to Wordle is part of a very old puzzle tradition. A game as different as a gripping political thriller suzerainty Or a wonderfully tragic love story kill the princess In many ways, it’s just a more complex choose-your-own-adventure novel.
But the crucial difference is that we’ve never been able to accurately record the amount of time we spend doing puzzles or leafing through these books. We entertained ourselves, and maybe learned something about our own tastes, but we didn’t learn much about each other. Today, thanks to the vast amounts of data collected by various gaming consoles and digital distribution platforms such as Steam, we can know an enormous amount of information about the choices we make in games.
Some of them aren’t particularly interesting. I don’t think the decisions that people make about how they set up their teams. football manager It reveals a lot about the human condition.
But so do others. I think games teach us something about ourselves when the choices we make in a game are between good and evil. Consider video games such as: I was a teenage expatriateor baldur’s gate 3you can choose between villainy or heroism.
The two games and their backgrounds are very different. I was a teenage expatriate It was produced in a small studio run by a husband and wife. baldur’s gate 3 Made by a company spanning multiple countries. They have two things in common. The first is that they’re both great ways to spend an afternoon. Second, and more importantly, players in both games seem to choose good over evil. I think that number is about double if you calculate from the achievements of “good” endings instead of “bad” endings on Steam. In fact, the ranks of people who choose evil are being fattened by people (myself included) who have already played once and want to know what happens when they make a bad choice instead. is common.
Of course, in the real world, in addition to our long-standing love of the game, history teaches us that we may choose cruelty over kindness. But I still think it says something positive that our idealized selves are more likely to choose the good.
stephen.bush@ft.com
