Talk:History of games

Discussion about the article
This Wikipedia entry is beginning as a list of games through history. Where possible the items in the list are linked to more descriptive pages already in Wikipedia. My intention is to begin the process of pulling together a single page that can help people who want to understnad the evolution and history of games. I don't think the content of all of the other pages needs to be duplicated here. Instead, this will help people visit the important pages that describe games in history. It may also motivate people to create new pages for the important games that have not yet been cataloged in Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Roger.smith (talk • contribs) 22:05, 11 February 2009
 * This seems more appropriate as a number of detailed prose paragraphs in the "game" article, which is sorely lacking a clear "history" section. Beyond the introduction of this article, we should not be encouraging indiscriminate lists of games without an explanation of their particular context and significance. --McGeddon (talk) 15:32, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Note also that History of video games already exists as an article. --McGeddon (talk) 21:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

This is more about the history of games in general not just video games; there is a difference. But yes ther is already an article on the history of video games. 17:47, 20 December 2010 (UTC)unknown17:47, 20 December 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.70.14.63 (talk)


 * This article seems very much to me to be an indiscriminate list. For instance, Go (dated here to 2300 BC) is listed under Board Games, rather than Ancient Games, which includes both games newer than Go (Liubo, dated here to 1500 BC) and board games, such as Senet, which is not listed under Board Games.  That seems pretty indiscriminate to me.  Honestly, I really feel like this ought to be an article rather than a list at any rate; others on this page seem to agree with this.  Would there be any objection to the list portion being rewritten as an article body?  I get the impression from this page that this was its intended purpose in the first place.  Heather (talk) 01:07, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * A few further thoughts on the article that I'll add as an aside. Abstract concepts are lumped in with actual games in this list, sometimes with their names italicised as though they actually were games (e.g., Virtual World). The opening of the "Serious games" list with  Pogs, Pokemon, Russian roulette, and Wikipedia is either vandalism or, at the very best, inaccurate.  Tafl and its variants are completely absent, as are Nine Men's Morris and Mancala.  Stratego is included but its forerunner Dou Shou Qi is not.  Games of chance are essentially absent, but military training exercises simply referred to as "war games" are included, again somewhat at random, alongside non-games such as the Monte Carlo Method and Game Theory.  Finally, the "References" section is a nightmarish mess, and is not close to being useful or even appropriate.  This article could really use some serious work; I'd again like to inquire as to whether there would be any objections to a rewrite.  Heather (talk) 18:22, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It would be great if you could kick this article into shape. The list format is just laziness, and encourages people to add random games without giving any historical context.  But I fear that the scope of the article ("games") is too broad to treat as in a single narrative article.  If you are serious, you might want eventually break it into several articles ("History of board games", "History of card games", "History of electronic games", etc.).  At the very least the article should clearly define what exactly it covers (indoor games?).  Some specific points: "Ancient games" is, I suppose, intended to cover extinct games such as Liubo and Senet (even though they are both board games), but not Go as it is still played.  You should be very cautious about the dates given in this article. For example, the earliest archaeological evidence for Go is circa 200 BC - 200 AD, and the earliest literary reference to a game that most scholars believe is the game of Go is 6th century BC, but nationalist sources push the date back to 2000~3000 BC on the basis of no evidence. The early date for Xiangqi (200 BC in this article) also does not accord with either the literary or archaeological evidence, which would suggest a date about thousand years later.  As to Wei Hai (3000 BC), that is just laughable. BabelStone (talk) 19:39, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Awesome. I'll get to work on it over the next few days, and I'll be incorporating your suggestions, which are all very good.  Fortunately, I have some experience and familiarity with the debate regarding the ages of ancient Chinese games, and strongly agree with what you're saying regarding their dates (there is debate, for instance, about whether certain ancient Chinese words refer to games that they probably don't, which may have led to some of the more questionable dates presented here).  And I'll especially agree that the list format tends to encourage listcruft.  Heather (talk) 17:52, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

'''I caught what appears to be an error in this article. "The first board game for which the name of its designer is known is A Journey Through Europe, a map-based game published in 1759 by John Jefferys." According to David Parlett's The Oxford History of Board Games, p.98, the game "Royal pass-tyme of Cupid or the Most Pleasant Game of the Snake" was invented by John Garrett in 1690. I would be reluctant to call even this the first board game with a known designer. I should add that Parlett attributes this information to Murray's History of Games Other than Chess (1952, 143).''' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.78.55.13 (talk) 15:09, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Rewrite
Okay, so I've started with the rewrite discussed above. To begin with, I am mostly concerning myself with reformatting the lists into paragraphs, but I'm trying to maintain historical accuracy at the same time, so quite a bit of double- and triple-checking has been required. Feel free to correct anything I've messed up. I will add more significant games and types of games as soon as I have taken care of the lists and references. Heather (talk) 01:16, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I have now migrated all of what appeared to be usable content from the indiscriminate collection of indiscriminate lists that this article was into what I hope resembles an article providing some sort of historical context for the games it is attempting to cover.  Again, feel free to correct anything that I messed up.  Any information that I didn't provide a ref for came from our own article on the relevant game; in each of those cases I have endeavoured to verify that the information being presented represents at least the mainstream view.  In the case of extremely contentious information, such as the dating of the origins of Xiangqi, I have defaulted to only noting the approximate ages of the earliest archaeological findings and dates of oldest undisputed literary references.  I have deliberately left the Electronic Games section unfinished, in hopes that editors interested in that subject will be encouraged to expand the information already presented rather than simply dumping in redlinks to games that may or may not be of any great significance.  Although, really, having eliminated the lists and pointed a link at History of video games should (hopefully) help with that more than any other single editorial decision could.


 * Still left to do: Rewrite the opening paragraph (what is presently there is just a distillation of what had previously been the two-paragraph opening, heavily edited down for tone and POV); add section on lawn games and at least a link somewhere to History of sport; add Nine Men's Morris, Mancala, Draughts, and other significant games not covered in the previous version of the article.  Heather (talk) 20:00, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

"References" moved from the article
I hesitate to use the word "references", because none of these were being used directly to reference anything; they were simply presented, as here, as a bulleted list of references en masse. If I can figure out what any of them were intended to support, I will move them back into the article as proper refs. Until then, here is there bulk of what had been the "References" section of the article prior to a few minutes ago:


 * Abt, C. (1970). Serious Games. New York: The Viking Press.
 * Aoyama, Y. and Izushi, H. (2003). Hardware gimmick or cultural innovation? Technological, cultural, and social foundations of the Japanese video game industry. Research Policy, 32, 423–444.
 * Beck, J.C. and Wade, M. (2004). Got game: How the gamer generation is reshaping business forever. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
 * Bergeron, B. (2006). Developing serious games. Charles River Media.
 * Bushnell, N. (August 1996). Relationships between fun and the computer business. Communications of the ACM, 39(8), 31–37.
 * Castronova, E. (2001). Virtual worlds: A First-hand account of market and society on the cyberian frontier. In The Gruter institute working paper on law, economics, and evolutionary biology. Online at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828#PaperDownload.
 * Chatham, R.E. (July 2007). Games for training. Communications of the ACM, 50(7), 37–43.
 * Demaria, R. and Wilson, J. (2004). High Score: The Illustrated history of electronic games. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing.
 * Edmonds, R. (2007). Virtual Worlds. SRI Consulting Business Intelligence. Abstract available at http://www.sric-bi.com/Explorer/VW.shtml#viewpoints.
 * Federation of American Scientists. (2006a). R&D challenges for games in learning. Washington D.C.: Author.
 * Federation of American Scientists. (2006b). Summit on educational games: Harnessing the power of video games for learning. Washington D.C.: Author.
 * Ghamari-Tabrizi, S. (1995). The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive science of thermonuclear war. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.
 * Herz, J. and Macedonia, M. (April 2002). Computer games and the military: Two views. Defense Horizons, 11. Online at http://www.ndu.edu/inss/DefHor/DH11/DH11.htm
 * Hutchison, J. (Nov 1997). The Junior Red Cross goes to Healthland. American Journal of Public Health, 87(11), 1816–1823.
 * Kelleher, C. and Pausch, R. (July 2007). Using storytelling to motivate programming. Communications of the ACM, 50(7), 59–64.
 * Kelly, H., et al. (July 2007). How to build serious games. Communications of the ACM, 50(7), 45–49.
 * Kushner, D. (Aug 2002). The wizardry of id. IEEE Spectrum, 39(8), 42–47.
 * Lane, D. (May 1995). On a Resurgence of management simulations and games. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 46(5), 604–625.
 * Learning Federation, The. (2006). Learning science and technology roadmap. Washington D.C.: Federation of American Scientists.
 * Lenoir, T. (2003). Programming theatres of war: Gamemakers as soldiers. In Latham, R. (Ed.) Bombs and Bandwidth: The emerging relationship between information technology and security. New York: The New Press. Online at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/TimLenoir/Publications/Lenoir_TheatresOfWar.pdf
 * Maier, F. and Grobler, A. (July 2000). What are we talking about? – A Taxonomy of computer simulations to support learning. System Dynamics Review, 16(2), 135–148.
 * Mayo, M., Singer, M., and Kusumoto, K. (December 2005). Massively multiplayer environments for asymmetric warfare. Proceedings of the 2005 Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference.
 * Mayo, M.J. (July 2007). Games for science and engineering education. Communications of the ACM, 50(7), 31–35.
 * Michael, D and Chen, S. (2005). Serious games: Games that educate, train, and inform. New York: Thompson Publishing.
 * Orbanes, P.E. (2004). The Game makers: The Story of Parker Brothers. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
 * Pausch, R. and Marinelli, D. (July 2007). Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center: Combining the left and right brain. Communications of the ACM, 50(7), 51–57.
 * Postigo, H. (2003). From Pong to Planet Quake: Post-industrial transitions from leisure to work. Information, Communications, and Society, 6(4), 593–607.
 * Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: McGraw Hill.
 * Prensky, M. (2006). Don't bother me mom – I'm learning: How computer and video games are preparing your kids for 21st century success – and how you can help. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.
 * Rosen, L. and Weil, M. (June 1995). Adult and teenage use of consumer, business, and entertainment technology: Potholes on the information superhighway. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 29(5), 55–83.
 * Scacchi, W. (Jan-Feb, 2004). Free and open source development practices in the game community. IEEE Software, 21(1), 59–66.
 * Schilling, M. (Spring 2003). Technological leapfrogging: Lessons from the U.S. video game console industry. California Management Review, 45(3), 6–32.
 * Shankar, V. and Bayus, B. (2003). Network effects and competition: An Empirical analysis of the home video game industry. Strategic Management Journal, 45(2), 387–398.
 * Sheff, D. (1999). Game over: Press start to continue. Wilton, CT: Cyber Active Publishing.
 * Smed, J., Kaukoranta, T., and Hakonen, H. (April 2002). A Review on networking and multiplayer computer games. Technical Paper TR454 from the Turku Centre for Computer Science, University of Turku, Finland. Online at http://staff.cs.utu.fi/~jounsmed/papers/TR454.pdf
 * Smith, R. (March-April 2007). The Disruptive Potential of Game Technologies: Lessons Learned from its Impact on the Military Simulation Industry. Research Technology Management, 50(2), 57–64.
 * Squire, K. and Steinkuehler, C. (2007). Generating cyberculture/s: The Case of Star Wars Galaxies. In D. Gibbs and K.L. Krause (Eds.), Cyberlines 2.0 languages and cultures of the Internet. Albert Park, Australia: James Nicholas Publishers.
 * Steinkuehler, C. (2005). The new third place: Massively multiplayer online gaming in American youth culture. Tidskrift Journal of Research in Teacher Education, 3, 17–32. Umea Universitet (Sweden).
 * Steinkuehler, C. (January 2007). Massively multilayer online video gaming as participation in a discourse. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 13(1), 38–52.
 * Venkatraman, N. and Lee, C. (Dec 2004). Preferential linkage and network evolution: A Conceptual model and empirical test in the U.S. video game sector. Academy of Management Journal, 47(6), 876–2005.
 * Winkler, T. and Buckner, K. (Fall 2006). Receptiveness of gamers to embedded brand messages in advergames: Attitudes toward product placement. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 7(1), 37–46.
 * Zyda, M. (July 2007). Creating a science of games. Communications of the ACM, 50(7), 27–29.
 * Zyda, M., et al. (December 2003). This year in the MOVES institute. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Cyberworlds. xxxii.
 * Zyda, M. (September 2005). From visual simulation to virtual reality to games. IEEE Computer, 38(9), 30–34.
 * Zyda, M. (June 2006). Educating the next generation of game developers. IEEE Computer, 39(6), 25–32.

Again, if I can figure out what concepts any of these "references" are supposed to go with, I'll move them back, but I'd hesitate to reinsert any that I haven't confirmed for myself. Heather (talk) 01:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

"Military games" list moved from the article
Below is the list which appeared in the article under the heading "Military games". Most of them are not. It is an indiscriminate list of various training exercises, training concepts, simulators, and vaguely-military-related vaguely-game-related odds and ends. I'm moving it here until its content can be properly worked into the article, assuming that it all actually belongs there. Heather (talk) 04:57, 20 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Koenigspiel, 1664
 * War Chess, 1780
 * Military School Wargame, 1797
 * Kriegsspiel, 1811
 * The American Kriegsspiel, 1879
 * Naval War College Games, 1886
 * The Naval Wargame, 1903
 * Lanchester's Laws, 1912
 * Little Wars, 1913
 * German Schlachtenspiel, 1920
 * Political-Military Gaming, 1929
 * Soviet Kriegsspiel, 1933
 * Japanese Wargaming, 1941
 * Game Theory, 1943
 * Monte Carlo Method, 1949
 * Tactics (Avalon Hill), 1952
 * Firefight (Simulations Publications, Inc.), 1974
 * Strategic Analysis Simulation, 1980
 * RSAS (RAND), 1954?
 * IDAHEX, 1976
 * McClintic Theater Model, 1977
 * Janus, 1978
 * Joint Exercise Simulation System, 1982
 * Naval Wargaming System, 1985
 * Air Defense Simulation System, 1986
 * ModSAF, 1990
 * OneSAF (Semi-Automated Forces), 2001

"Serious games" list moved from the article
As above. What follows had been included in the article under the heading "Serious games", which I'm not sure is actually an alternative to, say, board games, tile games, table games, or card games. I am omitting the first four entries, which I already noted above on this page (as likely vandalism). Again, if I can find a way to work any of these into the article, and they seem appropriate and within the article's scope, I will move them back. Heather (talk) 05:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)


 * SGI Flight, 1983
 * SGI Dogfight, 1985
 * Harpoon, 1989
 * Marine Doom, 1996
 * Falcon 4.0, 1998
 * Spearhead, 1998
 * America's Army, 2002
 * DARWARS Ambush!, 2003
 * Tactical Iraqi, 2003
 * Full Spectrum Warrior, 2004
 * Serious Games Showcase and Challenge, 2006
 * VBS2, 2009

Timeline as a whole - Mancala
Having discovered this orphaned page and linking it I'm glad to see that it has had soem attention however this page should not become a place to regurgitate information from the other page because much of it is wrong surprisingly contraversial too. This for now is a list without references hopefully I will come back to it later

Mancala could be as old as 7000BC the information on the wikipage is wrong see talk:Mancala even if the stones are not mancala it is still most likely a game board. I ended up reading 300+ papers in 7 languages but gave up on the edit war as I decided to publish instead.

Dice have then been attributed to around 4000 bc although some of the archaeological speculation is thinner than anyone would believe as in, there are a set of holes in the ground with no dice. The earliest dice were in fact knucklebones with two sides. Also specialist dice, cups and coins game in South America

Dominoes then evolve from dice although they existed Europe well before the eighteenth century I think they are in the complete gamester I think the earliest google has scanned is c. 1650. Dominoes then become cards

Backgammon is messy as is the phrase "current form" which would need to include the use of the doubling cube. It is actually much more complicated even when using a simpler form of the game. There is 58 holes or dogs and jackals which is another early forerunner. Along with UR and 20 squares - which is not still played with the known rules today I suspect the BBC ref took this info. from wikipedia. This game then became ludo amongst others. Wikipedia is lacking many key parts of game history. 5 lines, digrammismos pettoia (may have this spelling wrong) are all part of a famous account of games.

There is another family of games daldos that is significant in scandinavia

Chess is using a dubious claim for chaturunga which is largely unsupported. Similarly xiangqi is complex as often Go gets confused with it, indeed at some point it appears that the name of go was simply the same word as game. Now go is the most continuous game with unchanged rules but also using the most conservative time line. The 200 BCE-200AD time line can be narrowed earlier than this. Of course there is the famous myth of its 4000 year old age.

There are numerous errors amongst the ancient board games section. I.e. Go has 60million plus registered players but in fact this is a massive underestimate too. There are some translation issues from Asian records which means this is also likely a massive underestimate.

Snakes and ladders can be traced to Victorian times as a specific creation of the theme however there are spiral boards which are a very similar design of around 2000 years old.

You will never be able to fix a timeline for all the games I tried to track one dice game and there is no written information available you'd need to track word of mouth records. German style board games although tricky genre to describe to the 1900s at least. there is something called the boardgame study journal.

way too much on darts games needs a separate article.

Finally I though the original list included a chinese game that appears to have gone with which I wasn't familiar.

The main issue comes in the use of references for this article you are not going to have a universal agreement in the literature but you must be careful not to try to use passing references in non-expert sources. Tetron76 (talk) 01:14, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

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Reliable sources
This article contained a reference to the so-called "Silk Road Foundation", also known as "Silk Road". It's an online publisher. The website can be found here:

https://www.silkroadfoundation.org

This publication sometimes refers to itself as "Silk Road Journal", but should NOT be confused with Silk Road Journal Online, which has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion.

The Silk Road Journal in question is based primarily around Asian archaeology and history. It typically publishes theoretical articles written by researchers who appear to mostly hail from Russia and China. The sole editor of the publication, an American man named Daniel Waugh, has candidly stated that it has no formal peer review:

http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/newsletter/vol15/srjournal_v15.pdf

From the outset, there has been no formal process of peer review, such as one expects in the standard academic journals. We still solicit articles (a task which largely has devolved on me over the years), though we also receive (but have not been overwhelmed by) unsolicited submissions.

Decisions on what to publish (as with any journal) ultimately rest with the editor, who in this case, for better or worse, has acted as the peer reviewer. I often see what I think is gold in material that could never find its way into a standard academic publication. But the perils of rarely seeking outside opinions may mean things slip through without acknowledgement that a subject has been thoroughly treated elsewhere.

The lack of formal peer review does have the unfortunate consequence that junior scholars hoping to advance in their profession may avoid us, since their promotion will depend in the first instance on peer reviewed publication, however excellent (and widely cited) a piece might be which we would publish. Yet in some cases where there is a premium for academics in other countries to publish in a respected journal in English, we have been able to provide just such an opportunity. Many of the senior scholars we have solicited for contributions have politely refused to write for us, since they are already over-committed [...]

So, the Silk Road Foundation is a speedy publishing mill for primary research that is not formally peer reviewed. The editor describes himself as someone who often sees "'gold in material that would never find its way in to a standard academic publication'". A lot of researchers don't want to be published by Silk Road Foundation, and those that do are disproportionately from non-English speaking countries, who struggle to get their theories published in standard English-language journals.

To my mind, this is very near to the definition of predatory publishing, with the exception that the Silk Road Foundation does not even provide the benefits of high-end predatory puboishers, like DOI. It's really more like an internet blog.

The Silk Road Foundation is cited on various ethnical and archaeological articles on Wikipedia, often advancing pet theories, which is out of touch with WP:RS, which says that Wikipedia should prioritize high-quality, peer reviewed secondary research over this kind of stuff.

Although I'm not aware of any controversial material in this particular Wiki article related to its Silk Road Foundation reference, and I have no enmity for the Silk Road Foundation or its publisher, or its authors, this source does not meet Wikipedia's standards for reliable sources, and should not be cited. Hunan201p (talk) 08:17, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

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