Board Games

Board games have a wide and complex distribution in the ancient world. Two board games from antiquity that were transmitted across the borders of empires and city states and played for nearly two millennia show only minor changes in the appearance of the board. This lack of branching for antique board games can be explained by the abstract characteristics of the games and the dominance of certain cultures in antiquity. A historical analysis of their transmission process supports this hypothesis.

This study theoretically and empirically examines the important role that goal structures play in new venture teams. Specifically, we examine how creative self-efficacy affects the satisfaction of team members through cooperative and competitive goal interdependence. Relying on social cognitive and social interdependence theories, we contend that new venture teams' creative selfefficacy leads to higher team satisfaction because it promotes the perception of cooperative goal structures among team members. We test our theory on new venture teams in the independent board game industry. Results generally support our hypotheses and we discuss the implications for entrepreneurship research and practice.

Only two distinct board games (and their variants) are firmly attested among Greeks in the Classical period (fifth to fourth centuries BC).  The first, eventually known as "Ship-Battle" (Naumachia), is first attested in the seventh century BC and was played (ordinarily) with ten counters and a die on a board with five parallel lines or a circle of ten spots.  The second, known usually as "City-State" (Polis), is first attested in the fifth century BC and was played with sixty counters (and possibly a die) on a board with a grid of lines.  These two games were the first war games in the West (if not the world), preceding Chess by a millennium.

This paper presents findings from a study of boardgamers
which stress the importance of the materiality of modern
boardgames. It demonstrates that materiality is one of four
significant factors in the player experience of tabletop
gaming and describes four domains of materiality in
boardgaming settings. Further, building on understanding of
non-use in HCI, it presents boardgames as a unique
situation of parallel use, in which users simultaneously
engage with a single game in both digital and material, nondigital
environments.

The 2020 toy and game market is projected to be US$135 billion. To determine if 3D printing could affect these markets if consumers offset purchases by 3D printing free designs, this study investigates the 100 most popular downloaded designs at MyMiniFactory in a month. Savings are quantified for using a Lulzbot Mini 3D printer and three filament types: commercial filament, pellet-extruded filament, and post-consumer waste converted to filament with a recyclebot. Case studies probed the quality of: (1) six common complex toys; (2) Lego blocks; and (3) the customizability of open source board games. All filaments analyzed saved the user over 75% of the cost of commercially available true alternative toys and over 90% for recyclebot filament. Overall, these results indicate a single 3D printing repository among dozens is saving consumers well over $60 million/year in offset purchases. The most common savings fell by 40%–90% in total savings, which came with the ability to make novel toys and games. The results of this study show consumers can generate higher value items for less money using the open source distributed manufacturing paradigm. It appears clear that consumer do-it-yourself (DIY) manufacturing is set to have a significant impact on the toy and game markets in the future.

This research empirically tests whether employing a commercially available board game – The Logo Board Game – to facilitate student learning about brand elements, results in significantly higher levels of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975) in undergraduate business students. A post-test only control group experimental design was employed with a total of 235 business students enrolled in a core marketing unit – Brand & Product Management – at an Australian university. Tutorial sessions across three different campuses were randomly categorised as experimental and control groups. A total of 107 students (approximately 46%) were exposed to the experimental treatment (i.e. the board game). In terms of results, an independent-samples t-test shows that students involved in playing the board game reported significantly higher levels of flow, as compared to students attending and reporting on a conventional tutorial session. Findings from this study suggest that the use of a board game to introduce a brand-related topic saw students experience greater motivation, enjoyment and absorption (i.e. a flow experience) than students in the control group. Business educators may consider experimenting with alternative teaching methods, including board games, in order to enhance students' flow during face-to-face classes.

Nondigital board games are being used to engage players and impact outcomes in health and medicine across diverse populations and contexts. This systematic review and meta-analysis describes and summarizes their impact based on randomized and nonrandomized controlled trials. An electronic search resulted in a review of n = 21 eligible studies. Sample sizes ranged from n = 17 to n = 3110 (n = 6554 total participants). A majority of the board game interventions focused on education to increase health-related knowledge and behaviors (76%, n = 16). Outcomes evaluated included self-efficacy, attitudes/beliefs, biological health indicators, social functioning , anxiety, and executive functioning, in addition to knowledge and behaviors. Using the Cochrane Collaboration tool for assessing bias, most studies (52%, n = 11) had an unclear risk of bias (33% [n = 7] had a high risk and 14% [n = 3] had a low risk). Statistical tests of publication bias were not significant. A random-effects meta-analysis showed a large average effect of board games on health-related knowledge (d* = 0.82, 95% confidence interval; CI [0.15–1.48]), a small-to-moderate effect on behaviors (d* = 0.33, 95% CI [0.16– 0.51]), and a small-to-moderate effect on biological health indicators (d* = 0.37, 95% CI [0.21–0.52]). The findings contribute to the literature on games and gamified approaches in healthcare. Future research efforts should aim for more consistent high scientific standards in their evaluation protocols and reporting method-ologies to provide a stronger evidence base.

This article examines Cashflow, a board game that readers of best-seller financial success books play in order to learn the basics of investing and to enhance their financial skills. Cashflow is a fictitious market, in which players buy and sell assets with the ultimate goal of becoming “financially free.” Based on participant observation of clubs in the United States and Argentina, and drawing on the ideas of performativity and governmentality, the article focuses on four topics. First, the role of the game in establishing definitions of what it means to be rich. Second, the development of calculative tools. Third, players’ work on the self, through which they explore what may be fostering or limiting their chances of financial success. Finally, the work done by players to fit the game with reality, which allows the game to be used in different national economic contexts.

Senet—perhaps the most famous of all the games of antiquity—has captured the imagination of scholars and lay people alike. Recognized as a game played by the Egyptians since the beginnings of archaeological research, and one of the first ancient games to be recognized outside of Greek and Roman texts, it has been one of the most discussed games of antiquity both in academia and in popular media. Nevertheless, understanding of this game remains incomplete. New evidence and more nuanced interpretations of old evidence continues to expand on our knowledge of senet. This paper seeks to correct some of the misconceptions about the game, which often seek to trace the development of later board games to senet. Furthermore, it aspires to encourage scholars from all disciplines who study games to critically reevaluate common conceptions of games relevant to their regions and time periods.

Abstract

This paper offers a discussion of the various asymmetric games within the tafl family: hnefatafl, tablut, brandub, tawllbwrdd and alea evangelii, identifying various problems and misunderstandings that have accrued around these games.  Beginning with a review of the terminology used to refer to board games and to games of chance in general (alea; tæfl) as well as the nomenclature applied to specific games (tabula; hnefatafl), the paper discusses the distribution of selected examples of tafl-type game boards in the archaeological record (e.g. the Ballinderry gaming board) and in literature (e.g. alea evangelii in Oxford Corpus Christi MS 122), identifies Israel the Grammarian (c. 900–c. 970) as a likely co-inventor of the alea evangelii and concludes with an appraisal of Linnaeus’s problematic account of tablut during his controversial expedition around the Gulf of Bothnia in 1732 that, when probed, seems to raise questions about the falsification of some of the data recorded in his journal. The 1811 translation of Linnaeus’s journal also generated a significant misunderstanding about the rules of the game, subsequently amplified by H. J. R. Murray in his two monumental studies (1913, 1952). The paper concludes with the observations that alea evangelii may be an aide memoire for students learning the Eusebian canon tables rather than a game per se, and that more remains to be learned about the exact circumstances of Linnaeus’s observation of tablut.

Keywords: abstract games, alea evangelii, ancient games, anglo saxon games, board game studies, board game, board games, brandub, English games, game history, game rules, games, hnefatafl, irish games, Linnaeus, rules, sami games, strategy games, tablut, Tafl, tawllbwrdd, Viking game, welsh games

This article explores the world-building activities of players of the tabletop game Blood Bowl—a game that parodies American Football within a fantasy setting. It utilizes a ritual framework to focus on players’ activities relating to the considerable amount of luck inherent to the game. Based on fieldwork and survey data, it interprets players’ rituals and other actions as an effort to enact a particular social space, a “magic circle,” where enjoyable risk-taking and “edgework” take place. This social space is then analyzed within the Mary Douglas-derived theory of sociocultural viability (cultural theory). Using the theory’s typology, Blood Bowl tournaments can be characterized as individualist–hierarchy hybrid institutions. The article contributes by offering cultural theory as a tool for analyzing and comparing risk-taking behavior in diverse social contexts. The worlds built through Blood Bowl play are both analyzable and comparable with those integral to other social institutions, with cultural theory’s social solidarities ubiquitous. The article thus innovates by linking literatures on leisure and gaming with broader social theory.

Measuring user experience in board games is broadly unexplored with research mainly focused on digital games. This paper assesses the suitability of using a questionnaire, developed for digital games, for use on board games - thus providing a common measure of user experience between board and digital games. The study involved play testing a themed board game with undergraduate computing students and alumni, measuring user experience via the Games Experience Questionnaire whilst testing for reliability and validity. Findings obtained high scores in both criteria, suggesting that the GEQ is a suitable tool to measure user experience in board games and thus a valid candidate for comparing game design across varied game media such as digital and board games.

EFL learners in Taiwan have a low-level communication ability because many learners are still not provided opportunities to use language for genuine communication in classrooms and receive insufficient language input due to the environment. This study
examines the use of digital board game language learning set in a task-collaborative platform, digital learning playground, designed for classroom learning. This study investigates
whether communicative skills and intrinsic motivation could be improved by seeing
relevant context and receiving adequate practice through gaming. Ninety-six high school Taiwanese students (n = 96), who were randomly assigned to an ordinary instruction
group, a board game language-learning group, or a digital board game language-learning
group, engaged in a 50-min English class. Analysis of covariance was used for comparing learning performance through a speaking test between the three groups. A modified intrinsic motivation inventory was conducted to assess learners’ perceptions of learning
experience and an interview was held for details. The quantitative data presents a higher learning performance for the instruction set at digital learning playground. The qualitative data confirms computerized simulation adapted from board game entails context-relevant immersion, encouraging communication and efficient game instruction management for EFL language learning.

We present Haathi Mera Saathi (My Elephant Friend), a game concept which serves as a tool for teaching programming and computational thinking to underprivileged children in rural India. It provides a metaphor and gameplay for embodied and tangible games, and creates a soft early ramp up into the conceptual and digital space of learning to code. We discuss the urgency of digital inclusion for Indian rural children, with reference to technology as an amplifier which they need to learn to direct. We contrast the grounded, embodied style of Haathi Mera Saathi with the current crop of mini-languages and coding games, with particular emphasis on the need for physicality and tangibility in the very early stages of learning to code. We further discuss our experience conducting workshops for students from the tribal and rural belts of India, where we see HMS as an effective approach for taking them from a state of having no background in computers or computing, to a state where they create interactive applications in a Java based environment. Recommendations are given for researchers interested in working with rural village children.

ColorShapeLinks is an AI board game competition framework specially designed for students and educators in videogame development, with openness and accessibility in mind. The competition is based on an arbitrarily-sized version of the Simplexity board game, the motto of which, "simple to learn, complex to master", is curiously also applicable to AI agents. ColorShapeLinks offers graphical and text-based frontends and a completely open and documented development framework built using industry standard tools and following software engineering best practices. ColorShapeLinks is not only a competition, but both a game and a framework which educators and students can extend and use to host their own competitions. It has been successfully used for running internal competitions in AI classes, as well as for hosting an international AI competition at the IEEE Conference on Games.

Narrative-centric analog games 1 have emerged from a hybridization of genres: they borrow conventions from pen and paper-based role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, as well as the foundations of eurogames and war games. Historically, board game narratives and themes have primarily been imposed through design elements rather than mechanics: in his study of Eurogames, Woods noted that while players often value a "sense of narrative" that unifies theme and mechanics, this is rarely an emphasis of the genre [34]. However, modern narrative-centric board games demonstrate new levels of unity between play and story, integrating players into the narrative as meaningful actors and borrowing conventions from video games to build nonlinear play. In this paper, we examine and compare some exemplars of the narrative-centric board game genre, and use these games as a lens to propose a taxonomy of narrative-based physical games that builds from and extends Espen Aarseth's narrative theory of digital games [1] and suggest new possibilities for digital game narratives.

Through a case study of variations in the game of Mahjong differing from each other in terms of the extent of technological assistance involved, this article sheds light on questions of transmediality and technological specificity of games and play. It argues that while the variations in Mahjong can be described as sitting together in a family resemblance, the specificities of the technologies and the sociocultural contexts involved give rise to new kinds of playful practices that are not reducible to the " transmedial Mahjong " but whose understanding nevertheless necessitates knowledge of the rules and conventions of Mahjong. This not only casts critical light on how the " ludological " paradigm of game studies has defined its object of study but also prompts reconsideration of the role of technology when applying perspectives that emphasize the processual nature of games.

Mancala games are commonly defined by the appearance of the boards and mode of moving the pieces. The similarities have led to the belief that most mancala games are historically related or that they may be identified by appearances alone. Their ubiquity in Africa and their occurrence as graffiti boards on ancient monuments has created speculation about their antiquity. To this date their ancient status cannot be confirmed by archaeological or historical evidence. Based on today’s understanding, mancala games are of distinct kinds with separate histories while their antiquity goes back hundreds of years but not yet thousands.
Mancala games have been instrumental in showing that so-called complex societies and the presence of board games are not necessarily related. By extension, state formation and the development of board games should not be connected based on the evidence of contemporary mancala gaming practices.

A large chess variant with 52 pieces originally described in a 1800s Ottoman Turkish book as šaṭranǧ-i kabīr, or great chess, appears under various names in a number of subsequent Western sources, including authoritative works on chess history and variants. Game rules as presented in the latter are seriously flawed though, with inaccuracies regarding pieces array and moves. Over a period of more than two centuries, baseless assumptions, misreadings of previous sources and outright errors gradually accumulating in the literature have changed the game almost beyond recognition. With some of the game's aspects not covered even by the original Turkish source, reconstructed rules are suggested and discussed, as well as a reformed variant.

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to examine the learning outcomes of students enrolled in an introductory financial accounting course through their experience of playing the Monopoly TM board game and map those outcomes to a selected number of individual competency types addressed in the AICPA Core Competency Framework. Design/methodology/approach-A longitudinal qualitative analysis was performed to analyze self-reported learning outcomes collected from undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory financial accounting course. Content analysis and participant observations were utilized to inform the analysis process and derive research findings. Findings-The findings reveal a connection between the learning outcomes and a selected number of individual competency types addressed in the AICPA Framework. The findings also reemphasize the importance of utilizing some of the basic functions and features of Excel to augment foundational financial accounting knowledge and enhance professional skills. Originality/value-Although the use of board games in accounting education was examined in prior research, this paper provides an empirical evidence on the alignment of self-reported learning outcomes of a popular board game to a notable profession-driven framework. In addition to bridging a potential gap between the accounting education and profession, this study informs academics as to the implications of engaging students in a class activity that applies basic financial accounting and computer knowledge.

During the 2013 fieldwork of the French archaeological mission along the shores of the Arabian Sea, mancala games were discovered on the seashore of Salalah at the site of Ad-Dahariz. They are cup-hole carvings made directly into rock slabs and distributed in six distinct zones of the site. They usually consist of fourteen cup-holes aligned in two lines of seven, two supplementary holes being sometimes present on each side. They are the first of their kind in South Arabia and can be compared to similar configurations of carved games elsewhere in Arabia, such as at Jebel al-Jassasiya, Qatar. This paper presents the potential origins of this game in the region, as well as a plausible dating of their use.

This paper describes a learning-objective-centric workflow for modifying ('modding') existing tabletop games for educational purposes. The work-flow combines existing research for serious games design with novel systematic analysis techniques for learning and game mechanics and gameplay loops to improve the understanding and rigour of the process. A detailed worked example applies the workflow to the development of a serious tabletop game with the educational goal of increasing knowledge and confidence of performing postgraduate literature reviews. Systematic application of the workflow to a real example supports the value of this approach and provides a useful template for educators to follow for increasing the quality and feasibility of self-designed serious games. 1 Introduction It is now well evidenced that games can be engaging and effective tools for education but that the design of an intervention has as large an effect on success as the medium [1] and that designing effective game-based learning solutions requires significant expertise in both game-design and pedagogy [2]. Educational games which do not successfully combine game design with learning design are ineffective in terms of engagement , learning, or both (often known as a 'spinach sundae': a product which is neither appealing nor good for you [3]). Furthermore, research into game-enhanced learning demonstrates that the different characteristics of different games have discernible effects on the learning behaviours of players [4] and consequently on how well the game achieves its educational purpose [1, 5]. In short, educational game design is complex, resource intensive, and requires multiple interdisciplinary skillsets. Games designed for digital platforms also need significant technical expertise and the resources to support them. Despite these barriers, the well-documented advantages of game-based learning (GBL) drive demand for games for learning, training, or behavioural change (hence-forth referred to as 'serious games') across a wide range of contexts [6-8]. However, as evidence of the efficacy of GBL grows, the discipline gains new advocates from a variety of backgrounds which increases the risk of GBL solutions being designed and implemented in isolation of the expertise and resource contexts necessary to make them effective. This paper presents a practical solution to the tension between the growing desire for serious games amongst students and educators and the barriers to effectively implementing them [9]. It is proposed that serious game design can be streamlined and

Założeniem artykułu jest przyjrzenie się temu, jakie oraz w jaki sposób znamienne dla współczesnej historii Europy Środkowej wydarzenia zostały przedstawione w kulturze popularnej, którą tu reprezentują gry planszowe. Analizie zostaje poddane sześć gier historycznych powstałych przede wszystkim w Polsce, choć jeden tytuł pochodzi z Czechosłowacji, które w rozmaity sposób opowiadają o wybranych wydarzeniach z okresu komunizmu, m.in. o I pielgrzymce papieskiej, strajkach i stanie wojennym.

Understanding of elementary programming concepts, logic, and syntax is a vital part of learning to program. Unfortunately, learning programming is found to be difficult and boring, especially for novices. For example, drill type of exercises designed for learning elementary programming can be very tedious, making it hard to motivate learners. This study focused on the development of a mobile application, which integrates puzzle-based Parson's programming exercises into a strategy board game with the aim of facilitating the teaching and learning of programming. With the mobile application, learners play Ayo, a variant of the famous traditional African strategy board game Mancala. In each round of the game, the learners will solve a Parson's puzzle, which consist of small programming tasks where students are required to build programs by drag and drop, selection, indenting and ordering code fragments. The proposed solution of integrating the Parson's puzzles to Ayo game provides a new perspective on how to use mobile devices in programming education. The long-term aim of our work is to create a framework for integrating board games into computing education. The study reported in the article is the first step towards creating the framework.

The aim of this short paper is to understand smart device tabletop games as a part of the larger phenomenon of hybrid tabletop games. The approach taken is to create a loose typology of smart device tabletop games via analyzing the features of such games currently on offer and mapping them in the historical context of hybrid tabletop games. The process of creating a typology also helps us move towards understanding the nature of a wider hybrid gaming experience, not restricted merely to the delivery medium of the game.

This article describes the development, implementation, assessment, outcomes, and potential utility of a University-level, student driven educational gaming project. This project constituted a major assessment item in a course entitled Ancient Medicine, a class and project first coordinated and delivered by the authors in 2010. Discussion of various aspects of the project is explored in the context of educational gaming theory and practice. We demonstrate that educational board games not only represent an effective method for students to retain and convey information even when the games are focused on untraditional topics such as the history and archaeology of medicine. Furthermore, we argue that they can present a cheap, fun and less time/resource intensive alternative to electronic or web-based projects, while still being an attractive addition to traditional classroom teaching methods, especially within lower socio-economic status environments.

In this paper, we discuss the different ways in which modern European boardgames (“Eurogames”) are converted for digital play. We review digitised versions of three popular tabletop boardgames: Puerto Rico, Agricola and Ascension. Using these examples, we demonstrate the tension between the interaction metaphor of the original analogue medium and the metaphor of a digital game. We describe the importance of housekeeping chores to gameplay and position them as a form of articulation work, which is typically hidden by digital implementations. Further, we demonstrate the types of information that are created through digital play and discuss how this influences game play of both digital and physical boardgames.

We present SimpAI, an AI agent created for the ColorShape-Links competition, based on an arbitrarily sized version of the Simplexity board game. The agent uses a highly efficient parallelized Minimax-type search, with an heuristic function composed of several partial heuristics, the balance of which was optimized with an evolutionary algorithm. SimpAI was the runner-up in the competition's most challenging session, which required an AI agent with good adaptation capabilities.

Player Experience (PX) concerns how players think and feel when interacting with a game. Although it is intrinsic to all games, few design tools exist that enable designers to approach PX in a directed, intentional manner. Drawing on existing design tools and experience-related theory focused on emotions, we present our tool Spectrum. Spectrum facilitates a PX-directed approach to game design that foregrounds intended player experience. Spectrum can also be used to critically probe people's conceptions of game experiences. In evaluations of Spectrum with designers, while all were committed to the notion of PX, not everyone was able to translate from emotions into playable scenarios, particularly when those emotions were either visceral in nature or unusual within existing games. In evaluations with players, participants sometimes struggled to fit emotionally-specific language around their game experiences, but also stated that such reflections added post-hoc value to their experiences.

Bao is a member of the large family of mancala games. It is generally considered to be the most complex mancala game with respect to the number of game rules . Within the context of this note, it is impossible to describe the rules of Bao in their full length, so we restrict ourselves to the main discriminative characteristics, and to those rules that are necessary to understand the note. The complete rules for Bao can be found in De Voogt (1995) and also, adapted to computer Bao, in Donkers et al. (2005). An interesting question for Bao players is whether there are never-ending moves in Bao. The Bao masters of Africa do not believe that Bao can produce a never-ending move (De Voogt, 1995, p. 38). In contrast, argue that there is a high probability that a neverending move does occur in real game play. In this note we present an overview of never-ending moves; we discuss both trivial and complex never-ending moves. Moreover, we also show a neverending move that occurs during a game of Bao. Finally, the implications of never-ending moves to the rules are discussed.

A srudy of game rules, playing practices, and four game boards in the American Musemn of Natural History collections illustrate the early history and characteristics of the Philippine mancala game known as sm1gka. The distribution of comparable Southeast Asian mancala games suggests two waves of distribution. The first took place prior to the late nineteenth cenrury and included different configurations of boards found in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Maldives; the second concerns the migration of Philippine people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that only includes the sungka variant. Both exemplify cultural diffusion patterns in Asia that arc extensive and based on a complex cultural phenomenon.

This study investigated the development of player skill and cognitive understanding of a game over repeated plays to (a) bridge separate research traditions on skill acquisition and games learning and (b) provide deeper insight into the process of developing mental models of games. 325 participants responded to an online questionnaire with questions concerning their experience with the game, Hive, as well as both open-and closed-ended items designed to compare their understanding of the game to an expert's understanding. Open-ended items were content analyzed and modeled as a latent variable. As predicted, both player skill and mental model matching were positively associated with number of plays. Additionally, while player skill had a curvilinear relationship with number of plays that indicated diminishing returns on additional plays, that between cognitive understanding and plays appeared to be linear. The implications of these findings for the cognitive underpinnings of player skill-and for mental model matching theory in particular-are discussed. Supplemental online material is provided here: https://osf.io/3yeg2/

This study frames research on board games within a body of anthropological theory and method to examine the long-term social changes that effect play and mechanisms through which play may influence societal change. Drawing from ethnographic literature focusing on the performative nature of games and their effectiveness at providing a method for strengthening social bonds through grounding, I examine changes in the places in which people engaged in play over the course of the Bronze Age on Cyprus (circa 2500¬–1050 BCE), a period of increasing social complexity. The purpose of this research is to examine how the changes in social boundaries concomitant with emergent complexity were counteracted or strengthened through the use of games as tools of interaction.
Bronze Age sites on Cyprus have produced the largest dataset of game boards belonging to any ancient culture. Weight and morphological data were gathered from these artifacts to determine the likelihood of their portability and to identify what type of game was present. The presence of fixed and likely immobile games, as well as the presence of clusters of portable games, was used to identify spaces in which games were played. Counts of other types of artifacts found in the same spaces as games were tabulated, and Correspondence Analysis (CA) was performed in order to determine differences in the types of activities present in the same spaces as play.
The results of the CA showed that during the Prehistoric Bronze Age, which has fewer indicators of social complexity, gaming spaces were associated with artifacts related to consumption or specialty, heirloom and imported ceramics, and rarely played in public spaces. During the Protohistoric Bronze Age, when Cyprus was more socially complex, games were more commonly played in public spaces and associated with 
artifacts related to consumption. These changes suggest a changing emphasis through time, where the initiation and strengthening of social bonds through the grounding process afforded by play is more highly valued in small-scale society, whereas the social mobility that is enabled by performance during play is exploited more commonly during periods of complexity.

A late Iron Age cremation grave, dated to the second half of the first century BC, excavated from a site in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, contains an apparently unique set of glass gaming pieces. The gaming pieces are visually striking because of their distinctive appearance: the twenty-four opaque or semi-translucent coloured glass domes (six white pieces, six yellow, six red and six green), each with adorned with decorative spiral motifs, seem to comprise a complete set of game pieces for what may be an unknown four-player game. They were found in a rich burial containing five Dressel 1B wine amphorae and an Italian silver cup, along with other grave goods.

Some account of the pieces is given by Donald Harden in Stead’s archaeological report (Stead, 1967), along with a scientific analysis by Tony Werner and Mavis Bimson, based on spectrographic and X-ray examination. While Harden’s account of the glass pieces emphasises their unique significance for the double-spiral motif, and Werner and Bimson’s analysis suggests the yellow pieces show the earliest example of the use of lead and tin as an opacifying agent, the pieces are also thought to represent a unique example of a game for four players, described by Stead as “similar to a game played in India on a board with cruciform marking. This game was […] patented with the name ‘ludo’” (Stead 1967, p. 19).

Footnotes in Stead suggest that other examples of what could also be glass gaming pieces for a four player game – or at least incomplete sets of glass gaming pieces that can be organised into four groups by design or colour – have also been found in a number of Italian locations, including sites in the Po Valley. This paper presents several examples of Iron Age Italian gaming pieces from the Po Valley, and offers some comparison to the Welwyn Garden City pieces in order to draw attention to what may be examples of a hitherto overlooked four-player game.

La géographie des pratiques des joueurs, qui reste à faire, ne peut s’abstraire d’un travail préalable sur les jeux eux-mêmes, sur leur logique interne. Dans ce cadre, les jeux de plateau présentent l’intérêt de pouvoir être considérés comme des modèles de la réalité sociale et de se prêter à une investigation de nature géographique. L’étude des attributs de ces espaces ludiques – échelle, métrique, substance – et de la logique qui les unit est un premier pas vers une typologie des jeux fondée sur les représentations de l’espace qui y sont à l’œuvre, elle-même étant une étape cruciale dans la construction d'une géographie des pratiques. S'agissant d'une première étape de cette construction, l'article s'en tient à l'analyse des jeux de plateau "classiques", dont l'invention remonte le plus souvent à au moins un millénaire et dont la diffusion est aujourd'hui mondiale.

The geography of boardgames practises, which remains to be written, can not avoid a preliminary research on the games themselves and their inner logic. Within that framework, "traditionnal" boardgames have the interest of being possibly considered models of social reality and lend themselves to an investigation of a geographical nature. The study of the features of these play spaces – scale, metrics, substance – and of the nature of their relationship is a first step towards a typology of games, based on the representations of space conveyed by them. Such a typology is a crucial step towards the writing of a geography of practises.

This article will serve to provide a historicised examination of the configuration that have come to be known as transmedia storytelling, offering two interrelated examples of how transmedia storytelling was exploited in the 1920s and 1930s via the production practices of board games and jigsaw puzzles. The study will examine media practices developing during the early twentieth century, practices that were encouraged at this time by the increased commodification and branding of media texts and consumer products. The article’s first example, The Wonderful Game of Oz, a board game released in 1921, demonstrates how transmedia storytelling became an industrialised means of branding consumer products across media during the early 1920s. The article’s second example, a Tarzan jigsaw puzzle released in the 1930s to promote a Tarzan radio serial, will serve similarly to reveal how author Edgar Rice Burroughs exploited transmedia storytelling, expanding the fictional storyworld whilst continuing the fictional stories of its characters – as a model of commodification. Both branding and commodification accelerated practices of transmedia storytelling as a means of sustaining and reinforcing the commodity circulations of early twentieth-century consumer culture.

The family of mancala games offers opportunities for new research in both Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence. To illustrate this, we will present an overview of long-time known and more recent results on mancala games. Although board-games researchers may be familiar with mancala games, the general properties of this family of board games will be explained as far as they are relevant to the understanding of the results. The results mainly reflect the mathematical characteristics of mancala, although computer science also played a significant role in the research presented. Next to this, research in the field of Artificial Intelligence is included. The paper then concludes with a discussion of new research opportunities in both Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence. These opportunities are not restricted to pure theoretical research but include issues that allow interdisciplinary co-operation of applied research.

A relação entre os aspectos fílmicos e lúdicos dos jogos vão muito além da palavra videogame. Essa terminologia frente à humanidade é muito recente, apenas com algumas dezenas de anos, porém, trata-se de algo que converge em símbolos, técnicas e práticas, revestindo tais itens contemporâneos e impactando a sociedade significativamente. Logo, configura-se como um objeto de estudo capaz de promover reflexões diversas. No caso desta pesquisa, consideramos que nessa expressão do ato de jogar existe muito de game e pouco de vídeo. As abordagens focando as narrativas e as mecânicas muitas vezes deixam uma lacuna referente aos processos audiovisuais. Em função desta observação, foi realizado um estudo de cunho hipotético-dedutivo e metapórico preconizando uma visão integradora de três métodos distintos: a Ludologia, a Narratologia e a Linguagem Audiovisual. A motivação do título escolhido para o estudo de caso, Super Street Fighter IV, ocorreu por ser um jogo popular, dentro de um gênero típico de jogabilidade, que há mais de duas décadas se reinventa para agradar os fãs. Além disso, dialoga diretamente com temas culturais (costumes asiáticos e artes marciais) e temas cinematográficos (filmes de luta e o ícone representado por Bruce Lee). O estudo focou os resultados visando contribuir para uma compreensão do videogame, de modo que a pesquisa realizada pudesse trazer parâmetros tanto para aprofundar elementos presentes em sua linguagem quanto para o desenvolvimento de questões de ligadas à sua realização.

T he mancala boards collection of the National Museums of Colombo is characterised by a uniformity in decorations and configuration of playing holes. All objects relating to mancala games -including moulds and a bed -show a playing board configuration of two rows of seven holes and two enlarged holes often placed in between the playing rows. Other collections of Sri Lankan mancala boards show a similar uniformity. These objects should be linked to a single period of decorative art, in this case the Kandy period, and date back to at least the 18th or early 19th century.

Egyptian senet boards follow a very consistent morphology that varies in small but notable ways throughout the 2000-year history of the game. A previously unpublished board, in the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, California, may provide new insight into the evolution of the game in the early New Kingdom. A game table with markings distinctive of the Thutmoside Period, but oriented like Middle Kingdom and Seventeenth Dynasty boards, it is probably a transitional style. It likely dates to the Eighteenth Dynasty before the reign of Hatshepsut, a period to which no other games have previously been securely dated.

This article presents an alternative way of organizing lessons using games. Dixit is a game that facilitates mental development, including development of imagination, creative and critical thinking, social skills, and of an increased sense of belonging to the group. It makes the student more  willing to take part in lessons and positively perceive their school life. In the  era of widely available gaming, great variety of interactive games, daily  availability of iPads and tablets, students’ interest in the lesson is sometimes  more difficult. Especially when it concerns the activities in which the student  decides whether he wants to attend. An example would be ethics or  philosophy; on these lessons, although voluntary participation, there is a  subject no less important than those taught compulsorily. The role of the  teacher is to organize lessons for the student, which will encourage  participation and facilitate the transfer of knowledge on the topic.

This paper describes the use of a board game, Civil War, as a learning experience in the context of a course on critical theory. Civil War was created by the Educational Games Company of Lebanon and is set during the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war. The game functions both as a pedagogical instrument, in that players learn about the situation in Lebanon while playing the game, but also as a form of critique, in that its makers are clearly using it as a means of articulating their lived experiences and challenging the dominant narratives around the conflict. We suggest that the game is a rare example of one that is counter ideological in nature, as rather than perpetuating stereotyped views of Middle East conflicts that are constructed and imposed from outside, it instead directly presents the experience of those who are inside. A case study of using the game in the context of a class on postcolonialism is presented and responses by students are analysed. We argue that the active experience of playing a board game is an effective way of engaging students with a topic, and in this case in particular, an effective way of connecting them with the lived experiences of others.