"Do they ever win?"
"NO. LAST YEAR SOMEONE GOT THREE STREETS AND ALL THE UTILITIES."
Terry Pratchett. 2013 (reissue). Reaper Man. New York: Harper, p. 171.
Taxonomy: the practice and science of classification.
I am not a neat person. By nature, I tend to leave things lying around. As long as they're not likely to start decomposing, I rarely feel a great need to tidy. Which is probably why I love the idea of taxonomy.
Taxonomy lets you assemble things in such a way that you can see relationships.
Let me illustrate:
Cocker Spaniel puppy.
This is a dog (and a darned cute one, too). Scientifically, this is an example of Canis familiaris1. By knowing the genus (Canis) we can see that there are other critters out there that are closely related to dogs, including the Gray wolf (Canis lupus), the African golden wolf (Canis anthus), the Coyote (Canis latrans), and the nearly extinct Red wolf (Canis rufus).
But this is just scratching the surface. The full taxonomy of the dog is:
Animalia; Chordata; Synapsida; Mammalia; Carnivora; Caniformia; Canidae; Canis; familiaris
By diving deeper into the taxonomy you can see the deeper connections -- in the Canidae are things like foxes (Vulpes species) and raccoon dogs (Nycteruetes procyonoides). Take the next step, into the Caniformia, and you find bears (Ursidae) and skunks (Mephitidae) and weasels (Mustelidae) and seals (Pinnipedia). Take another step, and you're in the Carnivora, and you see cats (Felidae) and mongooses (Herpestidae) and hyenas (Hyaenidae).
Enough for now. I trust the point is clear. Taxonomy lets us understand how closely (or distantly) things are related. It clears up clutter.
Which brings me, at last, to the subject I actually want to talk about: games2.
Games are universal. No group of people anywhere has ever been found that didn't play games. What's long fascinated me is the fact that many games are very obviously related. It doesn't take much analysis to see that American football and rugby are close cousins. It doesn't require a lot of thought to see that baseball, stickball, and rounders are closely related, and that cricket and kickball are cousins. But there are deeper relationships.
The area I want to talk about right now is board games3. Board games are currently quite popular, and every year there are lists published of "hot new games" (see, for example this list from Popular Mechanics of "The 35 Best New Board Games" for 2016: http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/g18/15-best-new-board-games-of-the-year/).
Board games are ancient. The oldest known board game is Senet, from Egypt (the earliest evidence comes from about 3500 BCE). The Senet board is a 3x10 grid, and each player has at least five pieces.
A modern recreation of a senet game.
Recently discovered at Başur Höyük in Turkey is a set of 49 game pieces depicting " pigs, dogs, and pyramids, others feature round and bullet shapes" as well as "dice" and circular tokens "which were painted in ... black, blue, green, red, and white." The game pieces have been dated to about 3000 BCE4 Slightly younger, the Royal Game of Ur (also known as The Game of 20 Squares) dates back to about 2600 BCE. The board is divided into two parts, one a 3x4 grid, the other a 3x2 grid, the parts connected by a two square "bridge." The game was played with two sets of seven pieces and three pyramid-shaped dice. Other games -- checkers, go, backgammon -- have similarly ancient pedigrees.
I've played a number of board games. I'm not fond of chess or checkers; I like backgammon; I'm bewildered by go. And of course I've played a lot of more modern games, too -- Monopoly, Parcheesi, Risk, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Clue, TwixT, Boggle, Mancala, Life, etc.5 What I've been wondering for some time is how you would go about classifying board games? How can you group them so that the coomon characteristics become clear?
Or, to put it more precisely: Is there a taxonomy of board games?
After doing some research, I think I can definitely say maybe.
In David Parlett's Oxford History of Board Games, he discusses and -- more importantly -- classifies about 500 different games. He breaks them down into four categories:
- Race Games
- Space Games
- Chase Games
- Displace Games
| Type | Field of Play | Placement | Interaction | Objective | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Race | Linear | Equal | Ousting | First to goal | Snakes and Ladders, Backgammon |
| Space | Areal | Equal | Block, capture | Make patterns, overwhelm, occupy territory | Nine Men's Morris, Chinese Checkers |
| Chase | Complex | Asymmetrical | Capture | Overwhelm | Fox and Geese |
| Displace | Any | Equal | Capture | Overwhelm | Risk, Stratego |
I have to admit, I was extremely pleased to have found this! Now all the relations are clear! Now everything is ...
Um, no. No, everything isn't clear.
For one thing, where do mancala (wari, oware) games fit? If you're not familiar, these are "sowing" or "pit and pebble" or "count and capture" games:
Mancala game board.
In mancala games pebbles (seeds, beads) are "sown," removed, re-sown, or captured based on a specified numerical pattern. Where does this fit?
As it turns out, there are other schemes for classifying board games. In 1952 H.J.R. Murray used a five-fold classification approach:
- Race
- Alignment
- Hunt
- War
- Mancala
In addition, there are other possible interactions that game pieces can have:
- Capturing (permanent removal)
- Ousting (sending backwards)
- Blockading (preventing movement)
- Demoting (reducing strength)
- Promoting (increasing strength)
- Converting (changing who owns a particular piece)
And there's more. What about games in which there are no "sides"? Where players cooperate to achieve a goal. There are even noncompetitive games, where there is no "victory."
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman in Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals summarized works by a number of scholars who have tried to understand and classify games (not just board games). They tabulated the results:
Source: Salen and Zimmerman 2004, p. 91
In other words -- it's complicated.
I have to confess, I'm a little disappointed. I'm also a little surprised that I don't see any focus on the geography of games -- places of origin, patterns of diffusion, that sort of thing. Stewart Cullin called mancala "The National Game of Africa" (Cullin 1894); "race" games (senet, backgammon, etc.) seem to have originated in the Middle East; go apparently comes from China. But beyond that, there doesn't seem to be much information. I'm not sure if it's a lack of data or a lack of perspective. It would certainly seem to me that something that is obviously fundamental to being human should receive a bit more attention.
Notes
1 If you like you can say "Canis lupus familiaris," to indicate that you're onboard with Opinion 2027 of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature issued in 2003.2 I'm using the word "game" in a broad sense -- everything from "I spy with my little eye" to NHL hockey, from hopscotch to Monopoly.
3 Board games are a subdivision of tabletop games, which can include board games, card games, dice games, miniatures wargames, tile-based games or other games that are normally played on a flat surface.
4 Jacob Kastrenakes. Archaeologists puzzled over immaculate, 5,000-year-old board game pieces. The Verge, August 14, 2013. Online: http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/14/4622122/oldest-board-game-tokens-found-turkey
5 No I've never played Dungeons and Dragons. And though I did buy Settlers of Cataan, my friends vanished as soon as I said, "hey, this might be fun."
References
Cullin, Stewart. 1894. Mancala: The National Game of Africa. Report of the National Museum, 1894, pp. 597-611. Online: http://www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/Archives/Culin/Mancla1894/Owen Duffy. Board games' golden age: sociable, brilliant and driven by the internet. The Guardian November 25, 2014. Online: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/25/board-games-internet-playstation-xbox
Jak Hutchcraft. It's Official, Everyone: Board Games Are Cool Now. Vice March 1, 2016. Online: http://www.vice.com/read/rise-of-board-games
Jacob Kastrenakes. Archaeologists puzzled over immaculate, 5,000-year-old board game pieces. The Verge, August 14, 2013. Online: http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/14/4622122/oldest-board-game-tokens-found-turkey
Michael Lynch. 2012. Classifying Board Games. Online: http://www.sts.rpi.edu/public_html/lynchm2/Courses/GM_S/GM-2012-09.pdf
H.J.R. Murray. 1952, History of Board Games Other Than Chess. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Not twilight, but sunrise: Table-top games are booming in the video-game age. The Economist October 3, 2015. Online: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21669930-table-top-games-are-booming-video-game-age-not-twilight-sunrise
David Parlett. 1999. The Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
John R. Platt. Scientfic American blog, May 9, 2013. Online:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/ost-endangered-canine-species/
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. 2004. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge MA and London: MIT Press.
Maryann Westfall. 2002. Game Design as Cultural Practice: The Oxford History of Board Games (in-class report). Online: http://www.jumpingweasel.com/Edu/pdfs/gameoverview.pdf
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