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Yes / Archaeologists have unearthed a stone scoreboard in Chichén Itzá, Mexico, shedding light on the Mayan civilization's ancient board game called Pok-a-Tok. The Mayan games held deep cultural and religious significance, reflecting the beliefs and values of the people. Winning such games was considered a sign of divine favor, while losing could result in human sacrifices. Mayan games fostered communal identity and connections between the physical, spiritual, and social realms. The concept of the "magic circle" in gaming, where players enter a temporary world with its own rules and boundaries, can be applied to modern education to promote inclusion, collaboration, and the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills. By incorporating ancient and modern games, educators can create inclusive learning environments that cater to diverse student needs.

China is a cultural and economic giant in today’s world, but has been somehow misunderstood in the past decades . With more and more educational and economic communication between China and the western world, more non-Chinese people find a need to know China. This project has created a board game based on Journey to the West, a 2000-page novel which is one of the four great classical novels in China. The project seeks to transmit some of the cultural aspects of China, stimulate people’s interest in China through simple gameplay. The ultimate goal of this project was to develop a game which was fun for friends and families to play together, as well as to offer a relaxing and pleasant play space for people to experience a different culture without extensive reading. The paper explains the research that has been done to realize the project, Journey to the West: the Board Game, and the production expectation. A study has been done behind the project explored the game’s mechanics, appeal and effectiveness. The paper also details the results of this study to determine if players of this board game learn about Chinese culture more than readers of the book.

The aim of the work was to present the history of board games from a historical- sociological perspective. The theoretical section described the history of board game development, taking into account their role in society. Subsequently, the results of qualitative research conducted among members of the board players community in the Czech Republic were interpreted in practical part. These were complemented by the results of the questionnaire investigation. This gave a comprehensive view of the evolution and transformation in the board player community, as well as the board game itself. So the work presented not only a thousand-year history of board games, but also focused on contemporary board games and their players.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Chinese Historical Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Abstract is available to download.

This essay is about the history of the Swedish board game-industry from the 1970’s to today. The essay focuses on the companies in the business and how they change during this period and about the causes of this change. This essay aims both at accurately describing the development of the industry as well as asking the question of what influence factors from outside of the industry have upon the change during this period of time. The material used in this essay is mainly extracts from interviews with people who have been working in the industry during the period, as well as literature on the subject and product-catalogues from certain years in the time-frame. From this material I have outlined the basic history of the industry. From a nearly monopolized industry in the 1970’s to the global market of today with a wide spectrum of different companies competing for the attention of consumers. I have looked at the different kind of games that enter the shelves in the stores and what trends have come, like the party and trivia games, and what have gone, like the electronic board games and the DVD-board games. I have also applied a theory of society affecting the board gaming industry and looked at if this is true of other factors than just the theme of games. I found that the theme of games is more affected by outside factors than the mechanics are. I also found that while the industry is competing with the quickly growing industry of digital games, board games still sell almost as much today as they did forty years ago. When it comes to the business part of the industry, the globalization and the new ways to fund and distribute products have affected the consumers more than the companies in the Swedish industry. The big Swedish companies still work mainly for a Swedish market and mostly in the same working methods as earlier.

This paper examines five cooperative board games from the perspective of how randomization is used and how it affects the replayability and player strategy, with the intent to properly identify and categorize elements that contribute to replayability and tension and uses randomization to do so. Each element directly affected by or causes randomization is identified, explained (both what it does and how and what it affects), and categorized based on where in the game the randomization originates in the effort to create a base for game designers to get a better understanding of randomization, if and how they can use it, and which method of using it that can be useful for their own designs.The thesis discusses the impact of using certain randomization elements and draws some conclusions based on how they relate to the replayability and tension of games that use those elements.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-118). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1988. / Typescript.