Gaming Cultures:: Spring 2006: LIT 4930: Board Games
Notes
Board games offer a basic structure for easy play with groups of players, often families or groups of friends. The basic structure allows for easy variation across several loose groupings:
Partlett, 8-9, Types of games: race games (snakes and ladders); space games (of alignment and configuration); chase/hunt games; displace games (like chess; war games; bean games); theme games (property trading or crime detection)
These basic structures can take social and cultural norms. How is this useful? How is this problematic? What do you think of the homogenization of types of board games sold in most stores? How does localization affect all games?
Monopoly; Mandarin Promotion (94); Snakes & Ladders origins and moral purpose (93); noughts & crosses (tick-tack-toe)
References
References on maps and mapping in relation to games like Little Wars
Parlett, David.Oxford History of Board Games. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
4 time-bound and time-free games. Sports games as normally time-bound.
6 abstract vs representational games: abstract=chess; monopoly=representational
8-9 Types of games: race games (snakes and ladders); space games (of alignment and configuration); chase/hunt games; displace games (like chess; war games; bean games); theme games (property trading or crime detection)
Orbanes, Philip E. The Game Makers: The Story of Parker Brothers from Tiddledy Winks to Trivial Pursuit. Boston: Harvard UP, 2004.
3 "Board games were not commonplace in 1883. While a few littel-known games dated from the 1820s, the first popular American board game had been created in Salem only forty tears earlier: The Mansion of Happiness."
27 "Parker Brothers published five war games before the war began and four during the conflict, including War in Cuba, The Siege of Havana, The Battle of Manila, and The Philippine War. All made money and cemented the identity of Parker Brothers as 'America's' game company. "
27 "George Parker viewed both war and business as ideal themes for games."
73 "The steady publicity and controversy over [building] the Lincoln Highway prompted Parker Brothers in 1926 to market a new board game called the Lincoln Highway. Players moved colored pins along 'motor trails' on a map game board of the United States, racing from coast to coast. The Automobile Club of America, looking to forward its own publicity, endorsed it without charge. Roads on the map were so accurate that a motorist could actually use it to drive across the nation."
73 in the card game Touring "Players attempted to complete a trip by laying down cards that depicted miles traveled by automobile. The opponents were ready to pounce and cause mishaps with the play of cards like 'flat tire' and 'out of gas.' Remedy cards canceled these and permitted resumption of the 'tour.'"
85 "Sorry! would be the furst game to bear the Parker Brothers 'signature' logo, penned by George Parker." like walt disney and ube iwerks penning the name