The documentary starts with Benjamin Woolly saying how diverse were the reasons why people were playing games: for fun, for friendship, for intellectual purposes,for education and often for money. Even the locations were very different one from another: from churches to pubs and casinos. There was no doubt that people were feeling the need of playing games no matter the purpose or the place.
In 1996 an archaeological team found a well preserved board game near Colchester that is believed to be two thousand years old and belonged to the Romans. The game was called Stanway Game. It had no dice of any kind in the box the game was found so it has to be a strategy game.
Even though we often say that is just a game, for the ancient society games were more than that. They were battle of chance and destiny and most of the time historical events can be depicted from this board games. Nowadays teenagers play video games to escape reality and to live different events that in real life were most of the time impossible.
Later in the documentary, Benjamin Woolley finds a game in an early version of the Bible that can be consider the map of a religion. Might symbolise the fight between good and evil, a path a man should take to get to Heaven.
Games have different interpretation based on the mechanics they use. On one hand there were games that focus on luck as people's lives are most of the time influenced by destiny and on the other hand were games that focus on skill. Woolley says that life is a combination between these two.The perfect games should contain both of them. A game of such complexity might be backgammon.
Game historian, Caroline Goodfellow says that game are a good way of having fun and waste time mostly because humans, unlike animals, tend to get bored.
Nine men's Morris is a very common game similar to "X's and O's" that can easily be found anywhere. In cathedrals you can find carved drawings of the game in stone.
Later in history, dice were considered a tool of evil as no faith is worth being decided only by luck. Also, many considered that you can cheat with ease using dice.Hazard is a game where you bet money on the outcome of the rolled dice. Another game of pure chance is Faro. The difference is it uses decks of cards instead of dice. Usually the game is played in casinos for money. Because the prizes consist most of the time in money the stake was really high and addicted gambling players can become a real problem to society due to the fact that losing could cost them, literally, a fortune.
The church started to see dice as a real menace to community's life, so people found an alternative: a spinner with number written on the margins. Very similar to dice but with different shape.
Snakes and ladders is another well known game that is actually inspired by an Indian game named Gyan Chapoor. The game doesn't rely on competition. It focuses on the spiritual path the human must take to reach the balance and happiness.
Chess it is considered to be on of the most evolved game in terms of strategy that is easy to learn but very hard to master. The game is dated around 18th century in India. It was so well designed that lasted for two hundred years~ without any changes gameplay changes.
This concludes the first part of the documentary Games Britannia: Dicing with Destiny.
No comments:
Post a Comment