Portal:Games

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Ancient Egyptian senet game board inscribed for Amenhotep III with separate sliding drawer. Created between 1390 and 1353 BC; made of glazed faience, dimensions: 5.5 × 7.7 × 21 cm. Held in the Brooklyn Museum, (New York City).

A game is an activity defined by a challenge and a set of rules, typically done for enjoyment, competition, or development. Games may be played informally or in professional competitive settings before audiences. Popular formats include board games, card games, video games, and sports, distinguished from unstructured play by having rules. Scholars have long debated the essence of games, with no single definition achieving universal acceptance.

Games are a universal feature of human culture. The Royal Game of Ur and Senet are among the oldest known games, dating back to at least 2600 BCE. Throughout history, games have served as tools for entertainment, teaching, ritual, and socialization. In the modern era, the global video game industry has grown to surpass both film and music in annual revenue, reflecting how central games have become to contemporary life.

Philosophically, games have attracted attention as a test case for the nature of rules and meaning. Psychologists link play to cognitive development in children and to the intense, satisfying concentration called flow in adults. Game theory uses the structure of games to model decision making in fields such as economics and evolutionary biology. (Full article...)

Selected article -

Cover of The Mansion of Happiness
published by Parker Brothers in 1894

The Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive Moral and Entertaining Amusement is a children's board game inspired by Christian ethics. Players race about a 67-space spiral track depicting virtues and vices with their goal being the Mansion of Happiness at track's end. Instructions upon virtue spaces advance players toward the goal while those upon vice spaces force them to retreat.

The Mansion of Happiness was designed by George Fox, a children's author and game designer in England. The first edition, printed in gold ink "containing real gold" using one copperplate engraving and black ink using a second copper plate engraving, produced a few hundred copies. Water coloring was used to complete the game board, making a brilliant, colorful, and expensive product fit for the nobility. Later in 1800, a second edition was printed, probably for rich but common folk. Only one copper plate was used to print black ink and no water coloring was used. The game must have become quite popular in England as a third edition was printed using two copper plates, one for black, and the second for green lines to indicate blank spaces. Water colors were added to make a beautiful product. Laurie and Whittle published all three editions in 1800. On all three editions George Fox was listed as the inventor and the game honored the Duchess of York. In the first edition, gold not only added color and price but homage to royalty. In all three editions, the paper was glued to linen so it could fold up and be inserted into a heavy attractively labeled cardboard case. The game influenced later games, such as The Checkered Game of Life. (Full article...)

List of selected articles

Did you know? -

2005 World Series of Poker Ladies Champion Jennifer Tilly

...that the 2005 World Series of Poker Ladies Champion (pictured) had been nominated for an Academy Award in 1994?
...that Bruce Webster was so burned out from writing the computer game SunDog: Frozen Legacy for the Apple II, that he gave up programming for four years?
...that the chess Grandmaster Wolfgang Uhlmann is one of the world's leading experts on the French Defence?
...that Dungeons & Dragons, an album by Midnight Syndicate, is the only official soundtrack to the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game?
...that the video game Scarygirl puts players in control of a young girl with an eye patch, a sewn-shut mouth, and a hook-capped tentacle for one arm?

General images

The following are images from various game-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Tug of war is an easily organized, impromptu game that requires little equipment. (from Game)
Image 2Chinese mother-of-pearl gambling tokens used in scoring and bidding of card games (from Card game)
Image 3Association football is a popular sport worldwide.
Image 4Parcheesi is an American adaptation of a Pachisi, originating in India. (from Game)
Image 5MUD interface for Furcadia (from Role-playing game)
Image 6A man dealing cards to the other players before a game (from Card game)
Image 7A selection of pieces from different games. From top: Chess pawns, marbles, Monopoly tokens, dominoes, Monopoly hotels, jacks and checkers pieces. (from Game)
Image 8A person performing a standard riffle shuffle (from Card game)
Image 9Painting in tomb of Egyptian queen Nefertari (1295 – 1255 BC) playing senet (from Board game)
Image 10Mamluk playing card (king of cups), c. 15th century (from Card game)
Image 11The board game Monopoly is licensed in 103 countries and printed in 37 languages. (from Board game)
Image 12Preferans, a trick-taking card game version popular in Croatia (from Card game)
Image 13A group playing a tabletop RPG. The GM is at left using a cardboard screen to hide dice rolls from the players. (from Role-playing game)
Image 14Visitors at a desktop flight simulator (from Game)
Image 15The modern German board game Catan is printed in 30 languages and sold 15 million by 2009. (from Board game)
Image 16Historically, card games such as whist and contract bridge were opportunities for quiet socializing, as shown in this 1930s magic lantern slide photo taken in Seattle, Washington. (from Card game)
Image 17People playing Magic: The Gathering (from Card game)
Image 18Sabacc at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. (from Card game)
Image 19Boys playing soccer in Tirana, Albania (from Game)
Image 20Royal Game of Ur (from Game)
Image 21Mehen game with game stones, from Abydos, Egypt, 3000 BC, Neues Museum (from Board game)
Image 22People playing durak, a beating and shedding game (from Card game)
Image 23Trionfi sheet (from Card game)
Image 24Young girls playing Alias in a library at Iisalmi, Finland, 2016 (from Board game)
Image 25Happy Families cards (from Card game)
Image 26The Card Players, 17th-century painting by Theodoor Rombouts (from Card game)
Image 27François Rabelais’s giant Gargantua is depicted as a great player of card games (from Card game)
Image 28A fantasy LARP group (from Role-playing game)
Image 29Students in Laos using dice to improve numeracy skills. They roll three dice, then use basic math operations to combine those into a new number which they cover on the board. The goal is to cover four squares in the row. (from Game)
Image 30Bridge is a popular plain-trick game (from Card game)
Image 31Two Qataris playing the traditional board game of damah (from Board game)
Image 32A Friend in Need, from the Dogs Playing Poker series by C. M. Coolidge (from Card game)
Image 33The number of board games published by year (1944–2017), as listed on BoardGameGeek. Expansion sets for existing games are marked in orange. (from Board game)
Image 34An adventurer finds a teleportation portal while exploring a dungeon in the role-playing video game Falcon's Eye. (from Role-playing game)
Image 35Backgammon is a game of skill. Strategy can give players advantages, but there is also an element of chance. (from Game of skill)
Image 36The stage for the 2017 League of Legends World Championship Finals in Beijing (from Game)
Image 37Uno is a popular commercial shedding game (from Card game)
Image 38A game of Go in progress (from Game)
Image 39Ancient Egyptian senet game board inscribed for Amenhotep III with separate sliding drawer. Created between 1390 and 1353 BC; made of glazed faience, dimensions: 5.5 × 7.7 × 21 cm. Held in the Brooklyn Museum, (New York City). (from Game)
Image 40A backgammon board from Lebanon. (from Game)
Image 41Charles Nelson Reilly holds a hand of cards (from Card game)
Image 42Playing Cards, by Theodoor Rombouts, 17th century
Image 43Digital Klondike solitaire (from Card game)
Image 44A person holding Austrian-style tarot cards (from Card game)
Image 45Hanafuda cards developed their unique design due to laws passed banning playing cards (from Card game)
Image 46A ball-in-a-maze puzzle requires fine motor skills. (from Game of skill)
Image 47 Men Playing Board Games, from The Sougandhika Parinaya Manuscript (from Board game)
Image 48In gin rummy, players assemble groups of the same rank, or runs within a suit (from Card game)