Games are as old as human civilization. The Royal Game of Ur is a 4,600-year-old board game made of rare stones and jewels. It was discovered in the tomb of a princess in the area that is now called Iraq. In Egypt, a popular board game called Senet was buried alongside the mummy of the boy ruler King Tut about 3,300 years ago. The game of Go originated in China about 4,000 years ago and is still a very popular game today!
Around the Middle East, northern Africa, and in the ruins from the Roman Empire, you can still see ancient mancala boards. They have two or more rows of holes scratched into stone to hold the pebbles or seeds that people used as playing pieces.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
What do today’s video games have in common with ancient games?
Many of these ancient games are still around today in modern form. You may even have played some of them.
The Royal Game of Ur evolved into the game of backgammon. If you have a checkerboard at home, flip it over. You might find a backgammon board on the back, ready to be played with the same pieces. Parcheesi and Chutes and Ladders originally came from ancient India. And chess, which has been called “the game of kings,” has been played around the world for at least 1,000 years.
BONUS POINTS
Chutes and Ladders is known as Snakes and Ladders outside the United States.
THE MODERN ERA OF BOARD GAMES
As far back as the 1700s, paper mills and printing presses made it possible to mass produce games for the average family. But it wasn’t until the 1900s that games became a big business.
WORD TO KNOW
mass produce: to manufacture large amounts of a product.
These early, commercially made games weren’t just for fun. They were meant to teach lessons or morals, although that didn’t always work out as planned. In 1903, a political activist named Lizzie Magie invented The Landlord’s Game. She hoped it would show how people could work together to help each other stay out of the poorhouse.
Her plan backfired. Instead, players bought up as much property as they could and tried to make other players go broke. Thirty years later, a man named Charles Darrow made his own version and called it Monopoly. It became the best-selling board game ever.
Many of the games created in the mid-1900s are still popular today.
Candy Land, which came out in 1945, can teach preschoolers to recognize colors and to count, just like many games on tablets do today. Battleship was originally a pencil-and-paper game played by Russian soldiers during World War I. It was turned into a board game in 1957, the same year that Risk, a game of world conquest, was released.
Many early board games influenced the video games that were invented later. The 1933 crossword game Scrabble inspired the mobile game Words with Friends. Both Battleship and Risk became models for today’s war and strategy video games.
WORD TO KNOW
mobile game: a game that can be played on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.
For video game designers, two kinds of tabletop games have been particularly important. Roleplaying games (RPG), especially the 1974 fantasy adventure game Dungeons & Dragons, led directly to video games such as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy. And European strategy games such as 1995’s Settlers of Catan, where players gather and trade resources to keep their colonies running, are a little bit like world-building video games such as Civilization and SimCity.
WORD TO KNOW
role-playing game (RPG): a game, usually with a fantasy setting, where players’ actions reflect the characters they play in the story.
Video game designers have used almost every kind of board game for inspiration. Many game designers even make rough board game versions of possible video game ideas to see if they work.
RISE OF THE GAME MACHINES
The earliest video games were created to run on computers. But only researchers and college students could play them because computers were so big and expensive that only laboratories could afford them.
In 1939, atomic scientist Edward U. Condon displayed a primitive game-playing computer called the Nimatron at the World’s Fair in New York City. It used rows of flashing lights as game pieces, and beat almost all of the 50,000 people who played against it.
How do you think people reacted when they saw this first video game? Is there anything from today that is equal to this level of innovation?
Scientist William Higinbotham created Tennis for Two for visitors’ day at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York in 1958. This was the first computer game you could play on a screen. Players watched the path of a bouncing ball on an oscilloscope, a device that shows electrical signals as wavy lines. The screen was round and only 5 inches across.
PROGRAMMING FUN
People who worked with early computers were soon designing games for fun and sharing them with their friends. In 1962, Massachusetts Institute of Technology student Steve Russell created Spacewar!, a spaceship-shooting game. It quickly spread to colleges around the country. Colossal Cave, a text adventure game written in 1975 by computer expert and cave explorer Will Crowther, was based on Dungeons & Dragons and the real-life Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Players had to find their way through what the game called “a maze of twisty little passages, all alike,” with only written directions to guide them. The game had no images at all. Similar games with names such as Adventure and Zork became so popular that they were included with the first desktop computers built for homes and offices.
WORD TO KNOW
innovation: a new invention or way of doing something.
oscilloscope: a device that measures electrical signals and shows them as wavy lines.
text adventure game: a game in which players go on a quest with only written directions to guide them.
The idea of hooking up a game console to a TV set so you could play at home came from a television engineer named Ralph Baer. Often called the “father of video games,” Baer built the first experimental console, now known as the “Brown Box,” in 1967. He sold his idea to a company called Magnavox, which released the Odyssey, the first multiplayer, multiprogram video game system for home use, in 1972.
WORD TO KNOW
console: a specialized computer used to play video games on a TV screen.
The Odyssey was extremely primitive. All of its games were built into the machine, so you couldn’t add more. But the Odyssey represented the beginning of the home video game industry. Baer went on to invent many other electronic toys, including the electronic game Simon, which flashes patterns of light on colored buttons that players must repeat to move to the next level.
BONUS POINTS
In 1997, an IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue made headlines for beating world chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in a match. And in 2011, IBM’s Watson proved that supercomputers could understand human speech—and even clues with jokes in them—when it beat two all-time champions on the TV quiz show Jeopardy!
Baer was still working on new games when he died in 2014 at the age of 92.
Around the same time that video games began to move into homes, the first video arcade machines appeared. In 1970, Nolan Bushnell created Computer Space based on the computer game Spacewar! The game was housed in a sleek, brightly colored cabinet that looked like a control panel on a spaceship.
BONUS POINTS
Have you seen the animated film Wreck-It Ralph? Many characters from actual classic games of the past, including Q*Bert, Sonic the Hedgehog, Pac-Man, Frogger, and Space Invaders, appear in this movie, which is about an old video arcade game.
Later, Bushnell founded the video game company Atari. Its first game was Pong, released in 1972. Like the oscilloscope game Tennis for Two, in Pong players made a white square bounce back and forth between two lines. Although extremely simple, Pong set off the Golden Age of video arcade games.
Meanwhile, home consoles kept improving. With more processing power and enhanced controls, they were able to deliver better graphics and more interesting gameplay.
WORD TO KNOW
graphics: the images on a computer screen, including a game’s characters and background.
The Atari 2600, released in 1977, was the first major console to let you switch games using interchangeable cartridges. It also featured a joystick and switches that let you set the difficulty.
By 1982, the Commodore 64 home computer was the most popular game platform in the United States.
Desktop computers were becoming available for the home and many were used for gaming.
In 1981, a century-old Japanese game company called Nintendo arrived in the United States and soon dominated the video game market. Nintendo’s arcade game Donkey Kong became the hottest-selling coin-operated machine around. Created by Nintendo artist Shigeru Miyamoto, Donkey Kong introduced a little workman named Jumpman. Today, that character is better known as Mario.
One of the reasons Nintendo was so successful was because the company took game design seriously. How a game looked and played was considered just as important as the technology used to run it. This attitude helped Nintendo games such as Metroid, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda become instant classics.
PHONE HOHE!
Atari’s 1982 game E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is often called the worst video game ever made. In fact, many blame it for the slump that hit the entire video game industry at that time. For many years, video game fans heard rumors that Atari had buried unsold copies of E.T. in the New Mexico desert. No one knew if the stories were true. Then, in 2014, a film crew dug up a landfill and found piles of crushed, dust-covered cartridges! Fans spent thousands of dollars buying them on eBay. Cartridges were even donated to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.
In 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) brought advanced graphics, animation, and sound to home consoles and pulled the entire video game industry out of a slump that had started around 1982. NES set the stage for the Sony PlayStation in 1994 and Microsoft’s Xbox in 2001.
The first handheld system was Milton Bradley’s MicroVision, which came out in 1978. The idea didn’t take off, though, until Nintendo came out with the Game Boy in 1989.
BONUS POINTS
Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Serebrov brought a Game Boy with Tetris to the space station Mir in 1993. You can play a version of Tetris at this website.
Once handheld games arrived, players could carry their games wherever they went.
Included with the first Game Boy was a free puzzle game called Tetris. Russian mathematician Alexey Pajitnov had invented Tetris in 1984 as a way to test the power of a Soviet computer. Tetris was an immediate success and many consider it the most perfect video game ever invented. What do you think?
Using computer networks to play with other gamers also became a growing trend. In 1993, Doom let players in different places compete in matches over primitive computer networks. Then in 1999, Sega released the Dreamcast, the first console with a modem built into it. This is a device that lets you connect to the Internet. That was followed by Xbox Live in 2002, which let you use the same identity in different online games and allowed you to post your scores for other players to see.
With today’s massively multiplayer online (MMO) role-playing games such as World of Warcraft, millions of people around the world can play the same game at the same time. Club Penguin, a MMO game for kids owned by Disney, lets you create your own penguin avatar, play minigames, and chat with other players. Club Penguin has had more than 200 million registered users.
WORD TO KNOW
massively multiplayer online (MMO): an online role-playing game in which large numbers of players all take part in the same game.
Smaller, independent game companies, called indies, have taken advantage of the Internet, too. Steam, an online gaming platform, makes it possible for these indies to reach 35 million players, who can download any game instantly to their home PCs.
The invention of mobile games has meant that people no longer need special devices. Anyone with a cell phone can play anytime, anywhere. Early mobile games included 1997’s Snake, which was just a wiggling line you chased around a black-and-green screen.
In 2009, the touch screen opened up a whole new way to interact with games, such as Plants vs. Zombies, on your smartphone or tablet.
Other advances in game consoles included Nintendo’s Wii from 2006, which let you control games with everything from a golf club to a guitar. The Xbox Kinect in 2010 had audio and motion sensors that let you put yourself in the game just by moving your body around.
Newer games do even more to blur the lines between make-believe and the real world. Augmented reality games insert real-world images into the game environment or interact with real-world objects. Toys-to-life games such as Skylanders and Disney Infinity use special action figures that the console can scan. The figures then become playable characters in the game.
In 2015, the new Lego Dimensions game featured minifigs from The Simpsons, Scooby-Doo, Doctor Who, Back to the Future, and other classic TV shows and movies. A level pack based on Portal 2 included Lego versions of a turret, a companion cube, and the heroine Chell.
One of the most exciting new developments in game technology is the virtual reality game. Players wear screens over their eyes that wrap around like giant sunglasses to make them feel as though they are inside the game itself.
WORD TO KNOW
augmented reality game: a game that inserts real-world images into the game environment or interacts with real-world objects.
toys-to-Ufe: a type of game that includes playable action figures.
minifig: a Lego minifigure.
virtual reality game: a game designed for a wearable screen that makes players feel as though they are inside the game itself.
Today, video games rule the home entertainment world. They’re exciting, colorful, and interactive, and there are many different kinds to choose from. Game developers and fans divide games into categories according to what they are about and how you play them. Here are some of the most common categories.
•Puzzle games such as Tetris, Pac-Man, and Candy Crush involve stacking blocks, finding the way through a maze, or matching up tiles to clear the board.
•Action/adventure games such as The Legend of Zelda send players on missions to find a treasure or defeat an enemy.
•Platformers such as Super Mario Bros. are games where the characters jump, climb, or slide from one platform to another to reach the goal. They include side-scrollers, which are games where the background moves sideways to make it seem as though the action takes place in a world that is wider than the screen.
•Strategy games give players control of armies or empires, as in the game Sid Meier’s Civilization.
•Simulation games such as Minecraft and The Sims let players design the world within the game.
•Sports games, including Madden Football and Wii Sports, let players play sports without leaving their homes.
•Racing games such as Gran Turismo involve racing cars, gokarts, or other vehicles. Flight simulators do the same thing in planes, helicopters, or rockets.
•Fighting games such as Super Smash Bros. Melee feature large numbers of characters battling it out using martial arts, boxing, or wrestling moves.
•Shooting games include first-person shooters (FPS), where the player “sees” through the eyes of the main character, and rail shooters, where the player’s character moves through the scene automatically, as if rolling along a railroad track.
•Edutainment games, such as those on the site Brain Pop, are designed to teach traditional school subjects.
You could say there’s a video game for every person, no matter what they’re looking for. But what makes games so appealing in the first place? In the next chapter, we’ll look at how video games affect the brain.
BONUS POINTS
Author J.K. Rowling played Minesweeper on her computer as a break between writing chapters of the Harry Potter series of books.
CONSIDER THE ESSENTIAL QUESTION
Write your thoughts about this chapter’s Essential Question in your game journal, using information you’ve gathered from reading and knowledge you may already have. Share it with other students and friends. Did you all come up with the same answers? What is different? Do this for every chapter.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
What do today’s video games have in common with ancient games?
GAME JAM ACTIVITY
IDEAS FOR SUPPLIES
egg carton, 1 dozen size 
2 small plastic cups, such as recycled yogurt containers decorating supplies 48 playing pieces, such as pebbles, large beans, or pasta shapes
Strategy games, such as chess and backgammon, use math and logic to help players figure out their next moves. That’s why they’re simple to learn but become more challenging as your skill increases. One of the oldest strategy games is mancala, which means “to move” in Arabic. Mancala is believed to have been created in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago and it is still popular throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean today.
A mancala board has two or more rows of holes, and a cup or “store” at each end. The boards range from very plain to very decorative. Fancier boards were sometimes carved from wood in the shape of boats, fish, or crocodiles. Some had legs or human figures to hold them up. You can make your own board and learn how to play mancala in “Learn How to Play Mancala” project.
1 Cut the cover off the egg carton. The bottom part is your playing board. Tape the cups to the ends to make the stores that hold captured game pieces.
2 If you want your board to have legs, tape cardboard tubes to the bottom. When finished, smooth out the surface with extra layers of tape.
3 Paint your board, including inside the cups. When it’s dry, decorate it! Flip the “Learn How to Play Mancala” project for game instructions.
IDEAS FOR SUPPLIES
microwave oven waxed paper 10-ounce bag large marshmallows 3 microwave-safe mixing bowls 7 cups crispy rice cereal 3½ tablespoons butter cooking spray or cooking oil soup spoons food coloring (red, yellow, blue, and green)
Tetris was inspired by a puzzle called pentominoes. Its object was to fit together different shapes made up of five boxes put together in different ways. The shapes in Tetris, known as tetriminoes, each contain four boxes. They come in seven varieties:
•yellow squares
•light blue rods
•purple Ts
•orange Ls
•dark blue reverse Ls
•red Zs
•green reverse Zs
As random pieces slowly fall from the top of the screen, they stack up along the bottom. Players shift and rotate them as they fall so they fit together with no gaps. When a row fills up with no gaps, it disappears and the player earns points. Unfinished rows pile up until they reach the top of the screen and the game is over. These marshmallow Tetris Treats will disappear so fast you’ll never have to worry about losing the game.
1 Use a ruler to draw a 4-inch square and a 6-inch-by-4-inch rectangle on a piece of paper. Divide them into boxes by drawing a grid of lines 1 inch apart. Cover your drawings with a large sheet of waxed paper.
2 In a bowl, combine seven marshmallows and ½ tablespoon butter. Heat in the microwave on high for one minute. Stir until smooth and creamy. If needed, heat it again in 10 second bursts, stirring each time until just creamy.
3 Add yellow food coloring and stir until evenly mixed. Add more coloring if needed.
4 Add 1 cup of cereal and mix. Use cooking spray to keep the marshmallow mixture from sticking to the spoon or your hands.
5 Scoop the cereal mixture onto the square waxed paper. Press the mixture into a layer about ½-inch thick, following the outline of the square.
6 Fold the waxed paper around the edges and flatten the sides with a ruler. Use the thin edge of the ruler to press the grid lines into the cereal shape, following the patterns shown here. Place in freezer.
7 Repeat steps 2–6 with each color. Use the square waxed paper for the yellow, orange, purple, light blue, and dark blue colors. Use the rectangle for the red and green colors.
8 Remove the first square from the freezer. If it’s too stiff, allow it to warm up for a few minutes. Divide the square into individual tetriminoes with a knife. Make squares, rods, T shapes, L shapes, and Z shapes. Repeat with each color. Arrange your pieces on a cookie sheet or tray by fitting different pieces together, just as in a game of Tetris! Cover with waxed paper and freeze until ready to serve.
1 Place the board between the players with one store on each side. The row closest to you is yours. When you capture pieces, they go in the store on your right.
2 To start, players put four playing pieces in each hole. Choose any hole on your side of the board and pick up all the pieces in it. Going counter-clockwise, drop one piece in the next hole. Keep going, dropping one piece in each hole, including your store, until you run out.
3 If your last piece falls in your own store, go again. Always skip over your opponent’s store. If your last piece falls in an empty hole on your side, capture that piece, plus any pieces in the neighboring hole on your opponent’s side, and place them in your store.
4 Continue taking turns until one player empties all the holes on their side of the board. That player captures any leftover pieces on their opponent’s side of the board, too. The player with the most pieces wins!
MANCALA STRATEGY TIPS
To win at mancala, you must get the most pieces for yourself while blocking your opponent from getting any. Should you move your pieces from a hole that will land you in your store for an extra turn? Should you take advantage of an empty hole to capture the pieces opposite? The better your math skills, the better your mancala skills. To learn more about mancala strategy, try playing against a computer. The free online game Mancala Snails was developed in 2002 by Lance Priebe, who later created Club Penguin.
You can read an interview with Priebe in Chapter 3 and play Mancala Snails here.
