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I realize this suggestion comes too late in the year to be useful, but here's a gift idea for next Christmas: Get the Royal Game of Ur, the world's oldest playable board game, for the board game enthusiast in your life.
This ancient Mesopotamian strategy and action game is the oldest game whose rules survive to this day, thanks to a tablet engraved by a Babylonian astronomer in 177 BC, and painstaking reconstruction work by Irving Finkel of the British Museum. (You can see the original game pieces on display at the museum.)
Although Royal Ur is unlikely to replace Twilight Struggle in our house (the latter is an exciting game of Cold War intrigue for two players in which I prefer to play as the Soviet Union, while my partner generally opts for the Great Satan game), seeing the original pieces is always on display It gives me a thrill. They bring an unexpected sense of connection with those long dead, a shared sense of our shared humanity in something as simple and silly as playing a game.
Why do we play? Why will I be spending much of this festive period losing at Twilight Struggle to my partner, engaging in endless rounds of Monopoly Deal (the addictive, fast-paced card game that adds some much-needed speed and liveliness to its lavish predecessor) Are you playing classic games on Nintendo Switch or Recent games on PlayStation? Why are ancient dig sites filled with table sets and protractor pieces? Why do ancient urns depict Achilles and Ajax intent on a type of dice game?
I think there are two answers. The first is that the games are a lot of fun: whether you choose poker, Dungeons & Dragons, or… FIFAAn evening with friends playing cooperatively – or competitively – over food and drink is a good evening. Whether in the present or in a break from the distant Trojan War, we all have a craving for joyful escape.
But the second reason is that games are not only meant to entertain, but are often revealing. The cute aunt who turns out to be the evil type who wins at all costs when they play Scrabble or poker. The cynic who points out a possible three-way score for his younger relative. The friend who loves to gloat over victory in the chameleon game. Yes, games entertain us but they also tell us truths about our personalities that are often hidden.
Of course, one important change between us and the ancient Mesopotamians is that there are now many games that can be played alone, thanks to the advent of home video games. Single-player games aren't new either – jigsaw puzzles have been played at least since the 18th century, while a version of “choose your own adventure” novels (“To check the door, go to page 24. To ignore the howling and go to bed, go to Page 122”) dating back to at least 1930.
Many modern games owe a conscious debt to both genres. Games ranging from Tetris To Wordle is part of a very old puzzle tradition. Various games such as exciting political thrillers Sovereignty Or a brilliantly bloody love story Slay the princess They are in many ways simply more complex choose-your-own-adventure novels.
But the crucial difference is that we have never before been able to record exactly how long we spend playing puzzles or leafing through these books. We enjoyed ourselves, and perhaps learned something about our own preferences, but we didn't learn much about each other. Today, thanks to extensive data collected by various gaming consoles and digital distribution platforms like Steam, we now know a tremendous amount about the choices we make in games.
Some of this stuff isn't particularly interesting: I don't think the decisions people make about how to put together their team Football manager It all reveals a lot about the human condition.
But others are. I think games tell us something about ourselves when the choices we make in them are between good and evil. Take video games for example I was a teenage Exocolonistor Baldur's Gate 3Where you can choose between villainy or heroism.
The two games and the backgrounds they come from are very different: I was a teenage Exocolonist It was created by a small studio run by a husband and wife Baldur's Gate 3 Made by a company that spans multiple countries. They have two things in common: The first is that they are both great uses for an afternoon. The second, and more important, is that in both games, more players seem to be choosing good over evil. I think that number is about double, based on the achievements for the “good” endings rather than the “bad” endings on Steam. In fact, the ranks of those who choose evil are often swelled by people (myself included) who have played this game once and want to see what happens when they make bad choices instead.
In the real world, history naturally tells us that we, combined with our long-standing love of games, are capable of choosing cruelty rather than kindness. But I think it still says something positive, which is that our ideal selves are more likely to choose good.
