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History of Games

4 min read

Summary

The history of games is best understood as a long continuity of structured play rather than a sudden digital invention. Ancient board games, playground games, modern board games, arcade systems, consoles, PCs, and digital storefronts all differ in material form, but they repeatedly return to familiar design questions: how rules create tension, how uncertainty produces excitement, how mastery develops over time, and why some systems remain replayable for centuries. For design students, history matters because it shows that innovation usually means reworking durable play forms through new technologies and cultural contexts rather than inventing from nothing. (Handout, A Short History of Games, see source-history-of-games-handout; Barton, Vintage Games 2.0, see source-vintage-games-2)

Key ideas

  • Pre-digital continuity: race games, chance devices, territorial struggle, capture, and turn-taking all predate computers by thousands of years.
  • Durable systems: games such as go and chess survive because simple core rules can still produce enormous strategic variation.
  • Low-tech play: playground games show that game design does not depend on expensive hardware; social structure and rule clarity can be enough.
  • Media shifts matter: consoles, PCs, and digital distribution changed scale, audience, update cycles, and technical ambition.
  • Distribution is historical: id Software’s shareware model and Valve’s Steam platform changed not only sales but how games circulate, update, and build communities.

In practice

For designers and developers, historical thinking changes what counts as an “original” idea. A mechanic may be technologically new while still solving an ancient design problem. That matters when evaluating systems:

  • If a design depends on uncertainty and movement through space, it may have more in common with ancient race games than with recent AAA templates.
  • If a design depends on portable, teachable rules, playground history can be more instructive than high-budget digital examples.
  • If a design depends on distribution and community, PC history and storefront history are as important as mechanic history.

Historical awareness also helps students avoid technological determinism. Better hardware does not automatically produce better game design; many enduring games survive because their structures are clear, portable, and replayable.

Evidence

  • The handout explicitly argues that modern digital games grew out of older traditions of rules, chance, strategy, storytelling, and shared play rather than appearing suddenly as a new form. (Handout, A Short History of Games, see source-history-of-games-handout)
  • Ancient examples such as the Royal Game of Ur, senet, and Ludus latrunculorum show that formal games were already part of domestic, military, and ritual life in pre-digital societies. (Handout, A Short History of Games, see source-history-of-games-handout)
  • The persistence of go, chess, and backgammon-type traditions supports the argument that replayability, strategic depth, and teachability are historically durable strengths. (Handout, A Short History of Games, see source-history-of-games-handout)
  • Barton’s later survey of landmark digital games shows the same continuity inside digital history itself: distribution models, technological constraints, and player communities repeatedly reshape design practice. (Barton, Vintage Games 2.0, see source-vintage-games-2)

Implications

  • Game history should be taught as both cultural history and design history.
  • Students benefit when historical examples are treated not as trivia, but as case studies in why certain systems endure.
  • Console and PC history should be understood through both platform hardware and distribution/ecosystem change.
  • Historical literacy improves design judgement: it becomes easier to recognise borrowed forms, genre conventions, and false claims of novelty.

Open questions

  • Which historical changes most strongly alter design practice: new mechanics, new hardware, or new distribution systems?
  • How much does a broad survey like this risk privileging well-documented commercial histories over local or informal play traditions?
  • What would a stronger global history of games look like beyond the most commonly cited Eurasian and North American examples?

game-studies-foundations · overview-game-studies-foundations · games-as-systems-vs-games-as-stories · go · chess · doom · tetris · source-history-of-games-handout · source-vintage-games-2

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