Board Games, Part 1

a very conventional answer. I have a lot of fun memories of playing Monopoly as a child, but I was just thinking about how the board games I got most excited about as a kid really had no staying power whatsoever. They weren't games that people would still be talking about or still playing really much twenty years later. I was very interested in games that had a lot of complicated physical apparatus, like I remember seeing the commercials for mouse Trap.

I think the game was that had all these traps that would fall down on years, and I was really into that, though I don't know if I ever actually played it. It was a lot to set up in mouse Trap, but more recent versions of mouse Trap, by the Way, have simplified the set up a lot easier to play. The game itself is still pretty basic, but at least it's not this just box of junk that

has to be assembled. Well. Another example I remember being super excited about but never actually playing, was I took a class when I took I was in a class when I was in elementary school's computer class, and it was one of those cases where they tried to make

it cool by gamifying the class. So if you did good things in the class, you get points and you could spend those on prizes like it's Chucky cheese or something, you know, get a switchblade comb but that I never got enough points to get this one prize, but I always I did, and every time we went into the room and it was a it was a board game called the Omega Virus, and I just had, like with my wildest fantasies were about how cool this game was because it seemed like it involved a talking robot on

the board, and I think the premise was like you're on a space station and an evil computer virus takes it over and you like go to spaces with your little figuring. You have to press the robot and it talks at you. It's like, you know, infection spreads and stuff. Um, I can't be sure because I haven't played it. But I'm almost positive this game must be terrible, like not very fun, not very replayable. But I just sucked in by that that fluff component, just this like the machine

that comes with it that you interact with. And I'm sure I would have been suckered in the same way by those horrible looking board games that have like VHS tapes that would accompany them. As has been documented on everything is terrible, like that Star Trek board game that has h the guy who keeps saying experience beach. Yeah, so you mentioned the fluff. We should go ahead and h and describe this for everyone who may not be familiar when when we when we talk about board games

and just gaming in general. Uh, generally there is a distinct between fluff and mechanics, and I would add that there is an additional um part of this trifecta, that being materials. So, for instance, the pure mechanics of a game are just the rules of the game, how things move, how points are acquired, and how a winner or winners is determined. So like if someone's play testing a game that they've developed, it may have very little or even

no fluff. It could just be a system of numbers, the kind of game that would would just totally not appeal to someone like me, Like I like, I like a hefty, hefty dose of good fluff, fluff being the story, the character is the setting, Like, oh, I'm moving pieces around on the board. What are they? Oh? They it's a king and a queen and an army and some guy's riding horses. Okay, now you're talking fluff. An example of a game I think with no fluff is like go.

It is just tiles with rules or not. You know, pieces on a board with rules, and there's no imagery. There's no story there. You know that all that's gone. Maybe you could apply things like that to it, and maybe people have in some cases for all I know. But the Bear game itself is the draw is just

the mechanics. Then you've got all these other games I think of, like candy Land and the Game of Life, where really what's attractive about the game is like the illustrations on the board and the idea of what your character, the story of what your characters are doing as you you know, spin a wheel or roll dice and advance along spaces. Yeah. So so the fluff and candy Land is really good but also the material. You know, it has a has a neat looking board. Also, it wasn't

Life the one that had the pophumatic bubble. That being a bit maybe I'm thinking of another game I think you are. I think Life has a spinning wheel like the Wheel of Fortune, because you know it's Life so well, there was some other game. I'm sure listeners will will will clue us in here have the paphumatic bubble. You know. I had this material aspect of the game where you're like, that looks so fun. I just want to press that thing all day and play this game, even though it

might suck. Um. Like one example from my childhood, I remember being a super board with Monopoly. I hate Monopoly passion, but I do remember loving Fireball Island like that was. That was this game. For anyone who hasn't played it or or seen that it's been it's actually been reissued. There was like a Kickstarter for it. It's this game

with tremendous material and fluff features. It is a it's like a three D topographic island, and there is a monster head um temple at the top of a volcano in the center that shoots out marbles at certain times in the game to knock your player back down the mountain, and so it's just you know, it had a great ad campaign, but it was clearly the game itself is not that complicated and probably not that good. I haven't played it since I was a kid, but but clearly

it was leaning very heavily on material and fluff. But this makes board games an interesting thing to discuss in the context of invention, because board games are not the only, not the only thing we use that has appeal on both the material or not the both the mechanical side and the fluff side. I mean lots of inventions. Uh,

the success of them depends on both. Some things become very popular because they are inherently very useful in in their most basic functional sense, and other things become popular just because there's something esthetically cool about them. Oh yeah, um. Like Like, another game that instantly comes to my mind is Space Hulk, which was a game that that I saw advertisements for as a kid, and I wanted just

because the the the Warhammer forty thou fluff too. It was so good, you know, it's like these space soldiers and armor fighting xenomorph like aliens, the tyranned gene Steelers, and so I was instantly in I was instantly sold by the fluff, the the figurines looked great, So I was sold by the material, and later when I actually got to play it, it's a fine game as well. So all three of these things can line up, and when they do, you often have a game that stands

the test of time. But the curious thing about time in board games is you can look at something like Monopoly, or you can look at a game like Space Hulk, and if you strip them down, there's nothing about this game that could not exist thirty years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, because you're ultimately just moving pieces around, like the fluff can change, you know, it's just like what is space? So it's it's people in monsters and people have been battling monsters in human

myth uh for in a since time out of mind. Uh. There's nothing about about most of these games when you strip them down, that can't exist in another age. But they but they didn't. There's this there's still this evolution of of the mechanics of games, the way we play games and the sort of games we play. Yes, that is really interesting. The way that you know, it can seem like, how how did it take thousands of years

for this game to be invented? But then again, almost all board games are you could probably say, derivative of forms of other board games that previously existed. I mean, there are a few basic types. There's like the type where you try to reach a space on a board before everyone else does, or the type where you try to accumulate the most of a certain type of token or you know, money, type of currency. Uh, And then there's the kind where you have armies that battle each

other until the other one is eliminated. So while we keep coming up with new games that have never existed before, almost all the games we come up with are in some way that they've got ancestors in terms of their basic format and play style. Absolutely, so you could take various modern games take them back in time, and not only would would would even ancient people recognize it as a game, they would probably they might even be able to say, oh, well, that's that's that's kind of like

this game that we play. It's kind of like a it's a racing game, or it's a fighting game, etcetera. Of course, board games are not something that is found in nature. They are a product of human civilization, so they had to be invented at some point. And that's what we're going to be looking at today. What is a board game, what does it mean, how is it invented?

And what role does it play for us? Now, before we explore the the invention and the role of board games in human culture, we usually like to ask the question about an invention, what came before it? Right? That helps you understand what it actually is. And so I was trying to think what came before the board game. It's not like, you know, there was a there was a pre board game board game that we know about,

so it wasn't quite like that. But one thing we can be very sure of is that before we had board games, what do you do with a board game? You play it. So before we had board games, we had play That's right. If you look at a at a board game or you know, in this whole episode, you can also think a little outside of just board game and think of games that maybe don't actually involve

a board or a play surface. What are they but kind of a simulation of something in reality with lower stakes usually uh, And that's something that can exist even without some sort of phy the coal apparatus or materials. Right, and certainly that's something we see animals do as well. Right, Well, I mean we certainly don't see animals play board games. We do see them play, yeah, yeah, we we see them, let say, play fighting where it's like they're fighting, but

they're not really fighting. The stakes are not the same, right, And this is a really interesting psychological and biological question. It's interesting to me. But also there's a whole field of study around the study of play. What is play? Exactly? What is a game? It's one of those things, you know, it's in the pornography category. We know when we see it. But it's hard to set out a comprehensive definition of what exactly play is, or what exactly a game is.

In fact, the philosopher Ludvig Wittgenstein used the example of a game as his prime illustration of how not all useful categories can be bounded by a fixed set of universal characteristics. You know, this is one of his philosophical principles, like some concepts and categories instead operate on this principle that he called family resemblances. Quote A complicated network of similarities,

overlapping and criss crossing. And to give a better example of this, I want to quote from a section of his book Philosophical Investigations that explains this thinking with with a few abridgments. So Wittgenstein writes, quote, consider, for example, the proceedings that we call games, I mean board games, card games, ball games, Olympic games, and so on. What

is common to them all? For if you look at them, you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that Look, for example, at board games with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card games. Here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out and others appear when we pass next to ball games. Much that is common is retained, but much is lost.

Are they all amusing? Compare chess with knots and crosses, or is there always winning and losing or competition between players? Think of patients. In ball games, there is winning and losing, But when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck at the difference between skill and chess and skill and tennis. I think now of games like ring a ring of roses. I think that's like ring around the rosie. Uh, here is

the element of amusement. But how many other characteristic features have disappeared? And we can go through many many other groups of games in the same way, can see how similarities crop up and disappear. And the result of this examination is we see a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss crossing, sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail. And I've always thought that's a really interesting observation that

we have these categories. Game is one of them. I guess play would be another one where we can identify it when we see it. We point out a thing and say that's a game or that is play, but can't put together a comprehensive definition that includes everything that is a game or everything that is play. Right. Yeah, Yeah, I love I love what he's said here because it it makes me think, for instance, of something like like bowling, like bowling is is this uh this activity that you know?

Certainly one can make an argument for game. One can make a strong argument for sport. And I think there are elements of the two, like bowling. To me, it feels like an activity where the world of sport and game converge and perhaps cause a little bit of category confusion. Wait do I detect from this? Are you staking out of position that sports are not games? I'm I'm I'm saying that the distinction kind of falls into what he's

talking about here. You know, like you look at the baseball game, you look at a game of monopoly or cards, and yeah, there are some things that line up about them,

and yet there is a distinctive difference between the two. Yeah, it can be really difficult because so if Witgenstein is right, we're faced with a problem trying to say, organize a scientific study of the idea of play or of games, because we want to understand what play is and what role it plays, what games are, and what purpose they serve. But we have trouble creating like an airtight definition. There always seem to be some examples of things that just

don't quite fit the definition you come up with. But we would still look at those things and call them games or play. And yet for the purposes of research,

it's important to have clear definition. So a lot of what these researchers do is just try to come up with the definition, and they can end up feeling kind of, uh, I don't know what the word is, kind of kind of multifarious and plotting as far as definitions go, like, they've got a lot of clauses in them, But I want to read one I came across that I feel like is a pretty good biological definition of play. Might not get everything, but it's one of the best I've read.

And it was set up by a University of Tennessee researcher named Gordon Burghardt in the American Journal of Play in two thousand ten. And this is this is his definition quote. Play is repeated behavior that is incompletely functional in the context or at the age in which it is performed, and is initiated voluntarily when the animal or

person is in a relaxed or low stress setting. So that that that might be kind of hard to wrap your brain around, but I want to break out it's got like five parts there, because already I'm thinking this applies to everything from hunting to well, no, that's the part, okay, So so first thing is that the behavior is not functional, It doesn't contribute to current survival. So hunting wouldn't count unless you're doing it recreation. I feel like a lot. I mean, there are a lot of people who do

it recreation. There are a lot of people who certainly need to hunt to some degree or certainly consume the the food that they obtain through hunting. But anyway, I continue. Okay, So you might in that case class recreational hunting in fact as a form of play. Maybe it is, but so it's at least in the animals who need to hunt to survive. Hunting is not play because hunting is functional. So play is not functional. Number Two, it's done for its own sake. It's this is what we would call fun.

It's intrinsically motivating. Right. You don't have to do it for some other reason. It is itself attractive to you as an activity. Right. You're not expecting to obtain food by it. You're not expecting to obtain a mate by it. Uh, you were doing it just for the love of the game, right. It pulls you in on its own power. Three, The behavior is different from normal survival behaviors in at least

one respect. So something that is exactly the same as things you do for survival, even if you're not currently doing it for survival. That's probably not play right. Play tends to, in Burghart's words, quote, it is incomplete generally through inhibited or dropped final elements. Think about the way like play fighting can like have the first parts of a fight there, but don't actually go in for the kill or anything. So gladiator competition play in some cases, well,

that might be something up for debate. Yeah, But Burghart also points out exaggerated awkward or precocious movements um or behavior patterns with a modified form sequencing or targeting um so like attack behaviors against a thing that would not be normally a target of attack. I think about the way, like a dog will play with a ball like it is a piece of prey that I don't think the dog actually thinks that the ball has meat in it.

It's playing with the ball, right, But it does the same things to the ball roadly that it would do to say, a rat that was in the house. Okay, that's the third thing. Fourth thing, behavior is repeated. You know you can do it more than once. Uh. And then fifth it happens when stress is low. And this doesn't have to mean that there is no stress, but it just means it's not something that happens while you're

currently like be chase to buy a predator. And given this kind of definition, again, I think we can probably find ways that it might not perfectly fit what our intuitive ideas of play are. But I think that's a really good place to start, um and and that sort of helps us think about what the roles of play and games might be for biological organisms like us. All right, on that note, we're going to take a quick break,

but we'll be right back, and we're back. One of the things, of course, we mentioned earlier, is that we know play predates things like board games because play is present in non human animals. I mean, it's there, and they're actually debates over how many animals it's present in, like, for example, it's extremely common among mammals. It seems almost

universal among mammals. Like people have generally seen the way dogs will chase and wrestle each other, the way kittens stalk and pounce on each other and engage in various forms of play. Fighting, cats are I think, sometimes even more playful than people give them credit for. Oh yeah, especially in the indoor variety that are cut off from their natural world, and of course, you know, partially insane because of what we've done to them. They're kind of

in a permanent state of kitten hood. For instance, my cat um stalks and attacks my feet pretty much every day, but does not seem to be doing it with intent to um maim and consume my feet. No, I mean, I would guess that's probably play. It is done intrinsically for the fun of doing it right for her. It's not. I don't find it tremendously fun myself, but she loves it. She can't get enough of it. Well, why can't your feet take a joke? It's more the claws and the

teeth than the joke. I'm all hot for the joke. Uh So, yeah, we we know this is there in these Uh. I guess we consider them since their predatory mammals. We you know, we think about them as having like more complex brains. But it's also there in say mice like I was reading an article by the researchers Leel and Dugatkin and Serena Rodriguez for a Berkeley publication, and they were pointing out the research has found that mice

usually start playing about fifteen days after they're born. UH, and that play activities peak around nineteen to twenty five days, and this seems to coincide with neurosciences revealed coincide with development of synapses in the cerebellum and those those synapses are necessary for muscle control in life. So there seems to be something going on where like young mice are playing around the same time, their brains are developing the stuff that they need for for running around and surviving

with with muscle control. And also, mice tend to show greater brain development when they're raised in environments with wheels and other play structures than in environments without them. Give my something to play with and their brains do better. So this is the basic idea that of play as a rehearsal for something, play is practice for skills one will need as an adult, yes, or play being necessary

for just normal brain development. Um. And both of those are strong theories about why play exists in the animal world. That will come back to that in some caveats in just a minute. UH. An interesting question I came across is is their play among non mammals. We know it's pretty much universal among mammals but there are all these debatable reports of play among various birds and reptiles. Um,

it does seem, for example, that ravens play. They do stuff that's hard not to look at and say that's play. Like juvenile ravens are attracted to novel objects almost in the way, uh, you know, like like a dog would be with toys, and they seem to play around with them.

One really interesting thing I came across was in the zoologist Vladimir Denett's published a paper in Animal Behavior and Cognition describing the play behaviors of crocodilians playful crocodiles, which apparently was not news to people who worked regularly with these animals. But you might be wondering, well, how the heck does a crocodile play, or an alligator? You know,

what does that look like? They're all kinds of ways. Uh. Sometimes they chase after inflata balls, they surf in waves, they snap at flowing water, They give each other piggyback rides, they blow bubbles. These are all things that seem to meet these biological and ethological definitions of play. That's that's crazy, because I would certainly have thought, okay, the raven might play, it is an intelligent creature, but reptiles reptile Yeah, yeah,

I would have been there with you. But but apparently this is just common knowledge to people who are hands on with crocodilians a lot even fish. There there is debate about this about whether this really counts is play. But for example, they sometimes jump when there's no need to, when stress levels are low. Why there's nothing chasing them. They're not getting anything from it. We've talked about fish

jumping on stuff to blow your mind before. Uh, and so there there are some ideas that maybe they're playing. Maybe this is a form of play. Now, once you get down to invertebrates, it really does get much trickier to find things that could reasonably be classed as play, except, of course, in the case of you know what, cephalopods right, Oh, of course, yeah, I was. I was. I was thinking about insects and I was thinking, oh, well, well, Dr Seth Brundle told us that there there are no insect

politics and he didn't say anything about play. But it kind of stands to reason that insects would not play. But then, of course, I forget about about the the invertebrate superstars of the cephalopod world. Yeah, which are you know, the true aliens on Earth? Like octopuses are clearly one of the most playful animals on this planet, though their

play might seem very strange to us. They seem to enjoy puzzles and new toys and challenges, and sometimes they like pull on people in what seemed to be strange examples of social play. There are also even reports of play like behaviors among insects like ants and wasps, but these reports this is very controversial. I guess a lot

of this is getting into an individual organisms tendencies towards neophilia. Uh, the the you know, the likelihood that they're gonna seek out novel experiences or items if there's if they are you know, a curious cree sure that benefits has a survival benefit in trying things out, such as we talked about raccoons on stuff to blow your mind before. Oh yeah, of course raccoons being mammals, do seem to be somewhat playful.

But also we talked about the idea that like raccoons who have stronger, stronger neophilia instincts, the ones that seek out novel objects and approach them rather than avoid them. They tend to do better and say urban environments, which that makes sense. You approach some novel objects in an urban environment, you will often get some fries out of it or something. Um. But anyway, so I want to come back and kind of rope in just a basic overview of the ideas about why play exists in animals,

what biological purpose does it serve? Of course, this is something we don't fully know the answer to right this is this is an unsolved question, but there are some some strong hypotheses with with some evidence behind them. So one we already mentioned is that play is training for crucial survival or reproductive skills. And in the words of the English psychologist Peter case Myth, this would mean quote, play primarily affords juveniles practice towards the exercise of later skills.

And you can already probably imagine tons of reasons for thinking this is the case, Like think about, um, how much of the play we see in other animals and in humans frankly resembles forms of survival and reproduction behavior. Play very often looks like fighting, hunting, escaping, feeding, or mating actions that you know mimic. These activities in an exaggerated or incomplete form make up a huge portion of play behaviors, but there are also there's some evidence against

this too. There's studies in many animals, including some types of mice and merecats, that have found that animals who play at a skill like hunting or fighting do not later show advantages at this skill compared to individuals that play at the skill less. So maybe sometimes this isn't the case. Uh. There's also the question of why forms of play sometimes continue into adulthood after survival skills are mastered, or why some play behaviors, especially in humans, do not

mimic physical survival behaviors. A classic example of this would be the board game Yes. A couple of alternate theories that came across because they were mentioned by dugatt Ken and Rodriguez. One is that play is essentially for like social species, it's for learning the rules. This is from the University of Colorado biologist Mark baykoff Uh and he basically says that play is useful for developing a sense

of morality and social skills. Like play allows animals to experience and internalize their social clan sense of fairness of inclusion and exclusion of justice, and what cheating is. Oh yeah, this is a very good, good point and something that I see coming up in my own life with a six year old playing some board games with him while

he's also learning how to play chess at school. And a lot of it is, you know, certainly there's a there's a you know, stressing abstract thought and learning systems of rules and strategy, but a lot of it is like learning how to lose, learning how to win, how to do both of those things gracefully, how not to cheat, how to respond to cheating, like these are all all sort of aspects of the general exercise. Yeah, so I

think that that's a strong possibility as well. Another theory is from the check researcher Mark Spinka, who says that play is to help animals not necessarily just practice individual skills like hunting, fighting and all that, but to generally prepare for the unexpected. It's how an animal readies its brain to be surprised by life and deal with that surprise gracefully. So things like being knocked off balance when you're not expecting it, or things like encountering failure in

a in a chase or something like this. Another way of putting this is that play and games serve to increase versatility. This is this is very a very good point, because I'm thinking about like various physical sports, a lot of it does seem to have a it seemed to stress bodily awareness and being able to react physically to change. And then most board games of any of any note, you know, there's some level of you go into the game with a certain strategy, there's a certain way you

can and perhaps will win. But then the best laid plans right and foiled foiled. You have to figure out, well, how am I going to react to this and still try and achieve my initial goals. Maybe there's a different way I'm going to have to win after all. Well, and this, you know, you you can see it in the way that we really we have an extremely derisive attitude toward people who do not lose or face adversity

in games. Well, you know, the person who flips the table when they get when they you know, get frustrated in risk or something that's like an archetype we all know about. We all know that guy, and that behavior is strongly frowned upon. Right now, part of it might be because they're playing Monopoly or some garbage game like that, but but no, Yeah, people who react like that to games, they can probably react like that too to just about

any game. And I think one of the important lessons of gaming, like one that I continually try to embrace, is in enjoying the way in which you lose. I think I think it's a testament too of a well designed game, because I've also played some games where I'm like, Okay, this game is kind of BS and I'm losing. Uh, there's really what am I doing? You know? But but a really good game, you're like, oh, I see disaster is coming, and isn't it interesting how it's playing out?

What can I do to minimize disaster? That can sometimes become the new game that you're playing that is a really great kind of game. I haven't even thought about that, games that are interesting to lose. Yeah. Um So, one more theory I want to mention before we move on.

The last one I came across was in a presentation called what is Play for by the Penn State professor Gary Chick, and this discusses the possibility that play is favored by sexual selection, that it's at a Playfulness is a signaling mechanism of fitness in adults, and that might answer why even adults are playful and not just children. Like animals including humans, tend to prefer mates that play because play is interpreted as a signal of a few things.

Play signals youth, youthfulness, play signals good health, play signals intelligence, and it signals good socialization. Yeah, these are all solid points. But plus, in the more of the human context, there's a sense of leisure there, right, Like this individual has space in their life for something of little or no consequence, like a game. Right, I mean in the animal context,

I think that's part of the good health signaling. Right, If you show off that you can play a game, you're showing off that you're not starving and sick and at the edge, Like, hey, look, I'm chasing a ball. This isn't gonna feed me, but I'm big enough I can catch something later. Yeah. So, I mean, ultimately, we don't know which of these theories are correct, and there are other ones too, we don't have time to chase

them all on here. I guess you could also posit that, of course, play is not for anything that it doesn't serve any adaptive biological purpose. But given how widely play is selected for, I really find this unlikely. But anyway to come back to board games here, Given all of this we've looked at, I think one of the interesting questions to ask is what kind of play does a board game represent? And how does does a board game

fit into this whole model. So if you take the view that well, maybe a lot of play is training for skills later in life. Maybe that's what most of

play is for in the animal world. That's obviously plausible for a lot of different things, because, as we mentioned earlier, how many types of play involved things that are necessary for survival, like chasing, fighting, uh, you know, playing house, imaginative playing with skills of you know, maintaining a domestic life, that kind of thing, right, finding your mystery date, um, you know, creating your ensuring your financial future, battling barbarians

um or or or so simply just responding to luck, responding to chance, responding to to unforeseen events. Well, I think that last one might be especially relevant with games with board games, because what sets board games apart from so many of these other games like play, fighting, play, chasing, playing, house and all that is that, unlike these physical sports and stuff, board games become almost entirely abstracted from any

physical activity that is important for survival or reproduction. They're abstract games. Their games taken into an imaginary space that you don't act out full behaviors with your body, you know, right, Yeah, it becomes even though you may have some impressive, uh fluff, you may have some you know, impressive materials, some very nice figurines, etcetera, it's still largely something that is taking place in the mind with the aid of some physical

materials and of course the system of rules. With that in mind, I think we should maybe take a break and then come back and focus on some of the earliest known board games and and see what we can make of them. Alright, we're back. So in researching this, we we look to a number of different sources, but of course I ended up picking up Brian and Fagin's excellent The seventy Grade Inventions of the Ancient World is

a fun starting put place. Uh. He only devotes two pages to board games, but it provides a nice overview, and one of the things that he drives home is that board games are probably as old as human culture. Uh that pretty much any ancient or modern society has some sort of board game. It just seems innately tied to how we think and how we use objects and rules. And you can even go so as far as to

say that they're a defining element of human society. Now, obviously they came out of something though, right, But but the details are lost to the myths of history. Is unlikely that there's a single necess city or breakthrough that evolved into game playing. But there are a couple of key theories that I think are worth considering. So the first is that, and this ties in with some of the discussions we've had about play, is it is the the safe sublimation of competition and rivalry. Oh, this is

often a theory about sports as well. That it does something to Uh. It takes an instinct that we have that can be destructive and gives us an outlet for that instinct that is not destructive. Right. You know, today we have a game night in which say employee employee, fellow employees or friends or family members members will gather together and attempt to crush each other so that one may rise up victorious over the rest. This would be

terrible if we did this four real zes. But since we're doing it within the confines of a board game or card game or what have you, uh, it's it's perfectly acceptable, it's even beneficial. I mean, look at the way people practice sports fandom. You can clearly see in this that we have some powerful instincts that that that caused us to want to band together in groups and support of, you know, against a common enemy that's also

banding together. We have, I think some inherent warlike instincts, and I think it would probably be bad if we just had these instincts bouncing around without any way to express them. That wasn't actually harmful. But generally speaking, you're dealing with with far lower stakes. Yes, even if there is money on the line, it is still generally generally your life is not on the line right now. The second idea, and this one, this one I really find interesting,

is that board games emerged out of ritual and divination practices. Yes, yes, yes, yes, this is really interesting. Now. Of course, divination practices would be what would be trying to answer an unanswerable question or gain some piece of knowledge by the invocation of the gods or spirits or something, usually using a physical medium, yeah too. Yeah, And sometimes it's overt it is, say, asking spirit um deceased loved one or an ancestor or a god or a goddess or a supernatural entity for help.

Other times it's it's a bit more obscure, like what you're actually asking and why you're using a particular means to do so. We had an episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind where we talked about the eaching where we get into a lot of this. Yeah, talking about the eaching is essentially a randomization engine for divination that

depends on physical objects to create and record randomized events. Uh. Specifically uh tossing a few coins, laying some sticks down to keep track of what what the coins tell you, and then referring to a system of rules to tell you what these lines mean, and then of course how

you should act what you should expect based on that. Now, remember, in the Stuff to Blow your Mind episode, we talked about how even though you know, we're not positing that sort of ledge methods where you like you know, cast lots or something are actually giving you, say, knowledge of the future or anything like that, they could still be useful or adaptive in that they might tend to prompt action when you were otherwise frozen, like it's possible, you know,

you're just faced with a problem, you don't know what to do. And in fact it's the case that really any action is better than no action, and thus consulting a divination method gives you impetus to go forward with some type of response. I remember in that issuing episode that we did, we we looked to a quote from Julian Jaynes, who is the individual that was behind the the bicameral mind hypothesis. But but this particular quote has has little to do with with with that particular hypothesis.

But he was talking about sortilage and uh he said quote. But this simplicity, even uh, triviality to us, should not blind us from seeing the profound psychological problem involved, as

well as appreciating its remarkable historical importance. We're so used to the huge variety of games of chance, throwing dice through let wheels, etcetera, all of them vestiges of this ancient practice of divination by lots, that we find it difficult to really appreciate the significance of this practice historically. It is a help here to realize that there was no concept of chance whatever until very recent times. So he had to think about and he's tying that in

a little bit to his hypothesis. But but for the most partly thinking of the primordial uh, you know, ancestors to the board game, to games of chance being simply a way of of figuring out how to act, like what I must do something? But how do I possibly weigh these two things? I must appeal to some other force? Yeah, I mean, I think there's something to that. We we can't know this for sure, that you know, ancient or

prehistoric people's had no concept of chance. But judging by their writings when we have access to those, it does seem like they didn't really have much of an idea of endomness, at least to me. It seems more like there's a general belief in sort of like determinism by the gods or by some kind of power of fate that you know, win something that that appears random happens, say even just the outcome of a dice roll, that was the will of the gods for it to happen

that way. And so if you imagine board games in this context, they would take on a very different cast, right, every time you throw the dice, which I guess at that time probably wouldn't have been dice, but would have been something like, you know, sticks that fall in a certain way to tell you how many places to move or what the outcome of something is, or a knuckle bones or a common one. Yeah, yeah, rattle the bones.

I think there's this old Babylonian inscription that's like a gambler's lament that says like, woe, woe, woe to me the knuckle bones. It's like, you know, oh no that you know, they gave me bad fate. But the bad fate could be within a game, and within the game this would still be interpreted, perhaps as a deliverance by the gods or or a punishment by the gods, like the gods are determining who wins your dice game. Yeah, because it's kind of like you're going, all right, God,

I need some help on this. Give me a sign, all right, I don't see a sign. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna i'm gonna throw this stick. If it lands this way, i'm gonna assume that's a yes. And if it lands the other way, I'm going to take that as a no, So balls in your court. God, here we go. But what if it's not a yes or no about a question in your life, but about do I get to advance a space in this game on the board? Wow? Imagine if that was the case.

Every time we play a board game, a divine being has to has to like clock in today, like, oh my goodness, they're playing arkham Harror. I'm gonna be here all night. I hate this one. Can't they just play play checkers? You know? I wonder if this may come in as One of the things I often wonder about is like why do some religions for bid games of

chance or forbid gambling? What is it about that activity that makes it detestable to the religious authorities and the people who come up with the with these religious dogmas.

I wonder if games of chance, especially in the ancient frame of mind, tend to suggest a belief in like consulting demons and a non sanctioned spiritual authorities, you know, so that when you roll a die or roll a knucklebone, you may in fact be uh having a consult every time you do it with some kind of illicit spirit with a demon or something, huh, And it would be interested to come back and do an Invention episode on gambling.

But I also wonder, and I may be completely off on this, I wonder if it's ever a case where Okay, if a board game or a game is simply a simulation, simplification with lowered stakes, if you then raise the stakes again, does that become gambling? And it's because that's kind of how I always think about gambling. It's like playing cards

for fun, that's fun, playing cards for money. Okay, you've taken taken something fun and you've made it a little dirty, and you've made losing feel more real, and you've made winning a little more icky. Somehow everyone's mileage is going to vary on that. Well, but that's my take on I think there could also be when you're talking about not just games of chance, but like adding the gambling element, yes, which does seem to be often crucial, you know, is

their money on the line there. You could also just say that it's like, well, it's a basic social control problem because for some reason, where there's gambling, there also tends to be disorder and crime. You know, gambling tends to lead to fights, and murder and stuff. It could

just be something like as simple as that, right. I know, we were looking at at some sources about Islamic law and the interpretation of Islamic laws concerning games of chance versus games of skill, and it seems like for the for the most part, based on what we're looking at, generally gambling is bad. Gambling is against the rules. But games that have dice in them, if they are games of skill, you know, it's generally okay. So that specifically the uh, you know, gungeon and dragons is fine. I

think there's a difference opinion among difference. Yes, you're still you're still going to find some some individuals that have you know, there are a lot stricter on this and and and stricter on the interpretation and would say that no, if their dice involved, or there's some sort of chance element,

then then it is not permitted. You know. Going back to the sort of adaptive or revolutionary framework, I wonder if you can fundamentally class games of chance versus games of skill as as having different kinds of roles in

our biology and our psychology. Yeah, yeah, probably so. And maybe that's again one of the reasons that it's so perfect when when those two things are balanced in a single game where you do need skill to win, and yet there are these these these unpredictable moments, these these turning points that can totally change the outcome, and no amount of skill, Like maybe skill will be essential to

survive those twists and turns. Yeah, I mean dealing with dealing with unforeseen circumstances is a skill in a way. The the skill of versatility is the ability to face the vicissitudes of fate and come up with a with a way around. Like candy Land is definitely a game that requires no skill. You know, if anybody has ever played with the child knows virtually it's just all random movement. There's there's not really any there are no decisions to

be made. You're the complete whims of the universe. When it comes to that, that's going to be the one that God's really hate clocking in for because they have to do all the work. But then you have games like chess right where yes you're having to respond to changes that are perpetrated, but they're perpetrated by your opponent at any rate. I do want to drive home that whether we're looking at this idea of of games and board games as the safe sublimation of competition, or as

something that emerged out of divination practices. Uh, we can't really know for sure. There's evidence for both of these. Uh, They're likely other reasons in play as well, including just the desire to do something that is amuses you, something that is fun. But I'm still haunted by that question.

How did the thing that amuses us, the thing that's fun, become moving around little tiles on top of a pattern surface, or you know, or like rolling a knucklebone and seeing how many of a piece of tokens we got to take, or something such a strange and abstract way of approaching games, which in their core, they should involve the body, right, they should involve like you should be playing house, or you should be play fighting, you should be running a race,

but instead we're doing it in this abstract space with these little representative figurines. I mean, it almost seems like it suggests to me that there could be some kind of relationship between the emergence of board games as this abstracted form of play and the emergence of writing as

this abstracted form of representing thoughts. This abstracted form of speech. Yeah, taking what's going on inside our minds and put in externalizing it because they think of one of the the key things that our mind does is we're we're simulating future events. We're engaging in mental time travel, both past and future. We're trying to envision what is going to happen and how we're going to react to stuff like that happening. And it's a purely mental, uh mental exercise.

So it's in a sense planning it all out or doing just very abstract versions of planning it all out in a physical system in a board game like that's that's perfectly in keeping with the spirit of play fighting, but it's a different type of fight. It's the kind of fight that that that really only conscious beings are capable of engaging. This is really interesting, and that's why I am so excited to come back next time and talk about the earliest known evidence of board games. What

do the earliest board games look like? What are they? That's right, it's it's there's some fascinating examples to to run through, but we've run the full course for this episode. So in the meantime, as you're waiting for next week's episode to come out. Head on over to Invention paw dot com. That is the mothership for this show. That's where we'll find all the episodes of Invention. Links out

to some social media accounts linked to a store. Even if you really like our jazzy logo and would like to get it on a sticker or a shirt, that's a fun way to support the show. But really the best thing you can do to support Invention and ensure that we get to keep rolling these episodes out is to make sure you have subscribed. And once you've subscribed to Invention, make sure you give us a nice rating

wherever you have the ability to do so. Throw up some stars, throw up a nice review on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Ry Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback about this episode or any other episode, to suggest a topic for a future episode of Invention, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Were you b