Games Britannia: Dicing With Destiny or How I Learned to Appreciate Ancient Games.

We watched the first episode of a BBC 4 show called Games Britannia this episode was called Dicing with Destiny and was about the history of games from games played with there boards carved into the stone of church chairs, to the games that we play today.

We find that may of the ancient games weren't just played for fun but that they are fundamental, some games offering some sort of prophetic meaning, whether they are used not only through life but through death, or if they are used to help kings determine whether they would be successful if they where to go into battle.

However games started to lose these prophetic and religious meanings and instead started to be more and more associated with gambling. By the time of the Victorians there where a number of dice and card games which resulted in a moral backlash associating these games with loss and hardship, games where being used as moral teaching materials, with a number of the aspects of gambling being associated with evil, people started to refer to dice as instruments of the Devil meaning most children where not allowed to play any games that may of used dice. During these times most games that involved gambling where often a 50/50 chance to win, unlike Todays gambling where most machines are rigged to pay out only at certain points. One of the most notable gamblers was a noted Whig statesman Charles James Fox, who was the second son of Lord Holland, one of the last acts of Lord Holland was to settle a massive £140,000 of his son's debt, but Fox continued to win and lose huge amounts of money in single sittings. It is said that he would gamble for days only taking breaks to fulfil his political obligations.

It is around this time that Britain established one of the first gaming industries, with the mass production of games, like Snakes and Ladders, although this is also an iteration of an ancient Hindu game of knowledge know as Gyan Chauper. But this beautiful game that was designed to show the journey to enlightenment was now tainted by commercialisation  so that the game could be fun and suitable for the market of Today the journey that it once represented was removed and the religious meaning was completely forgotten.

As a game designer I feel that it is important to remember the ancient games as without them we wouldn't have the games that we have today, not only that but I feel we need to keep the original meanings of these ancient games alive and not only enjoy the modern versions for the fun, but remember the ancient versions of these games so that we can feel what the people who would play these games felt and be able to learn from that experience.

One of the games that I found truly interesting was the game Alea Evangelii which played in a simplified way is a game of strategy and movement as you have to try to escort your king piece to any of the corners of the board being outnumbered by your opponent you have to really think and take a strategic approach to the game. I would like to look more into the game Alea Evangelii and maybe even try to play the game at it's simplified state.