Portal:Games

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A game is a structured type of play usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or video games) or art (such as games involving an artistic layout such as mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).

Games have a wide range of occasions, reflecting both the generality of its concept and the variety of its play. Games are sometimes played purely for enjoyment, sometimes for achievement or reward as well. They can be played alone, in teams, or online; by amateurs or by professionals. The players may have an audience of non-players, such as when people are entertained by watching a chess championship. On the other hand, players in a game may constitute their own audience as they take their turn to play. Often, part of the entertainment for children playing a game is deciding who is part of their audience and who participates as a player. A toy and a game are not the same. Toys generally allow for unrestricted play, whereas games present rules for the player to follow. Similarly, a puzzle is not exactly a game.

Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational, or psychological role. (Full article...)

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The board game Monopoly has its origin in the early 20th century. The earliest known version, known as The Landlord's Game, was designed by Elizabeth Magie and first patented in 1904, but existed as early as 1902. Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo's Law of economic rent and the Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value taxation. A series of board games was developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. By 1933, a board game already existed much like the modern version of Monopoly that has been sold by Parker Brothers and related companies through the rest of the 20th century, and into the 21st. Several people, mostly in the midwestern United States and near the East Coast of the United States, contributed to its design and evolution.

By the 1970s, the false idea that the game had been created by Charles Darrow had become widely believed; it was printed in the game's instructions for many years, in a 1974 book devoted to Monopoly, and was cited in a general book about toys as recently as 2007. Even a guide to family games published for Reader's Digest in 2003 gave credit only to Darrow and none to Elizabeth Magie or any other contributors, erroneously stating that Magie's original game was created in the 19th century and not acknowledging any of the game's development between Magie's creation of the game and the eventual publication by Parker Brothers. (Full article...)

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...that Barbarossa is an award-winning German-style board game by Klaus Teuber from 1988 in which the players have to sculpt plasticine to earn points?
...that in the video game The Splatters (pictured) players detonate bombs by flinging anthropomorphized globs of goo at them?
...that Israeli chess Grandmaster Ronen Har-Zvi first met his wife playing online chess at the Internet Chess Club?
...that Skyfox was one of the first games to popularize the cockpit view for flight action games?
...that professional poker player Ilari Sahamies lost over US$3 million playing online poker while drunk, including more than $700,000 in a single day?

General images

The following are images from various game-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1The Card Players by Lucas van Leyden (1520) depicting a multiplayer card game (from Game)
Image 2A fantasy LARP group (from Role-playing game)
Image 3The number of board games published by year (1944–2017), as listed on BoardGameGeek. Expansion sets for existing games are marked in orange. (from Board game)
Image 4Mamluk playing card (king of cups), c. 15th century (from Card game)
Image 5A selection of pieces from different games. From top: Chess pawns, marbles, Monopoly tokens, dominoes, Monopoly hotels, jacks and checkers pieces. (from Game)
Image 6This timeline was made with information from the Wikipedia articles on Board Game, Hasbro, Board Game Cafe, Tabletop Simulator, and Monopoly. All information on this timeline was from those Wikipedia pages as they were on November 24th, 2024 (from Board game)
Image 7Association football is a popular sport worldwide.
Image 8 Men Playing Board Games, from The Sougandhika Parinaya Manuscript (from Board game)
Image 9Mehen game with game stones, from Abydos, Egypt, 3000 BC, Neues Museum (from Board game)
Image 10The modern German board game Catan is printed in 30 languages and sold 15 million by 2009. (from Board game)
Image 11A group playing a tabletop RPG. The GM is at left using a cardboard screen to hide dice rolls from the players. (from Role-playing game)
Image 12Chinese mother-of-pearl gambling tokens used in scoring and bidding of card games (from Card game)
Image 13An adventurer finds a teleportation portal while exploring a dungeon in the role-playing video game Falcon's Eye. (from Role-playing game)
Image 14Students in Laos using dice to improve numeracy skills. They roll three dice, then use basic math operations to combine those into a new number which they cover on the board. The goal is to cover four squares in the row. (from Game)
Image 15Painting in tomb of Egyptian queen Nefertari (1295–1255 BC) playing senet (from Board game)
Image 16MUD interface for Furcadia (from Role-playing game)
Image 17Playing Cards, by Theodoor Rombouts, 17th century (from Game)
Image 18Backgammon is a game of skill. Strategy can give players advantages, but there is also an element of chance. (from Game of skill)
Image 19Ancient Egyptian senet game board inscribed for Amenhotep III with separate sliding drawer, from 1390 to 1353 BC, made of glazed faience, dimensions: 5.5 × 7.7 × 21 cm, in the Brooklyn Museum (New York City). (from Game)
Image 20Parcheesi is an American adaptation of a Pachisi, originating in India. (from Game)
Image 21Historically, card games such as whist and contract bridge were opportunities for quiet socializing, as shown in this 1930s magic lantern slide photo taken in Seattle, Washington. (from Card game)
Image 22The Card Players, 17th-century painting by Theodoor Rombouts (from Card game)
Image 23Tug of war is an easily organized, impromptu game that requires little equipment. (from Game)
Image 24A ball-in-a-maze puzzle requires fine motor skills. (from Game of skill)
Image 25Young girls playing a board game in the Iisalmi library in Finland, 2016 (from Board game)
Image 26Two Qataris playing the traditional board game of damah (from Board game)
Image 27Preferans, a trick-taking card game version popular in Croatia (from Card game)
Image 28The board game Monopoly is licensed in 103 countries and printed in 37 languages. (from Board game)