Games Britannia: “Dicing with Destiny”

During our critical game design studies we watch show Games Britannia: “Dicing with Destiny”, this was the first on three episodes. This was very interesting to me from the get go, learning that how far back games when, learning about ancient games and how they were played and seeing some resemblance to the games that we play now. At first I was not very interested in seeing the history of games but that soon changed as the episode went on.

The episode focused on ancient game in the medieval times, these games were Chess, The Royal Game of Ur and Nine Men’s Morris, and they were games played to gain skills and strategy.

These games are still played greatly today and we can even see the same mechanics used in different games that are well known today. Games like Ludo have a very similar concept to the Royal Game of Ur unlike chess with is still played today. Chess was used more for strategy of war than it was used for fun back in the medieval times compared to how it’s played today for just fun.

There were games that involved a lot of gambling such as Faro, this game was known to cause bankruptcies. This game was played mostly by the upper classes during the 18^th and 19^th century.

This episode gave me a lot on insight to how games were played back then making we look at how games are now and how this are different in many ways and also very similar