Game Design Origins - Game Design Essentials - page 10

something like dice to advance through the play. Candy Land and Snakes and
Ladders by that definition wouldn't be games because winning doesn't rely on
skill or logic. Designers need to be aware of these gray areas and understand
that, because of how vast the world of making games has become and how it
continues to grow and expand, the concept of what a game is and how it must
be played will evolve as well.
history: Going Way Back
Humans have enjoyed playing games for as long as our history has been recorded.
Early Egyptians played games like Senet for leisure. It was so popular, in fact, that
four copies of the game crafted from ebony and ivory were found in King Tut's
tomb. The game is a battle between good and evil, in which the evil forces try to
keep the good from reaching the highly prized Kingdom of Osiris by blocking
holes in the game board with their pegs. Figure 1.4 shows an image painted on a
tomb wall of Nefertari playing Senet . The game took on such an important role in
Egyptian society that during the New Kingdom (between the sixteenth and elev-
enth centuries BC) it was viewed as having religious and magical properties.
FiGuRe 1.4 S e n e t shows that games have long been important to
human society.