Where Did Video Games REALLY Start?

So, way back when I started the blog, I made the assertion that I believed that Christopher Strachey's Draughts was the first video game ever. My stance on that solidified as a result of watching Stuart Brown's (Ahoy) video essay on the subject of the definition of a "video game", and what, based on that definition, ought to be classified as the first "true" video game. Incidentally, I don't think you should really read those early posts - my writing and research was quite lazy. Putting multiple games in a single post was a mistake - a mistake I may potentially look to rectify in the near future.

I still agree with Ahoy's assessment that Draughts is the first true video game ever made. However, that's not a consensus opinion. Plenty of people would disagree with me. There's plenty of other takes on the "first video game", and games that predate Draughts that could be argued as the first. Some say it's OXO, others Tennis for Two, and some would even say Spacewar! or Pong is the first. Ralph Baer, of course, argued that his "Brown Box" that would become the Magnavox Odyssey was the first. Here in this article, I'm going to discuss those other contenders (except Pong and the Odyssey, because ignoring 25 years of prior history to them is absurd), and attempt to settle on a definite date for when the concept of the "video game" was born.

As I'm sure we're all aware of, especially if you've been around this blog for any length of time, the video game spawned out of the world of computer science. Computing technology had been slowly developing over about a century, starting with the mechanical computing devices invented in the 19th century - Charles Babbage being the chief instigator of that with his "Difference Engine," and later the "Analytical Engine." Calculators and other similar, mechanical and non-electronic devices continued development (we can't forget that the arcade existed, either) up until just prior to the outbreak of World War Two. 

The war seriously accelerated the progress of computer development, in the West especially to counter the advances of the Germans in their Enigma encryption technology. The Germans also had access to one of the world's first digital computers: Konrad Zuse's Z3. The Brits countered first with their "British Bombe" electro-mechanical codebreaker, and then with the Colossus computer in 1944 - the ultimate code breaking machine.

After the war, however, there was naturally less of a push for state-of-the-art defense technology, allowing for peacetime efforts in computing to be directed elsewhere, particularly games. For instance, Turing, in 1948, began experimenting with creating a Chess program, which he called "Turbochamp." He worked out the algorithms by hand and tested them against his colleagues, before getting to work programming it on a Ferranti Mark 1 computer - a task he would never finish. Despite him not finishing the program, it shows that there was interest in using computers for gaming purposes very early on in the minds of the great coding wizards.

Several other computer scientists experimented with games programming, though not initially for the sake of leisure, but more for the purposes of developing machine learning and artificial intelligence. Particular interest was given to what are called "solved" games - games that had a "perfect" way to play them, discoverable through use of computers calculating the algorithms. Chess and Checkers are such games, hence why there was much interest in them early on, but also Tic-Tac-Toe and Nim were also of interest as much simpler "solved" games. Some games were designed purely for recreational purposes, but those were much rarer across the early decades of video games (1940s - 1960s.)

Now that I've given more of a surface-level overview, we're going to zoom into a few examples of early computer games. Timing wise, I'm going to end off in 1952 with a revisit of Draughts and OXO. I'm only interested in the origins of the computer game here, so going beyond that point is unnecessary in such an introductory article. Each game will only be getting a brief summary, both to prevent this article from becoming a master's thesis, and to leave room for expanding this article into a "revisit" of my prehistory series. If I'm honest, I'm not totally satisfied with my early articles and the lacking research I did, so revisiting the series is something I'm strongly considering, both to fix my mistakes and refine my research methodology further.

Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device (1947)

Patent schematic.

An electronic game designed by Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. This is usually cited as the earliest example of a video game by most historians I've read. Personally, I don't think it really counts, as it was only ever a patent. Never was this device constructed, and I think that's important when discussing the "first video game." It's one thing to have the idea and the blueprint for it, but it's another thing to actually build the device to see if it works. 

However, the description of it may sound vaguely familiar. The player would sit in front of the CRT, presented with a game in which you fire artillery shells at designated targets painted on the CRT's screen. The shells, represented by a dot on the screen, were able to be manipulated by the player with a control knob. The player was to move the dots over targets painted on the CRT screen that represented aeroplanes, pushing a button to then fire the shell. If successful, the screen would simulate an explosion.

That does sound very much like an early arcade or second-generation console video game to me - part artillery game, part flight combat simulator. Considering what was to come after this patent was filed, this electronic game concept was quite ambitious and forward-thinking. Certainly not a "solved" game, like most of the other early examples of computer games. It does make one wonder what might have been if the thing was built, though...

Bertie the Brain (1950)

Comedian Danny Kaye was a fan.

Electronic game development goes quite for a couple of years after the CRT Amusement Device was patented. 1948 and 1949 don't see much progress in electronic game development, outside Alan Turing's previously mentioned Turbochamp Chess program, and some other computer scientists doing similar experiments that were strictly not intended for recreational purposes.

That leads us to a new decade - the 1950s - and the next milestone game: Bertie the Brain. Like the computer scientists' experiments, this machine wasn't entirely intended to just be a for-fun amusement. Its creator, Dr. Josef Kates, created it as a marketing ploy for his newest invention: Additron tubes. Kates intended for these tubes to replace the earlier, more fragile Thermionic valves. One Additron tube was equivalent to ten Thermionic valves!

With support from his former employer, radio and electronics company Rogers Majestic, Kates' went about constructing a machine to display the potential of his new invention. What he decided on was to make a device that was able to play Tic-Tac-Toe against a human opponent. The result was Bertie the Brain, a four-metre tall electronic box that offered passersby at the 1950 Canadian National Exhibition (where Bertie the Brain was put on display) a novel game of *Noughts & Crosses.

The display consisted of incandescent tubes that lit up with an X or O - not really a true "video" display if we're working with Ahoy's definition of a video game. The control panel was quite intuitive - nine buttons, one for each box of the game grid. What I find most interesting about Bertie the Brain from a game-design standpoint is that it had adjustable difficulty. Kates was able to adjust the level of challenge to suit whoever was playing at any given moment. Accommodating for a child, merciless and unbeatable for a skilled adult player. It's a clear forerunner to the varied DIP switches found on just about every single arcade video game from Pong onward.

Nimrod (1951)

Looks like the lair of an evil genius.

Across the Atlantic, something curiously similar to Bertie the Brain was being developed. British computer manufacturer Ferranti were gearing up for the 1951 Festival of Britain. However, their promise of preparing a new computer for the festival was seeming less and less likely to be fulfilled. That's when John M. Bennett, an Australian (hype!) computer scientist and employee of Ferranti suggested the idea of making a computer that played a single game: Nim. Bennett was inspired by a similar, electro-mechanical Nim-playing machine that had appeared a decade prior called the Nimatron.

Once again, however, the purpose of this "game" was not to simply be a game. Bennett wanted Nimrod to be a display on the basics of computer programming. Most onlookers were, according to Bennett himself, "quite happy to gawk at the flashing lights and be impressed." Some were more determined to try beat the artificial intelligence. Like Bertie the Brain, Nimrod used incandescent lamps to indicate game progress, and used a push-button panel as the control scheme. With the lack of video display, Nimrod also fails to perfectly meet the definition of a video game.

Nimrod also went on a small world tour, heading to Germany after the Festival of Britain exhibition concluded, and then after Germany to Canada. Also like Bertie the Brain, once Nimrod had fulfilled its purpose, it was sadly dismantled. This wouldn't end Ferranti's contributions to early video games, however.

Draughts (1952)

Recreation of what the game would've look like.

Now for my first true revisit on the blog. Christopher Strachey's Draughts was one of the very first games I covered on the blog. There wasn't a whole lot of depth to the research in that article, as I paired the game with A. S. Douglas' OXO. At the time, I thought it made more sense, since Draughts is a game lost to time, to pair it with another game to make the article more substantial. In retrospect, I think that was a mistake.

The story of Strachey's Draughts goes back into 1951, parallel with the time Nimrod was in active development. Strachey has just joined the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, England. Just prior, the NPL had completed the Pilot ACE - one of the country's first computers, based on an Alan Turing design. Strachey, wanting to familiarise himself with programming on the Pilot ACE, chose to create a Draughts (or Checkers, if you prefer) program.

However, his program was too much for the Pilot ACE, and totally consumed the system memory. This led him to look elsewhere for a more capable computer to run his game. Ferranti re-enters the scene, as they happened to have just the computer Strachey needed - the Manchester Mark 1. Incidentally, Stracey and Alan Turing were colleagues, and so Strachey was able to request that Turing send him the manuals for the Mark 1. By October of 1951, Strachey had transcribed the program, but it took until July 1952 to get the game fully functional.

By all definitions, Draughts is certainly a video game, and the first one that is purely software. It uses two CRT displays to show game progress, and the player inputs are through buttons. Strachey also programmed in various reactions the computer would give depending on player actions, such as telling them to hurry up or berating them for not playing properly. It's apparent to me now that this is where the trend I've seen of text-based games berating the player started. Also noteworthy is that Strachey included one of the earliest instances of computer-generated music in Draughts, where, upon the conclusion of a game, the computer would play a short piece of "God Save the King."

One final distinction earned by Draughts is that it's the first video game to directly inspire a future game. Back across the Atlantic, Arthur Lee Samuel created his own Checkers game for the IBM 701 computer, which became a pioneering work in machine learning, as the game's computer opponent could learn to improve its play.

OXO (1952)

A draw - again.

The final game in this overview of the beginnings of video games sees us staying in the United Kingdom. OXO is another software game developed for the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator - try saying that five times quickly), stationed at Cambridge University. Alexander Shafto Douglas was its creator, a computer scientist with particular interest in the relationship between humans and computers. Once again, this is a game that was not created just to be a game.

Like Draughts, OXO is one of the first games to use a graphical CRT display, making it, by my definition, a full video game. The control scheme is of particular interest, though, as it uses a rotary phone dial as the input. I bet some of you younger readers have no idea what a rotary phone dial is. Google it. Since Douglas' purpose for OXO was to be a part of a thesis on human-computer interactions, any sort of difficulty or gameplay wasn't considered; the computer plays a perfect game of Tic-Tac-Toe, meaning that the player can never win. The player was never intended to win.

Final Thoughts

If we want to answer the question posed by the article, there's two possible, more definite ways to answer it, in my opinion. The first is to just start at the very very start, saying that the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device is first, simply because it was the first video game concept ever created, despite the fact that it was never built.

Video games were invented: 25th of January, 1947.

The second, and this is where I land, is to find or develop a working definition of "video game," and determine what's first from there. As said at the start, I use Ahoy's definition, which sees Draughts and OXO as the first true video games. Although, it could be argued that these two games don't perfectly fit his definition, as his fourth point, "Be principally intended for entertainment", is not directly met by either. They weren't intended exclusively as entertainment, but as training (Draughts) or academic (OXO) exercises. Still, there's enough recreational merit in both to meet the definition of a video game, in my mind.

Video games were invented: 30th of July, 1952. 

There were some other games floating around at the same time, like Sheep & Gates, also on the EDSAC, which Ahoy also briefly mentions, but none of those caught much attention and continue to live in obscurity (perhaps something I will seek to remedy?)

That being said, answering the question is not really that simple. History is rarely ever simple. You could look at the pinball industry, or electro-mechanical arcades and say that the seeds of video games are present there, particularly when a computer game like Nimrod was directly influenced by a similar, electro-mechanical arcade game developed a decade prior. When electronics and technology advance, the effects eventually filter down into other industries, and that's what we see with the origins of video games. Computers become more advanced, then get incorporated into arcade games, etc., etc.

Personally, I always find the origins of things fascinating. There's always an opportunity to see the seeds of what was to come being planted. The curious thing with the origins of video games, is that just about every game is an island. They all exist in their own spaces, not influenced by each other, nor do they influence any future games. While Bertie the Brain and Nimrod were publicly displayed, they had no sequels, nor was anyone inspired to do something similar by them. Draughts and OXO were purely academic works, inaccessible to the public and created as part of personal projects - although Draughts did inspire one other Checkers game. The influence of these games lives far more in the realm of computer science than video games. We don't actually see any substantial video game "family trees" begin, per se, until Spacewar! and The Sumerian Game appear in the early 1960s.

What are your thoughts on the first video game? Do you agree with me? Or do you prefer a different game be labelled the "first"? Did I miss a game? I'd greatly appreciate it if you shared your thoughts in the comments. This is potentially the start of a "prehistory revisited" series that would feature more robust and well-researched articles. Let me know if that's something you would be interested in seeing from me.

What's In a Game?

The recent article on Boomerang Puzzle got me to thinking about something. I remarked (rather strongly, at that) that I didn't think Boomerang Puzzle was a video game. Afterwards - and even during the writing process for that article - I got to thinking about what exactly is a video game? How do we define what qualifies as a video game, and what does not? So I decided that it was worth writing about, and here we are.

I'll propose a working definition of both a game and a "video" game in this article. Not only will it be helpful for me going forward, but I also want to present it for discussion. I'm sure I'll miss something, or you, reader, will come at it from a different perspective, which I wholly welcome. Discussion and debate are good and healthy things, provided they don't become hostile.

A Brief History of Games

It's a history blog - you know I'm going to delve into some historical data. The concept of games as a recreational activity is most likely as old as the human race itself (regardless of whether you hold to a creationist or evolutionary worldview.)

One of the oldest known games to us is the Royal Game of Ur, named after the great Sumerian city of Ur (in modern day Iraq) - the same city the Biblical character Abraham likely originated from. It was played all across ancient Mesopotamia as far back as 2,600 B.C., according to archaeologists - old enough for Abraham himself to have played it! It also made its way to Egypt, where a variant arose called the Game of Twenty Squares. Game boards were discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun, and even as far away as Crete and Sri Lanka.

Royal Game of Ur game board, dating back to 2,600 B.C.

The objective of the Royal Game is quite simple: get your pieces from one end of the game board to the other. It's pretty much the same core game objective as Backgammon. Two players play on the same board, consisting of 3 rows of squares, with both players sharing the middle space and owning one of the edge rows. Each player has 7 pieces that they must get from one end of the board to the other. Movement is done by using four-sided triangular dice. Two of the points on these triangular dice are coloured, giving a 50-50 chance of getting a coloured point facing directly up. On a player's turn, they would roll four of these dice, and however many coloured points they get is how many places they move on along the board.

There are some extra rules to make things more interesting, however. The basic form of the game has five special spaces on it - four on the edge rows, and one in the centre square. The edge squares give the player an extra dice roll, and the middle one is a "safe" square. This means that a piece that lands on it cannot be removed. That's where the other main rule comes in - the centre row. Since both players move their pieces along the centre, what happens if a piece lands on the square their opponent's piece is on? Like Backgammon, that piece is kicked off the board, and has to start its course all over again. With all the similarities to Backgammon, it's likely, according to historians, that this game was an ancestor of the family of games which includes Backgammon.

Another ancient game that's possibly even older is Senet. Senet originated in Egypt, possibly as far back as 3,100 B.C.! The rules of this game are more obscured to us today, but it's believed that the game itself had religious significance for the Egyptians. The objective of Senet is, like The Royal Game of Ur, to get all your pieces off the game board. Also like The Royal Game, Senet's game board is comprised of a board of 3 rows, but with 10 tiles in each row. Players would use "throw-sticks," sticks with one coloured side, to determine moves, and avoid hazards on the game board.

Senet game board for Pharoah Amenhotep III, circa 1,390 B.C.

We've already seen another ancient game in action on the blog, Mancala, in my Awari article from last year. Almost unbelievably, there's potential archaeological evidence of Mancala boards dating back to 6,000 B.C.!! This is a mathematical game played across almost the entire world, with variants in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Players take turns sowing "seeds" (stones) into their houses on the game board, with the aim being to capture more "seeds" than your opponent by the end of the game. Rules vary wildly by region, with Kalah, the Western variant Awari was based on, being one of the simpler ones.

Modern Mancala.

All of these games have several common factors, which are the defining characteristics of what a "game" is as its core.

Core Components

All the games I've mentioned above all have several shared components that make them a game. These components are fairly consistent across games historically, and so work as a suitable base from which to define a "game" and, extension, a "video game."

1. Objectives

A game is an objective-based activity. This is fairly self-explanatory. There's always some sort of end goal to be achieved in order to win a game. The Royal Game of Ur and Backgammon's common objective is to get all your pieces on, across and off the board before your opponent does. Chess and Checkers require you to capture all of your opponent's pieces to win. Every kind of sport has an objective, usually scoring more points than your opposition.

Video games are the same in this regard. In an RPG, the chief objective is often to defeat some sort of big-bad to restore peace to the land, such as defeating the Dragonlord in the original Dragon Quest (or Dragon Warrior, if you prefer,) or saving the world from being destroyed by Lavos in Chrono Trigger. Racing games mostly have the same simple objective - win the race. Strategy games, whether real-time or turn-based, ask you to acquire and spend resources to defeat your opponents before they defeat you. Puzzle games - solve the puzzle. The list goes on. Failure to achieve an objective usually results in some form of punishment, like losing a life or losing hard-earned progress, although less so today; there tends to be less harsh consequences for failure in more modern games, but failing objectives is still possible, in most cases.

Even a game like Minecraft, which started life as an open-ended sandbox that doesn't necessarily fit neatly into this category still has objectives - survive, gather resources to create better means of survival, and explore the world. Later on it was given a technical "End" goal (*wink*), but the game doesn't truly end, even after completing this objective.

2. Game "Board"

Every game has a "game board" in some fashion or another. Physical board games are obvious, but even digital and card games have a form of "board" that the game is played on that defines the setting of the game. A real-time strategy game like Age of Empires, or even an RPG like Skyrim has a game map - the digital "board" that the game takes place on. Platformers have their level maps, and so too first/third-person shooters. Puzzle games have more obvious boards in a lot of instances - just look at the grids Match-3 puzzlers like Bejeweled or Jewel Quest are played on. Some of them look like Chess or Royal Game of Ur boards.

Card games mostly have pre-determined layouts of where the main deck goes, where the discard pile is (if applicable,) and where players place certain cards on the table in relation to other cards. Something like Solitaire has a fairly obvious game board. TGCs like Yu-Gi-Oh or the Pokémon Trading Card Game straight-up have mats to use like game boards.

3. Rules & Mechanics

Without rules, there is no order. Just pure anarchy. Some people might revel in that, but not I. Games certainly don't revel in the idea, either. For a game to be a game, it must have both gameplay mechanics, and rules governing the use of those mechanics. The mechanics are kind of like the physical pieces of the game, while the rules put limitations on their usage.

It's a fairly simple area to deal with in board games, and sports as well. The mechanics of Tennis are simply hitting the ball with the racket, with the objective of getting it past your opponent, or forcing them into an error. The rules are what points you get for forcing your opponent's error, how many points you need to win, how many times the ball is allowed to bounce, that the ball must stay in the court, etc, etc... Monopoly has money as a mechanic, and there are rules governing how money can and cannot be used. Of course, we always like to break the rules and cheat, or just come up with our own rules.

Video games, on the other hand, aren't so simple. Depending on the size and complexity of the game, there can be hundreds of mechanics, and thousands upon thousands of rules governing how they can be used. Often the rules and mechanics are far more tightly interwoven, which can result in the lines becoming blurred. Super Mario can jump, but how high? What happens if you tap the jump button instead of holding it down? That piece of equipment can only be equipped by x class in y slot, and has this much protection and that much weight - oh, and it has elemental resistances, too, and a +2 bonus to strength. You can gather food and wood in Age of Empires, but it specifically costs 50 food for a villager, and 30 wood to build a house. Plus, if you don't have houses, you can't get more villagers or other units. Cavalry units are a +2 to population instead of foot units being +1. That AoE example factors in the mechanics and rules surrounding resource gathering, unit production and population - all interconnected and working together. The rabbit hole keeps going deeper and deeper here, so I'll refrain from any more examples, otherwise I'll have to make this into a book.

4. Interactivity

I thought about this one later into the piece while driving home one night recently. One of the big differences between games and other forms of entertainment, like film, art and TV, is the interactivity factor. Don't just watch that sport on television - play it! 

With video games, interactivity is what makes them especially unique. It immerses the player in a world more than any film or show can. You're not watching Frodo Baggins' quest to take the one ring to Mt. Doom - you're playing it, like you're Frodo himself. You aren't watching a sport on TV, you're participating in a simulated match yourself, controlling the players and making strategic decisions. Video games allow the player to be directly involved in making choices that have consequences, either immediate or later down the line, depending on the type of game. If the media being viewed doesn't let you make interactive choices, it can't be a game.

5. It's Just Fun

Finally, games are meant to be fun. If it's not fun, it's work. Games are at heart a recreational activity, meant to bring pleasure, relief and rest after a hard working day. Unless, of course, your work is games, in which case I envy you, or if the game in question is a sport. Recreation and pleasure are certainly present with sports, rest... not so much.

There's certainly other benefits to different forms of games. Sports help with fitness, hand-eye coordination and (sometimes) teamwork. Board games and video games can build critical thinking and problem solving skills, as well as teamwork and social connections in multiplayer settings.

But, ultimately, games are meant for enjoyment. Fun, laughter, getting a good fright, showing off the newest cool thing you built in Minecraft - it's all meant to bring some form of entertainment.

But What About x Game?

Naturally, some exceptions crop up from time to time in today's gaming climate. With such a massively wide scope of programs calling themselves "games" these days, some are going to not neatly fit into the categories I've just described. So, what do we do with these? Are they still games, or something else?

First, let's talk about a game I've mentioned a few times - Minecraft. 

Minecraft doesn't exactly fit into category 1 of objectives. It doesn't exactly have a winning objective (The End notwithstanding,) and is functionally an endless sandbox. However, I think it's still a game. It has objectives, and the player also has freedom to create their own goals, or even their own minigames within it.

Plenty of other games are out there that buck the objective category also. Any kind of sandbox game would suit, SimCity, The Sims - anything without a precise, winning objective. One could even make an argument that many arcade games, like Galaxian or Pac-Man, are endless and without winning objective. However, these all still have some kind of objective. Whether that be to survive as long as you can, beat the high score, or save your city from an alien invasion... what, what? 

Another sort of game that might come up as a "what if" is "walking simulators." You know, games like Journey, Dear Esther or The Stanley Parable. There's not a whole lot to do, but just... walk around. There's still objectives, and these games do have an ending, so I think it's fairly cut-and-dry that they're games.

When it comes to interactivity, I've mentioned several times on the blog the phrase "illusion of choice." This is a term I use to refer to games where player choice is present, but doesn't actually affect the outcome of said choice - by it either being predetermined or completely random. The go-to examples here are Dartmouth Championship Football and PDP-10 Timesharing Basketball. These games have choices the player can make, but the outcome is entirely random - your choice is effectively irrelevant. Are we to still consider these games? I think so, because they still have all the other components of a game, and interactivity is still technically present; the player still has to make strategic choices, even if the outcome is random.

Where I would say the line gets crossed is with a program like The PDP 10 Timesharing World Series. That's a program I looked at way way back at the start of the blog. It's not a game, because you don't actually play anything in it. The only "choice" you make is choosing a seed number at the start of the program, which then simulates a preset game of baseball based on that seed. You don't pitch, don't bat, don't field - no interactivity at all, so not a game.

Even the aforementioned walking simulators win in this category - as they're all about interactivity. You walk through the world, interact with it, maybe solve puzzles if there are any present in the game, but you still get to choose where you go and how you explore the game world.

I don't think there's much in the way of exceptions to the "game board" category, so let's move on to some possible exceptions to the "fun" category.

Starting with that dreaded word... edutainment. Some games are intended for a purpose other than entertainment, which is learning. Education and computers have a long standing relationship that goes back into the 1950s and the formation of computing as a whole, so I think it was a natural inevitability that, once computer games started being made, creating games meant for educational purposes would occur.

Based on their intent, I'd still classify "edutainment" games as games. The purpose of educational games is to inject an element of fun into learning. How fun these games are is up to user discretion. I played educational games like Word Rescue and Math Rescue growing up like they were normal games, not even thinking about the educational aspect. Plenty of us, I'm sure, played Number Munchers while at school. We also had Math Circus, which was great fun.

What's determined as "fun" is more subjective than the other factors. I don't exactly find horror games to be much fun, but many others do. This component is more about authorial intent than the others. If the developer intended for it to be fun entertainment, then I'd still call it a game. Spreadsheets are not a game, however, as fun as I might find them. They are intended for non-recreational purposes - though we can still find recreational purposes for them... that is not what they were designed for.

I think that just about covers it for exceptions and objections I can think of. Please, if you can think of others, leave a comment.

Quick Recap

That does it for now. I just had the idea on a whim and thought, "why not?" These will be good bonus articles that I can put out every so often when I have an idea I want to air out. I have a few more drafted, so if this one works out well, I might consider posting more. There's also a new page on the sidebar where all my thinkpieces and special articles will be housed.

So, to recap, the defining components of a game I outlined were:

1. Objective-based.
2. Set on a "game board," with pieces, physical or digital.
3. All games have rule and mechanics.
4. Games are interactive - you have choice, and it matters!
5. They're meant to be fun!

What are your thoughts on these categories? Did I miss anything? This is open for debate - I'm not saying I'm an authority on this at all, just someone who has ideas wanting to put them out there. I did briefly look at what some other people had said about the topic, but all of these categories are formed from my own thoughts and experiences on the subject, in combination with the research I did on historical games. I'd be interested to know if my thoughts are similar to anyone else's.

If you made it this far, I'm impressed. Know that I appreciate you. Also... if you check back here on a Tuesday, there might be an extra surprise every-so-often. Keep your eyes peeled.