Watching Games Britannia Part 1. “Dicing with Destiny”, made me realize games have been common amongst, and important to humans ever since ancient times.
As was mentioned, this is because humans, unlike animals, suffer from a unique weakness; which is 'getting bored'. Thus games were always useful, as they are today, to keep people occupied and entertained, even though they mostly meant wasting one's time whine gaining nothing from it.
Some games were made made only for high class people and were later released to the public. It doesn't seem like we kept this tradition though, as now most games are aimed for the general public.
Games were also seen as spiritual objects in the past. This could be seen as snake and ladders had no goal beyond 'enlightening' the player. Another example was where a high class person was found buried with a game having pieces laid out - as if they're telling a story related to the person's life.
The simpler (in terms of playability) of ancient games seem to have survived the times and made it all the way to our time. Games such as snakes and ladders, and connect four or o x o, which had their original ideas created back in ancient times, are still commonly sold or played nowadays. Complex games were found too, however it seems like only the simpler games made it through to today.
On another note, something that I found amusing was that the element of randomness in games (through the use of dice) eventually led to Gambling, and thus, the dice were seen as evil.
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