International Society for Board Game Studies

The International Society for Board Game Studies is an interdisciplinary group dedicated to research on board games and the history and development of board games around the world. Some of the research is very general and examines board games as a part of play and learning in different cultures. Other studies relate to specific board games and their evolution; such games include backgammon, mancala (wari, oware, awele, et. al.), Halma (Chinese Checkers), the game of India (Parchesi, Ludo, et. al.), checkers, chess, and others.

The BGS group holds research seminars every year, meeting each time in a different country, usually in April.

The 2006 colloquium is is planned to be held at Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil.  For information, go to www.boardgamesstudies.org.

Previous Colloquia

The 2004 meeting was held in the United States for the first time, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 16-20.

Previous colloquia have been held in Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, The Netherlands, and England.

• Phil Orbanes, CEO, Winning Moves, and former V.P., Parker Brothers:
  The History of Parker Brothers: From Tiddledy Winks to Trivial Pursuit (Sat. afternoon)
  Insights into George S. Parker & the company he created, based on Phil Orbane’s V.P. experiences and research; and excerpts from his latest book.

• Nicolas Ricketts, curator, Strong Museum, Rochester, NY:
  Privilege: A Socialist Card Game (Sat. afternoon)
  The story of a failed Socialist card game from the 1930s, a five-suit bridge game with drawings by famous artists, including American illustrator Rockwell Kent, social caricaturist Peggy Bacon, political cartoonist William Gropper, Georges Schreiber, the lesser known Esther Vance, and with designed number cards by the game's inventor, Robert Morey.

• Nick Sauer, Games Historian:
  The Legacy of Sid Sackson--A Life in Games (Sat. afternoon)
  A tribute to the late Sidney Sackson, prolific American games inventor whose legacy lives on in the homes of game players around the world.

• Dr. Irving Finkel, Keeper of Western Asiatic Antiquities, British Museum:
  Parchesi--The Game of India: Origins and Variations (Sat. evening)
  No matter how you spell it or what you call it, Parcheesi, India, and Ludo have become game staples the world over. Hear how it all began.

• Bruce Whitehill, Games historian and author:
  The True Origins of Twenty Classic American Games (Sat. evening)
  The beginnings of Clue, Careers, Twister, Stratego, and others, and the real origin of Monopoly, Scrabble, Battleship, Cootie, Othello, Chinese Checkers, and other classic games.

• Visit to the Franklin Institute Science Museum
• Tour of the Newman Paper Mill. The mill takes cardboard from recycling bins plus papers from the IRS and other companies, dissolves everything into a slurry, then turns it into fiberboard, etc., for game board and boxes
• Guided walking tour of historic Philadelphia
• Visit to the Henry George School Museum and birthplace, for a presentation on the connection of Monopoly to Atlantic City.
• Visit to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For Information
For information about the organization and its professional journal, and for links to other academic sites supporting board game research, visit the Board Game Studies website at http://www.boardgamesstudies.org.

Previous BGS colloquia have been held in:

• 2005: Oxford, England

Future proposed sites are:

• 2006: Bel Horizonte, Brazil
• 2007: Vienna, Austria

The Board Game Studies colloquia began as Board Games in Academia, following a preliminary gathering in 1990 in England, hosted by Irving Finkel, curator (keeper) of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum.

To propose a site or host a future assembly, contact info@boardgamestudies.org

The Board Games Studies colloquium is a multi-cultural event in which university professors, museum curators, and others involved in games research in the international community speak on various aspects of board games and board game study. Participants also include historians, authors, game inventors, collectors, and game company directors and representatives.

The list of presenters below is only a partial one--apologies to previous participants whose names are not included. (If you have been omitted, send your name, the title of your paper, and the colloquium year of presentation to me, I will add it to the list.)

Previous colloquia participants have included:

Irving Finkel, Curator at the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities of the British Museum, in his talk, “Origins of Snakes and Ladders,” described how Ludo (which means “I play” in Latin) was played using 16 slave girls dressed in different color clothing. On another occasion, he spoke on “The Tibetan game of Sho.”

Caroline Goodfellow, Curator of Dolls and Toys at the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, chose the topic, “The Story Line: The Late 18th Century Race Game,” explaining how many of these early games dealt with teaching morality; it was interesting to see how British games like Virtue Rewarded and Vice Punished (from 1812) were the games on which the earliest American board games (from the 1840s) were based.

Professor G.G. Bauer from The Salzburg Institute for Games Research and Games Paedagogy, proposed the question, “Did Mozart play board games?” (The answer was “Yes.”)

Dr. Ulrich Schädler, from the Department of Archaeology of the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, Germany, spoke about Astrological Chess in the Middle Ages, during which period the value and durability of a game depended not on game play, but on the significance (religious, astrological, etc.) ascribed to the game. As the Director of the Musée Suisse du Jeu (Swiss Games Museum), in Montreaux, Switzerland, he presented a paper on “ The Talmud, Firdausi, and the Greek Came ‘City’.”

Spartaco Albertarelli, from the Italian games company Editrice Giochi, spoke about how Monopoly was played as a folk game, and explained that the Italian MONOPOLI is the only one in Europe not controlled by Parker Brothers because it is a distinct version, having evolved separately with different rules. The amount of money given at the beginning of the game depends on the number of players; players receive a property at random before the game starts; and the money paid from taxes and utilities is a fixed amount, not based on the throw of the dice. A few of these Italian rules are used as options in other Monopoly games. At another seminar, his topic was “Senet: a different ‘gaming concept’.”

Thierry Depaulis, noted games historian from France, gave an intriguing talk about “Asymmetrical Blockade Games,” wherein one player controlling between three and five hunters attempts to trap an opponent or force an opponent to repeat the same move, while the single hunted piece tries to pierce (get through) the line of the hunters. Mathematically, the hunters always win.

Alex Randolph spoke about man’s need to organize his universe, and how games imitate the chaos of life (the rules are our need to make order). (Alex, one of the world’s best-known game inventors, explained to me how he invented Stop! as a blockade game that gives the hunted a better chance of success.)

Adrian Seville, of City University, London, spoke on “Tradition and Variation in the Game of Goose.”

Pascal Romain, of Bordeaux Archeological University, presented “Representations of Board-games in Antiquity and their Signification.”

Professor Avi Fraenkel, of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, gave a talk on “A Selection of Mathematical Board Games.”

Alex de Voogt, from the University of Leiden, in The Netherlands, provided more research in his area of specialty, with “Distribution of Mancala Games.” Another year, he spoke about “Isopaedia and the Indian Ocean.”

Alessandra Rizzi, of the Benetton Foundation, Italy, presented "Reflections on Board Games at the End of the Middle Ages"

Prof. Jean Retschitzki, of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, spoke on "Strategy of Expert Awele Players."

Nobusuke Sasaki, from Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Japan, presented "A Computer Analysis Towards a Classification of Games."

Thierry Wendling, of the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, expounded on “The invention and transmission of Chess knowledge.”

Prof. R. Vasantha, from the Dept. of History at Sri Krishnadevaraya University, Anantapur, India, provided “An inquiry into the earliest game boards, pieces, dice from India.” On another occasion, she explained about “Deciphering the board games invented by the Raja of Mysore.”

Dr. Bernward Thole, head of the Deutsches Spiele-Archiv (German Games Archives) in Marburg, Germany, explained “The classification of modern board games” as employed at the archives.

Prof. Dr. V. Balambal, of Chennai, India, talked about the “Special features of some traditional board games of Tamilnadu.”

Rudolf Rühle, historian from Bonn, Germany, talked about “Games and game producers in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).”

Dr. Maria Schetelich, of the Institut für Indologie at the University of Leipzig, Germany, spoke on the “Ritual context and ritual aspects of Indian chess (caturanga) games.”

Peter Lemcke, director of the Deutsches Spielemuseum (German Games Museum), in Chemnitz, Germany, talked about “Tasks and developing a European center for the research of play.”

Prof. Dr. Hiroyuki Iida, of the Computer Games Research Institute at Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Japan, gave “A logistic model of a game`s elaboration.”

Dr. C. Rajendran, from the Department of Sanskrit of Calicut University in Kerala, India, spoke about “Exploring the possibilities of finding out the nature of chess in its original form.”

Monica Sabino, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, informed about “The use of board games in management training.”

Erik Ostergaard and Anne Gaston, both from the Danish Society of Ancient Games, introduced “Daldos--an almost forgotten board game.”

Dr. Arie van der Stoep, from The Netherlands, talked about “The influence of the draughts on chess.”

Tom Werneck, of Germany, spoke about “The inventor of a game as a shaping factor for the recent development of a culture of games.”

Beniamino Sidoti, Italian journalist, gave a workshop on "The game as a species of story-telling."

Chris van de Rietgave a talk entitled "Ancient Board Games by the Number."

Peter Michaelsen of Denmark gave a talk entitled “On some unusual types of stick dice.”

Mayari Granados, from Germany, presented a portion of her doctoral thesis concerned with “Symbols of war on games tables.”

Walter Joris, of Belgium, talked about “The difference between board games and pen and paper games” and told us about his new book of pen and paper games.

Sybille Aminzadah, from Germany, discussed "The significance of players for the reception and further development of a contemporary game: 'The Settlers of Catan.'"

Bruce Whitehill presented an overview of the American game industry in "American Games: A Historical Perspective." On another occasion, the subject was the “American Origins of Halma, forerunner of Chinese Checkers.”

2004 Papers and presenters

• “Playing and puzzling with letters”
  --Hendrik Cornilly & Piet Notebaert; The Belgian Studycentre for Boardgames (Belgium)
  People like to play word games. There’s significance in the way letters must be placed on the table or on a specific board. The Belgian Studycentre for Boardgames developed a classification system....
• “’Juden Raus’: history’s most infamous board game”
  --Andy Morris-Friedman (USA)
  The story of a Nazi propaganda game against Jews, explained in a context of other racist games.
• "The oldest game boards of Europe: games and gaming on Minoan Crete"
  --Niklas Hillbom, Dept. of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University (Sweden)
  An examination of the large, fabulous game board from Knossos and the more elementary, popular cup-holes found all over the island.
• “Some reasons behind the success of the ‘Settlers of Catan’”
  --Sybille Aminzadah (Germany)
  What makes the surprisingly popular contemporary board game so attractive to players?
• “A typology of distribution: the case of Maldivian board games"
  --Alex de Voogt, Professor, University of Leiden (the Netherlands)
  A combined study of five board games in one region, the Maldives, and in one time period pointing at five different distribution patterns.
• “Parchesi--The Game of India: Origins and Variations”
  --Dr. Irving Finkel; curator/keeper, Dept. of the Ancient Near East, The British Museum (England).
  The early history of one of the oldest and most widely played games in the world. (Dr. Finkel will also talk about the upcoming exhibition of games at the Asia Society, in New York.)
• "Francis Willughby’s Book of Games—A Seventeenth-Century Treatise on Sports, Games and Pastimes"
  --David Parlett, author of the encyclopedias of board games and card games, and inventor of the international classic, "Hare & Tortoise" (England)
  In the years before his death in 1672 at age 34, Francis Willughby recorded descriptions of a wide range of board games, card games, field games, word games, and children’s games.
• “The True Origins of Twenty Classic American Games”
  --Bruce Whitehill; Games historian and author (USA)
  The beginnings of Clue, Careers, Twister, Stratego, and others, and the real origin of Monopoly, Scrabble, Battleship, Cootie, Othello, Chinese Checkers, and other classic games.
• “Games of the Indigenous People of Brazil”
  --Mauricio de Araújo Lima (Brazil)
• “The Old Dutch Game of SLABBERJEN from Welcheren”
  --Fred Horn (Holland)
• “Strategies for the game of CONGO”
  --Jim Polczynski (USA)
• “Voyagames: the Go-case”
  --Dr. Ulrich Schaedler; Director, Musée Suisse du Jeu (Switzerland)
  Why the game of GO did not spread to become a vital part of everyday gaming outside East Asia. (Dr. Schaedler will also announce the opening of the exhibit, “The American Game”, at the Musée Suisse du Jeu--the Swiss Museum of Games, La-Tour-de-Peilz.)

To learn more about the International Society for Board Game Studies, go to
http://www.boardgamesstudies.org
or contact info@boardgamesstudies.org