The Games Portal
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A game is a structured type of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).
Games are sometimes played purely for enjoyment, sometimes for achievement or reward as well. They can be played alone, in teams, or online; by amateurs or by professionals. The players may have an audience of non-players, such as when people are entertained by watching a chess championship. On the other hand, players in a game may constitute their own audience as they take their turn to play. Often, part of the entertainment for children playing a game is deciding who is part of their audience and who is a player. A toy and a game are not the same. Toys generally allow for unrestricted play whereas games present rules for the player to follow.
Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational, or psychological role. (Full article...)
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The board game Monopoly has its origin in the early 20th century. The earliest known version, known as The Landlord's Game, was designed by Elizabeth Magie and first patented in 1904, but existed as early as 1902. Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo's Law of economic rent and the Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value taxation. A series of board games was developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. By 1933, a board game already existed much like the modern version of Monopoly that has been sold by Parker Brothers and related companies through the rest of the 20th century, and into the 21st. Several people, mostly in the midwestern United States and near the East Coast of the United States, contributed to its design and evolution.
By the 1970s, the false idea that the game had been created by Charles Darrow had become widely believed; it was printed in the game's instructions for many years, in a 1974 book devoted to Monopoly, and was cited in a general book about toys as recently as 2007. Even a guide to family games published for Reader's Digest in 2003 gave credit only to Darrow and none to Elizabeth Magie or any other contributors, erroneously stating that Magie's original game was created in the 19th century and not acknowledging any of the game's development between Magie's creation of the game and the eventual publication by Parker Brothers. (Full article...)Did you know? -
- ...that in 1967, Mac Hack became the first computer chess program to defeat a person in tournament play?
- ...that a reviewer called the narrator in the game Defenders of Ardania (pictured) "booze-obsessed", with a voice that sounds like "a Dalek doing an impression of Sean Connery"?
- ...that snooker player Stephen Maguire won his first ranking tournament at the 2004 European Open in Malta?
- ...that the Crawford-Gilpin House is alleged to have once changed owners due to being lost as a wager in a poker game?
- ...that The Big Bang Theory episode "The Santa Simulation" features a Christmas-themed Dungeons & Dragons game?
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![A screenshot showing a small red blob hurling across a level in the shape of an elephant head](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/The_Splatters_03.jpg/445px-The_Splatters_03.jpg)
A screenshot from the Xbox Live Arcade game The Splatters showing a level in play
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