Games Britannia part 2 “Monopolies & Mergers”

hello everyone its me again

during this weeks lesson with Ed we watched the second part of Games Britannia, in this part it showed us all the top board games that are the best in the market up to date, it also went on to talk about how they thought that early television and video games where threatening board games as they may make board games submit in the future due to future technology, this however is not the case as board games have not died, it is still going on very strong as thousands of people still love to play board games even if its as massive hobby where people collect thousands of games or if people just have a few that they play randomly every now and again.

overall the program was fun to watch and was full of facts that i did not know before watching the program i look forward to watching the third part of the series.

Dicing with Destiny

During this lesson with ED we was introduced into the history or gaming and he though there was no better way to do this than by watching part one of three in the series of Games Britannia, this part was called Dicing with Destiny.

This episode talks about medieval and ancient games that have been proven to be played not just for fun, for example Chess and games alike would have been played to work out strategies to fight a battle the opposition this would help the leader or the men understand the battle better and show them how it could or will be fought. however games like this and especially ones related to religion became less and less associated with these things and started to become more associated with gambling.

This then meant that more and more card and dice games where being played rather than board games, this then led to these games being associated with being "evil", this then led to a "stop gambling" campaign was started in 1784, back in those days though winning and losing was completely 50/50 based so one could win a complete fortune or lose it all within a few hours of gambling, a famous quote about this was said by Charles James Fox, he was one of many people who became bankrupt through gambling, he became bankrupt twice due to his gambling habits but he said "winning is the greatest pleasure in life, and loosing is the second". 

we also learnt that very big and famous games where based on other games from other cultures and eras for example the game Snakes and Ladders was based off of a Hindu game the would show you a journey of life across its board, this game was simplified and then adapted wha we now know as Snakes and Ladders.

i really enjoyed this part of the series and it talked about a lot of interesting things and theories tht have led to things as we know them today.

Paidea vs Ludus

today in lesson we learned many things one of those things was that Newman suggests that there are two types of games, these types are Paidea and Lodus in the short paragraphs below I will explain what each of them are.

Peidea

this is games or play that follow no rules, these types of games allow the players to do whatever they like, a simple example of a game that does this would be Minecraft as this allows the player to do or build whatever they want.from the very beginning.

Lodus

this is the opposite to Peidea because within this category the games that fall within it will always have an objective or a goal to complete before progressing through the game, these are games such as Call Of Duty, League of Legends and Need For Speed games, for example within Need For Speed games the player is always taking parts in races to build their reputation up and to buy and upgrade cars they may have or want this means even though a player may be driving wondrously around the map there are races and events for them to take part in at all times.

Newman then goes on to say that there are four different types of play and these are:
Agon      - Competitive play
Alea       - Game play based on chance
Ilinx        -  Game based on the movement within it
Mimicry  -  meaning simulation

	Paidea	Ludus
Agon	Skyrim	Beijing Olympics 2008
Alea	Risk of Rain	Card games (Rummy)
Ilinx	Skate 2	Trials HD
Mimicry	Minecraft	Need For Speed

So these are my notes for week two hope you like it and find it helpful