Games Britannia Monopolies and Mergers

 this was taken from https://learn.ucs.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_12740_1%26url%3D

Three-part series presented by historian Benjamin Woolley about

popular games in Britain from the  Iron Age to the Information Age, in

which he unravels how an apparently trivial pursuit is a rich and entertaining 

source of cultural and social history.

In part two, Woolley traces the surprising political and social impact

that board games have had in Britain over the last 200 years. It was

the British who developed the idea of the board game as an

instrument of moral instruction and exported it to America. There, it

was adapted to promote the American Dream of free enterprise and

economic success.

This crusading element in board games is perhaps best exemplified by

the best-selling game in history - Monopoly - which celebrated wealth

and avarice in the wake of the Great Depression. Ironically, this most

capitalist of games was derived from a radical socialist game first

published in Britain in 1913.Woolley goes on to trace the development

of board games through their post-war heyday, when together with Cluedo and Scrabble,

Monopoly formed a holy trinity of British family

favourites that endures to this day.

Now in the information age, board games have evolved to include

fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons - an American

invention. The British continue to produce niche political games like

War on Terror which plays on satire, but mainstream British games

designers have joined the computer games revolution. 

Greg Rutter comment

Board games have made a huge impact over the last 200 years. A lot of games today are on computers but you can still see some elements of board games in them for example something like Skyrim has taken some elements from dungeons and dragons(the heroes fighting monster for one example of this), and Skyrim also uses ideas from monopoly ( buying buildings and then charging rent for them).



 

This was taken from  http://boardgames.about.com/od/risk/a/risk_history.htm

  1957 - A representative of Miro approaches Parker Brothers with La Conquete du Monde (French for "The Conquest of the World"), a game designed by Albert Lamorisse. Lamorisse (a movie writer and director best known for The Red Balloon) and Micheal I. Levin are co-credited with the game design at BoardGameGeek.com.
1959 - Parker Brothers first publishes the Risk Continental Game in the United States.
1986 - The game Castle Risk (played on a map of Europe) is published.
1993 - The rules for Secret Mission Risk, which had been a variant in Europe, are added to the United States edition.
1999 - A limited edition of Risk is published in France, as 10,000 copies of Risk Edition Napoleon are released. An expansion in 2000 added the Ottoman Empire.

Greg Rutter comment
This shows how board games have evolved since 1957 to make the well known game of risk.

Some computer games have taken a risk style for game play for example ruse. ruse uses military forces to capture towns and risk uses military forces to capture countries.