Asian Origins Of Gaming Exhibited 36
thrashor writes "A major upcoming exhibit of the Asia Society in New York City explores the Asian origins of games - including many of the favorite board games in the English speaking world. The exhibition looks at how games have been as important as trade and religion in transmitting cultural ideas. Backgammon, dice games, chess, and of course (my favorite), Go/Weiqi/Baduk are explored, among many others." The exhibition preview mentions: "Illustrating the importance of games in early societies, mastery of weiqi was considered by Chinese people to be one of four essential cultural accomplishments along with music, calligraphy and painting."
Younger kids (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Younger kids (Score:2)
Heh, no they didn't. It's not an exhibit for Asian Origins of Bad Gaming.
Re:Asia does not equal Orient (Score:4, Insightful)
Those of us who have bothered to RTFA are aware that it refers to Persia about as often as China. I hate Slashdot posters who write kneejerk posts based on their personal prejudices without bothering to find out whether their complaints actually have any basis in reality.
Re:Asia does not equal Orient (Score:2)
Re:Asia does not equal Orient (Score:5, Informative)
Southwest Asia
It can also be called the Middle East, although that term is occasionally used to also refer to countries in North Africa. Southwest Asia can be further divided into:
Anatolia, which includes the nation of Turkey
The island nation of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea.
The Levant or Near East, which includes Syria, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq.
The Arabian peninsula, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen and occasionally Kuwait.
The Caucasus region, including the nations of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
The Iranian Plateau, containing Iran and parts of other nations.
Also see Gulf States, for a different grouping involving several of the above countries.
Re:Asia does not equal Orient (Score:1)
Think of it like this... when I say "look at that asian kid", do you look for a middle eastern guy? No! You look for a Chinese/Japanese/etc. guy.
The point is, when someone says "asian", our minds instantly think about south*east* asia.
-nova20
Re:Asia does not equal Orient (Score:2)
Re:Asia does not equal Orient (Score:2)
Since when have China and Japan have been considered to be in southeast Asia? :)
dice (Score:3, Interesting)
"God does not play dice" (Einstein)
More seriously, did they invent the die? Or just the game of dice? Inventing the die would be very impressive.
freechess.org (Score:2, Informative)
If you're looking for a competitive game of chess try www.freechess.org.
Re:freechess.org (Score:3, Informative)
Power Up Book (Score:4, Informative)
A nice companion to the material in the exhibit might be the upcoming book from BradyGames, Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life [yahoo.com] . This book, coming out in September, examines not only the history, but also the reasons for the success of Japanese video games. I'll definitely be adding this one to my collection!
Go ... perhaps the best game ever. (Score:5, Informative)
American Go Association
http://www.usgo.org/index.asp [usgo.org]
International Go Federation
http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/igf/index.htm [nihonkiin.or.jp]
The Interactive Way To Go
(excellent tutorial)
http://playgo.to/interactive/ [playgo.to]
Tips for Learning Go
http://go.kestrel.nu/ [kestrel.nu]
Interestingly enough, it remains the one game that cannot be won by brute force number crunching. Even an average player can beat the best Go programs. As such, I conisder it to be a useful tool in the search for meaningingful computing.
Go is a whole new challenge
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/go.html [aaai.org]\
If you don't Go, you'll never get anywhere!
Re:Go ... perhaps the best game ever. (Score:2)
Re:Go ... perhaps the best game ever. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Go ... perhaps the best game ever. (Score:1)
Do they pay you guys or something?
Maybe I should start a club of people that plugs Monopoly every time a board game or chess story comes up.
Re:Go ... perhaps the best game ever. (Score:2)
Go Vs. Chess (Score:1)
Re:Go Vs. Chess (Score:2)
Re:Go Vs. Chess (Score:2, Interesting)
It just seems odd that every Go site that I've visited has something against Chess.
Re:Go Vs. Chess (Score:2)
Re:Go Vs. Chess (Score:2)
Re:Go Vs. Chess (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, i think i have read somewhere that Xiangqi is the most played board game in the world. But that is bound to happen to whatever is the most populare thing in China.
Offtopic? (Score:1)
Did the first post in this thread have several links to Go websites that devalue chess?
Re:Offtopic? (Score:1)
Re:Go Vs. Chess (Score:3, Interesting)
Next on the agenda is 4D Tic-Tac-Toe.
Re:Go Vs. Chess (Score:2)
Because alot of times we think that we can become the more populare by dropping down someone (or thing) above us a notch or two. Sadly, that seems to be human nature -- to some extent. So when people see that chess is more populare than GO, they think by bashing chess, they can make GO more populare.
It is sad that this is the case, but please do not judge the message by the messanger (i know it is hard). No matter how poorly GO is presented, it remains a fun g
Re:Go ... perhaps the best game ever. (Score:2)
Sorry, sometimes I'm seriously syntactically challenged.
Open Source/Free Asian games and their rules (Score:3, Informative)
Hanafuda Card Game (Windows) [theflowercards.com]
Hanafuda plugin for Flowersol (multiplatform) [telestream.com]
Go Trainer (Windows) [smart-games.com]
Go SGF Editors (multiplatform) [gobase.org]
Online Go IGS Clients (multiplatform) [gobase.org] Ask people for a teaching game after learning rules, practising
The Interactive Way to Go [playgo.to] Easy to follow online tutorial (requires Java)
Go An introduction [britgo.org] Outlines basic rules in easy to understand comic
American Go Association [usgo.org] The info hub of American Go players
Shogi Variants (Windows) [netspace.net.au] Japanese Chess, Shogi
Ricoh Shogi's Page [ricoh.co.jp] Rules of Shogi (harder to learn rules than Go, IMHO) [netspace.net.au]
Online Mahjong on Yahoo! Games [yahoo.com] Requires Yahoo! account, web-based
Rules of Mahjong [yahoo.com] this isn't the Shanghai Mahjong you know! Real Mahjong is like poker, not a tile matching game.