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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesGames have changed their materials, settings and technologies over thousands of years, but play has not moved in a straight line from board to screen. Ancient race games, familiar puzzles and role-playing ideas have echoes in electronic games, while board, card and social games remain forms of play in their own right. The evidence for the earliest games is incomplete, so their history is best understood through what has survived—and what it can, and cannot, tell us.
What can we know about the earliest games?
Archaeologists find evidence of games in boards, pieces, images and occasional written records. These traces are uneven: a durable game box may survive for millennia, while a board drawn on the ground or a game woven into cloth can disappear. Some objects that resemble boards may not have been used for games at all, and the names and rules of many ancient games are unknown.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s October 2018 essay on games from ancient Egypt and the Near East identifies the earliest known boards with parallel rows of holes in the Neolithic Near East, while cautioning that their use as game boards is uncertain. The British Museum’s 2021 overview likewise presents games with long histories without settling on a single, undisputed “oldest game.” What survives—and how confidently it can be identified—shapes the story.
How did ancient board games work?
Many preserved Egyptian and Near Eastern games were race games: players moved pieces along a route of holes or squares, often using a randomizing object to determine how far to move. The evidence for these tools spans different periods. The Met documents Egyptian throw sticks from the Predynastic Period, approximately 4400–3100 BCE. Cubic dice have a less certain origin; the Met essay says they probably came from the Indus Valley. Sheep or goat knucklebones offered four distinct faces that could also serve as randomizers.
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Senet and Mehen in Egypt
Senet was popular in Egypt from the Predynastic Period to at least the Late Period. Its board has three rows of ten squares, and its pieces travel in an S-shaped direction. During the New Kingdom, Senet acquired an association with the journey to the afterlife. That religious meaning belongs to a particular period in the game’s history; it should not be treated as a complete explanation for why people played it across all eras.
Mehen, whose name means “the coiled one,” used a spiral board shaped like a snake. It was played in the Predynastic Period and Old Kingdom, and its imagery had religious associations. These games show how a familiar activity could occupy both everyday and ritual settings. The Met notes that depictions of play appear on tomb walls and papyri, and that games moved between Egypt and the Near East through trade and military contact.
The Royal Game of Ur and other race games
Twenty Squares was played across the Near East. Its Sumerian form, known as the Royal Game of Ur, is attested among objects deposited in the Royal Graves of Ur around 2600 BCE; the game later appeared in Egypt. “Royal” refers to the name commonly used for this form, not to proof that only royalty played it.
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Other boards have prompted modern names that can sound more certain than the evidence allows. “Hounds and Jackals,” for example, is one of several names for a game also called Fifty-eight Holes. The Met notes that the names and rules of some popular games remain unknown. Finds from Jiroft, Iran, around 2000 BCE, share structural characteristics with backgammon-like boards; that resemblance is not evidence that modern backgammon itself existed then.
How did games change from physical play to video games?
The transition was not a replacement of one kind of play by another. It was a shift in materials and settings, accompanied by the reuse and adaptation of older ideas. A board game made pieces and routes visible on a shared surface; electronic games could put those mechanics on an arcade screen, computer or home system. The medium changed, but races, puzzles, words and imagined roles remained useful ways to organize play.
| Form of play | Setting or medium | Examples of mechanics or ideas | What the evidence establishes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ancient board games | Boards and pieces; depictions also appear on tomb walls and papyri | Race routes, moving pieces and randomizers | Surviving objects and images, with names or rules uncertain for some games (The Met, 2018) |
| Arcade games | Electronic cabinets in venues including bars, restaurants and arcades | Familiar play settings with a new electronic medium | The Strong describes pinball’s presence in these venues as part of the context for arcade cabinets (2013) |
| Computer and home video games | Computer displays and home-system prototypes | Demonstration, multiplayer play and multiple programs | The Smithsonian National Museum of American History identifies early examples, including OXO, Tennis for Two and the Brown Box prototype |
| Analog and digital games today | Tables, cards, puzzles, arcades and electronic screens | Word play, spatial puzzles and role-playing structures | The Strong describes influence in both directions and continued analog play (2013) |
When did video games begin?
There is no single milestone that captures every meaning of “beginning.” Early computer games appeared in research and demonstration settings, where they could attract public interest and test computer capabilities. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s overview identifies A.S. Douglas’s OXO, made as part of his Cambridge doctoral work in 1952, and William Higinbotham’s Tennis for Two, created on an analog computer and oscilloscope display in 1958.
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The Smithsonian also describes Ralph Baer and colleagues’ “Brown Box” as a prototype for a multiplayer, multiprogram video-game system. This is a different kind of milestone from a research game: it points toward a home system designed for more than one program and player. These examples are useful markers, not a complete chronology of electronic play or proof that one invention alone created video games.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Which older games and ideas influenced modern video games?
The Strong National Museum of Play’s Jon-Paul Dyson, then director of its International Center for the History of Electronic Games and vice president for exhibits, wrote in 2013: “The roots of video gaming go deep into the longer history of games, puzzles, and play.” The museum illustrates that continuity through several kinds of influence:
- Arcade settings: pinball was already played in places such as bars, restaurants and arcades before electronic cabinets became familiar there.
- Races and movement: race-game mechanics existed well before racing video games, even as electronic games transformed their presentation.
- Puzzles: the Strong identifies pentomino puzzles as an inspiration for Tetris.
- Words: electronic word games draw on analog word-game predecessors.
- Role-playing: the museum describes Dungeons & Dragons as shaping video-game structures such as experience points, fantasy settings, levels, bosses and non-player characters.
These examples describe lines of influence, not a claim that every later game has one direct source. A game can combine inherited mechanics with new technology, rules and ways of playing together.
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Why do older forms of play still matter?
Physical and digital games are not mutually exclusive stages in a story of progress. A board, a set of cards or a puzzle can still provide face-to-face play; an electronic game can mediate play through a screen. The Strong’s account emphasizes that board games, card games, puzzles and social party games persist in their own right, even as earlier forms inspire new ones.
Looking across the history of games reveals both change and continuity. Materials and venues shift—from holes and boards to arcades, computers and home systems—while players continue to race, solve, form words and inhabit imagined roles. Because the ancient record is partial and some rules remain unknown, the clearest history is not a list of definitive firsts, but a record of how people have repeatedly found new ways to play.
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