I will be discussing and looking in-depth into an ancient game entitled ‘The Royal Game of Ur’. I will also be outlining the in game rules as well as analysing the featured mechanics and dynamics of the board game itself. From this I will be discussing the outcomes of my own iterations to which I have implemented into the game. I then tested with follow peers on how this changed to games mechanics and dynamics to make for a more interesting game for better or for worse. Throughout my study and later iterations of the game a significant amount consideration to the study and work of Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek into the ‘MDA’ (Hunicke, 2004, pg.1-2) framework is used and put into the thought process upon analysing this game.
The story of ‘The Royal Game of Ur’ started around the early to mid 1920s where explorer Sir Leonard Woolley first discovered the game within the Royal Tombs of Ur in Iraq upon undertaking a team based exploration. It is said to be one of the oldest known board games that has been discovered which dates all the way back to 2600BC. Sir Leonard Woolley excavated a number of different game pieces and game boards within the Royal Tombs, which included binary dice as well as a number of black and white counters. The layout of the board is somewhat abnormal to your typical modern board game although it still makes for an interesting game dynamic. The gaming board layout consists of what Becker calls a “larger body” (4x3 squares) and a “smaller body”, 2x3 squares which connected with a “narrow bridge” of “two squares”, 2x1. (Becker, 2008 pg.11-14)
