Science

7 July 2021 Science

Artificial intelligence beats humans at dice game Qwixx

Susann Janetzki is a games enthusiast and researcher. The 19-year-old programmed an artificial intelligence for the dice game Qwixx. With success: Janetzki won the state competition in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for Mathematics/Computer Science at ‘Jugend forscht 2021’ with her project.

2 July 2021 Science

Collab: board game for interdisciplinary research

The game Collab aims to improve communication and cooperation between researchers from different disciplines. It is more reminiscent of a method for activating conversation than a classic board game.

14 April 2021 Science

Games with dice that score points promote maths skills

If you want your children to develop maths skills, you don’t need to rely on mathematical learning games. Simply playing basic board games with number dice is enough, rather than using games with colour or symbol dice. That’s the conclusion of a scientific study.

1 January 2021 Science

Historical themes in board games: playing history or pushing wooden blocks?

How can history and games be connected? Why are historical themes sometimes helpful? Why can authors, publishers and designers also get their fingers burned by them? Daniel Bernsen answered these and other questions about history in board games in his guest article.

6 October 2020 Science

Poker and Skat: More skill than luck

Are Skat and Poker games of luck or skill? According to economists at the University of Heidelberg both card games have a luck component of over 50 percent, but skill prevails in the long run.

27 April 2020 Science

Spear’s Games: Virtual journey through the history of games

The German Games Archive is the memory of the games industry. It stores more than 30,000 board games. Due to Corona, it is currently closed. With Google Arts & Culture, interested parties can still browse the shelves and dive into the history of Spear’s Games, a family business that made games history.

1 January 2015 Science

Protection from dirt: archiving games

Games have many enemies: fingers, sunlight and protective films, for example. If you want to enjoy your games for a long time, you should therefore bear a few things in mind. In an interview, Stefanie Kuschill from the Deutsches Spielearchiv Nürnberg reveals why she replaces zip bags with parchment bags, why protective films are dangerous and why professionals only handle games with gloves.

27 March 2014 Science

Diagnosis: Player

Why do people play? And what happens in our brain when we play? We go on a search for clues and have discussed this, among others, with neuroscientist, psychologist and author Manfred Spitzer.

The game archivists

Cynthia Schönfeld and Stefanie Kuschill share a common passion: board and card games. For them, however, these games usually end up not on the table but in display cases. Schönfeld is the head of the Deutsches Spielemuseum Chemnitz, and Kuschill is the head of the Deutsches Spielearchiv Nürnberg. In the interview, they reveal how to store board games properly and how board games have changed over time.

John Forbes Nash Jr.: Nobel laureate and game designer

The economist John Forbes Nash Jr. invented the game “Hex” in 1947. The problem with the game: if both sides play optimally, the winner is predetermined from the start.

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