The "evolution stopped" at chess and we still redo this board with units over and over again adding more units, cities on some grids, diplomacy, but in the core it's the same kind of game. No revolution of any kind here, for some, unknown to me, reason...

Maybe this outcome is somewhat inevitable, given the way the human mind works?

A strategy game usually involves a substantial set of possible game states which the player must understand and reason about. The player must be able to evaluate the current state of the game and plan a sequence actions which will allow them to transition from the current state to a more favourable state in future turns.

As it is not going to be practical for the player to maintain the entire state of a complex game in thier head, it seems natural to introduce some sort of visual representation for them to refer to. It may be possible to represent the game state in some sort of spreadsheet-like form, for example, but this is hardly ideal when the state is large and complex. We then begin to look for a more intuitive way to represent the game state "at a glance". Research shows that humans are able to distinguish certain characteristics more quickly and reliably than others. Some relatively efficient ways to visually encode information for interpretation by humans include:

• Colour
  
• Size
  
• Shape
  
• Spatial (position/orientation)

Given all of this, is begins to seem natural for humans to gravitate towards the traditional "game board" representation. As creatures used to living in three spatial dimensions, a 2D projection for our game board is perhaps the most practical in the general case as it is easier to look at, navigate and physically construct than a 3D game board. It's just an efficient way to represent the multidimensional space of possible game states.

The "evolution stopped" at chess and we still redo this board with units over and over again adding more units, cities on some grids, diplomacy, but in the core it's the same kind of game. No revolution of any kind here, for some, unknown to me, reason...

Maybe this outcome is somewhat inevitable, given the way the human mind works?

A strategy game usually involves a substantial set of possible game states which the player must understand and reason about. The player must be able to evaluate the current state of the game and plan a sequence actions which will allow them to transition from the current state to a more favourable state in future turns.

As it is not going to be practical for the player to maintain the entire state of a complex game in thier head, it seems natural to introduce some sort of visual representation for them to refer to. It may be possible to represent the game state in some sort of spreadsheet-like form, for example, but this is hardly ideal when the state is large and complex. We then begin to look for a more intuitive way to represent the game state "at a glance". Research shows that humans are able to distinguish certain characteristics more quickly and reliably than others. Some relatively efficient ways to visually encode information for interpretation by humans include:

• Colour
  
• Size
  
• Shape
  
• Spatial (position/orientation)

Given all of this, is begins to seem natural for humans to gravitate towards the traditional "game board" representation. As creatures used to living in three spatial dimensions, a 2D projection for our game board is perhaps the most practical in the general case as it is easier to look at, navigate and physically construct than a 3D game board. It's just an efficient way to represent the multidimensional space of possible game states.

The "evolution stopped" at chess and we still redo this board with units over and over again adding more units, cities on some grids, diplomacy, but in the core it's the same kind of game. No revolution of any kind here, for some, unknown to me, reason...

Maybe this outcome is somewhat inevitable, given the way the human mind works?

A strategy game usually involves a substantial set of possible game states which the player must understand and reason about. The player must be able to evaluate the current state of the game and plan a sequence actions which will allow them to transition from the current state to a more favourable state in future turns.

As it is not going to be practical for the player to maintain the entire state of a complex game in thier head, it seems natural to introduce some sort of visual representation for them to refer to. It may be possible to represent the game state in some sort of spreadsheet-like form, for example, but this is hardly ideal when the state is large and complex. We then begin to look for a more intuitive way to represent the game state "at a glance". Research shows that humans are able to distinguish certain characteristics more quickly and reliably than others. Some relatively efficient ways to visually encode information for interpretation by humans include:

• Colour
  
• Size
  
• Shape
  
• Spatial (position/orientation)

Given all of this, is begins to seem natural for humans to gravitate towards the traditional "game board" representation. As creatures used to living in three spatial dimensions, a 2D projection for our game board is perhaps the most practical in the general case as it is easier to look at, navigate and physically construct than a 3D game board. It's just an efficient way to represent the multidimensional state space of a game.

The "evolution stopped" at chess and we still redo this board with units over and over again adding more units, cities on some grids, diplomacy, but in the core it's the same kind of game. No revolution of any kind here, for some, unknown to me, reason...

 

Maybe this outcome is somewhat inevitable, given the way the human mind works?

 

A strategy game usually involves a substantial set of possible game states which the player must understand and reason about. The player must be able to evaluate the current state of the game and plan a sequence actions which will allow them to transition from the current state to a more favourable state in future turns.

 

As it is not going to be practical for the player to maintain the entire state of a complex game in thier head, it seems natural to introduce some sort of visual representation for them to refer to. It may be possible to represent the game state in some sort of spreadsheet-like form, for example, but this is hardly ideal when the state is large and complex. We then begin to look for a more intuitive way to represent the game state "at a glance". Research shows that humans are able to distinguish certain characteristics more quickly and reliably than others. Some relatively efficient ways to visually encode information for interpretation by humans include:

• Colour
• Size
• Shape
• Spatial (position/orientation)

 

Given all of this, is begins to seem natural for humans to gravitate towards the traditional "game board" representation. As creatures used to living in three spatial dimensions, a 2D projection for our game board is perhaps the most practical in the general case as it is easier to look at, navigate and physically construct than a 3D game board. It's just efficient.