About game systems

A collection of components that are especially conducive to the creation of new games that use the components, are often referred to as a Game System. Many of the of the items in the above list are Game Systems.

Ron Hale-Evans (rwhe) has a four part series of articles on game systems in the Game Journal Archives consisting of an an introduction, and articles on card game systems, board game systems, and what he calls low-tech systems. In these articles, Hale-Evans discusses, among other things, dice games, games played with pencil and paper, hand-based games, and issue of the licensing and ownership.

Game systems can categorized by their licensing model. Some systems are public domain such as Piecepack Game System and a standard deck of playing cards, while others are proprietary systems, such as Icehouse Pieces and Orion with various amounts of licencing protection. Also, there are game components to which rights are reserved by a company, that are flexible enough to be easily used to play other games. Two examples of this are the card decks for Stick 'Em and Rage. Even well known boards from games like chess and Go are used for a variety of other games, though since these components require others in order to play another game, would not be considered a game system on their own.

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