RetroGaming

I think gaming as a recreation without gambling didnt really come about until the 1940s - 1950s, right? Commonly, of course.

Historically, games have always been about recreation. Gambling saw an opportunity and just fucked many games because, hey, quick money! Some games were made with the full intent of being for gambling, but those are beside the point.

Anyway, outside the places where the dumb English puritanism* took over, you can see games being culturally significant throughout history: Go in SEA and Mancala in Africa, for instance. When important people received important guests (like royalty receiving other royalty), one or two matches of a board game like chess were common. Interestingly, Age of Empires 2's intro cutscene, and Total War: Three Kingdoms' Cao Cao trailer, should give a proper idea of that. Playing games wasn't exclusive to the powerful, of course, but it goes to show that games were deemed important even by them.

I remember a saying that roughly translated into "kids play, adults play games" - which also gives an interesting insight into how the English language disregards any difference between the two types of play (and theatrical plays, for that matter). In portuguese, it's the difference between brincar (kid play) and jogar (play a game)

* English puritanism went full on "anything fun = devil", games being included there, whether they had gambling or not. To them any idle time should be used for praying, work or something work related.