Chess was a premodern game

Premodern games such as chess assumed a stagnant economy. You begin a game of chess with sixteen pieces, and you never finish a game with more. In rare cases a pawn may be transformed into a queen, but you cannot produce new pawns nor upgrade your knights into tanks. So chess players never have to think about investment. In contrast, many modern board games and computer games focus on investment and growth.

Homo Deus by Yuval Harari, 2015. P. 210