The Game of Risk
Madison Kjeldgaard
The game of Risk was a very valuable addition to our class. I never thought a board game that I played hundreds of times with my family would teach me so much global politics. When I played the game the goal was total domination and while this modified game incorderated a lot of the same aspects it was also entirely different. I was on the black team and our goal was to maintain peace and try to make twelve alliances. Why this seems like an impossible task considering the nature of the game it was actually quite a common victor. When my group first got this assignment I thought it was going to be impossible because typically people like to keep things interesting and I thought that game would trend towards war. And while in a lot of aspects it did, a large number of alliances were made. The fact that each group had their own objective made the game extra interesting. In the real world countries have their own agenda and sometimes it might be clear but a lot of times it's not. For example red and blue both had to try and take the Ukraine but neither party knew the other's goal so there was constant fighting. As a group trying to create peace, this complicated things. How do you convince a group to give up on their goal? Yellow also having the power to break off and start a new nation threw in an interesting twist. If that had happened the black team most likely would have won as the potential number of alliances would have risen.
This game taught a lot about decision making and how it can affect so many different variables on the global stage. While this was a much simpler version of anything that happens in the real world it still demonstrated how different states have their own agenda and act to benefit that.
I believe the game of risk we played in class clearly demonstrates how complicated world politics are. Many countries do not know the goals and motives of other countries and cannot figure out what to give them in order for them to reveal it. As a member of the green team, acting as the traditional team in the normal game of risk put a huge target on our teams back. We had to constantly act with force which made us seem very aggressive. This made it hard for us to form alliances which could relate to real world international relations.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comments and lessons learned from the game. Even though it is a simple game, it shows a lot about our world politics. For me, it is also interesting to see the inner urge of most people to win. If we did not have this natural inborn character trait, world politics would also look different.
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