User:HADDISUR RAHMAN/Reflective Practical Analysis

University of Westminster Department of Politics and International Relations: theoretical analysis of political gaming with the critical analysis of playing political simulations SPIR608

Reflective Practical Analysis BY HADDISUR RAHMAN

Throughout this brief analysis, I will portray the positive and negative features of four different games with a special emphasis on its integrity and effectiveness as a model of its intended subject. The analysis will evaluate and contrast the different strengths and weaknesses of each of the games examined. It will be a reflection on the theoretical debates and socio-historical perspective within which the 4 games are situated.

Monopoly was the first game played and is a redesign of an earlier game called ‘The Landlord's Game’, first published by political activist Elizabeth Magie. It was made to expose the parasitic or bloodsucking (in terms of money) role of landlords. The game was originally educational where the purpose of the game was to teach people how monopolies end up bankrupting the many and giving extraordinary wealth to one or few individuals. Magie was a proponent of the Single Tax put forward by famous author Henry George. She designed it to show how the Single Tax would work and players could choose to play under regular rules or alternate "Single Tax" rules. The mascot for the game, known as Mr. Monopoly or Rich Uncle Moneybags, is an elderly moustached man in morning dress with a walking cane and hat. This very image palpably resembles the typical capitalist entrepreneur. By playing the game and understanding the rules, my belief is that it is a very pro-capitalist game which promotes capitalism and forces people to become very aggressive. Capitalism is a global system, with the rule of the market imposed everywhere, usually by force. The mechanism of monopoly is very simple as you go around the board accumulating properties or places. The aim is for each player to make profits through charging rent on their commodity or land and to expand their empire. The game naturally makes you want more and more. In real life one single service can gain all our profits, our labour power. Since labour power cannot be separated from people, we are literally bought and sold in the market place. To prevent stagnation, capitalism must constantly expand. Thus we must also consume as well as produce.

The game makes me want to extricate as much money as you can from your fellow people. The role of the dice can be seen as having luck on your side. This is also true in real life as not all make it to the top and become wealthy. “Hard work and an arduous pursuit of the Capitalist Dream won't always lead you to success”. Some may argue that it had anti-capitalist origins when it was first created to be an educational game; however, now most would argue that it only promotes capitalism. As capitalism is a social relation between classes its continuation requires the participation of both exploiters and the exploited. Whilst playing the game I was lucky to have more money than the other players and even though they had less money than me, I still wanted them to land on my property and therefore make myself richer. Though monopoly has now become a family game to be played in the evenings, it is clear that it has a subliminal message to advocate capitalism. Just as in real life “profit is gained by the capitalist class because they can make more money selling what we have produced than it cost to buy on the labour market. In this sense, the working class are exploited by the capitalist class. The capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class whilst reinvesting some of their profits for the further accumulation of wealth” just as in the game the person with a lot of money and property will cont After playing this game many times, though it is enjoyable, I could clearly see that it is a game that can someone how terrible capitalism really is and how it makes everyone become broke (except the one person who wins by exploiting everybody else).

The second game that was played in class was 1776. 1776 is an Avalon Hill board war game developed by Randell C. Reed and originally published in 1974. It was different to monopoly as it is a two player game played on a hex grid map which included thirteen colonies and Canada. One player gets to be the British army and the other would play with the American army. The British have more numbers; however, in the game this may not always be an advantage. Altogether each player gets 6 moves each. The Americans would try and hide from the British and try to avoid confrontation as this could eliminate their army. For the British to win (in the basic game) they must have their army situated in more places in America than the Americans. Different places are worth different number of points so you have to strategically attack places that will gain you a greater advantage at the end. It is a game that tries to portray the military aspects of the ‘American Revolutionary War’. There is a basic game, which I played in seminar with the basic rules. You can also play the basic game with advanced rules which I played later on and then there is a campaign game.

The game tries to be a realistic simulation of the strategic simulation faced by the British and Americans in the decade when America won their independence. Once you read the rules the game is very easily understood. The basic game with the basic rules gets you into the practice of simulation gaming. When playing the game with the basic rules in seminar, I personally found it quite boring and saw it as a standard role of the dice and move game (based on luck due to the role of the dice) with no real simulation of the ‘American Revolution’; however, once playing the game with the advanced rules later at home you can see that the game becomes interesting and a strategic war game but I still saw no real connection with the American Revolution therefore it is quite abstract but there was no real sense of realism. The basic game of 1776 is a single scenario game where the players are taught basic movement and combat. One player executes his/her movement phase and then combat phase (which is done by the role of the dice). So though the British may outnumber the Americans, the outcome of the combat lies with the role of the die. Their opponent then executes their movement and combat phases. By playing the game with the advanced rules which, in my opinion, is much more fun and interesting gives you scenarios that provide you with additional complexity and realism. The advanced game consists of 4 scenarios. The invasion of Canada, the Greene’s Southern campaign, the Saratoga campaign and finally the Virginia-Yorktown campaign. So the advanced game builds on everything that I played in the basic game; however, it introduces advanced combat options: supply, fortifications, entrenchments, magazines, artillery units, dragoon units, militia units, and Indian units. These added dynamics deepen the game play and produce an enhanced game experience. This would obviously be better than the basic game as mentioned before; the basic game is not much more than movement and fire.

The way in which I would be critical of the game is that it didn’t give me any sense that it was about the American Revolutionary War. Monopoly seemed to create that false consciousness, where you got the feeling as if you were a real capitalist, however 1776 could have been any old war game and the map could have been based on any country. I also think that the number of pieces that you play with is far too many and when it is your turn to move your troops sometimes it is difficult to see who you have moved and who you have not. Also the pieces could have had a magnet on them to keep them together but apart from this, a very fun and strategic game which I will be playing again!

“Give me Liberté or give me death”. This is the message attributed to Liberte board game, however that may be quite extreme as the game is based only on the French revolution and the not the American one! Liberté is a game which covers the French Revolution from 1789 and the meeting of the Estates General to the Directory and Bonaparte’s coup d’état in 1799. The design of the box looked fantastic to me and inside, pieces included a game board showing the map of France divided into many provinces, wooden pieces which portray the three factions in the game, the Radicals (red), the Moderates (blue), and the Royalists (white), and also a deck of cards. The rules are provided in English, German and French and they also provided some reference sheets.

The aim of this game is to accumulate as many victory points as you can by having the most influence in the parties in government after each of the four elections. When playing we could score points by winning battles or winning the election in specific provinces. The game is played in four turns, each ending with an election. The game was driven and put together by the cards, personality, club cards or event cards. Personality cards represented major figures in the revolutionary period; for example, Robespierre, Danton and Necker. Each personality card commands support for a particular faction. Club cards had 1 block of a particular colour, but can be applied to any region. Event cards, are only to be used after the first election, and in my view, make the game much more interesting as you are allowed do something special; for example, the most feared card is terror card which enables a player remove a whole stack of blocks from one province and guillotine an opponent's personality card.

So we would continue until one faction ran out. Each province in turn gets to vote. The person with the tallest stack in the province will allow that particular faction's marker to be moved up on the election track. A key point that players had to keep in mind was that Paris was special, the faction and the player get as many votes as the highest stack, so we battled for Paris many times. If by chance there was a tie, there would be a tiebreaker and players could win by giving up a personality or club card of the appropriate faction from their set of cards in front of them, known as their display cards. Normally the tie was broken and that player got the vote. The person and faction with the most votes formed the government (though we did not get this far due to time constraints) and the player with the most blocks of that colour score points.

As this is a strategy game, there are many tactics that I have learnt and tried to use. I had to be aware if which faction was most likely to win the election and how much of a stake each player had of that faction. This obviously depended on the cards that a player had in their hand so I didn’t know which one they were going to play or which faction they were going to use as the game allows you to be all three factions. So I had to decide to build up my hand first or to get in early with the cards I already had. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the best cards but I still thought it would be an advantage to start building my factions earlier. It's would have been useful to have multiple cards of the same faction colour (which I didn’t) in the same region as this would have allowed me to fortify my position in that province. To evaluate the game on a whole, it was a very fun, enjoyable and strategic game. It was effective in that it did model its chosen subject; however, it was abstract in the sense that a player could be all three factions at one time. And because a player did not align him or herself with one faction it moved away from realism as you didn’t fight for one group. On the other hand a revolution devours its own children and the distribution of factions was quite realistic. Also depending on who you were you would have a different amount of influence in France (geographically) which also made it quite realistic. So a game I would most definitely play again.

The fourth and final game which I chose to write about and to evaluate is ‘Operation Pale Charlie’. This is a multi-power politics simulation game of 1950’s Vietnam. I would say that it was the most enjoyable game that I have played in this module to date. It is slightly different to the games that I have played and logged so far as it is an interactive simulation. The game can involve 13 to 25 players who are then split into 7 groups representing different countries or people: France, China, Russia, USA, Britain, French Indo-China and of course the Vietminh (otherwise known as the Indo-Chinese Communist party). The game involved people making and breaking alliances and also preparing and negotiating policies during the heat of battles and events. Our class game featured ‘Operation Castor, The Battle of Dien Bien Phu, The Suez Canal question and the Geneva Peace Conference. I along with George (my classmate) decided to be the Vietminh. We were working towards national victory in a chaotic and uncertain time.

National victory was expressed in terms of victory points. And the ‘victory points were an expression of international prestige. The victory points were given if you achieved certain aims, and each country was given a sheet with their aims. Some were common and others different. It was up to each country how much they revealed. The victory points were there to try and persuade you and the country you were representing to move in a certain direction. As the Vietminh, our main victory points came from: ‘becoming chair of the Geneva Peace Conference’ (100 points), attending the peace conference and ensuring there was an agreement and also ensuring that 60% or more of Vietnam remained in communist hand. George and I thought it would be good to become allies with our communist brothers, Russia and China and so we formed an Alliance. Suddenly we were told that the French landed paratroopers in North Vietnam. Though they told us that these troops should not be seen as an aggressive move we decided to launch a full force attack with the help of Russia and China and eventually their troops retreated. This was also very realistic as the “French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 signalled the end of French influence in Indochina.

The battle fought around Dien Bien Phu was the last major campaign by a European state in the region”. France then allied with America, Britain and French-Indo China. As the Vietminh we had 200 victory points to give away. We gave away points to French-Indo China to give us their vote to become the chair of the peace conference and with the votes of our communist brothers (Russia and China); we would have a majority of votes to become chair of the ‘Geneva Peace Conference’. We decided that we would not co-operate with the USA who after all entered the war to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. American leaders feared Communist forces would gain control of Vietnam. After that, nation after nation might fall to Communism which was seen as the domino theory which was first mentioned in a speech made by President Eisenhower on the 7th April 1954. “Communism is a political and economic system that the United States strongly opposed. Vietnam had been split in half in 1954, after fighting a war to gain independence from France. When French forces withdrew, Vietnamese Communists gained control of North Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the North Vietnamese Communists. South Vietnam had a non-Communist government. This government was weak. But the United States supported it in order to keep the Communists from taking control of all of Vietnam”. We asked Russia to arm their nuclear warheads and put forward a serious threat towards the USA that they cannot have a majority share in Vietnam. We agreed that they would have 40% with the communist countries having 60%. So in the end we achieved more than the Vietminh did in real life. Because of the time restraint we couldn’t actually play the game in full. As a political simulation the game is very realistic as you get the feeling as if were negotiating, for real, with different countries.

The way in which I would improve and be critical of ‘Operation Charlie’ is that the game could have introduced some sort of ‘chips system’, for example poker chips, in order that people can keep track of their game score. Also it seems to be more of an interactive simulation than a game and after playing it once, more than likely the players will start gaming the game, so changing the rules after every game could also be an improvement. The game for me combined abstraction and realism well. Abstraction in the sense that your choices do not have human consequences and realism in the sense that you couldn’t see each other’s victory conditions so it was realistic in how the blocs worked. In addition the game used ‘living labour’ rather than ‘dead labour’ which seemed to be congealed in a board game. There could have been tape recordings and press releases to give the game more flavour;  however, as mentioned previously this was by far the most enjoyable game that I have played on the module. You learn many political lessons such as the importance of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy which helps you create alliances. On the other hand you see that countries are always looking out for their own interests!

To conclude, this has been a very enjoyable module and though we played many games, I could clearly see that these boards all have a political message, ranging from exploitative capitalism to cooperative socialism. Some had realist sense to them; however, most were probably more abstract than the game creators thought they would be. They were all very strategic and more than anything I have to agree with Hungarian Psychology professor, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow which he defines as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it”. So in all the games I played, with especially the role play simulation (Operation Pale Charlie/Battle for Dien Bien Phu), I could see that there was a loss of self consciousness, and only when this happens a game becomes very exciting, interesting and fun!

SOURCES USED Board game geek http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame

Cardshot http://www.cardschat.com/f13/poker-capitalist-anti-capitalist-99791

History Learning Site http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/dien_bien_phu.htm

Pevans http://www.pevans.co.uk/Reviews/Liberte.htm

Teaching Expertise http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/mihaly-csikszentmihalyis-theory-of-flow-1674

World Sociaism http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/articles/whatiscap.html

Wiki http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_the_US_become_involved_in_Vietnam