User:NormaAlvarado/games analysis


 * Games Analysis By Norma

POLITICAL GAMING AND SIMULATIONS: REFLECTIVE PRACTICE ANALYSIS

For many years, board games have been based on some political, economic and social experiences and aspects of daily life. On this module we focused on political games in order to analyse its historical background and the ideological assumptions and thus be able to evaluate and critically discuss its techniques, mechanisms and designs. Along the semester, different kind of prototypes were played, such as board games, card games, strategy war games and also a role-playing activity was experienced. With the purpose of exploring the games’ aims, their true meaning and the political lessons that people can learn by playing them, the discussion below will look specifically at four different games: Monopoly,  1776 The Game of the Revolutionary War, Modern Society and finally London

To explore the history, expansion and success of the well known board game called Monopoly is significant and necessary in order to go beyond the game itself and to get a wider understanding of its initial purposes, its different modifications over the years and the impact that this has on society.

Initially, this prototype was created by Elizabeth Margie Philips, under the name: “The Landlord’s Game” with the intention of showing how in order to increase their personal wealth to the maximum, dishonest and unscrupulous landlords or owners finished up leaving in bankruptcy the rest of people, the game was socialist and was designed as educational tool against free market and its capitalists monopolies, therefore it was anti-capitalist manifestation. Approximately in the 50’s the game became really popular in America but this version was completely opposed to the Elizabeth’s anti-capitalist form, after some years the invention was called Monopoly and became one of the greatest symbols of capitalism, where the players’ principal aim is to fight to get properties and wealth and to plunge into bankruptcy the other players. Thus, the game created to illustrate the capitalism’s immoral or unscrupulous features, soon became capitalist or as well called pro-capitalist, its meaning totally changed and suddenly Elizabeth’s name was erased from the Monopoly’s history.

Monopoly, no doubt, reflects the best and worst of capitalism, either by the loser or winner. It is impressive to see how popular and recognised this game is, in the seminar most students had played this game at least once in their lives, and if anyone had not done it before, for sure have heard of it. Monopoly’s pieces and circle board are well designed; everything is explained in the guidance and also in the information provided on the cards and board, therefore the rules of the game are easy to follow and understand. On the other hand it is important to mention that the players have the opportunity to analyse their next movements or actions in advance (buy or sell properties or change houses for hotels) or along the game, without having the need to stop and think in order to make decisions, unlike games as chess.

By playing this game the capitalist philosophy has been expanding worldwide, people learn how to manage and be cautious with their money, how to negotiate and how to take risks, but at the same time it has a negative impact on players as it promotes egoism, and encourage consumerism and also people to become more and more greedy without thinking about the ones that are in bankruptcy. “Cuba, the U.S.S.R., and other Eastern Bloc countries outlawed the game for fear it would corrupt the public with positive notions about a free-market economy. Soviet leaders even tried coming up with their own Marxist-themed spin-off games designed to highlight the virtues of frugality.”

It is a game that causes great fighting and keeps all players sitting around the board for hours, people normally take the capitalist role incredibly serious, but it is essential to highlight that the behaviour of every single player is different, and realism should be judge from the “player’s behaviour”. It is enjoyable and sociable, it also Excites and engages people in such a way that sometimes, players add additional rules and create plots against each other; it is clearly a game of trade, ability and enjoyment. In Monopoly, luck is a relatively important because the player's progress depends on the dice; the only improvement I will suggest is to explain the probability of the two dice.

From a capitalist game we moved into military strategy games, one of them is 1776 the game of the revolutionary war, which is a turn-based combat game; each turn is divided into two participant sections and each section is divided into two stages: movement phase and combat phase. This prototype is more complicated to understand and to follow, unlike Monopoly, this game needs to be constantly guided by the rules sheet, the reinforcement or time record track is the table that provides all the information about the different dates and the places where players have to allocate the new troops or reinforcements, as the game is a bit complex the rules are lengthy but well explained.

The board and the pieces fit perfectly for the purpose of the game, it has diverse scenarios and highly developed rules. It is noteworthy that with the pieces is possible to convert a big army into small troops, in order to perform different displacements. Regarding to the board, it is a hex grid map where is easy to find the ports, the thirteen colonies and Canada, it is also possible to locate the rough terrains and American rivers; which play an interesting role in the game’s mechanism, they recreate the real difficulty of the troops to cross a river, a rough terrain or a mountain in war, this way the game combines abstraction and realism, at the same time the fact of presenting  the British army as the more powerful on the scenario seems realistic as does the appearance of reinforcements in different dates (turns).

The game is enjoyable and sociable to play, and it was very interesting to see that the Americans troops were headed by American students, but even so not everyone was fully involved in the game, the players’ behaviour demonstrated that just few of them took the warrior’s role seriously. By playing this game people learn to take into account the geographical obstacles that arise in war and also how to avoid or pass through them to reach targets set, simultaneously in the decision-making processes faced, players learn how to take strategic decisions and how important is to sacrifice some troops to accomplish the goals established. In few words as 1776 is principally focused on the military matters of the American Revolutionary War, people learn only about war strategy and absolutely nothing related to politics.

The only technique employed in the game to model the subject of American Revolutionary War is the geographic board, and its hex grid design, which to certain degree recreates the distances between important locations, but unfortunately it is impossible to identify significant features that symbolize the political struggles of the revolution, this is the game's principal problem, which needs to be solved so that the content and game mechanics make allusion to its name in all sense. Regarding to the pieces, it is necessary to improve them as the material is not favourable when the troops are numerous, in order to avoid the stacks falling over the board, with coins of the same size as the cardboard pieces would be easier to make the stacks. Another disadvantage is the limited numbers of opponents, because 1776 is a game of only two sides; one in the position of British army and another in the American military troops, in the seminar was perceived that the role of some players could create limitations in the role of the others of the same group, thus generating difficulty to take decisions in group, thus it will be interesting to play with more opponents. To finish with the reflection of this game was easy to identify that the creator Avalon Hill made the game easy for the Americans to win it could be perhaps for loyalty or patriotic reasons. After having played various board games, an innovative card game as Modern society was played and analysed. This prototype focuses principally in the different issues and political agendas of our current society, players take the role of politicians or statesmen and find the way to exert influence on the basic values of modern society, the creator Jussi Autio divided those basic values in four different categories “each symbolizes a specific focal point of civil interest, and so one value is freedom-orientated, one is environmentally minded, one is in line with economic growth and the fourth concentrates on conservative tendencies”. On the board each value is represented by pieces of different colours and depending on the cards that are on play, participants get points and the pieces move to the left (negative) or to the right (positive). Thus, it is important to mention that all the scores and movements on the board are according to the influence of the cards on the table.

The rules and aims of the game are well explained in approximately twelve pages, every single feature is described, the same as the game’s mechanism and the numerous symbols on the cards. However, there are several elements and too much information in the instructions and also on the cards; as all the scores, the positive and negative movements on the board and the different images. Due to the complexity of the prototype’s mechanics and its design, the game’s different stages and punctuations are quite difficult to understand and follow, thus creating confusion with the outcome and the victory points. On the other hand, it seems that the creator did not follow the traditional mechanics of board games; he has brought up an innovative idea, in which cards made up the board, but at the same time the fact of having too many elements on the table is not really practical. This prototype combines abstraction and realism by showing to certain extend how law is developed in modern society and its positive or negative impact on economic, social, political and environmental spheres, also by exposing the different issues that are on the governments’ political agenda. Nonetheless, in the game players are not able to build a modern society. However, during the seminar was possible to perceive that players were focused on getting victory points to win the game, instead of concentrating on building a modern society.

By playing this game people can be aware of the current social issues, besides that, it helps individuals to get a wider understanding of how some legislations can affect or influence some values on society, and moreover to be ready for unexpected decisions or actions. Therefore, it is possible to say that the prototype employs quite good techniques to model modern society, but the other hand the decision-making process faced by the real-life politicians or statesmen is not reflected in this game, as players do not follow their own ideas and the cards could be about any issue, which means that participant’s decisions are limited. Hence, this aspect needs to be improved, creating a mechanism in which players could pick a law in order to reflect their individual point of view and perspective regarding to the current reality. As mentioned above the game has many elements and too much information on the cards this could be eliminated with the purpose of making the game more sociable and enjoyable. London was the last board game played; its principal aim is to build up a new city from the Great Fire’s ashes and make profit of it. In this prototype several of the most recognized monuments and buildings are represented in the cards. London allowed players to employ their talents and recreate different roles. However it has some problems and needs few improvements. To start it is important to mention that the design of the game's mechanics which includes board, pieces and cards, fit perfectly for purpose as all the colours, materials, images and the attractive map employed are well explained and designed but there are too many pieces on the board when playing the game.

By playing London during the seminar was easy to appreciate that for students the prototype was not enjoyable and sociable at all, this might be due to the reason that it was their first time playing it, and it took quite long to understand the rules and its mechanism but as students played the game, it became easier to follow. On the other hand two different features created confusion between players; first the need to identify which are permanent and the single effect card, as it is necessary to play the game and secondly the difficulty to learn the two different point system.

London is a quite realistic game, since it provides a credible view of London’s history and it recreates how difficult is to invest and to accumulate capital as it also brings and accumulate poverty. It also reflects the variations in the cost of land in different parts of London. At the same time this game simulates the decision-making processes faced by real life protagonists quite well as it recreates the actual problems of balancing necessary buildings in order to reduce poverty or just nice and striking buildings which give points but are not really essential. In this sense players have to state priorities and take the best decisions; getting loans and spend the money on monuments and luxury and extravagant places or try to deal with the city’s well development and at the same time fight against the poverty problem.

The techniques employed to model the game’s chosen subject are realistic since it demonstrates that every single decision or action have consequences and sometimes the decision making process is not easy, as to attain one aim it is necessary to give up another. The political lessons that students can learn by playing London the board game is that the resulting actions when you develop a city can generate profit or gain incontrollable debts, and also reduce or increase poverty, but it is highly important to keep poverty under control. Thus, this prototype taught students that every move has to be calculated and well planned in order to attain the best results. The only improvements I would suggest are to create a system to know who is winning during the game and also players should be able to pick some cards prom the discard stack. To conclude it is essential to mention that the module of Political Simulations and Gaming, allowed students: first, to understand how some episodes of history are recreated in political games and simulations and also to identify how different games are related to both historical and contemporary political struggles. Secondly, it taught to analyse the effectiveness and credibility of the prototypes and lately, this module made us re alised that board games are very sociable, unlike computer games. The prototypes played were fun and educational.
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Bibliography

Autio., J. (2009) Modern Society. [Online] Available from: kulkmann’s gamebox http://www.boardgame.de/reviews/modsoc.htm [accessed 1 may 2011]

Autio., J. (2009) Modern Society. [Online] Available from: Board Game Geek  [accessed 3 March 2011]

Bills., D. (2001) Monopoly Probabilities: End-of-turn and "Land on" statistics/frequency analysis for Parker Brothers Monopoly Game. [Online] available from: Durango bills http://www.durangobill.com/Monopoly.html [accessed 9 February 2011] Callen., M. (2007) In Defense of Monopoly: analysis of the strategy. [Online] available from: Board Game Geek http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/250081/in-defense-of-monopoly-analysis-of-the-strategy [accessed 25 February 2011] McMahon., B (2007) War-opoly: How History’s Most Popular Board Game Helped Defend The Free World. [Online] available from: Mental floss  [accessed 5 February 2011] Tom., j (2005) 1776 The Game of the Revolutionary War Review. [Online] available from: Board Game Geek  [accessed 18 February 2011]

Webb., D. (2011) Review of Martin Wallace's London [Online] available from: Nerd bloggers  [accessed 25 March 2011]

Back ground paper: Fight For Libya

is an Avalon Hill-inspired war game that models the 2011 Libyan Uprising. Players take the side of either Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan Army or the rebel forces of the Libyan People’s Army. Players fight gain control of the Libyan government. The game includes ground troops of two different kinds, simulated air strikes, and conditions that simulate the imposition of a NATO no-fly zone over Libya.

This game is most inspired by the Avalon Hill war game 1776. Fight For Libya is our attempt to bring the revolutionary war aspects of 1776 into a modern context through a simulation of a more recent conflict, as well as an attempt to improve some of the its noted flaws – namely, to make Fight For Libya a simulation that is specific to the Libyan uprising and not just a set of game mechanics that could be applied to any martial conflict. The two games utilize many of the same game mechanics, including dice rolling with combat results tables, hex-and-counter movement, and variable player powers.

The hex-and-counter game board was chosen because it allows players to move in almost every direction at the same speed. Whereas a board with square markers only allows pieces to move equally in four different directions – or unequally in eight directions if diagonal movement is allowed, since pieces move faster when traveling on a diagonal than they do while moving in rank and file – the hex grid allows pieces to move at equal speeds in six of the eight possible directions. While still not perfect, this provides a compromise between the equal four directions and unequal eight directions of a square grid board. The use of dice to determine the outcomes of battles and other situations in the game was chosen to provide an element of chance and randomness into the game.

By adding combat results tables to the use of dice, more powerful players are provided with a statistical advantage over weaker players, while still allowing for a certain amount of chance. Finally, variable player powers were chosen to provide differentiation between the two armies in the game. Gaddafi’s army is much more powerful, with loyal, trained regular army troops and the ability to perform air strikes. However the less loyal and relatively untrained militia members of his army can defect quite easily to the rebel army, giving the rebels a much larger but much weaker and less trained fighting force.

The most helpful things that came out of play-testing Fight For Libya were improved differentiation between the two different armies and clearer, streamlined rules. In the first design of the game, each arm contained three different kinds of pieces – infantry, artillery and planes. After playing through this version of the game several times, it was decided that the two armies were too similar to each other and did not accurately reflect the differences between the two armies in the conflict that was being simulated. It was at this time that the decision was made to have only two types of troops – trained and untrained – as well as the inclusion of a mechanism for troops to defect to the other side. Play testing also helped to streamline and improve the mechanisms for air strikes and the imposition of the NATO no-fly zone.