Ariel Ulrich, Blog Post #5

Real World Value of Risk versus Prof. Shirk's Modified Risk

    Last year, my friends and I played a lot of board games online because of COVID-19. One of these games was Risk. I had never played Risk before, though I did know what it was, and I remember that after playing for the first time, I didn't really like it all that much. World domination seemed like a strange goal to me and almost too simple. Everyone goes around, rolls the dice, fortifies, attacks, conquers and repeats. There doesn’t seem to be much substance to the game. However, I think that the modified version we played in class was much more interesting and had quite a few skills to teach. 

    The most beneficial change between regular Risk and Professor Shirk’s modified version (which I will refer to as PS Risk from here on) was the objectives of the game. With regular Risk, the objective of each opponent is world domination. There is nothing of substance here. Oh okay, so you want to rule the entire world. Congratulations, your mission aligns with every other super villain out there. It seems just a bit too childish. However, with the PS Risk, each person/team has a different and secret goal. These include things like holding a territory with the permission of the other teams or creating twelve alliances, which is a great deal more difficult than it sounds. These objectives resemble a much closer image of what real life international politics are like. Everyone has an objective and more often than not those are all different or have different motivations. Additionally, in real world politics, you can only ever really have an idea of what someone wants, you can’t ever know for certain. The different objectives and because they are undisclosed to anyone not on the team, makes the game a lot more interesting and provides a better scope into world politics.

    One of the most important aspects of real world politics is the deals and alliances that are created. In Risk, there are little to no alliances made and everyone is always in a state of war with each other. I do recall that when I played with my friends we would talk about alliances and if they were against the rules or not, but in the end you can’t be anyone’s ally all the way through because there is only one person left on the board. In PS Risk, this looks very different.  Allies and neutrality and the state of war are all a big part of the game. This to me resembled a very true part of global relations, the processes that states have to go through to do literally anything. Just like mirror to real life, in PS Risk a team has to propose an alliance or neutrality or declare war and then the other team has to accept it or not and you also have to be neutral first before declaring war or proposing an alliance. All of this takes work too. You have to negotiate with the diplomats and other teams to try to find a way that you can come to an agreement, or not depending if you want to declare war. It is complicated and can get a little messy, and this perfectly describes international politics. They are messy and take effort and negotiation and compromise and discussion, and PS Risk does a good job of teaching and demonstrating that vital detail of global politics.

    Now, PS Risk is not the perfect tool because at the end of the day there is a winner and loser and that is not necessarily true with international politics. The rules were also not perfect, but I think this unintentionally showed how the rules of real life politics are also not perfect. Almost always, there are possible loopholes. I do feel though that PS Risk adequately simulated international politics and relations and helped the players understand how to negotiate and compromise and strategize on a global scale. PS Risk also demonstrated how important it is to try to not just understand your own objectives but also understand what it is your opponents and allies are trying to achieve. Risk is a fun, simple game, but PS Risk is a much more complicated and interesting game that gives a good amount of insight to what international politics truly are.