The Games People Play
I like playing board games.
Well. Not all board games.
I love the cooperative board games, where you work together and win or loose together. We have this game called Pandemic, we bought it for Our Son for Christmas 2020, mostly because we think we’re funny. Turns out, it is a very fun game. The object is to save the world from a pandemic. You draw a card that gives you a specific role to play, which gives you specific actions you can take throughout the game that help the team. You work together and win or loose as a team. We have another one that the object is to go into a haunted house and survive the journey…..but partway through, one of you (through the draw of a card) turns and is then in league with the entities that haunt the house. Your object then becomes to kill off all your teammates, their object is to survive. This one is half cooperative, half run-for-your-life.
Another category of game is the win-or-loose games. Many, many fall under this heading. Dominoes. Ticket to Ride, where you are trying to make train pathways from one destination to another, the object being to make the most pathways. Seven Wonders, an awesome game where you collect materials needed to build one of the seven wonders of the world. I think many, if not most, card games fall under this category. Like Cribbage. Hearts and Spades may depend on your mindset. Are you trying more to win or are you trying more to keep your opponents from winning? I honestly don’t mind loosing these games (naturally I would rather win!) because for the most part you have a decent chance of winning or loosing on your own merit, your own strategy, your own effort.
The other type of game is the Screw Your Neighbor game. I don’t do well with these. Monopoly is a great example of this. I am good at Monopoly when I choose to be. I had to be….my brother was extremely good at this game when we were growing up, so I had to learn to be good at it in self-defense. But the only way to win is to make sure to keep the other players down at all times. Make sure, to the best of your ability, that they don’t get any property sets, and build as many houses as quickly as you can. And those two light blue properties right after passing Go that no one tends to buy? Get those as soon as you can and start building. They are easy to build up quickly and people tend to land on them frequently. Or so it seems. Also, buy the Railroads if you land on them.
There are several games that can be either the win-or-loose or the Screw-Your-Neighbor. Sorry is one of those. You can be nice or you can be ruthless or you can be somewhere in between. I like Sorry. I like having a choice of how to play and being able to change my strategy partway through. I think there is a difference between being defensive and being malicious. Being defensive when playing a game means that you are doing what you can to make sure that you win. Being malicious means that you are doing what you can to make sure that everyone else looses. At least in my world.
It’s that mindset that keeps me from enjoying the Screw Your Neighbor games. I know it is just a game, but the malice behind “I want you to loose" doesn’t sit right with me. I would much rather we all do our best on our own, and help each other out along the way if we can, and play as a team as much as possible.
I know it is just a game. But, they say, life is a game. And it is frequently said that life isn’t fair. I suppose this is my way of trying to make the Game of Life just a little easier. At least in my corner.
Peace,
Kathie