game of risk

Elif Okan

Game of Risk

The game of risk that we played in class was both realistic and unrealistic when comparing to international/ world politics.

One realistic part of the same was some teams started out as bigger and more powerful from the start while others were not instead of having every team start out with the same amount of territories and/or resources from the beginning. In the world, not every country has the same amount of power or land and there are ones that are bigger so therefore have more power. In the game, the Blue team was the most powerful one from the beginning and was like the United States, China, or another superpower so because of that my Green team wanted to become allies with the Blue team at the beginning instead of angering them and going to war. This leads to the second part of the game that was realistic which is how you made allies. From the beginning, we were at war with the yellow team, Blue was at war with the Red team, and yellow and Red were allies. Because of this, it made sense that Blue and our Green team went to war with the Red and yellow team which meant we went to war with the ally of our enemy at the beginning. Later on when everyone was turning on Red and they asked for our Green team and they wanted us to stop being at war with them and turn into allies, even though we had nothing against them and only went to war with them because of the Yellow team we had to turn them down since we knew if we said yes everyone else would start turning against us then. In world politics, I think it’s the same, if everyone is against one country and your country try to support them then everyone will turn against you as well. The third realistic part was with trying to negotiate with other teams. When the Blue team wanted us to approve their plan and get a yes, they came over to us like they did for pretty much every other team as well to negotiate with us. At first to give a yes we asked for two territories and they said they would get back to us. They talked as a team and asked if we would be okay with only one instead which we agreed to so we ended up negotiating a yes that they needed for a territory we needed. Everyone had different goals so we were all trying to meet them and thought about it even when negotiating which I feel is realistic in world politics as well. Countries negotiate with a goal in mind and make deals that way instead of just trying to be nice and giving what is asked without getting anything in return even if giving what is asked does not hurt them personally.

One unrealistic part of this game was going from being an ally to going to war or the other way around. In this game, we had to wait a turn before we could change it so if you were an ally and you wanted to go to war with said ally you would have to break your ally and go to neutral first before you could go to war. It’s the same thing from being at war to turning into an ally, you had to turn neutral first and then you could go be allies on the next turn. This is not realistic at all. In world politics, you would not have to go to neutral first and would go straight to war from being allies if that is what the countries want or go straight from being at war to being allies instead of having to wait a little first. Also what’s not realistic of this game is that you had been at war to be able to attack another team, in world politics you could attack an ally or someone who you are natural with right away instead of having to be or declare war with another country. Also in this game, you could be an ally with someone even if they were not an ally with you which is unrealistic since no country would call another their ally if the other doesn’t see them as an ally as well.

There are only two things I would change about this game which is get rid of having to be neutral first before going to war or being an ally with another thing and make it so both teams have to agree to be allies instead of having it so only one needs to be which I think would make this game more realistic of international/ world politics.