July 10, 2008

IR Gaming Geekery

How did I not know about this sooner?

Tonight I played an international game of, essentially, RISK. I played with Baltar and a former student of ours who now works for a European government. This former student, who keeps vampire hours evidently, popped up in my gmail chat: "I'm bored. Want to play RISK?"

Sure, how about global thermonuclear war?

Sorry.

I'm not very good at RISK. I get a little bored, or a little tipsy, and next thing you know Yakutsk is attacking everyone. That never stopped me from playing with a bunch of friends who all went to statistics summer camp together. We would even took our RISK board to a group beach vacation, playing late into the night. Adulthood with jobs and relationships and kids have scattered us around the country, so it's been awhile since we've had the chance to roll the dice on a cardboard invasion. But with this new capability, I don't know, maybe Yakutsk might be warming up to an arms race once again.

Posted by binky at July 10, 2008 11:49 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Geekery | International Affairs | The Academy


Comments

Guess I'm just old-fashioned but playing classic war board games without the actual board (and the in-person taunts over said board) just isn't as appealing.

Posted by: Armand at July 11, 2008 12:20 AM | PERMALINK

Well, this has a chat function for the taunts (and they were there, certainly). Plus, without this technology I surely wouldn't be able to reach across the pond.

Posted by: binky at July 11, 2008 12:36 AM | PERMALINK

i've been playing a slightly less sophisticated variation, weewar, for a half-year or something with a group of friends. it's definitely different, but there are similarities. a few months ago they opened it up to enable players to design boards, and other players to use boards designed by others, which added a lot of interesting variability to it.

you can play with at least six people, and we've found, over time, that the diplomacy is done as it would be in the real world: under cover of darkness, deniably.

Posted by: moon at July 11, 2008 10:14 AM | PERMALINK
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