The Game of Risk: Mirroring World Politics

The Game of Risk: Mirroring World Politics

by Victoria Hassan

After playing a modified version of the game of Risk during class, it became clear to me that the game incorporated several aspects of real-life world politics. Playing the game of Risk and interacting with other teams helped me to better understand how world politics generally operates. However, there were some aspects of the game that seemed to insufficiently mirror the reality of world politics, most likely due to the fact that Risk is merely a game. As a result of this, there are a few aspects of this modified version of Risk that can be adjusted for future operation of the game.

One of the game’s aspects that ultimately mirrors how world politics operates, is the notion that the different political actors in world politics generally have different objectives. Though two different political actors might aim to control one particular territory, their reasoning for acquiring this territory is likely to differ. For instance, if one political actor’s reasoning for acquiring a territory is to spread religion, another political actor’s reasoning for acquiring that same territory might be to obtain that region’s resources. This is similar to the game of Risk because each team has different objectives that they need to complete in order to win. However, some of the teams need to acquire the same territories as other teams in order to complete their objective.

Another aspect of the game that directly relates to real-life world politics is the fact that political actors do not always know the objectives of other political actors. Sometimes political actors feel as though they need to keep their objectives a secret in order to preserve their chance of actually obtaining the goal at hand. However, there are instances in which political actors feel as though they need to disclose information to other political actors in order to reach success. For example, one political actor or state might want to form an alliance with another political actor or state and share their objective in order to reach it. There was an instance in the game in which a political actor from the Yellow Team shared his objective with political actors from the Blue Team in order to achieve this objective. This tactic proved to be helpful and resulted in an alliance that benefitted both teams.

Additionally, the game of Risk seems to mirror real-life world politics because it revealed that communication between political actors is very important. Without proper communication between states and their respective diplomats, information can become skewed and this can ultimately lead to conflicts between states. For instance, the United States believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which ultimately led to violent conflicts between the United States and Iraq. However, within the game of Risk, many of the political actors communicated with one another via their respective diplomats. This allowed for a generally clear understanding of the status of each team.

Though there were several aspects of this modified version of Risk that mirror real-life world politics, there was one major aspect of the game that did not seem to mirror actual world politics. This was due to the fact that the outcomes of the battles were based merely on luck. However, in real-life, the outcomes of battles depend on how well the military forces are trained and the particular strategies that they utilize. Though this seems quite impossible to include in a game version of world politics, such as Risk, it still inadequately mirrors the reality of battling for territory in real-life world politics. Along with this, the game of Risk did not seem to incorporate the economic feature of trade in world politics. I believe that trade is a very important part of world politics because it is not only a trade of goods, it is a trade of culture and it allows for essential communication between states. Therefore, due to a lack of trade between teams within the game of Risk, I think that the game failed to mirror this economic aspect of world politics.

In the future, I think it would be beneficial if the game of Risk dealt with aspects of trade in international relations. For example, each team could have a particular major export and they each could also have an objective to acquire particular resources from other teams. Trading could happen through discussions between the diplomats of each team, requiring them to bid for resources. If one team wanted a particular territory that was being occupied by another team, they could offer to trade their resource in order to acquire the territory. I believe that trade is a major aspect of world politics due to its influence on economic, communicational, and cultural matters. Thus, I think that it would be beneficial to incorporate trade in the game.

Overall, there were several important features of the game that mirrored world politics in a very beneficial way. Whereas, there were a couple minor aspects of the game that were either missing or did not seem to sufficiently mirror world politics. However, adjustments can be made to the game to better mirror world politics.