Today in class, we all played cooperative games in groups. I signed up to play in the Pandemic group, which I have previously played. Pandemic involves the players working as a team to cure the world of disease. The game is relatively short, allowing us to play more than one game. We only won the second game. A flaw in Pandemic is that a large part of the success in the game is determined by the cards that are drawn. The end of cooperative games can also feel anticlimactic, without a single winner. I think I prefer team games or individual games rather than cooperative games.
Self Assessment on Teaching a Game:
Overall, I think I did a nice job teaching my group how to play Blokus. What worked especially well, was letting the players figure out a lot of the game techniques themselves. Blokus, however, is a fairly simple game that can be explained in a minute or two, so my job was pretty easy.
If I want to improve, I think I need to step back a little more from the game, and let the players figure out more on there own. Otherwise they are at risk of cognitive overload. I probably shared more strategy than was effective. At some point, players need to discover strategy for themselves if they are truly to understand it.
My approach to gaming has not changed too much as a result of teaching the games. Although, I do enjoy more games than I did before the class began. I now enjoy games like Euchre and Settlers, games that I was not a huge fan of before the class. I think I learned that I shouldn't rule out a game after a single attempt at playing.
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