Risk: The Game of Global Domination

This summer I'm working for this organization that does a lot of work around youth empowerment, social justice and community organizing. At the beginning of the summer, we had a overnight retreat. While we did do a lot of getting to know you games, group bonding, and learning more about what we'd be doing this summer, the thing that most sticks out in my memories of the retreat is playing Risk: The Game of Global Domination. All of the boys at the retreat were really into the game, and so I learned how to play. We stayed up most of the night playing Risk, and I really got into it.

The goal of Risk is to take over the world. In the beginning, the countries are divided evenly among the players, but you can challenge a country's owner by rolling a die, and if you win you get to take over that country. For every 3 countries you have, you get another game piece, and if you have a entire continent, you get bonus pieces.

It's not a very politically correct game, so playing it at the retreat was really funny because we're a group of super-aware teenagers who spend most of our time doing activism-related work. As such, the game was interjected with comments about the treatment of the refugees that we were undoubtably causing in our quest to conquer more countries, and the possible loss of culture due to repeated take overs. Risk also doesn't have all the countries in the world. For instance, Middle East and Afghanistan are two huge countries, but there is no Pakistan or Iran or Iraq or Turkmenistan or any other countries that are actually in the Middle East. We discussed why certain countries were part of the game, and why other countries were left out. It was also fun to analyze why we all enjoyed taking over the world so much.

Now, why am I blogging about this now? Like I've said, I've gotten really into it. So into it that last Friday I introduced Risk to my family. It's become so popular that we've spent several hours on each of the last few days playing it. Right now my brother has Asia and Europe, I have North and South America, my dad has Australia, and I'm fighting over Africa with my brother. My sister has lost all her countries and been kicked off the board. I really can't wait to keep playing and possibly Dominate the Globe!