To start this off, I think Incan Gold is the best game I have played since the start of this class. I love this kind of game. Gambling to go further in the game and reap more rewards or fail. Or taking it safely and reaping smaller rewards. Both of the games this week were more or less about this sort of theme. Can’t Stop and Incan Gold are at their core games about gambling it all with the possibility of losing everything or taking a smaller haul with less value.

So I think the hardest part about these games is the same thing as every week for me. A few of the members in the group didn’t watch the videos and we have to spend a little more time explaining the game. This week we had to do it twice so we got a little bit of a disadvantage in completing the games. Other than that I think the games weren’t too hard to grasp in total. Though I did think that Incan Golds theming was more fun than just the bland snowy mountain. I grew up being a big fan of Indiana Jones which seemed like what inspired Incan Gold, so I do have my biases.

Leadership in Incan Gold was sort of funny. The leader was the person who chose first each round whether or not they would continue forth down the cave. We were unable to do the flip at the same time because some people didn’t understand the game and because it was all done online so we did it in turns. The first person usually dictated what they wanted to do then a lot of people followed them. For Can’t Stop, I think the leadership aspect in that game was in determining yourself if you wanted to risk it to get further than your peers. I will say that during my game I was heckling the other players when they were up as a joke, trying to make them take bad decisions (extremely fun might I say) but a lot of the time they didn’t take my bait. We never actually finished Can’t Stop during the class session so I might be a little biased towards the 3 or 4 games of Incan Gold we played. But I think that Incan Gold was definitely the better game of the two.

I was putting off doing all of these assignments (the weekly blogs) because I don’t ever feel like I get the full experience of the game. Something always goes arie in this class for me. Whether it’s multiple people not watching the videos or the total misunderstanding of how to play the game I am always caught in the middle it would seem. For these three weeks, it wasn’t too different than usual sadly.

I was putting off doing all of these assignments (the weekly blogs) because I don’t ever feel like I get the full experience of the game. Something always goes arie in this class for me. Whether it’s multiple people not watching the videos or the total misunderstanding of how to play the game I am always caught in the middle it would seem. For these three weeks, it wasn’t too different than usual sadly. I think playing this game with a group of people who are enthusiastic about it would be a different story, however. But within a class setting and an overall lack of them want to play it is hard (also doing it through the internet is also not the best way to experience it). I am going to split off this reflection into three separate parts, week one, week two, and week three. I am going to give you a rundown of what happened between each week and my thoughts about the game after leaving each week.

So to start off week one, I was put into my group right before class rewatching the videos to remind myself of the rules. From the start, I could tell that I and one other member of the group will be doing the heavy lifting for just about everything for the game. It was week one, maybe they just didn’t understand yet. I was wrong however, their microphones were off a lot of the time and we had to urge them to talk even when it was their turn. It made for such a slow process of picking the connections with everything and establishing the relationships. It was excruciating, we didn’t even get to the actual game at all this session. We solely set up for the next session.

In terms of leadership for this week and all the next weeks, myself and a specific other member of the group definitely carried the load for this one. We were the only reason the game got played to be completely frank. Nobody would speak if we didn’t and that was a little upsetting cause I did really want to play this game. It is hard to be a leader for people who are too apathetic to want to do anything. It makes for a difficult time. I remember feeling like I was talking to a brick wall for a large portion of this first session. But as I left I felt like the next week could be better. Just to sum up the first week, the hardest part was getting people motivated to want to play the game, we were only able to do the setup for the game during this time, and there were really only two people talking including me for the majority of the time.

The next week, we start the session. We are missing one of the players. That is absolutely phenomenal (the sarcasm is strong here). We quickly had to readjust what some of our game plans were for the session, and then we also had to go through the first half of the game at least in order to finish playing one round before the end of our time playing Fiasco for the class. So we started the first role-playing scene. It went pretty well. The two people involved were me and the other player who was helping with the leadership. Then after me, it was the other leader and she chose someone who is usually pretty quiet in the group. From the first part of the scene, I could tell that he has never roleplayed before or watched the videos sent for reference. I am ok with not being able to role play for the record, it is something not everyone is good at including me but it’s hard to have a good back and forth if there is no one willing to try. This was how a lot of the scenes went, it was like one person would role-play then ask the other quieter person a question of what they want to do then we would have to pry for details of how. That was how a vast majority of the scenes went.

I think for this week in particular it was very hard to get everything going again. Some of the members didn’t write down who they were and what they agreed on during the previous section and then we had to try and figure out and remember everything again. Leadership here was just keeping the game alive in all honesty. If we didn’t remind people it was their turn or explain to them how to play over and over again the game would’ve died before anything could actually happen. It really is hard to talk about the game considering the game is solely dependent on the player’s capability to roleplay and improv as the game continues. Despite everything however we were able to make it to the halfway point in the game when it ended. And by the end, people started to understand what was going on in the game.

The last week was better than the previous two but still difficult to manage. For starters, our lost party member came back but with a broken microphone. So she played through text which didn’t really go too well then it seemed like the people who were here last week sort of forgot how to play the game again and it became difficult to manage. My overall demeanor changed as well during this week, I had a particularly bad day and it became somewhat difficult for me to be positive so I kept to myself speaking only when I needed to or when someone needed direction. Long story short we were able to finish the game but it didn’t feel like anything cohesive or even correct. Looking back it was sort of a jumbled mess of what some of the members tried to do.

So I think in the right setting, with the right people this game could be extremely fun and could lead to a ton of laughs, but that is the issue with it. It is so reliant on the people who are playing the game instead of the rules the game itself makes that it sort of falls flat in my book. This is more similar to an improv comedy sketch where the performers get the scene from the audience as opposed to a game with its own rules and world. It is a double-edged sword. I honestly think it was because of the context I was in that I didn’t like it as much as I should have. However, if a group of my friends came down to me and asked to play, I wouldn’t be opposed to it.

In terms of leadership, I think this game is something that, if proctored could be used to teach leadership. Everyone needs to be a leader for this game. Everyone needs to have their own game plan and what they want to do in the game and try to take the game in their own direction. That is essentially what a leader does, they try and take anything in their own direction and get others to follow.

I am not the best leader, nor do I ever claim I am. I just try my best to get everyone to follow along and do what is best for myself and everyone else around me. Sounds good but my personality gets in the way a lot of the time. I easily have bad days and I can be overly apathetic at times. It is something I need to work on. I work well with people when I am able to see them face to face and can have a real dialogue with them. I obviously need to work on my leadership skills and start looking to be more positive. By the last week, I really wasn’t feeling it anymore and my demeanor changed. I think I have something to work on for when another role-playing type game comes up now.