Category Archives: Event Reflection

Reflection: Campus Gaming Event

I attended the Geeks on Ice campus gaming event on Friday, September 16, 2022. My boyfriend tagged along with me and we were able to walk around and see different clubs within the League of Geeks. When we walked in, I waved hi to JS and we made our way toward the board games. We looked at some of the options for a little bit. This was nice because I saw both games I was familiar with and some I had never heard of before. My boyfriend and I arrived at the very beginning of the event so there were not many people there yet to start up a board game yet. We sat down at a table with Code Names and a game called Letter Jam which I had never heard of before.

Letter Jam was an interesting game. Unfortunately, we did not make it all the way through. I was drawn to this game by the design of the packaging. I thought the strawberry was clever because it was talking about jam. The game reminded me of Wordle through The New York Times. It took a long time to set up the game. The setup was more complicated than I anticipated. I felt like the instructions were slightly complex and confusing. Although, It is possible that my brain was just tired at the end of the week.

We did not end up playing Letter Jam. I found the setup got to be confusing. Then, my boyfriend and I walked to the floor above to check out other areas of the event. We walked through the lounge with the Super Smash Bros playing and other computer games as well. We made our way toward the virtual reality area where someone was all set up to play Beat Saber. Only one headset was charged enough to be used. So my boyfriend and I sat and waited for a bit observing the process. He thought it would be funny to watch me, but he never got a chance. We were waiting for a while and decided to go check out other areas of the event again.

We made our way back through the lounge where all the games were being played. This time I saw a group playing mario kart on the Nintendo Switch. I like Mario Kart but I have only played on switch maybe once. Every other time I have played Mario Kart it has been on the Wii. I think next time I may take my chance at virtual reality or Nintendo Switch Mario Kart, but that did not happen this time.

When leaving the lounge, a group of five people was just setting up the game Mysterium and I got excited. Only a few individuals in the group had played Mysterium before. The person who played the role of Ghost had the most experience with the game. It was interesting playing with a mix of experience levels with the game. It took some time to explain how to play but it also helped that the more experienced individuals were able to help the process. This reminded me of some of the leadership styles and aspects we touched on during class the other week. We talked about leading by example, thinking politically (which was thinking of all the options and outcomes) and a lot more. I saw different styles of playing games and leadership come out.

I was also intrigued by how the individual, who had played before with their family, had different intricacies with playing the game that came out as we went along. This made it interesting as I had to adjust my game play slightly from what I had experienced in class. We ended up making it through to the last stage with only one “hour” left on the clock. Then, we all displayed our individual collections of the person, room, and weapon. The clues given were mostly supporting one card out of the three. This was an interesting strategy that I do not think I particularly enjoyed. I think only one out of six of us actually matched what the ghost had chosen as the final culprit, location, and weapon of choice.

I liked seeing people’s reactions as we made it through the game. How people reacted at the actual outcome and final result was intriguing. The ghost also noted that they had used all of their crows before the final round and that two of them had been used to get better cards for one person in particular. This made me think about the dynamic of having a group of five friends playing with two people they had never met before. It was probably an interesting dynamic from their experience as well. I think this observation and the note about the crows influenced how I saw the end result of the game. I thought there may have been some choices that were made that would have been different if someone else was the ghost. This would most likely be because of differences in experience, personality, and leadership style. Playing in this setting and with this dynamic of individuals really made me want to try a go at being the ghost in the future.

We set up the game to play again and another individual joined. This was intriguing because they stated they had played before, even if it was a while ago. However, I found that they asked more questions than the players who had only played for the first time that day. This new individual also had a more assertive personality. This added a whole new layer to the game but also made it slightly more complicated. It is quite possible I viewed it as more complicated because I am a fan of cooperation and sharing different ideas. While this assertive personality may have been helpful in some decisions that needed to be made. It was also frustrating because we had to explain the rules and re-explain them after this individual was trying to help make decisions as to people or places that would be selected. This made the second game start out with a very interesting point of view.

We did not end up finishing the second game of Mysterium. The group we were playing with wanted to go ice skating so we cleaned up. My boyfriend and I walked through the areas once again and passed by several groups down on the second floor playing board games. Seeing a variety of groups playing different games was wonderful. I had not expected a lot of people to be at the event. But I felt like the turn out was pretty impressive for what I was expecting. My boyfriend and I did not stay too long after that because it was getting late and I had another event I had to help facilitate within my Residence Hall. We did pass JS on the way out again. They were bringing in SDS Pizza when we crossed paths again. This would have been wonderful, but I also appreciated the ability to recognize that we were done for the night and would not have had a good time if we tried to stay much longer.

The biggest highlight of the event was the community. It was a very cordial group that was both inviting and welcoming. I feel like more students should branch out and go to League of Geeks events as well. There were a lot of options to participate and get involved while at the event. Therefore, it was easy to get involved and find something at lest somewhat interesting. I would definitely recommend this event to other students. It felt like a wonderful way to build community and create great memories with friends. I felt like the community was kind, respectful, and welcoming on all accounts and interactions that I had.

One thing I would have done differently if I went again, I would have brought along more friends to play games with. I think this would have made my personal experience better. I felt like my boyfriend and I were just wondering around for a little while because we did not want to start a game with just two people. I think I also would have worn socks. It was a warm day out and I wore sandals so I was not able to go ice skating once that had opened up. I appreciated ice skating being an opportunity and only wish I had planned ahead more. Maybe I was not anticipating being at the event for such a long time, but I am truly glad I did stay.

If I helped plan the event, I think I would have done the event on a different day than the Art After Dark Miami Activities and Programming (MAP) event. This would be helpful because there was so much advertising for the MAP event that I did not know about the Geeks on Ice event except from word of mouth during out classtime.

Overall, this event was really fun! I will recommend this event to others in the future. I also hope to go to other League of Geeks events in the future, or atleast the Meeples board game nights. I hope other students take the opportunity to experience events like this as they are good experiences and opportunities to see the amazing community that exists on Miami’s Campus.

The images included are the box of Letter Jam because I thought the design was cool. I also included an image of Mysterium mid-game. I would like to note that I am not good at remembering to take selfies and/or other pictures at events, yet I remembered to take these at least.

Geeks on Ice: Campus Gaming Event Reflection

Geeks on Ice, an annual event held by the League of Geeks, was held September 16th of this year. I’m an officer of Meeples, the tabletop club, and so I attended both as someone who helped organize and set up part of the event, as well as someone who just wanted to attend and see what all the other organizations had going on. My role in Meeples is the Trading Card Game Coordinator, so I was focused on running TCG events on the ground floor while I was there, but I spent time in many other clubs’ areas doing other things as well.

As far as turnout, it was great! From the very start of the event we had a constant stream of people coming in, and at the event’s peak almost every table we’d set up on the ground floor had a group playing a game at it. There was some concern that Art After Dark, another campus event being held at the same time, would step on the toes of Geeks on Ice and lead to both events having less attendance, but that didn’t seem to be the case: Many people it seems like went to both at different points in the night, and it was great to see such a strong turnout. While walking around and checking out all the different clubs, it seemed like all of them had several people in their dedicated area at most every point in the night, which was great to see. Plus, at least for Meeples, we had a lot of people come to the club for the first time in the couple of meetings immediately following the event, saying that they’re there because they played games at Geeks on Ice. If that’s not a mark of the event being a success, I don’t know what is!

Events like Geeks on Ice are super important for on-campus organizations, since it helps them get their name out there and attract people to their clubs who wouldn’t have otherwise known about them or been inclined to go to their meetings. For example, I didn’t even know we had a “medieval club” on campus, but seeing a bunch of people all dressed up in armor and period clothing with swords and shields made me very curious to learn more about their organization. Even if I knew about most of the other organizations, if the increased meeting turnout from Meeples is anything to go by, other groups likely also saw increased interest from people who weren’t aware of the clubs prior to this. Events like Recon and the Halloween Party are also good for this, but I think Geeks on Ice is especially effective because of its setup: With every group having a specific corner of the building or smaller room, you’re more incentivized to see what each club is individually all about, and that’s a great way to get new people interested, or at least involved at club activities at the event itself.

As for what I myself did during the event, I showed up early to help set up tables and chairs and things, as well as carry over games from Armstrong. We tried to pick as many games as possible that are generally popular and that we thought people casually walking by the table full of games would see and want to play. We actually sat some of these games out on empty tables specifically, which seemed to work well as I believe all the games we sat out like this got played at those tables. I spent a good chunk of my time facilitating or playing games in that area (since it was my job after all), and even in the dedicated TCG area we had a lot of people playing. Lots of Magic, including people playing the game-in-a-box we brought, and even some Yu-Gi-Oh players which was cool to see, especially since that game isn’t usually played at club meetings.

Otherwise though, I was able to check out other organizations as well. While I can’t really play VR due to my bad eye, I was able to watch other people playing it, which the club also broadcast onto the big screen of the ice rink. It’s always fun seeing how peoples’ movements mapped onto controllers look kind of silly in-game. I also watched some of the Fighters Guild just playing casual matches in a couple of different games. Fighting games are a genre I’ve wanted to get into for awhile now, and I’d actually forgotten that the Fighters Guild was actually a club, so I made a mental note to consider going to one of their meetings in the future. I also just met up with a group of friends of mine (who I didn’t even know would be there, actually) and hung out and ate pizza (the pizza was great, by the way, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen pizzas that big in my life.)

All in all I think this was a great event! I kinda came at it from two different perspectives, one as an officer for one of the clubs represented at the event and another as just someone who likes checking out all the clubs and seeing what they’re all about. On both axes I think Geeks on Ice was a great success and a very fun experience. We had a great turnout and it was just fun to see everyone having a good time and be around people interested in similar things. It’s funny, even if you never actually talk to or interact with most of the people at an event like this, just knowing you’re surrounded by a bunch of people with similar interests to you is a very cool feeling, and one I didn’t really get to experience much before I came to college, since I lived in a super small town with nothing to do.

(The photos are of the areas I helped set up for my TCG Coordinator Role)

Gaming Event Reflection: Strategy Gaming Club

On Tuesday, February 15th, I attended a gaming event here on campus, specifically one of the Strategy Gaming Club’s (SGC) meetings. SGC is a student organization that provides a time and place for students to play all sorts of tabletop games, as well providing a wide selection of these games at each Sunday and Tuesday meeting. Additionally, SGC also has a group of members that have been hosting sessions of the Warhammer series of games, as well as miniatures for players to use with the games on Wednesdays. Recently though, these Wednesday meetings have been taking place alongside the Tuesday meetings, allowing those who usually could not come to the Wednesday meetings to play various Warhammer games during the Tuesday meetings instead.  

SGC Tuesday meetings allow the attendants to play whatever tabletop games they want to, assuming that the organization owns those games and have brought the games with them to this meeting. Due to the fact these games could require any amount of space, the organization itself does not perform any setup of the room themselves beyond bringing the tabletop games, instead allowing the members to break up the large rectangle of tables themselves in order to create the space that they need for their chosen tabletop games. As a result, the only part of the room left in its initial state is often the far end of the tables, which are where the games not being played are located. However, this more hands-on setup is typically not a problem, as all of the attendees will often move the tables back into their initial place once they are done playing games, and the table is no longer in use. 

Of course, you will need to get a group of players together for most of these tabletop games, but the other attendees of these meetings are usually more than willing to arrange groups to play larger games or join you for a game you would like to play. In many cases you might be able to play multiple different tabletop games in one meeting, but at this particular meeting I was only able to fit one game in, though I enjoyed it quite a lot. I was only able to play this game due to the fact that SGC was able to move some of its Warhammer content over to the Tuesday meetings.

Warhammer and it’s various games are something that I’ve been interested in for quite some time now, but I have never been able to experience them myself due to the large cost of building an army of miniatures and lacking any time to attend SGC’s Wednesday meetings. As such, now that Warhammer is being hosted during the Tuesday meetings, I jumped at the chance to finally play these games myself. During this meeting specifically, I played Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress, a Campaign Dungeon-Crawler game set in the Warhammer 40k universe, along with three other players.

In Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress (Blackstone), you play as a group of explorers searching for relics and riches within the depths of an ancient space-faring fortress. These expeditions into the fortress take place in two distinct phases, the exploration phase and the facility phase. In the exploration phase, the players draw a card from the exploration deck, which determines what they will find in this area of the fortress. In our session, we only drew Combat cards from this deck, but other areas of the fortress will feature other challenges. Combat encounters in particular are quite complex, as they require the players to balance not only their own actions, but also their position in initiative, the group pool of Destiny Dice for additional actions and the potential actions that their enemies may take based on the roll of a twenty-sided die. After each exploration phase, the players have the option to exit the Fortress and enter the facility phase, where they can use their character’s ships to perform various actions and purchase items using the loot they have gathered, though each player can only visit one ship. From this point the players can either save their characters by placing their character cards and loot in their special card sleeve and stop for the time being or reenter the Fortress.

    As Blackstone is a Campaign game, my group is still quite far from finishing it, but I had quite a lot of fun with the combat encounters that we were able to play through. However, I do not think that the fun I felt was purely attributed to the game, but to the people I was playing with as well. For one thing, one of the players in this group is actually someone that I have known since my first semester here at Miami, and that I would consider a good friend. And the two other players, even if we only recently met, were still more than willing to discuss the things they enjoy and just generally have a good time while at the meeting. This general feeling of openness and acceptance is not just something that applies to this particular meeting, as it is something that I have found in every meeting of SGC that I have attended. 

I believe that it is because of this open and accepting feeling that I enjoy my time with SGC so much, both this meeting and any other. No matter what group of people I choose to play with, or what game we are playing, I enjoy my time while I am there. The community their organization has built is just so accepting and so committed to having fun that it seems to be hard not to have fun while playing tabletop games with them. Not only that, but if the game you are playing happens to be a game that you are unfamiliar with, and someone else is very familiar with, the more experienced players will typically jump at the opportunity to share something that they love with someone new. This exact scenario is what happened during the above meeting, as while I am still relatively new to the people that play Warhammer at SGC’s meetings, they were very excited to help teach me the games that they enjoy so much.

As I have expressed throughout this reflection, I have always been able to enjoy my time spent at SGC, and the meeting on February 15th was simply an example of just why that is. The community that the Strategy Gaming Club’s officers have been able to build over their time is just simply such a welcoming and open one. As a result the entire organization just has a friendly and accepting atmosphere that makes it clear that having fun and meeting new people should be the number one priority, and that the tabletop games available are simply a way to meet those people and build those friendships. Even after all of this time, there are still new people in the organization to meet, and new games to play, and so the environment that SGC provides will always be appreciated.

A selfie of myself at SGC, with some of the people I was playing Blackstone with in the background.
A picture of a combat encounter in Blackstone. The miniatures had not been painted yet, so unfortunately almost all of them are pure black.
(Unfortunately, I’m not sure how to rotate it in the blog post.)
My character card, showing the two wounds I had suffered at this point and the rewards I had gathered to the side of the card.

Campus Gaming Event: Metamorphosis Alpha

I was sitting in Armstrong back in early March when I saw an advertisement for the Western Center. They were looking for people to join their Metamorphosis Alpha roleplaying game, so I figured I would throw my hat in the ring. The DM of the group was The Western Center Coordinator, Billy Simms. We set up a time to make my character and explain how the game works. 

Metamorphosis Alpha is a D6 system set in the far future when humanity has left earth and lives on a gigantic spaceship. This ship has been drifting around a radioactive black hole for thousands of years, causing the humans to mutate into horrifying monsters that now roam the ship. My character was one of the lucky humans frozen in cryosleep and protected from a majority of the radiation. He was woken up and tossed into a vast wilderness section of the ship armed only with a plasma rifle and a knife. The party later discovered this area to be an old zoo. My character is named Atom, a moniker he gave himself after realizing he could adjust the space between his molecules, which grants him the ability to grow and shrink. Characters in Metamorphosis Alpha have eleven skills ranging from amazing to hopeless. The standard role in using a skill is d6, with a certain number of successes needed for the overall action to succeed. An amazing skill adds 3d6, a good skill adds 2d6, a competent skill adds 1d6, a weak skill subtracts 1d6, and finally, characters cannot attempt hopeless skills. Atom was a sniper and mechanic back on earth, so he was disciplined, knew a lot about technology, good with a rifle, and constantly alert. 

Since I joined midway through the semester, Atom first appeared as a threat to the adventuring party. He guarded a swan bridge and thought the party was his next target. Out of the bushes walked a humanoid venus flytrap (think the piranha plant from Super Smash Bros), an owl holding a futurist tablet, and a Gila monster wielding a vibrosword. The negotiations were tense, but they won over Atom with clever wordplay. From then on, Atom journeyed with the party battling mutated armadillos, robotic zookeepers, a holographic dinosaur, and a totalitarian turtle bent on taking over the zoo. 

I had such a good time that I decided to keep coming back each week until we wrapped up during finals week. This semester has been a really stressful one and so sitting down at my computer on Tuesdays from 2:30-4 and laughing with a bunch of people I’ve never met before helped me not get lost in the isolation that covid brought with it. Playing online RPGs like Metamorphosis Alpha has been an essential part of my Covid isolation survival, and I bet lots of other people felt the same way.

Dungeons and Dragons

Once again, a key part of my experience is how it was impacted by being virtual. It made it hard to work together and see how the others felt about each group decision. It was extremely amusing to see my fragile warlock get down to 2 and 0 hp in the first two sessions, with a long rest in between. I knew my warlock would be soft when I made him, but since it was my first time playing a character that is primarily a magic user I wasn’t expecting that level of squishiness.

We spent time enjoying my near state of death and trying to get closer to the solution to solving the issue of where all these goblins came from. No one was quite willing to be the one to speak out and offer a course of action. Likely due to not being able to see the reactions of the other players and their reactions to different options. At least, that was why I kept fairly quiet. It wasn’t fair to our DM and definitely increased the uncomfortableness, but it was hard to get over it when trying to not speak over anyone. 

Overcoming these obstacles happened more easily and more often towards the end of the three sessions. While we still struggled to communicate, the plot motivated us to work better together and get involved and invested. Leadership was shown when everyone trusted our DM and each other and put in the effort to try and work with each other to have fun and follow the goblins.

Dr. Michio Kaku

Yesterday, on March 9, 2020, I attended the campus leadership lecture led by Dr. Michio Kaku. Dr. Kaku is most famous for being a co-theorist of string theory and has also written several best-selling books about physics and the future. Additionally, he also has been in several TV documentaries about his discoveries and even hosts a podcast. Currently, he teaches theoretical physics at City University of New York and I must say, even though I am not good at physics, I would love to be in one of his classes. Dr. Kaku explained things in his lecture that should have been extremely complicated, but he made complex ideas and concepts sound easy to grasp. Dr. Kaku had a sense of humor that was apparent throughout his talk. I was quite surprised about how much of a great personality he has, considering he is so brilliant. The lecture was one of the quickest hours of my life. 

I have always been fascinated with the future. What will it be like? Will it be possible to make myself immortal? Will flying cars exist? Can I teleport? As I have gotten older, these questions have frequented my mind less and less. However, Dr. Kaku was the opposite and showed what can be developed and conceptualized with those probing questions. Not only that, but Dr. Kaku expanded outside of the realm of physics and applied his findings and theories to outside sectors, such as healthcare, finance, and the humanities. Hearing Dr. Kaku reaffirm that humanities, reading, and writing will always be important to the professor made me happy because I feel that so many scientists are so quick to dismiss things like that. 

Considering history, there have been several identifiable “booms:” the Industrial Revolution, the inventions that came out of the Cold War, the computer boom, the robotics boom, and the ever-looming artificial intelligence (AI) boom. AI and virtual reality (VR) are already prevalent in today’s world, but not in a way that can benefit all of society. For example, most people associate AI and VR with the Oculus Rift or comparable headsets. However, AI and VR can extend into the world of art. Dr. Kaku showed some crude images that had been printed from dreams using modern and seemingly futuristic technology. He extended out simple images by saying that one day, we will be able to record our dreams and watch them in videos the morning after. Continuing off of that, maybe one day, Alzheimer’s patients will be able to have a memory chip in their brains that can help combat the symptoms. There are so many possibilities considering AI, VR, and the future. Hearing someone as well-respected in the field as Dr. Kaku made the child in me excited. 

One thing that is drilled into my head as a finance major is risk. We must analyze all risk, where it came from, and how we can get rid of it. I feel like a lot of other people do not consider this, but I was happy when someone decided to ask about the riskiness of having AI and VR controlling our lives and being implemented into our cars and houses. It is a huge invasion of privacy, but Dr. Kaku addressed the question appropriately and mentioned how Big Brother is always watching us. Additionally, he mentioned that like everything else, there is a degree of risk that may not be certain or completely known. That is something that will be better known when it becomes apparent. That information can help combat future risk, although it cannot be fully eliminated. Another thing that I believe could have also been addressed during this question is ethics regarding AI and VR. As Dr. Kaku is such a famous scientist, it would have been interesting to hear what he thinks about the ethics of the government listening in and the little privacy we do have. I do think it was interesting that he did mention that the Internet was never created to be private, though.

Following the lecture, I attended the reception. As expected, there was a very long line to go meet him and of course, it had been a long day for him so there was not any time to ask a question or speak with him. However, being able to have gotten the opportunity to meet someone so respectable is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Not only that, but so many scientific things that I have heard have some connection to Dr. Kaku. Hearing him speak reignited the flame in the child inside of me and has me considering all the possibilities that come with the future. One of Dr. Kaku’s books is next on my reading list. I am also thrilled that Miami University offers us opportunities like this to engage with leaders in their respective fields through lecture series like these. Prior to this, all the on-campus lectures I had attended had been through Farmer, since those tend to align more closely with my interests. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how applicable another field could be to my life. In the future, I plan to look more into the lecture series on campus to see who else is speaking.

Game Event Review: RECON 2020

I attended the 2020 League of Geeks RECON event February 22nd and 23rd. RECON involved many activities in several different rooms in Armstrong and it was a bit overwhelming, but at the same time, was incredibly fun to go to. On the morning of the 22nd I participated in the Game Awards. This was the first year RECON was holding a Game Awards where students on campus could turn in the games they have created to be played by others at RECON and by a judge. I turned in two games with two different teams. I created a board game based off of the infuriating video game I Am Bread with Jeremy, Juliette, and Steven during our IMS 211 class and we decided to put that into the running. I also turned in a game called Nexia that I created with Bryan, Seth, and Jonathan during our IMS 212 class. We created a game that was based on Risk, Catan, and a dash of DnD roleplay. It was a strategic resource and army management game with a board that is different every time it is played. Players explore new lands and collect resources to build towns and armies. During the Game Awards playing session. I taught the game to two girls who came to the event. It is a very complicated game to explain, but they got a hang of it quickly and had fun doing so and voted for the game as their choice to win. The judge came by to ask questions of the girls while they were playing and took notes and went to go judge the others. The announcement would be tomorrow, but after the girls left, I had to pack up and run to go do volunteering for a different club of mine. I forgot a lot of the rules that my team and I created for the game and I hadn’t played the game since last semester, so it was a bit difficult for me to explain correctly. I also felt like I was keeping the players from other events they wanted to go to because my game was so long. Also, because it was long, the judge never even got a chance to play the game. Next year I will probably create a new game that will hopefully be shorter to play. I also think that the Game Awards should be advertised a lot more and encourage more people to turn in their games. Many IMS students make games for classes anyways, but there weren’t many games that were participating in the awards. There weren’t many people who came by to playtest the game either. I think location was a big issue there. The room was so far away from everything else so no one would walk by to see and be interested in it. I hope Game Awards will be much bigger next year.

Later that night, I came back to RECON to volunteer for Miami Game Design Club. I am vice president and I signed up to run the Murder Mystery for 2 hours and ended up staying there with my friends until closing time. The Murder Mystery was something we started creating last semester and involved a group of around 5 people to come into a room and read a bunch of different documents and piece together the murder of Steve, a journalist from the 1920s. We worked very hard on this event for a while and I was happy to run the event. The players looked to be very excited to play and some people did solve the murder in the end. I believe our event was a success which I was worried it wouldn’t be. All of the information to solve the murder was in documents and I thought players would get tired of reading so many papers that we created. Many of them created charts and timelines on the white boards and they really put their heads together to figure out new information. We could have made it more definitive though because it seemed that even when people got the answer, they weren’t positive they got it right. I did like our decorations and the story we created. It was very entertaining and because it was set in the 1920s, the last group ended up playing music through his phone to set the tone of the room. It was a very chill atmosphere and I would have loved to play our own murder mystery if I didn’t know the answers already.

On Sunday, I planned to come to RECON for the Game Awards and then go back to my dorm because it was an incredibly long weekend. I came to the pavilion where the Game Award announcements would be held and chatted with my friends until the judge came. It was a very small ceremony where the player’s choice and the judge’s decision were announced. My game ended up taking the win and I was very excited. One of my teammates was there and I gave him a little fist bump. It was very helpful to get feedback on the game we created from our class. He gave us a notecard with the notes he took about the game and his ratings on characteristics about it. He gave a high rating on the art which I created, and this gave me a lot of confidence. The entire Game Awards event seemed underwhelming. I know it is the first year it was held, but I wish it held a little more importance. There wasn’t a lot of time given for people to playtest the games and give their feedback. The judge couldn’t even play all the games in that time. The room was so tucked away from everything else, so it felt like an afterthought. During the awards announcement, the judge was late and there wasn’t much of an audience. The audience that was there was either the people who made the games, and people who just so happened to be in the same pavilion playing games on their own. The announcement was made off to the side of the pavilion and I didn’t feel much accomplishment even though my team won. Even my teammate seemed to be falling asleep even though it was noon on a Sunday. I hope next year is much more exciting. I think the Game Awards could really be something special that people look forward to every single year.

As I said, I only planned to come for the Game Awards announcements then I would leave. I didn’t leave. I got sucked into playing some of the play-to-win board games with my friends. This was probably the most fun I had all weekend. We played Planet and Root. Planet was an amazing game and it was simple to learn and understand. Each of us had a magnetic planet that we added terrain tiles to and tried to win animals during the rounds to have them inhabit our planets. All my friends really hoped that one of us would be able to win it so we can continue to play it after this event. After Planet, I was really intrigued by a game named Root. The art style reminded me a lot of the video game Night in the Woods. My friends and I pulled that game out and were suddenly overwhelmed by it. This game is very complicated, and each person is playing their own separate game with different objectives. We had two people come over to us to try to explain how the game worked and eventually we were able to start. We sadly could only play through 2 rounds before we had to pack up and put it back so the prize drawings could start. I really loved the idea of playing a game that will be randomly given to a person who played it. Free games are always fun but playing them first gives them an idea of how it works and an appreciation if they win it. It was also just a fun time to play with my friends.

The last part of my RECON experience was the prize drawings for both the ticket drawings and the play-to-win game drawings. The atmosphere during the drawings was incredible. Everyone was a good sport and hyped up every single person who won something, even if they themselves lost. It was humorous and relaxing. I didn’t win during the ticket drawings, but I did win the game Root which I was really hoping for. I now own Root and the title of Game Awards winner and that felt pretty good leaving Armstrong that day. After such a hard week and busy weekend. RECON created a positive atmosphere for me to forget my worries and just play with friends. I even got to play Bohnanza with my friends after the drawings which has been our collectively favorite game recently. The League of Geeks brings together so many nerdy and geeky people to one area to just forget about life and have fun playing and creating. RECON is such a large event and I was happy to be both a participate and a volunteer. I could appreciate it on both sides. I highly recommend that anyone should go next year. There is bound to be at least one event during the weekend that interests you.

RECON Reflection

On February 21th, 2020, I did something I have never done before and something I thought I would never do: attend a video game conference. Under any normal circumstance, I would not have attended. I did not know anyone there and I have no clue how to play video games. However, there was an exception: Ultimate Werewolf. We played Ultimate Werewolf on the first day of class and it was so much fun that I just had to go to RECON to play it again. 

Since I did not want to go to RECON alone, I decided to bring my boyfriend with me. He plays more video games than I do and actually had some semblance as to what was happening. We arrived shortly before midnight, pumped to play Ultimate Werewolf. It was his first time playing and since I enjoyed it so much, he figured that he would try his hand at the game too.

This version of Werewolf was much different than what we played in class. This was the “legacy” mode, where instead of Werewolves versus Villagers, it was Werewolves versus Villagers versus the British versus the person who had to guess what team would end up dying (I forgot his character name). Upon receiving my card, I realized that I was the Diseased and had Coronavirus (defined by the Moderator). This meant that if I died, the Werewolves could not kill anyone that night either, since they also had Coronavirus. I was amused to be the Diseased since my role protected my fellow villagers for another night. In a way, my role reminded me of the “medic” but in a more broad way, as they saved the entire village for a night. I was looking forward to learning the dynamic of the group and becoming more involved as the game continued, but unfortunately, I was killed on the first night. I ended up being okay with this since my boyfriend was still in the game and I could watch him try to live until the last possible second. Surprisingly, he made it nearly to the end and his team, the Brits, were the victors of the game.

The Legacy version of this game was quite interesting and very bloody. It seemed like as someone died, they were able to also kill another person or two along with them. For example, everytime one of the Brits died, they had to take out someone to either their left or their right in addition to them. There was also the unique role of the Leprechaun who had the power to shift the wolves’ target either one to the left or the right.  As I watched, I saw that the Leprechaun saved a few people on the Villager team a few times. I also saw how my boyfriend was supposed to be killed twice, but because of the Leprechaun, he made it out alive. 

This version of Ultimate Werewolf was less fun than the way we played in class on Week 1. Part of that has to do with the fact that no one knew anyone during Week 1, whereas everyone playing at RECON seemed to know each other and quite well, too. When I entered the Armstrong Pavilion at around midnight, I was immediately stressed and a bit anxious. Usually, whenever I walk into a room at Miami, I am able to recognize a handful of people and approach them for conversation and guidance. This was not the case with RECON. I only knew myself and my boyfriend, and I tend to get extremely introverted in situations when I do not know people. As a result, I mostly people-watched and did not interact with many individuals. I think I would have had more fun at this event if I knew more people or if everyone was a stranger. 

After leaving from Armstrong, my boyfriend made an observation to me. I am a business student and spend most of my time in Farmer, so I know so many people who are involved within the business community. When I walk into a room full of business students, it is not weird, awkward, or stressful because I know a handful of people in each room. However, someone like my biology major boyfriend walks into a room full of business students and is stressed because he does not know anyone or what is going on, so he likes to stand back and people-watch.  Me walking into RECON resembled him walking into a gathering with business students. I was simply at an event where I knew no one, so I kept to myself. 

Although I only saw about two hours worth of RECON, it looked like it was a blast for people who enjoy gaming. There were screens everywhere and video games of all kinds were being played. I had another friend who ended up going to RECON for a different event and he had a phenomenal time. I would not be surprised if I found myself here again next year to people-watch and try my hand at some non-video games. Had it not been for EDL290, I would have never known that RECON existed and I never would have had a chance to see a gaming event on Miami’s campus. It is a goal of mine to try to attend as many things outside of my scope of interests while I am in school, and this ticked off another thing on the list for me. I will say that I did enjoy RECON more than anticipated and look forward to possibly attending other gaming events on campus.