I am a games lover, always have been. I like role-playing games, strategy games, skill games, card games, outdoor team games. I am competitive, creative and at times annoying, both in victory and defeat I am loud but nice: I assume this from the fact that my friends and girlfriends continue to want to play with me, for the sake of the challenge that I take very seriously and for the satisfaction - for those who succeed - of seeing me cheer. In glee, certainly.
Back in the day, about three years ago, I bought a game called 'Pandemic'. Guess what it's about? Yes, it's like that. There is an epidemic going on and depending on the cards you collect from the 'contamination deck' you can perform actions. Each player has a role to play with specific skills: the transport manager, the contingency planner, the quarantine specialist, the doctor, the scientist, the researcher and the logistics expert.
The first and only time I played it, I didn't like it because it is a collaborative game, you win or lose all together, you don't spend your time reasoning alone about how to put your opponents in check. It was not a sexy enough game for me. Besides, at that time I was very sick, I had broken my leg and the physical pain and immobility made me distracted and irritable, in the collective mission I was the ballast of the group. I did not feel like playing, I was distracted and I could not turn my anger by imposing myself on others. I thus decreed that it was no fun.
This game came back to my mind during these days but especially when writing the editorial for the 76th issue of the SIARV NEWS magazine, I thought how collaboration, unity, shared responsibility, the duty to take care of all and sundry, the duty in the management of resources and the transparency of processes and decisions are values that need an exercise, a daily training to be done with thoughts and actions. And we know that games are an unparalleled educational and didactic tool. And we, citizens of the world, need to re-educate ourselves.
Pandemic will definitely get a second chance.
In the meantime, I'm finally taking some time to develop the plot of a game about drug market access... but that's another story.
Valeria
