Colonization is all a Game

              Earlier this past week, we played a game about colonialism. For the game, we needed a deck of playing cards and our groups. The first step in the game was to pick how we are going to win the native people’s trust either guns a blazing, or peacefully. After we made that decision, the game began. Each group had to take twelve more turns, symbolizing the twelve months in a year, in order to gain a surplus of supplies. Whenever a group took a turn, we would have to randomly choose what type of weather we would have, whether or not the natives would retaliate, and whether or not we would press them for supplies. And everything that we chose impacted the next part of the turn. The goal of the game was to be the group with most surplus supplies after a year.
               For my group, we decided to start off the peaceful way. We didn’t start to press the natives for supplies until the third month. Then we started to press then every other month. In the end, after some bad weather and some difficult choices during that bad weather, we ended up with a surplus of three which was two more than what we started with.
              The reason why we chose to start off peacefully was that we wanted to create a lasting bond with the native people so that we could collect more supplies in the future. Even though we started off peacefully, we still established our dominance, but in a passive way. (We didn’t want the people to retaliate.) Even though this wasn’t a real expedition to colonize a foreign land, we tried to make it more realistic by keeping that mindset. And it all worked out in the end.
              After playing this game, I realized that trying to colonize a foreign place is a game of chance. The reason why I say this is because the “mother country” only knows what is going on in their part of the world. They don’t know what kind of weather happens on another hemisphere, nor do they know how the natives will respond to them. It’s all just a matter of “what ifs.” For example, what if there’s not enough room for farming, what if there’s a drought and everyone dies, what if the native people retaliate, etc.
              I think that if I were to change anything within the game would be to add in a portion where each group would have to keep a specific amount of native people alive in order to thrive as a colony. I think that would make the game a bit more realistic because in order to have a successful colony you need to have people. I’m not sure how to add that part into the game, but somehow it can be done.
             This game, to me, seemed like a correct representation of how colonization happened. You’re playing with forces that you can’t control nor do you fully understand them. It’s all a game of chance.