It's a game that is deadly serious. In this make-believe world, humanity teeters on the brink of destruction. With each flip of a card, virulent and deadly diseases get a fiendish chance to advance across the globe. In this world, Yaianni and his friends are valiant public health officials, racing against time to save the world from pestilence and death. So they take this game – called Pandemic – seriously. They huddle around a table at the Victory Point Cafe in Berkeley, California, discussing strategy. The colorful board in front of them is crowded with little cubes representing diseases, and every turn could be their last. In Pandemic, Yaianni says, diseases usually win. \u201cPeople have created this game to make you lose. So it\u2019s a challenge, mentally.\u201d It's a challenge players can overcome only if they work together. Pandemic is a cooperative game. Unlike most board games, in which one player wins and everyone else accepts defeat, in this newer style of gaming, the deck is stacked against everyone. A deck of disease, a game of friends Yaianni\u2019s team must draw from a diabolical deck that is filled with cards that make even more \u201cdisease cubes\u201d pile up. \u201cEvery turn, we\u2019re all talking about the turn we\u2019re taking together," he explains. To prevent another disaster, the friends decide to build a little hospital. Yaianni says that when he\u2019s hanging out with friends, he likes board games. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of social, at the same time, it\u2019s not something you do on your own. I used to play a lot of computer games and that\u2019s fun. But it\u2019s between you and the computer screen. Even if you\u2019re on line, playing with other people. Here you\u2019re like literally in person. And you\u2019re, you know, you play a game together, whether it\u2019s cooperative or competitive, you\u2019re socializing in a way, and it\u2019s entertaining." To help with that socializing, the Victory Point Cafe offers patrons coffee, beer… and board games. Nora, the assistant manager, says those board games are a big part of the appeal. \u201cYou can play video games with other people, but you don\u2019t look at them necessarily face to face over a board that you share pieces on and that sort of thing. You can\u2019t hand things to other people. [Board games are] just very tactile, and very visual. And you know, I feel like it uses more engagement, and people crave that.\u201d There is a wall lined with board games that customers can borrow, and most of these games are competitive. But Nora likes the cooperative games such as Pandemic. "There\u2019s something about cooperative games that I just find really enjoyable, and almost comforting. Because you\u2019re working together." Competition vs. cooperation At Karliquin\u2019s Game Knight in Boulder, Colorado, the board game buddies prefer competition, whether it's a colorful board and a deck of cards, or a lively game of dice. One regular at the hobby shop dismisses cooperative games. "You can\u2019t really feel the twist of the knife," he says while rolling a pair of dice. "There\u2019s kind of no reward and no penalty for failing in cooperative games. It\u2019s a little better than watching television but not by much.\u201d But cooperative games have their fans here. One man says his favorite is a game called Ghost Stories. "You\u2019re protecting a village against an onslaught of ghosts.\u201d Other players list Mansions and Madness, and Super Dungeon Explorer. Meanwhile, back at Victory Point, it\u2019s a Pandemic cliffhanger. One turn away from the final curtain, their team strategy gets a boost with the draw of a lucky card. They save the world from pestilence and death! As for what this means in the game of Life, Yaianni quips, "If your life is having to cure disease before it kills everyone in the world, then yes, I guess it\u2019s a metaphor for life.\u201d Yet in a world that needs people solving problems together, he says that playing cooperatively speaks to him. \u201cWe have a very good team when we\u2019re playing together, and if we didn\u2019t have this level of teamwork, we wouldn\u2019t have been able to do it. We would have lost the game.\u201d Board game fans say that win, lose or cooperate, anyone who finds a game they love will have a grand adventure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It's a game that is deadly serious. In this make-believe world, humanity teeters on the brink of destruction. With each flip of a card, virulent and deadly diseases get a fiendish chance to advance across the globe. In this world, Yaianni and his friends are valiant public health officials, racing against time to save the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}