How an online game of Risk boosted House spirit and brought out Harvard’s aggressive side.
It pitted House against House, inspired propaganda films and spy rings, and wreaked havoc on study schedules. Students reportedly even left their House formals early to issue marching orders to their online armies. But when the College Events Board (CEB) released Harvard Risk at the start of reading period in May of last year, it didn’t realize it had crafted possibly the best scheme for boosting House spirit in recent memory.
“We thought it would be hitting a whole new population, people who wouldn’t necessarily come out and go to a concert,” said Haining Gouinlock ’07, then a CEB member and now the Campus Life Fellow (or Fun Czarina). “We thought of it more as a diversion and we didn’t expect the madness that happened.”
Because of that huge success, the CEB will bring Risk back for a second round this reading period. According to Michael Ayoub ’10, in his second year as the CEB’s point person for Risk, the game’s basic structure will remain unchanged, although there will be an effort to make the game more user-friendly.
“We are toying with the idea of lengthening the time frame and decreasing the number of turns each day to make the game a little more friendly to people who don’t want their lives consumed by it,” he said.
Other new rule changes may crack down on “zombies” and otherwise encourage fair play — but not too much, Ayoub noted. “Although we’re not encouraging spying by Houses, we realize that there’s no way to get around it, and, in fact, that’s part of the fun,” he said.
In the 2007 version of Risk, based on a similar game which debuted at Yale the previous year, the Harvard campus map became a stylized game board. Among the sixty-odd territories were parts of Houses (such as Lowell West and New Quincy), campus locations (Sever Quad), and area landmarks (the Sheraton Commander).
Each House selected a War Minister to coordinate gameplay. To facilitate personal involvement, individual students could issue orders to their own armies through online accounts. Orders were processed three times a day: at noon, 5 p.m., and midnight.
From the moment the game kicked off on May 6, each turn was met with increasing excitement by students engrossed in the game.
“We were expecting a handful of people from each House to be involved, just enough to have their house survive,” said Ayoub, whose game-coordinator tasks will be shared this year with Kevin Mee ’10. “We were very surprised when we saw how many people became involved and how much attention it was receiving on campus.”
While Currier and Eliot were early casualties, Risk fever continued to grip the rest of campus. As the game intensified, military bureaucracies — such as the Lowell War Council and the Pfoho Committee on Public Safety — emerged to debate strategy, conduct diplomacy, and foster greater participation within their Houses.
Clever tactics also evolved. Good old-fashioned spying compromised the on-site discussion forums and forced each House’s strategists into secure Google groups.
Even neater tricks followed. Allied Houses negotiated planned territory swaps to safely maintain momentum while building up their forces. Some students simply submitted their e-mail addresses and Risk passwords to volunteers who regularly moved the armies of these “zombie accounts.”
Still, many students maintained control of their armies for the entire game, building House-wide interest in the game and helping freshmen bond with their new homes.
“I was shocked and pleased by the fanaticism with which freshmen loyally played for their Houses,” said Ben Schwartz ’10, a Winthrop resident and a current CEB member. “Mainly, it introduced me to other Winthropians, many of whom I now see regularly.”
By mid-game, Lowell, assisted by Mather, had taken the lion’s share of the River area, while Quincy and Pfoho had gained ascendance in the north. Smaller Houses perched nervously in the middle, a Mass Av no-man’s land stretching from the Barker Center to the T Stop.
Gov concentrators ate up the realpolitik that followed. Pfoho and Quincy urged Dunster to join their coalition; when Dunster refused and attacked, it was brutally crushed.
Propaganda appeared too: Lowell tried to keep Leverett out of the Pfoho-Quincy alliance with a YouTube video, “Leverett Lessons,” featuring images from cartoonist Andy Riley’s Book of Bunny Suicides. Quincy responded with its own video, “Lowell Lessons.”
The struggle between the surviving alliances of Leverett-Pfoho-Quincy and Kirkland-Lowell-Mather became a costly war of attrition. The crucial turning points would come on the flanks: throwing over 8000 armies at Kirkland North over the course of two days, Quincy finally gained a beachhead on the River continent on May 16. Soon after, Pfoho used the Union Dorms as a springboard to attack Mather’s home turf, pushing Lowell and its allies ever further back. On May 20, when the last Lowell army fell, Leverett, Pfoho, and Quincy declared themselves joint victors.
That final battle occurred four days into exam period, an overlap Gouinlock said won’t happen again: “That was bad. People didn’t study.”
But outside of Risk’s role as a distraction, game organizers said they were impressed with its power as a House spirit-builder and hope it will reprise that role this year.
“Competing against people is one of the fastest ways to bond,” said Gouinlock. Harvard Risk has been, and will continue to be, enjoyably strong evidence of just that.
Adam Hallowell ’09 (ahallow@fas) looks forward to the reemergence of the Pfoho juggernaut this spring.