It came as a shock to all of us, all classes would be cancelled due to the Corona-virus. As all community events were not allowed anymore, we unfortunately had to cancel all of our game-nights as well. We believe that the UCR community is very important for pulling us through the pressure of UCR academics. Therefore, living in isolation in our little rooms on campus, or with family far away from the UCR community, one can easily get overwhelmed or lonely. We saw the unique opportunity to try to continue our events online. This way everyone could join from where they were currently staying, be it in Middelburg or hundreds of kilometres away. We set up times and places where students can virtually meet up with fellow students and enjoy some of the RASA spirit from a distance.
Playing games is a good way of distracting yourself from the uncertainty outside as well, and a way to be able to communicate with others. In the end, we settled on three events per week, with very different focuses (from multiplayer games to card games), with the hope that in that way, there is something for everyone to enjoy.
By now, we’ve had several events. Organizing these nights has sometimes been a challenge, with messy Zoom calls, a lot of research on where and how we can play certain games, overwhelmed websites and the odd internet problems on campus. However, the events of last week – including League of Legend, Cards Against Humanity and Scribblio – were well attended and fun.
Dear GamesGo, I’ve never been too much of a gamer myself. Solitary games bore me a little and social games I tend to experience as taking too much time. But these must be character flaws in me, for two of my intellectual heroes have convinced me long ago that humans are both social (Aristotle) and ludic (playful) animals (Huizenga). So I am happy to see that in our adverse circumstances UCR has GamesCo as all important host of playful sociality. As an anecdote I heard a rumour that some small college in the US with crappy digital learning environment has taken to communicating with their students through World of Warcraft, because it offers a much more stable platform. Give peace a chance!