My Personality Weakness was Exposed by the Game of Diplomacy
And how my friend saved our relationship after my brutal stab
Conventional wisdom says Diplomacy ruins friendships. At best. At worst, it ends them. Here’s why that colloquial truism isn’t actually true, and what you might gain if you can remain friends with your victim after backstabbing him.
If you lose friends over a game of Diplomacy, it says more about you than the game. In Your Move: What Board Games Teach Us About Life, game writers Joan Moriarity and Jonathan Kay explore both the dangers of breaking the magic circle and how some games create contradictions in the player contract.
Diplomacy is one of those games. It is neither solely collaborative or conflict-driven, but rather both at the same time. Because the face-to-face version of the game is driven by rounds of private negotiation away from the table, the tension between these opposing forces is amplified by the difficulties of managing in-game relationships. With six other players. Each a flawed human, equally capable of good and ill.
How Diplomacy Threatens the Player Contract
Here is a list of reactions or reflections I’ve seen on the subject of perceived betrayals in the game of Diplomacy:
