A money-grab from the development team and a plea for your help from a fellow risk enjoy-er. A personal letter, if not witness statement, to the decline of games as we know it. Officially Copyrighted as of © August 2021 Introduction Where to start? I suppose I should begin by laying out to you, directly, what I aim to convey in this guide, and what I am trying to say, what I am feeling. I mean, the only reason this guide comes under the "English" language, it because "facts" wasn't available to. My childhood, how I was raised, my experiences with life. I could go through them all with you now I'm sure of it. But I won't. I don't wish to bore you, I wish to inform you, and inform you I will, do enjoy the guide: Historically accurate - This game sux Risk is a strategic game, unlike "Game of the Goose",the earliest commercially produced board game, the Game of the Goose is a game of chance and luck, involving no strategy at all. The Duke of Spain popularised the game and it quickly spread as a common past time amongst citizens of Europe. Crowds gathering around stalls in the marketplace, the smell of fresh manure running its course throughout the slums of the kingdom. Peasants and second-class folks alike, stood side by side, cheering on the contestants of "Games of the Goose". Children frolicking about the dirty town, happiness, like poverty, is plentiful amongst the townspeople. The game of the goose brought closer the men and women and children and hags of the kingdoms all across Europe. Chess, Backgammon, Draughts, or Checkers, and many more. i could continue. Throughout the ages, from as early as 600 AD, humans have used 3 forms of social interaction; One to form stronger relationships, the other to fulfil his or her own needs, and the final to carry out the daily tasks one is responsible for. Relationships In this primal division of social interaction, there is then a further, more specific, three divisions amongst those first primary divisions, and these are -as I call them- secondary divisions. The first of three secondary divisions withing the "relationship" primary division, would be Sexual. Within a community of co-existing men and women, sexual intercourse is a strong defining factor between two choices of wide importance. From the King signing a treaty with another Allied kingdom, to a bartender dogging down a young girl in an alley-way. Sexual relations, whether chosen forthrightly or forced, are a crucial step to the development or withholding of a society. This is true within almost all species of the wide animal kingdom, not just the humans. The second, secondary division is a light, casual relationship amongst people. This ranges from the relationship between a bartender and his customers, to a knight captain with his fellow, although recognisably inferior, knights. The final sub-division of the three is a strong bond that rarely occurs and is often quickly broken, Both its rarity and it's fragility cause these kind of relationships to crumble and occur, publicly, a lot less than a society needs them to, In the middle-ages, a class system was a concrete barrier that shows a significant decrease in these meaningful relationships, and now I am left to wonder whether we, as a society, are even capable of forming long-lasting relationships. We live in a world of instant-gratification, who the hell has time to care about your problems? In such a fast-paced Eco-system we now flourish and thrive in, Is there any doubt that we will soon pay for our mistakes. What am I even getting at? Well, this digital, steam edition or Risk is quite literally the downfall of all things good. As the great disciple Matthew has warned us, we can tell a tree by its' fruits. Matthew 7: 17-18: A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. I remember the times when my entire school would gather together to see the chess tournament, or the nearby ping-pong games being played, and most memorably, the different risk games all occurring on the outskirts of the gym hall. Three of these open-school risk tournaments, I personally won, and the last two I placed second, only to be graciously beaten by my very own sister. Risk helped the family dynamics within my home, being able to distract my mother and father for longer enough that I don't have to hear them yelling at each other was one of the very few moments of joy I can remember from my childhood. There are approximately 373 variations of Risk to date. I am aware that the fickle-minded developers behind the digital game believe that, because you don't have to pay for it, it is better. But they are still stuck in their own deluded mindset that keeps them unhappy in their lives. Tell me, what products are often better because they are free? Spotify is better without ads, I think we can all agree on that, I would rather pay to have no ads on YouTube, and almost all "free" books are only free because nobody in their right mind would pay for it. And that's all I can say for this game, It's only free because nobody would pay for it. I suppose I should attempt to summarise my disorganised writing. You see, to interact in a relationship, one must first have the ice breaker. Whether this is ordering something from the bartender, proposing a treaty to a king, or offering someone a game of risk, the ice breaker always exists and will continue to, remaining hidden in plain sight. I can honestly tell you that I had a wide, ear-to-ear grin on my face when I won those risk tournaments, and not just that satisfaction, but the relationships that formed from winning, and playing, those games were immensely worthwhile. How many friends have you made playing digital Risk? it's the difference between playing Fifa and going to a football club. The former just outplays the latter and leaves it in the dust. Fulfilment in an empty generation There is, like with relationships, three sub-categories, or a sub-dominant checklist, that we can identify and relate to. The first being vital-needs, the second being non-vital needs, and the third being self-fulfilling needs. An easy example of vital-needs would be eating food when you are hungry and drinking water when you are thirsty, although not all need-fulfilling activities are this vital. A good example for the non-vital needs that we still take care of, would be relaxation and hygienic treatment. These are obviously not vital as we can live without them, but the first may cause a mental breakdown and second a detrimental effect on social status and physical well-being. The final of the three are the self-fulfilling needs, and no, they don't fulfil themselves, but instead they are needs you only categorise needs because you as the individual classify them as such. To better explain myself, a good example is in order. Let's say you come home from a hard day's labour and decide to sit down and read a good book by the fire. This is important, not only to you, but for you. It sustains your mental health as well as lifting your mood and re-energising you for your next day of hard work. I can't classify reading a book by the fire as a need of mine, but to you it very well may be, and who am I to take that away from you? If my needs is to wake up and vigorously masturbate out of my window, then what's stopping me. Besides laws of course. Daily tasks Finally, we must cover the daily tasks each individual takes the responsibility to uphold and complete successfully when they are supposed to be completed. The first of three (yes there is three again) is a societal task, this may be parking your car in a legal parking spot, or completing your job as waste-management leader to your fully committed duties entail you to. All-in-all, the societal task benefits your society greatly, and we all play a large role in this, whether we believe it or not, and our ability to individually perform these tasks will be reflected when we take a third-eye look at the society we live in. The second of the three is our beneficial task. This can be collecting your mail from your mailbox, as to keep on track with your bills, or it can be servicing your car to keep it in a healthy condition. To you, those two activities may seem very well like -as it is named- a task that is beneficial to you, but it is in fact beneficial once again to your society members, your neighbours, and yourself last. It takes energy to walk to your mailbox, and then all you do is find out you have to pay some company money just so you can have water to drink, Surely water should be a necessity not a commodity! And along with this, servicing your car will only cost you, accompanied by the gas to get to the servicing garage, and when you get there you will (depending on your own intelligence and knowledge of vehicular maintenance) likely be charged for jobs that don't need doing. But the beneficial side of this task would be that you won't break down in the middle of the road and cause a traffic jam. So essentially you go through the effort and pay the money just so some fat, balding man isn't late to go to his garage and over-charge dim-witted customers. Irony. Although this vastly puts me off of servicing my car, you must know that, as you do one act of society, society is also expected to do one act for you. If everyone serviced their cars, then you don't have to worry about traffic jams as much, if everyone drove perfectly you would likely never have to watch out for traffic pile-ups. On the other hand, if everyone took the lazy, half-arsed attitude of not servicing their motor vehicle, we would experience traffic jams at least 8 times as much as we do today. And that's only one drawback to your personal neglect. So what I'm saying is- Our three basic needs (that being relationships, needs and completing tasks in among us ) must all be taken into consideration when comparing one great from one not-so-great. In this case, it is comparing a class-A board game to a digital, lazily made sloppy mess. In my days of playing real-life Risk, I formed relationships, whether with new friends, strengthening my relationships with existing friends, or playing strip-risk with my sister. I was fulfilling my personal needs, and I was completing the tasks that kept me sane, that kept me in order. Risk saved my life, but this digital edition is about to ruin it, and I will not stop until either the devs apologise to me, or I die. It's one or the other, but I'll take my chances happily. Continue the legacy, buy the risk board game, Yours truly, Alina