{"id":1005,"date":"2016-11-08T01:06:36","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T01:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/?p=1005"},"modified":"2016-11-08T01:06:36","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T01:06:36","slug":"evolution-board-game-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/2016\/11\/08\/evolution-board-game-review\/","title":{"rendered":"“Evolution”: a board game review"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Florence Sullivan MSc student, Department of Fish and Wildlife.<\/p>\n

Another grad student once told me that in order to survive grad school, I would need three things:<\/p>\n

(1) an exercise routine, (2) a pet, and (3) a hobby. My Pilates class on Wednesdays is a great mid-week reminder to stretch. I don\u2019t have a pet, so that advice gets fulfilled vicariously through friends. As for my hobby, I think you\u2019ll find that even when scientists take a break from work, we really don\u2019t get that far away from the subject matter\u2026..<\/p>\n

Board games have evolved<\/em> significantly since the early \u201890s when I grew up on such family staples as Monopoly, Risk, Sorry!, Candyland, and Chutes and Ladders, etc. Now, table-top games tend to fall into three loose categories \u2013 \u201cEuro-games\u201d that focus on strategy and economic themes as well as keeping all players in the game until the end, \u201cAmerican-style\u201d that tend toward luck and direct player contact so that not everyone plays until the end, and \u201cParty\u201d that are easy to learn and are often played in large groups as social icebreakers or to provide entertainment.<\/p>\n

\"img_20161106_200251024\"<\/a>
A few of my favorite games.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As board games proliferate, we see the use of many themes and often, there are valuable educational lessons included in the game design!\u00a0 There are militaristic or survival games (Betrayal at the House on the Hill<\/a>, Dead of Winter<\/a>), economic and engineering (Settlers of Catan<\/a>, Istanbul<\/a>, Ticket to ride<\/a>, Carcassonne<\/a>), fantasy and art (Small World<\/a>, Dixit<\/a>), cooperative vs competitive (Hanabi<\/a>, Forbidden Desert<\/a> vs. 7 Wonders<\/a>), and some of my favorites \u2013 the sciences (Compounded<\/a>, Bioviva<\/a>, Pandemic<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Today, let\u2019s talk about my current favorite \u2013 Evolution<\/a>. It is immediately obvious that the game designers responsible are either giant nerds (I use this in the most loving way possible) or have spent some quality time with ecologists.\u00a0 Not only is the art work beautiful, and the game play smooth, but the underlying mechanics allow serious ecological theories such as \u2018predator and prey mediated population cycles\u2019, \u2018co-evolution\u2019 and \u2018evolutionary arms-races\u2019 to be acted out and easily understood.<\/p>\n

\"Players<\/a>
Players set up their species (1 green\/yellow tile = 1 species) around the watering hole, and contemplate their next moves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In game play, as in life, the point of the game is to eat \u2013 victory is achieved by the player who has managed to \u2018digest\u2019 the most food tokens. All players begin with a single species, and with each turn, can either add traits (ie. fat tissue<\/em>, scavenger<\/em>, etc.) to the species, increase the body size of a species, gain a population level, or gain additional species. \u00a0Next, players take food from a limited, random supply until there is no food left. Species that have not been fed to their full capacity (population levels) will starve, and can even become extinct – much like the reality of environmental cycles. \u00a0Finally, all food that has been \u2018eaten\u2019 is digested, and the next round begins.<\/p>\n

Since a player can never be sure how much food will appear on the watering hole each turn, it is a good strategy to capitalize on traits like foraging<\/em> which allows a species to take twice as much food every time it feeds.\u00a0 If your species cooperates<\/em> with another, that means that it gets to eat every time you feed the first species. A player who combines foraging traits with multiple cooperating species in a \u201ccooperation chain\u201d can quickly empty the watering hole before any other players get a chance.\u00a0 Much like a species perfectly adapted to its niche in the real world will out compete more generalist species.<\/p>\n

\"img_20161106_195009550\"<\/a>
The pack-hunting carnivore<\/em> on the left can easily take down the fertile defensive herding<\/em> species in\u00a0the upper right. The efficient foraging<\/em> species in the middle is protected by its horns<\/em>, and cooperates<\/em> with the next species to the right. The burrowing<\/em> species is protected from carnivores only as long as it is full (and presumably no longer needs to venture out of its burrow).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One way to avoid the competition for food at the watering hole is to play the carnivore<\/em> trait.\u00a0 This species must now consume other species in order to feed itself.\u00a0 A few caveats; a carnivore must be larger in body size than anything it tries to eat, and can no longer eat plant food as it is an obligate carnivore. As soon as a carnivore appears on the board, the evolutionary arms-race begins in earnest!\u00a0 Traits such as burrowing<\/em>, climbing<\/em>, hard shells<\/em>, horns<\/em>, defensive herding<\/em> and warning calls<\/em> become vital to survival.\u00a0 But carnivores can be clever, and apply ambush<\/em> to species with warning call<\/em>, or pack-hunting<\/em> to a species with defensive herding<\/em>.\u00a0 In everything, there is a certain balance, and quickly, players will find themselves acting out a classic \u2018boom and bust population growth cycle\u2019 scenario, where herbivores go extinct due to low food supply at the watering hole and\/or high predation pressure, and carnivores soon follow when there are no un-protected species for them to feed upon.<\/p>\n

\"img_20161106_195518519\"<\/a>
A flying creature must first pay the ‘upkeep cost’ of its body size in food, before it can feed its population. Good thing it has the extra cliff-side food source that is only accessible to other species with wings!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An expansion has been released for the game \u2013 it is called Flight<\/em> \u2013 and introduces traits such as flight, camouflage, good eyesight<\/em>, and others.\u00a0 From an ecologist\u2019s perspective, it fits the original game well both scientifically and thematically.\u00a0 To achieve flight, a higher price must be paid (in terms of cards discarded) to gain the trait card, and unlike other species, an \u2018upkeep cost\u2019 must be gathered in food tokens before the species actually eats any food tokens during the round.\u00a0 However, flight also gives access to a cliff-side watering hole that is not accessible to earthbound species. This neatly mirrors the real world where flight is an energetically costly activity that also opens new niches.<\/p>\n

The next expansion is just arriving in stores, and I can\u2019t wait to play it! It\u2019s called Climate<\/em>, and adds traits such as nocturnal, claws,<\/em> and insectivore<\/em>. Perhaps more exciting though, are the \u2018event cards\u2019 which will trigger things like desertification, cold snaps, heatwaves, volcanic eruptions and meteor strikes. A climate tracker will keep track of whether the planet is in an ice age or a warming period, and certain traits will make your species more or less likely to survive \u2013 can you guess which ones might be useful in either scenario? I think it will be enormously fun to play through different climate scenarios and see how traits stack and species interactions evolve.\u00a0 Perhaps this new addition to the game will even cause a new game review in Nature \u2013 check out their initial assessment here: http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nature\/journal\/v528\/n7581\/full\/528192a.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Games like evolution are useful thought exercises for students and researchers because they promote discussion of adaptive traits, predator-prey cycles, climate, and ecosystem dynamics as related to our own projects. Watching a story unfold in front of you is a great way to truly understand some of the core principles of ecology (and other subjects). This is especially relevant in the GEMM lab where we continuously ask ourselves why our study species act the way they do? How do they find prey, and how are\/will they adapt(ing) to our changing climate?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Florence Sullivan MSc student, Department of Fish and Wildlife. Another grad student once told me that in order to survive grad school, I would need three things: (1) an exercise routine, (2) a pet, and (3) a hobby. My Pilates class on Wednesdays is a great mid-week reminder to stretch. I don\u2019t have a … Continue reading “Evolution”: a board game review<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6597,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[168,2139,712846,677522,2944],"class_list":["post-1005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-education","tag-evolution","tag-florence-sullivan","tag-foraging-ecology","tag-grad-school"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6597"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1010,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions\/1010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}