Learning Game

The glare on this picture from an overhead light is pretty bad but I couldn't bring myself to use a black and white version of this photo as it wouldn't do the pieces justice.
To say that we learn through mistakes and often through other people is perhaps not original but I think it's something we often resist and struggle against. I'm not suggesting that fail early and fail often is a great approach in general but I'm struck by how much more quickly I grasp how something works when it goes wrong.
I play boardgames but often find it difficult to 'get' a game until I've played it or seen it played. Tonight, we had a go at Darkstar - a newish game that I got a review copy of. It looked really interesting and we gradually got a sense of it but it wasn't until a particular combination of events occurred and one player was effectively wiped out that we began to grasp how the interaction of planning, tactics, and negotiation could work. Other plays are going to look quite different because that moment of failure helped see how the pieces should fit together. Thankfully I game with folk who lose amicably and we all understand the first game's a learning game.