COC, A Family Affair

Clash of Clans (CoC) is now a pastime at home, even a ‘thing’ perhaps. The game is just entertaining and quite honestly, addicting.

I used to play it before but withdrawn from it because I misunderstood some of the game’s rules as the level of experience go up. My son played it before too, but it’s just out of curiosity and probably because he has nobody to play it with. Joining a clan in the game (a group is called ‘clan’ in the game) can be quite frustrating especially when you don’t know anyone in there.

Anyway, when we visited Taiwan in the fall of last year, a big CoC event was happening in Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall grounds. It was probably a regional or national competition between clashers. My son and I started talking about the characters of the game whose banners and replicas were on display. So the moment we got home, I downloaded the game once again and started playing it, only this time I play now with him.

My wife plays some games too but never with the games that we, the boys, play (and we do play a lot of RPGs). However, we got her to play this one because my son likes to tell her stories of what he’d done with his game whenever they’re alone together. The responses she could give him that time were only ‘Uhmm & OK’. We were able to persuade her to play the game eventually and now whenever the topic is CoC, she's no longer an outcast. 

Soon enough, our weekend ‘Family Affair’ was born and we called it 'CoC Wizards'.

CoC is a game of strategy so you’re going to need a lot of planning and patience (it will test a lot of your patience). My son is already very good in planning skills but is still learning to how to be patient. It seems that, with wisdom comes patience.

The game has a lot of twists, turns and surprises. You will feel that at times, any plan you prepare isn’t good enough to face adversities. You’re going to learn how to settle with what you have and get the best defence out of it. You will need to find ways to increase your resources in a given time frame. And, over time, you’ll get enough experience to know what the do’s and don’ts of the game are. 

This, in a way, is how we live our lives. 

From this though, I have learned that by doing anything together as a family on a regular basis can make your relationship tighter, in harmony with one another and more open. I was surpriseof the things that I was able to in these activities that I think I’ll never gonna get in any other situation. I was also surprised by how much I am teaching my child values in a language he can easily understand thru situational examples. It happened to me a lot.

Role Playing Games (RPG) such as this one can be really interesting. It might even tell a lot about yourself and the people you're playing it with. So, why not add some colours to your lives and play some family games.