Cooperation Over Competition— Why Being Nice in Boardgames is Actually Fun

When I was first getting into board games my gateway drug was similar to many others — that seemingly innocent but viciously cutthroat and acerbic game known as The Settlers of Catan. In Catan, players compete for scarce resources in a cuthroat battle for control of different types of landmasses. It’s a game that relies mostly on it’s exceptional theming, player interaction, and tactile feel, but often falls short in other categories. Nevertheless, it’s generally considered one of the best games of all time for a reason.

In my younger years I played A LOT of Catan. There were many late nights on my friends patio sipping drinks and listening to Shakira on repeat as the sun went down, taking turns seeing who could pummel the other person into submission using our wits, a bit of luck, and of course, the robber. Most of the time these game nights were humorous and light-hearted, full of banter and fun, but quite often, at least one player would have a bad game. Inevitably one player would have a slow start and never be able to catch up, and worse — another player would be in the lead, and other players would gang up against them to take them down. There was no incentive to winning the midgame because you knew, as soon as you pulled out into the lead, popular opinion would turn against you and the result would be player aggression.

To me, at the time, Catan was the perfect foray into Eurogames, those with complicated rule-sets and beautiful themes, and often intense competition over resources and points. During this time, almost a decade ago, I was in my young period of youthful exuberance. Everything was new and exciting, and I had energy to stay up late and mentally tussle with friends. By the time the novelty wore off, I had already started to dabble in other games. One friend brought ticket to ride on a camping trip and I was hooked. I tried Dominion — sparking a vague memory of playing it with a friend, him maddenly chaining actions together while I sat there impotently playing silvers. I bought and played several Catan expansions, Seafarers being my favorite, and other fantastically themed games like 7 Wonders and Carcassone, expanding my horizons and rediscovering the joy I hadn’t found in my childhood playthroughs.

One thing all of these games have in common is their competitive nature and generally ruthless experience. Lagging behind, even by a few fractions, often meant hours of boredom and suffering as your enemies piled on. Winning was often hallow because of the cost to the other players. Yes you were the best player in the room (and thus could claim intellectual superiority for a few hours) but at what cost? A demoralized and bored group of friends who often felt hurt at the brutal nature of your victory. 

It’ll be no surprise to learn that eventually, the shine wore off from my love for competitive board-gaming. I found my way through various consistencies and make-ups of board game groups, one day ending up in a group of some co-workers and friends, all of whom enjoyed the mental sparring of highly complex board-games, like dominant species, terraforming mars, scythe, and power grid. They were intense, mentally drianing exercises where there was often tension or betrayal within our group. Of course, these games are exceptional games, but over time I lost interest in spending so much time jockying for mental superiority, and after a while, I decided it just wasn’t very much fun to work so hard at having fun. 

One of the primary issues that plagued our group was “host superiority” Generally, the host who owned the game had played the game the most. They often had a leg up on understanding the rules, and more often than not, how to exploit those rules. And since games are usually 2–3 hours, our group would get one game in at most, at the end of which the host would win a hollow victory and the rest of us would go home tired. Then the next game night we would play a different game entirely, so all the learned strategy from the previous game night was forgotten by the time it came to play the initial game again, and the host again won an easy victory. 

If we could have guaranteed that all the players were playing a new game for the first time, or that we all had multiple rounds of experience under our belts, the games would have been more fair, and the competition would have felt more engaging. But as it was, with an almost unlimited pile of games to play, and only so much time to play them, there was a cap on the fun for most players. 

I was about my new hobby & I tried bringing Catan to a more diverse group of friends outside my core board gaming group. Just as my first friend was my gateway into this addictive hobby, so I would try to be to others. But for some reason, I found that it became harder and harder to get players into boardgames the more I tried. Often I would see their eyes glaze over as I was explaining the rules, or people would get frustrated when they were losing and I could see the desire to switch activities in their eyes. Sometimes, when they didn’t understand the simple rules that I already knew by heart, I felt like a school teacher correcting a student. In general, I think many more casual people felt alienated by the harsh theming and competition in many modern Eurogames. Games like terraforming mars were off the table entirely because of their complexity for a new player, and even a game like Catan was fraught with risk that some friends might not enjoy it’s competitiveness, or it’s hyper aggressive “take-that” mechanics. 

Then, In 2017 A friend of mine released a co-operative board game called Ravine. The game toes the line between party-game more traditional card-game, but is quite unique in it’s cooperative premise. You are a surviving passenger on a plane that crashed into a deserted island. Together with the other players, you have to work together to craft materials, forage for food, and generally keep your “hearts” from running out before you get rescued. In essence, you’re playing together against a “turn counter” player, who has a predetermined number of nights before you are rescued (the players don’t know how many of course). Your success relies a lot on luck, and it’s no surprise that the game has mediocre reviews on Board Game Geek, the central hub of all board gaming culture. It isn’t very complex, it takes itself pretty lightly, and the fact that you’re playing against a turn counter can make the stakes feel very low. However, the game quickly became a favorite of many of my friends to play on a night in. Whenever the idea is floated to play a game, Ravine is often the inevitable decision. How could a game that generally is derided as too simple, too random, and too “un-fun” be so popular with certain groups of my friends? 

The truth is- ravine was popular for a few reasons. It’s simple to teach new players within a few minutes and its fun and silly and not too serious. The stakes are so low — if you lose it’s not because another player “beat you” it’s often because of luck. There are no “host advantage” imbalances, if one player has played before and another hasn’t, the player with the more advanced knowledge can share that knowledge with the new player instead of keeping them in the dark. Finally, there is a large amount of player interaction, so many players, when playing with a casual group, know they’re still going to be able to talk with their family and friends instead of staring at a board silently doing math. In general, the game itself produces fun by producing good group dynamics, promoting conversation, and being silly. There are many things I would change about ravine, but one thing that has stuck with me for years is the cooperative nature and how that creates a better first-play experience, and in general, is friendlier to newer players. 

Types of Cooperative Games

There are two main formats a cooperative game can operate under. The first is what is known as “All vs. Traitor(s)”. This is usually a large group of players is playing against a smaller group of players. This asymmetrical design is often used for deception games like Werewolf, Arkham Horror, or Secret Hitler. Those games even player imbalance through a knowledge imbalance. However, they rarely allow the entire group of players to cooperate, if all players are playing together — who are they playing against? Unless you’re designing an experiential game, i.e Mousetrap (one of my childhood favorites), all games need a winner! 

The second type of cooperative game is the type that Ravine, Flashpoint and Pandemic — a cooperative experience where you are playing against a predetermined “computer” enemy. This type of game is “All vs. The Game”. The problem with this type is pretty obvious — board games are static, pre-printed objects with set rules, cards, and experiences. Unlike with software games where the computer can react to your inputs and respond with changes and complexity is relatively limitless, in a physical game “The Computer” player must act on a predetermined set of rules managed by the group of players and not much else. This often ends up as a turn timer — i.e. players must accomplish something within a certain number of turns or they lose, which sadly can create the feeling of tension, but not much reward when you beat the turn timer, which is why they’re often derided in the greater board game community. It’s more of a sense of trying to avoid losing than it is a sense of playing to win

Pandemic is probably the only widely successful cooperative board game in the “All vs. Game” category that is also viewed as being a compelling play experience. I’ll save the details of why Pandemic is a brilliant cooperative success, but in short, it gives players choice and the ability for their actions to impact how the “Computer” plays out the game. 

Over the past 3 years I’ve been working on solving this problem — how to create a cooperative game that is actually fun in the eyes of the hardcore gaming community, but still maintains a friendly sense of sillyness, lower stakes, and ease of entry that draws more casual people to play cooperative games. 

What I ultimately have discovered is that there is a category of game that hasn’t really been explored yet, but solves most of the problems of the “All vs Game” cooperative games without losing the joy that comes with cooperating and interacting with your friends. I’m calling this category “Semi-Cooperative” games.

In essence, to create a semi-cooperative game, you must take your win condition —  generally you can either win on your own, or lose on your own, but bracket that with two critical rules. One: winning doesn’t mean other people losing. Two: It’s easier to win together than it is to win solo. Third, and possibly most critically, it’s easier to win if all players win. By biasing the rule-set to favor cooperative play, that is -if you do things that help others, they have more effect, than if you do things that help yourself, you end up creating a game where game-play heavily favors cooperating in most circumstances, yet still allows for selfish play in the right circumstance. This gives the player freedom to choose their actions. Want to be selfish this turn and get rich? Go ahead, but the Computer Player gets stronger the more selfish you are. Want to help the group — that’s awesome, but your personal rewards will be less.

 This has the added benefit of increasing player interaction through real-world social dynamics. If you have been a player who has not be cooperating, why would other players help you? And visa versa — if you are a player who has been helping others and is in dire straights, perhaps other players might be more inclined to help. In fact, the game should optimize for keeping the most players alive giving you the best chance of winning. Players should actively optimize for keeping all human players alive in order to win. This is a satisfying mechanic for most hardcore Euro-Gamers — who crave the ability to optimize their play and create efficiencies and engines. By making other characters the focus of their optimization they have something to play for cooperatively. Yes, you could play selfishly and be the last person standing, the game would be that much harder. It gives players freedom of choice to play their own way, and this, in my mind, is the biggest missing piece from cooperative games today. 

Second, in order to create a really fun Semi-Cooperative game, players must be able to interact with the Computer player in a way that is compelling and meaningful. In most cooperative games The Computer Player’s turn is strictly negative. Often there’s a randomized deck of cards that enact negative outcomes on you and the other players. You have no control over those happenings. You lose cards, or money, or points. It’s as if you’re being punished for playing the game, that’s not fun! But if you get to choose how the computer plays (within a set of rules), and optimize the computers moves for your own gain, you now have some level of control over the computers turn. Now it’s another element you, as the player, and as a group of players, get to optimize and strategize for, and gives the player a sense of accomplishment when negative outcomes are avoided. You flip the negative punishment outcome of the computers turn to a potentially rewarding turn by avoiding that specific negative outcome. It’s like playing defense in sport. Few people like playing defense as much as playing offense, but a good defense can be rewarding when executed well. 

Lets use Ravine again for a simple example. In Ravine, players are stranded on an island and must survive each night from animal attacks and heavy weather events. Players must draw one card per night which have these deleterious effects, sometimes they might make you lose an item, or sometimes it’s health or worse. Currently there is no way, as a player, to affect the Night Cards in any way, so you’re at the whim of the randomized deck. Imagine, however, if there was a simple, common item that players could craft together to impact the deck. Perhaps they could look at the top 5 cards and reorder them, or perhaps with this item they could insert positive cards into the deck at points of their choosing. To get more complex, perhaps if you worked together to craft something, or there was a type of wagering mechanic (perhaps health or items) players could remove night cards entirely (making it easier to win by getting to the end), but at a significant cost, a risky, but potentially fun play. 

Semi Cooperative Vs True Cooperative

The Semi prefix of semi-cooperative is also quite important. Players can get frustrated in a cooperative game due to certain players dominating the game-play, unfortunately causing other players to feel like their input doesn’t matter. Further, players can get bored because the primary mechanic is simply helping other players, not strengthening or progressing themselves. For instance, this is one of the flaws with Flashpoint — Fire Rescue. You’re constantly struggling to not die, but there is no progression or growth. Often your primary goal is to keep your other firefighters alive (by putting out fires) while they rescue people. How do you become a better firefighter? Can you create a more efficient character? Where is the gold, the loot, the money, the fame, the power they crave? 

It’s incredibly rewarding to build your engine or character up to be more powerful and more successful, but in a cooperative game you have to optimize for your teams survival, and players that act even a bit selfishly are ostracized. Chosing to get the glory of rescuing a person from the building instead of putting out a fire might put you at odds with your teammates. Adding in mechanics that optimize for selfishness, and even more importantly, player growth/improvement, is probably the strongest way to combat this. If one player is dominating the game, well, that’s fine if you’re still getting yours. If your player is getting stronger and more powerful, perhaps in the future you’re the one who could be dominating the game. Furthermore, you now have a sense of progression, of improvement. 

Board games are, in essence, microcosms of real life. When you sit down to play, you’re facing real people — friends and family —competing or collaborating toward goals. But a binary of competitive or cooperative doesn’t mimic real life. Take your job, for instance: you might collaborate with teammates towards a common objective, yet you also have personal ambitions, such as career advancement or financial growth. In daily life, you encounter situations where you may want to help others but find yourself constrained by time, finances, or energy. These complex interactions, familiar to us on an hourly, daily, and lifelong scale, are reflected in semi-cooperative games. Aggressive, self-centered players can opt to play as such, even if it’s detrimental to the group, while altruistic players may choose a more cooperative approach, even if it’s less beneficial for themselves. These games allow players to express their individuality and deeper humanity in the choices they ultimately make.