Cooperative board games are board games in which players work together to achieve a common goal, the result being either winning or losing as a group. As the name suggests, cooperative games stress cooperation over competition. This type of board game attracts people who enjoy the social aspect of games and is a good way to get new board game players interested in the hobby. Either the players win the game by reaching a pre-determined objective, or all players lose the game, often by not reaching the objective before a certain event ends the game.
Definition
In cooperative board games, all players win or lose the game together. These games should not be confused with noncompetitive games, such as The Ungame, which simply do not have victory conditions or any set objective to complete. While adventure board games with role playing and dungeon crawl elements like Gloomhaven may be included, pure tabletop role-playing games like are excluded as they have potentially infinite victory conditions with persistent player characters. Furthermore, games in which players compete together in two or more groups, teams or partnerships fall outside of this definition, even though there is temporary cooperation between some of the players. Multiplayer conflict games like Diplomacy may also feature temporary cooperation during the course of the game. These games are not considered cooperative though, because players are eliminated and ultimately only one individual can win.
History and development
20th century
Early cooperative games were used by parents and teachers in educational settings. In 1954, a board game version of Beat the Clock, a game show, was released. In 1956, the Lowell Toy Manufacturing Corporation of New York City released a board game version of I've Got a Secret, a panel show, featuring host Garry Mooreon the cover of the box. Teacher Jim Deacove published the cooperative gameTogether in 1971. He founded Family Pastimes in 1972 in Perth, Ontario, focusing exclusively on cooperative games. Family Pastimes has published numerous cooperative games, having released over 100 board games including the popular game of Max the Cat. The company also holds the trademark for the phrase, "A co-operative game". Ken Kolsbun and Jann Kolsbun founded Animal Town in 1976 in California. They invented cooperative games such as Save the Whales, Nectar Collector, and Dam Builders. Animal Town was renamed as Child and Nature in 2003. During the 1980s, several cooperative games like The Wreck of the B.S.M. Pandora, Time Tripper, and Arkham Horror were published. In the series of games published in the 1980s, players are presented with a mystery to solve, and they trace the evidence together. Many cooperative Adventure board game series with Role-playing elements like Citadel of Blood, HeroQuest, Wizards , Advanced HeroQuest, Deathmaze were released in this decade. Minion Hunter is a board game originally released in 1992 by Game Designers' Workshop in conjunction with their Dark ConspiracyRole Playing Game. The game is designed to encourage the players to work together to stall and/or defeat the plans of four monster races as a primary goal, with the individual advancement of the players as a secondary objective. is set in the Star Trek universe and released in 1993. It utilizes a video tape that runs constantly while users play the board game portion. Events on the video tape combine with board game play to determine whether users win or lose the game. The video itself was directed by Les Landau and contains original footage filmed on the actual Star Trek: The Next Generation sets at Paramount Studios. Warhammer Quest is a fantasy dungeon, role-playing adventure board game released by Games Workshop in 1995 as the successor to HeroQuest and Advanced HeroQuest, set in its fictional Warhammer Fantasy world.
21st century
In 2000, Reiner Knizia published Lord of the Rings which influenced a number of subsequent titles, including Shadows Over Camelot. Pandemic, designed by Matt Leacock was first published by Z-Man Games in the United States in 2008. Space Alert is a cooperative survival designer board game created by Vlaada Chvátil in 2008. Players assume the roles of space explorers on a mission to survey the galaxy. The crew is evaluated on teamwork and how they deal with problems that arise on their journey. Other cooperative games of the last 10 years include Star Trek: Expeditions, Sentinels of the Multiverse,, Zombicide, and Hanabi, which won the Spiel des Jahres award in 2013. Mechs vs. Minions is a cooperative board game created by Riot Games. The game was released on October 13, 2016.
Characteristics
In José P. Zagal, Jochen Rick, and Idris Hsi's "Collaborative games: Lessons learned from board games", the lessons the researchers learned highlight what makes a good cooperative board game.
First, the game needs to point out the folly of being competitive by allowing players to make decisions that benefits themselves rather than the whole group.
Second, each player should not need the input of the rest of the group when making a decision.
Third, players need to be able to identify what actions had benefits or consequences.
Fourth, the game should reward selfless players by giving players unique roles or traits.
These researchers also point out Challenges in designing collaborative games due to the following pitfalls that must be overcome:
game degenerating into a single player decides the actions for everyone
For a game to be engaging, players should invested in the end result and winning the game should be satisfying
For repeat play, game experience should vary and challenge needs to evolve
Game as the opponent
Participants typically play against the game. Cooperative board games generally involve players joining forces against the game itself, and can be played without any player in the role of the opposition or Gamemaster. In Pandemic, for example, players work together to stop and cure different strains of diseases. Also, in some cooperative games, players actually cooperate with the opposing forces in the game. For example, in Max the Cat, players are mice who keep an aggressive cat at bay by offering him milk and other appeasements. In this way, all participants in the conflict scenario are fulfilled and the resolution is truly cooperative or "win-win".
Randomness
In many contemporary cooperative games, randomizing devices help in varying game experience over multiple plays. Dice can be rolled, cards can be drawn each turn from a shuffled deck or various board sections of a modular board revealed to generate random objectives, events and challenges. These provide the conflict or challenge in the game, and make it progressively more difficult for the players. For example, in Save the Whales, players work together to protect whales from the challenges inherent in the game setting—radioactive waste, commercial whaling, etc.
Focus on the Theme
Themes and objectives in cooperative games are either or both of grand scale and highly detailed. This brings an investment in the games objective and the satisfaction of succeeding against the overwhelming magnitude of the odds. The outcome of the effort is often uncertain until the very end, the games try to maintain interest and tension.
Cooperation and its Variations
Most cooperative games bestow different abilities or responsibilities upon the players incentivizing cooperation. Some cooperative games might have an added layer of intrigue by giving players personal win conditions. In , a zombie apocalypse game, in order to win players must achieve the communal victory condition and a personal objective. Gloomhaven is a cooperative board game for 1 to 4 players designed by Isaac Childres and published by Cephalofair Games in 2017 where each player also has a personal objective.
Secret Opponent
In Scotland Yard and The Fury of Dracula have one player secretly controls the enemy. The other players are cooperating to locate and defeat the enemy.
Traitor
A traitor game can be seen as a cooperative game with a betrayal mechanism, or as a kind of team game. For this mechanism, traitors begin the game with hidden identities, or are assigned them during the game. Traitors typically win if the other players lose. In , players who receive a “You Are a Cylon” card when loyalty cards are handed out work in secret to undermine humanity. Other games, like Betrayal at House on the Hill, start out fully cooperative, but assigns a player to be the villain mid-game. Such games may be separated from Cooperative board games.
