Idiots - Why I Dislike Cooperative Board Games

 If you picked the tank, you’re smarter than a cooperative...

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I still stand by my original points in defense of co-ops, though the lower quality co-ops tend to all resemble variations of whack-a-mole. But in recent years, I have developed a slight preference for semi-cooperative games. These are games where players can choose to work together or work against each other, depending on personal preference and potential incentives for either choice within the current game state.

Examples of semi-cooperative games: Saltlands, Camp Grizzly (especially with a couple of the expansions), Dark Venture, and Magic Realm. Magic Realm in particular is a game designed for 1 to 16 players, and the rules remain exactly the same if players decide to ignore each other, attack each other, work together as an adventuring party, compete as teams, or even betray each other when it is convenient. And the fact that all of these options are available every game allows players to enjoy the type of game that they want to enjoy.

My other examples are not quite as neutral with respect to intentions.

Camp Grizzly definitely is designed around a default co-op assumption, but allows for a situation where some players might abandon the rest in a desperate attempt to escape as soon as possible. Expansions added a couple of selfish characters and some cards that might encourage selfish actions.

Both Saltlands and Dark Ventrue require players to pick a play mode at the start: competitive, cooperative, or, in the case of Saltlands, semi-cooperative. Dark Venture doesn't have an explicit semi-cooperative mode, but the default competitive play has individual quests that can encourage temporary cooperation or direct PvP play.

I just read this article for the first time. I get it, and agree with a lot of your points. And here's the BUT.... as a designer who has made a cooperative game, and currently has 2 others in development, I don't have an "inability to sense the game state." On the contrary, I have to think of ALL POSSIBLE game states.

Team play - ANGOLA of course, one of the most brilliants wargame designs I've ever played.

There are now co-ops that don't rely, or even use, event decks, and put the onus on the players to create the gamestate/events. I mean, the Mind, for one, but also stuff like the Grizzled.

Yep, I agree with this article completely. Co-ops have left me cold for a long time now. There's just no substitute for a real opponent and the ending of a co-op (or solo) game always falls flat for me. "We beat the game - yayyyy ..."

And the Eunice story is something I'm currently experiencing with a relative too!

Something like this has been bouncing around in my brain for a while. Thanks for putting it in words better than I could. I have some other thoughts.

Most coops are bad, full stop. Beating them for the first time -can- be satisfying if the puzzle is compelling and tricky enough, but remixing the same puzzle over and over? Nah. The handful of good coops offer something other than endlessly wrestling with a stupid pack of cards. Seal Team Flix balances straightforward goals and predictable "AI" with dexterity as opposed to just selecting and completing tasks. Darkness Comes Rattling never forces you to play whack-a-mole because you literally can't solve all the problems it presents. And then there's games like The Mind and Hanabi that get out of the way and become about player interaction again, which frankly should be to goal of most games. The very recent push for every upcoming game to have some kind of solo mode has made me realize that most people are only purchasing these boxes to poke bits around and learn a new system. That fundamentally makes no sense to me.

I'm glad you closed on team games too, because team games are GREAT. They're everything that's fun about coops in a far more satisfying framework. You get the camaraderie of bouncing ideas back and forth without ending every sentence on "assuming the game does X". Any game built around partnerships or teams is automatically elevated over most coops by not having to play against the paper idiot.

I haven’t posted on F:AT in a while, so bear with me.

For at least 5 years, I’ve increasingly spent my time with co-ops rather than competitive games. To the point where, in my regular Wednesday group – an amazing tribe of Ameritrashers and wargamers - I’ve officially been dubbed the “coopinator”. Sometimes I’ll go weeks exclusively playing co-ops with people who lean in the same direction, and I don’t mind in the slightest.

A few reasons why:

I’m often a better person when I play co-op games. I’m highly competitive, frequently to my detriment. In single-winner games, I play hard and don’t mind crushing foes and their extended families. These games don’t bring out the best in me, so switching to the occasional co-op was a sound life choice. I still catch myself being a jerk in competitive situations, and I can usually put on the brakes when I start to slip – but not always.

Competition can occasionally make games less fun. Tired of mocking me for playing co-ops, members of my weekly group recently goaded me into a few competitive sessions. I was happy to break the hugs-all-around routine, so we started with Acquire. Through a combination of good play and lucky draws, I routed everyone else – doubling everyone else’s score, at least. (Note: I’m not terribly skilled, so this isn’t a brag. Just how things turned out.) The point is that – roughly 1/3 of the way through – everyone’s faces turned sour and glum when they realized I was definitely going to win. And not just win, but destroy. They kept playing and talking trash, but the mood had gone south when I became the clear frontrunner.

As a sidebar, I tend to dislike most multiplayer war/conflict games: Struggle of Empires, Blood Rage, Dune, and so forth. Not because I hate conflict, but because the downtime and endless negotiations drive me batty. (Negotiation and trading are my least favorite game mechanics, by far.) I was into the DoaM genre for a long, long time – but no longer.

Stuff unrelated to my weekly group:

Co-op games are amazing family experiences. When I was more active on F:AT, I posted at length how my family and I pretty much only played the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game for 4-5 straight years. I’ll always treasure those all-against-evil campaign experiences, and nothing will tarnish those memories.

If playing a brand new game, people tend to have a better time with co-ops than with AT games, wargames, or highly competitive euros. Many people (especially nongamers) are almost frightened of new games, as they don’t want to look dumb, ruin the experience for others, etc. I’ve found that newcomers welcome co-ops, since the tabletalk and advice put them at ease and make them feel like they are contributing to the game’s forward motion and success. I also happen to be one of the primary game teachers in my groups, so this characteristic of co-ops fits my style nicely.

More people could probably benefit from playing cooperative games. This involves a couple of life stories. Anecdotes aren't the most persuasive forms of argument, I know, but here goes.

When my kids (now eagle scouts) first joined scouts, all activities were framed as competitive exercises. Every single one, as far as I could tell. The kids would be enjoying a ropes course, for example, and suddenly the troop leader would declare that the activity became a race and the team with the best time would “win”. This was completely unnecessary, in my eyes, since the boys were having fun without the guiding hand of competition over their heads – and it actually made the course less safe. But the leader insisted that motivation was necessary, and competition was the best way to do it. Fast forward…

I was teaching a cooperative game at WBC a few years ago (Ghost Stories?), and I encouraged an observing tween to join us. Per my usual co-op explaining, I pointed out that we all won or lost as a team; then we played and happily won. After the game ended, our young guest wanted to know which individual player had really won. The team did, I explained. But he didn’t get it. He needed there to be a single winner, so he kept pushing me to name the victor. Presumably, that’s how every game he had encountered before had functioned, and his brain literally could not comprehend a game that functioned differently. It blew my mind, but I saw it happen firsthand and found it to be really interesting. And telling, I guess.

Honestly, I believe that people – perhaps just Americans – would be better off if we were taught to cooperate a bit more from time to time. Particularly in our formative years. As squishy as that may sound, it may be in our best interests.

Finally, I’m not saying there aren’t bad co-op games, or that I don’t get sick of them. But I truly enjoy them, ever since I received the Lord of Rings board game as a holiday gift in 2000 (before the movies!). As a Risk-fed youth, LotR opened my eyes to a new type of gaming that allowed me to experience human interaction in a new way. That was cool.

^this is a really good post and reflects a lot of how I feel.

There was a woman that used to play in our regular Jyhad games. Her boyfriend taught her how to play and build her own decks, and since he was one of our better players, she was also a decent player. But she was uncomfortably competitive, gloating unpleasantly when she was winning, and sulking miserably when losing. One time in a sealed deck tournament, she ended up contesting two vampires with me (her prey) and two vampires with her predator. That meant she had no vampires in play and couldn't really afford to bring out another, while losing four pool (life for you Magic players) every turn, which is an awful fate. She broke down and literally wept, then fled the table when she was eliminated a couple of turns later. Being competitive and that emotionally invested in winning is a bad idea when playing a competitive multi-player game, because the odds are that you will lose most games.

After three years of enduring her behavior, I was surprised one night at the game shop to see her playing a board game at a different table. They were playing that co-op Hobbit boardgame, back when there was just the base set. And she was so happy! After that, she gave up on Jyhad completely and focused on co-ops and low-interaction eurogames, and that was a great choice for her.

Shellhead wrote: After three years of enduring her behavior, I was surprised one night at the game shop to see her playing a board game at a different table. They were playing that co-op Hobbit boardgame, back when there was just the base set. And she was so happy! After that, she gave up on Jyhad completely and focused on co-ops and low-interaction eurogames, and that was a great choice for her.

My spouse is like that and knows it. Won't play competitive board games because of it and I can't blame her. For her, it came from the role games played in her family growing up, which was a form of humiliation and ridicule as stupid on whomever lost.

On the other hand, my athletic girlfriend only wants to play competitive board games. The one time I persuaded her to play Camp Grizzly, she played in a selfish manner and ran off to the Boat Finale while Otis stalked and murdered my character.

wkover wrote: I was teaching a cooperative game at WBC a few years ago (Ghost Stories?), and I encouraged an observing tween to join us. Per my usual co-op explaining, I pointed out that we all won or lost as a team; then we played and happily won. After the game ended, our young guest wanted to know which individual player had really won. The team did, I explained. But he didn’t get it. He needed there to be a single winner, so he kept pushing me to name the victor. Presumably, that’s how every game he had encountered before had functioned, and his brain literally could not comprehend a game that functioned differently. It blew my mind, but I saw it happen firsthand and found it to be really interesting. And telling, I guess.

As a teenager, I was usually the DM for our role-playing group. It made sense for me to play host, so I could avoid hauling around all of my books and maps and tokens. My dad would usually check in with our group at least once every session, and ask "Who's winning?" Somebody would always take the time to patiently explain to him why that wasn't a relevant question, and then he would roll his eyes and say "Have fun." He was a competitive jock type when he was our age, so the idea of winning was deeply instinctive to him.

After months of this, my dad finally got it. And now he would stop by maybe two hours into a session and cheerfully ask "Who is dead or unconscious?" Usually one or two players would reluctantly hold up their hand, and my dad would grin and say, "Great! You can help me with this project out back." Like helping him build the shed, or fix the car, or pull weeds in the garden. And oddly enough, our group embraced that, because it made the stakes feel higher in combat.

wkover wrote: (Something that would make a great blog post for the front page, with a little editing. And, welcome back, wkover.)