I have been thinking more about my concept of Cooperative games - see Colony post.
This is a bit of a confession and a personal revelation. Many of my games are not traditional wargame with two or more sides duking it out. Most of my games involve a team of players working together.
I suppose this shouldn't be such a surprise. I wrote earlier about how I don't like competitive traditional wargames And think what the revelation is is that I have never really thought about the format and collaborative games and what design techniques should be used.
Here is a list of games I have produced.
McGonigal, Jane - "Reality is broken"
A full chapter - "13: Collaboration Superpowers" is devoted to discussing collaboration and cooperation in online gaming.
Collaboration has three distinct elements
- Cooperating - players act together toward a common or shared goal
- Coordinating - players organise and synchronise effort and resources
- Cocreating - the players work together to create a novel or new outcome.
A game in of itself is a cooperative act - sometimes called the golden or magic circle of gaming. Players agree to play a game and be restricted in their actions by the rules of the game so that a game can be played.
Discussion
None of the above really covers my concept of a collaborative game.
I think McGonigal is not wrong in what she writes - the first two points are simplistic and not controversial. She develops the chapter mostly so that she can talk about her theme of games changing reality and how gamers cooperate to create a new reality. She emphasises cocreation as this method gamers have a superpower.
I am struggling to find a phrase to cover what I want - games that reflect the internal struggle of groups of people to achieve a goal, or even to agree on what the goal should be. Intra-player games?