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Competitive Cooperation

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Fri, 12/10/2004 - 14:57
Hamumu
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Joined: 12/31/1969

Here's a brainstorm I just had if anybody wants to twiddle on the merits of it. A game in which the players must cooperate to achieve "victory" (the end of the game), but only one person is crowned the winner - not the person who wins first, but rather the person who was most helpful in getting other people to the end. So it's a purely competitive game, in that you want to beat the other players, but what you're competing in is just how cooperative you can be. Get it? (now's the part where you list 12 commercial games that do this)

I kind of think it could degenerate into a basic competitive endeavor in the end without the cooperation being really noticeable. But could there be interesting ways to make the competitiveness more sneaky, with an overt sense of actually cooperating? Certainly it would have to have no ways to backstab other players, but it would be fun if it were possible to screw other players out of being able to help you somehow ("oh, you want to lift me up onto the ledge? Don't worry about it, I've got a rope right here!"... and better yet, the rope flings you up another ledge higher, so you can then lift the other guy up!).

Maybe the best plan would be for each player to draw a secret goal at game start. You all have the goal of completing the game together, but maybe one of you has the personal goal of helping the most people, another has the goal of getting there last, one of getting there first, one of collecting the most blueberries, or whatever. Kind of a change from the original concept though, but at least it keeps the competition more secretive.

Note1: This isn't a game I'm considering, just an odd concept I was bouncing around, thought I'd share, steal if you want.

Note2: I'm new to this forum, and new to board game design, so hi! I've been making computer games for years (buy them, NOW, at the website below! NOW) and recently got really interested in board games more. I've always had an interest, and played various ones occasionally (like the endless hours of Talisman in my youth!), but voila, Carcassonne claims another victim.

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Fri, 12/10/2004 - 15:17
#1
Brykovian
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Joined: 07/21/2008
Competitive Cooperation

Interesting idea, Mike (and, welcome, by the way ;-D) ...

Something similar hit me when chatting with Sedjtroll about his "3 Kingdoms" idea ... what if each player had a scoring tracking for each of the *other* players in the game. Each time you help someone, you move up on your copy of their track. Each time you do something to set them back (which might help you in some other way), you move back on your copy of their track.

For it to work well, I think this would have to be in the background behind some other mechanics.

-Bryk

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Fri, 12/10/2004 - 17:38
#2
jwarrend
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Joined: 08/03/2008
Competitive Cooperation

As you anticipated, there have been versions of the idea of “competitive cooperation” that have been implemented in various forms, but I’m not aware of a game where your sole standing at the game end is determined by how much you helped others. I’m not exactly sure it woud be possible to make a sensible game that worked this way. If your only goal is to help other players along, then it must be asked, helping them along towards what? It sounds like you’re envisioning a game where the board is some sort of course over which the players progress and you win if you are the most helpful. But this really gives cooperation in name only.

Let’s envision a game that consists of a track with 4 spaces. Each player gets one colored pawn, and places it on space 1. On your turn, you can move any 1 pawn 1 space forward. You get 1 VP if you move another player’s pawn. The game ends when one pawn crosses the finish line. Now, setting aside the problem that the game will probably end in a tie, the route to winning this game is, by definition, to move the other players’ pawns. But you aren’t helping them; you’re just moving their pieces. But let’s add a rule where you get bonus VPs according to the position your pawn occupies on the track. Now, we have a cooperation element: by moving a player’s pawn, you actually are helping them to achieve a higher score, but you’re helping yourself as well.

This is exactly the kind of approach I took in my game “Disciples” where taking certain actions in the presence of other players gives you extra points, but also gives points to those players. The idea there is that your own score will be higher if you actively boost the scores of other players as well, but to win the game, you want to be sure you’re spreading the rewards around so that you gain a net advantage over the rest of the players.

There are different approaches that can be taken. One is that of games like Diplomacy where a player wins by himself but must negotiate with the other players to get them to help him along. (TV’s “Survivor” works the same way). There are also games like Republic of Rome and Terra where each player is trying to win individually, but if players don’t work together, it’s possible that no player can win.

Bottom line, I think the idea of cooperative competition is fine, and indeed, has been explored by several other good games. The key to making it work is that if you are going to give out points for “helping” the other players, then doing so must improve that player’s position in some way -- be it by giving them access to resources, or VPs, or whatever -- otherwise, you just have a competitive game in which you move the other players’ pieces rather than your own.

-Jeff

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Fri, 12/10/2004 - 19:18
#3
Hamumu
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Competitive Cooperation

Well, in essence I was thinking more along the lines of a "theme" of cooperation, since you aren't cooperating in a true sense. But imagine a game where the players all win or all lose - I keep having a vision of a mountain climbing game, so use that. You all win if you all make it alive to the top. If anyone dies, you lose. So nobody wins unless you all finish. Your personal goal in such a game, if it wasn't purely cooperative, would normally be to get to the top first. I think it might be interesting if instead your personal goal was to provide as much help to others as possible.

I think that it would break down to being a competitive game, with just a different theme to your actions - like you said, moving the other pawns instead of your own (but hopefully not that overt!). The real trick I was mulling (briefly, but I thought it's semi-interesting to discuss) was how to make it more about true cooperation, but with that undercurrent of wanting to help out the MOST. And I do get that that's pretty much an oxymoron as you point out, but maybe there's some way to half-ass it.

It's like those people who give to charity, but feel the need to announce that all over the place. They're not really doing it for the charity, they're doing it for themselves, to feel smug. Just kind of an interesting part of human nature to delve into, although I think it would be codified to the point where it would have little to do with human nature except thematically.

It might sort of work though, as long as the goal that needs to be achieved is hard enough that cooperation is an integral part of reaching it - that way, you can't constantly prevent others from helping you, or you'll lose anyway. Your goal would be to get your help from a variety of sources, to spread out the points you're giving people, while of course helping others as often as possible. It'd almost be malicious cooperation like "Haha! Now I'm in position to lift you to the next ledge, sucker!" (which is indeed syntactically the same as "now I can kill your monster and get 10 points", but at least it helps the game get won as well, and I think it's a fun theme to it). Of course, that opens the door to "spoilers" who see they're not going to win, so they suicide and kill the game for everyone. In a way though, that would be the challenge for the leaders - can they help SO much that they can get a suicidal man to climb a mountain? It adds a whole new level to it!

Here's another theme for it: a suicide hotline where all the callers are the other people working at the hotline (come on, that is a seriously depressing job!). Now that's an interesting game! You only win if all the callers survive the night, but the #1 winner is whoever prevented the most suicides (the desire for suicide would be a game element, since obviously it's counter to the players' goals, except in the spoiler case... maybe there'd be Depression Points you have to dispose of or something). I am a fan of quirky settings.

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Fri, 12/10/2004 - 20:46
#4
jwarrend
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Joined: 08/03/2008
Competitive Cooperation

Hamumu wrote:
Well, in essence I was thinking more along the lines of a "theme" of cooperation, since you aren't cooperating in a true sense.

Depends on what you're looking for in the game. In my experience, there are basically two kinds of theming: "chrome-theming" and "mechanics-theming". In a game that is "chrome-themed", the gameplay doesn't actually reproduce the feeling of the theme; the theming comes more from the atmosphere created by the artwork on the cards, the names and titles given to the various components, etc. In contrast, a "mechanic-themed" game has the theme built into the mechanics themselves. I think it's definitely possible to get a game that actually involves cooperation between players, but is competitive -- a "mechanic-themed" game. In fact, I know it's possible: it's been done. But it seems what you're talking about more is a theme that puts the players into a setting where they're "pretending" to cooperate, as a way to inject some humor. Ok, that's fine.

Quote:

But imagine a game where the players all win or all lose

That's a cooperative game, though.

Quote:

I think that it would break down to being a competitive game, with just a different theme to your actions - like you said, moving the other pawns instead of your own (but hopefully not that overt!). The real trick I was mulling (briefly, but I thought it's semi-interesting to discuss) was how to make it more about true cooperation, but with that undercurrent of wanting to help out the MOST.

But this is just my point -- there's no undercurrent here. If helping is the only action that's rewarded by the game, then it's the only action people will take.

Quote:
And I do get that that's pretty much an oxymoron as you point out, but maybe there's some way to half-ass it.

I think it's only an oxymoron because you've tried to have the sole scoring system relate to "helping others". But "helping others" is only well-defined if there's something you're helping them to do. To make a competitive cooperative game, that must be some variation of "helping them toward winning the game", or else it's meaningless. What I'm arguing is that this can be done quite effectively; there's no need to "half-ass" it.

Quote:

It might sort of work though, as long as the goal that needs to be achieved is hard enough that cooperation is an integral part of reaching it - that way, you can't constantly prevent others from helping you, or you'll lose anyway.

Yes, so long as there's a goal over and above "helping other players", there is a chance for the idea to work. And as I've said, there are many games in which you must work together with others to do well. Any trading game serves as a perfect example: Settlers, e.g. A player would be hard pressed to do well in the game without trading, and yet that is by definition a cooperative mechanic.

Quote:

Your goal would be to get your help from a variety of sources, to spread out the points you're giving people, while of course helping others as often as possible. It'd almost be malicious cooperation like "Haha! Now I'm in position to lift you to the next ledge, sucker!"

This is very much like how my game works, but there's really nothing malicious about it in my game. I think it might be funny to make a game that was all about helping the other players when your help is unwanted. It reminds me of "The Incredibles", where superheroes must go into hiding to avoid lawsuits over helping people who didn't want helping. Maybe a game about proving who is the most polite ("No, really, after you...I insist!") or avoiding being the "most helped by other people" or something. Could be pretty funny!

-Jeff

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Sat, 12/11/2004 - 13:41
#5
Hamumu
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Competitive Cooperation

Yes, that last is just the sort of thing I'm thinking of! A game about being the most damnably helpful bastard in the room. But as far as helping being the only action rewarded... well, here's the oddness: what about as I described, a game where all players must complete it or nobody 'wins', so you must cooperate (and receive cooperation) or it's a bust for everyone, yet the one true crowned winner is the one who helped others the most? Does that even work? Will people care about the whole group surviving if they're not the one Big Winner? Will the Big Winner be enough in contention that all players will generally assume they're going to be it, so strive to keep everyone alive fo reach the end?

[ed. note: beware stream-of-consciousness, lifejackets recommended]
Basically, the game has a 'half-win', which is everybody reaching the end alive, and a 'personal win' which is being the big winner. Would that half-win be enough to keep people going to reach the end, or would they just be jumping all over the helping opportunities to try and take the personal win, and end up losing the half-win for everyone? Then again, since helping others is what you do to get the personal win, they would reinforce each other... but what if the one guy who can save you from death is the one who has helped others the most so far? Do you let him help you? If not, the game is over with nobody winning, but if so, you're moving him further toward the personal win - then again, who says being helped is optional? If it was, we'd have the suicide problem from above. I think this is a little different from a game where people need to help each other to survive in general.

I guess in the end it's just a fairly normal game with some nice infighting and backstabbing. You would basically be competing to be in position to help other people as much as possible, but at the same time you'd have to avoid getting in situations where you need help (both so people don't get points, and so you don't die), and avoid getting in positions where people CAN help you against your will. That's a pretty good set of tensions, I think. Saving other people would get you points, but being saved if you're in real danger, though it would give another player points, is also protecting your game position, since you can't win if you die.

Anyway, I don't even have a concrete idea for such a beast, but I do have about a dozen others I'm mulling heavily, so I will give those some thought instead!

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Sat, 01/15/2005 - 00:58
#6
Anonymous
Competitive Cooperation

Quote:
A game about being the most damnably helpful bastard in the room.

Hi, everyone!

I just found BGDF last week, and it was love at first site (ha ha.)! Anyway, I read this topic, and I came up with this great (according to me) game based on this. I hope it's okay with you, Hamumu (I believe that you said it would be okay to steal it) ...

I made a prototype game, pieces, cards, board, etc. a couple of nights ago, and have been playing it with some buddies. One of them has won every time, and he likes to brag that he's the best player of this game in the whole universe, since the beginning of time, etc., since no one else has played the game.

Here's how it works. It's called "Climbing Box Mountain", and the aim is to climb a bunch of boxes (drawn on the board, not real physical objects), but getting to the top is not how you win--that's just the end of the game.

Players earn points as they climb the mountain by helping each other up. The way that players take actions is by drawing cards that have possible actions on them. Those cards are basically separated into two types: Action cards, and Help cards.

Action cards allow you to move around the mountain. Help cards you use to help someone up a level of the mountain, or across a gap. The catch is that many of the cards, after using them, will leave you in a "Precarious Position"--or PP for short. When you go into PP, then you tip your piece on its side, and you cannot move until someone else helps you.

That's how you earn points! Helping someone up a level is worth points, helping someone up and going into PP yourself is worth more, helping someone up from PP is worth still more, and helping someone up from PP and going into PP yourself if worth the most points. This way, you want to use the Action cards to get above other players so you can use your Help cards, and by earning yourself the most amount of points, you present an opportunity for everyone else to earn those points off of you, especially the guy you just rescued. Intriguing, huh!

There are a few more twists and details in the game, but that's the general idea I came up with. What do you guys think?

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Sat, 01/15/2005 - 12:28
#7
Hamumu
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Competitive Cooperation

It sounds interesting to me! A lot like what kept coming to mind for me, except my mountain was made of rocks and ice. So in this case, you'd sort of like to not reach the top of the mountain (since game end=no more points possible), but you need to keep moving up in order to be in position to earn more points, right?

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Sat, 01/15/2005 - 15:26
#8
phpbbadmin
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Joined: 04/23/2013
Competitive Cooperation

screechwithgrace wrote:

Players earn points as they climb the mountain by helping each other up. The way that players take actions is by drawing cards that have possible actions on them. Those cards are basically separated into two types: Action cards, and Help cards.

Action cards allow you to move around the mountain. Help cards you use to help someone up a level of the mountain, or across a gap. The catch is that many of the cards, after using them, will leave you in a "Precarious Position"--or PP for short. When you go into PP, then you tip your piece on its side, and you cannot move until someone else helps you.

That's how you earn points! Helping someone up a level is worth points, helping someone up and going into PP yourself is worth more, helping someone up from PP is worth still more, and helping someone up from PP and going into PP yourself if worth the most points. This way, you want to use the Action cards to get above other players so you can use your Help cards, and by earning yourself the most amount of points, you present an opportunity for everyone else to earn those points off of you, especially the guy you just rescued. Intriguing, huh!

There are a few more twists and details in the game, but that's the general idea I came up with. What do you guys think?

Hmmm, I hate to be a naysayer, but this game idea isn't really a cooperative game. Even though you have cleverly disguised the theme to make it appear that way, it really isn't. The goal of the game is still to score the more points than anyone else. Don't get me wrong, it's a great theme for a game, I'm just not sure how cooperative it really is.

-Darke

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Sat, 01/15/2005 - 17:02
#9
Anonymous
Competitive Cooperation

Hamumu wrote:
So in this case, you'd sort of like to not reach the top of the mountain (since game end=no more points possible), but you need to keep moving up in order to be in position to earn more points, right?

That's pretty much it. You don't really want to shoot for the top unless you're ahead in the lead, but you have to be above another player in order to score points, so you must climb.

During a lot of our games, something like 50% of the actual play time is played when all players are within a couple levels of the top of the mountain, climbing up and dropping down strategically (according the limited choices available to them in their hand) a level or two trying to get the most points and then end the game by forcing the last guy to climb up (against his will, using a Help card, of course)

Darkehorse wrote:
Hmmm, I hate to be a naysayer, but this game idea isn't really a cooperative game.

That's true, it's not really cooperative, since everyone is trying to get the most points out of everyone else. The story goal is for everyone to reach the top, but the actual goal is to gain points, and that goal is definitely worth more to any one playing; players will drop down levels intentionally in order to prevent other people from getting points, or in order to get more points for themselves.

Maybe a way to make a game like this more cooperative would be to reward the people who got Helped as well as the Helpers. Maybe the Action cards could be done away with entirely, and have Help cards that lift someone up from your own level as well as pull them up from below. That way, the only way to go up the mountain would be if someone else helped you there. Of course, the Helper would have to be rewarded nicely for doing something so nice, and then the goal would still be to get more points than anyone else, rather than to help your teammates. Hmm, we're back at square one.

Maybe the better idea is to include a game-threatening hazard instead of the painless PP system I have. That is to say, the game will have a way to make your very participation in jeopardy, like you end up hanging off the edge of a mountain, and if no one saves you in 3 turns, then you die--game over. Why would people save you, tho? They'd need to have some incentive, like the actual act of rescue delivers points, or maybe it doesn't, but having another player in the game is somehow beneficial to them.

This is tricky! If you really want to make it true cooperation, with self-sacrifice, then you can't reward players for helping each other. OTOH, if you want players to cooperate, then you need to reward them for doing it, or else they never will. Well, there can be penalties for failing to help someone, too, but the idea is that if you make Helping valuable, then players will compete over helping to gain more points, and then it is no longer really cooperation, because you gain more than the other person does.

But is that relevant? If I can help you out, and you gain something from it, but I gain more, is that not cooperating? Or say that you gain more than I do--but I still gain something, so it's in my best interest to help you out. I think I can still be cooperative and be a competitive jerk at the same time. :)

I guess the final issue is the goal of the game, not in the mechanics. It seems like that's the contradiction, tho; if I want there to be a goal that all players share for winning the game, and I want them to get there by helping each other, how can I reward them for help without making that reward worth more than the main goal?

Imagine: "Okay guys, after playing this difficult game for 2 hours straight, on our 52nd try, we finally won! And congrats to Harry, who won the most!" I'm just not seeing how that can work. :/

--Peter--

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Sat, 01/15/2005 - 18:28
#10
Hamumu
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Competitive Cooperation

I liked the idea from another thread where each player had individual goals, but there's a group goal. If the group goal is met, whoever did the most towards his individual goal wins... but if the group goal FAILS, everybody loses, but whoever did the most towards his individual goal loses the most (I guess you'd say the winner is whoever did the least toward his goal), since he presumably was most responsible for the group failing with his selfishness. Semi-related.

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