Competitive, Cooperative, and Cohabitive

post by Screwtape · 2023-09-28T23:25:52.723Z · LW · GW · 13 comments

Contents

  I. Background: The Two Genres
  II. Something is Missing
  III. Cohabitive Games: Definition and Examples
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Summary: I think there's a third genre of games, which I dub Cohabitive games, where your victory isn't tied to other players winning or losing.

(I’ve been writing this in bits and pieces for a while, and Peacewager [LW · GW] was the impetus I needed to finally stitch it together and post it. Peacewager sounds like a really fun game and an example of the thing I’m talking about, but I do not want this whole genre to get called Peacewager Games when I think I have a better title for the genre.)

I. Background: The Two Genres

I believe there is a missing genre from existing games, and this genre feels large enough that it should contain maybe a third of the games I can imagine existing. More serious game players or game theorists might already have a name for the thing I’m pointing at, though the first three game design majors I asked didn’t know of one.

Let me back up. I’m going to assume for the moment that you’ve played some games. I don’t have a strict definition of “game” I’m working with here, but let's start with definition by example: Chess is a game, Hide and Seek is a game, Pandemic is a game, Apples to Apples is a game, Poker is a game, Magic: The Gathering is a game, Werewolf is a game, Among Us is a game, Hanabi is a game, Baseball is a game, Football (American or European) is a game. I’m not trying to do some narrow technical definition, I’m waving my hand wildly in the direction of a pretty natural category and I’m not planning to do anything weird with the edge cases.

Chess is a competitive game. In chess, you’re loosely simulating a war between two evenly matched factions. When you play chess, there will be one winner and one loser. Sometimes instead there will be a draw. Anything that is good for you when you are playing chess is bad for your opponent and vice versa. You can be mistaken about what is good or bad for you; you can offer trades of pieces to your opponent because you think it is a good trade for you and they can take the trade because they think it is a good trade for them, but this is ultimately what’s called a zero sum game. Your loss is their gain. “Eurogames” where you’re trying to get the highest score are competitive in nature; if you could pay ten points to cost every other player twenty points, you’d do it. 

Pandemic is a cooperative game. In Pandemic, you’re loosely simulating a global pandemic and the response of the international medical community. When you plan Pandemic, either all the players win, or all the players lose. Anything that is good for you when you are playing Pandemic is good for your teammates, and anything that is bad for you when you are playing Pandemic is bad for your teammates. You can lose things for yourself; you can spend resources and pay costs and run out of good cards in your hand, but ultimately this is also a loss for your team since they want you to have good stuff. 

There is of course the circumstance of competitive team games, like football. If I’m playing Football, I’m trying to help out my team like it’s a cooperative game, and make the other team lose like it’s a competitive game. This adds a little to the picture, but doesn’t change the basic dynamics much. Again, I’m not doing anything weird with edge cases here. There’s also multiplayer games like Risk, where it might make sense to make a temporary alliance to cooperate with another player while still ultimately knowing only one of you can win. Hidden role games like Werewolf or Betrayal At House On The Hill are usually competitive with teams. (A team of one and a team of the rest of the players is basically a team competitive game.)

Picture these as two points on a continuum. You can compete, or you can cooperate. Seems simple enough. You can, if you like, extend this into a metaphor for how humans relate to one another outside of just games.

II. Something is Missing

Except this really isn’t how human beings actually operate in a wide range of circumstances. I’m not competing with my roommates over who does the chores, but I’m also not cooperating in the sense that I cooperate in Hanabi or Pandemic. All else being equal, I’d rather someone else did the dishes! Alternatively, look at the stock market; yes, I’d rather make more money than less money, but my gain is not exactly your loss. Sometimes there are individual trades that leave us both better off, and not because one of us is making a mistake either. 

I once ran what was basically a stock market with play money [? · GW], and ran into some weird behavior towards the end of the night. Some players were making very high variance trades, ones that probably were going to cost them play money in expectation. When I asked, they pointed out that since another player was a little bit ahead of them and there wasn’t much time left, it didn’t matter if they lost by a little or a lot but it did matter if they could somehow climb into first place.

This is not really how the stock market works.

In the stock market, I don't particularly care if I make more money than Warren Buffet. I care if I make lots of money. If I could pay ten dollars to cost Warren Buffet a hundred billion dollars and thereby narrow the gap between us, I wouldn't do it, because then I'd be out ten dollars. I'd rather spend ten dollars on a pizza, because at least then I'd get to eat pizza.

III. Cohabitive Games: Definition and Examples

I dub things like the stock market in this way to be "cohabitive," from the word "Cohabitation" which means "the act of living together." Cohabitive is a third thing, roughly the same level of category as "cooperative" and "competitive." You want to do as well as you personally can, but it’s not worth you losing points in order to make other people lose more points. 

You’re happy to ally with other players if it gets you points, but you wouldn’t help them if it cost you points even if they would get more points than you’d lose. You aren’t explicitly cooperating with others, you aren’t setting out to compete with them, you’re simply living in the same space at the same time. If it turns into a stag hunt [? · GW], you're not scored on the collective point score or having the highest score but on how many points you earned, without reference to anyone else.

When you start looking for them, you find that cohabitive games do exist! Many MMORPGs have the cohabitive nature, where you don’t mind if someone else gets a rare loot drop but you want as many rare drops as you can for yourself. The scoreboard of a pinball machine may be ranked, but it’s a perfectly normal goal to just want to get as high a personal score as you can and that has the cohabitive nature. Track and Field sports such as the hundred-meter dash declare a victor by comparing the fastest times of different runners, but we still talk about Personal Records as a distinct thing from World Records. We just don’t have a name for this thing, and many otherwise fine cohabitive games have competitive or cooperative win conditions awkwardly grafted onto them. 

Cohabitive games can have scores, and the goal is to beat your personal record. Cohabitive games can have victory conditions, where you might win or lose depending on whether you met those conditions independent of whether other players met the conditions. Cohabitive games can  allow or even incentivize aggressive behavior, as long as your victory and defeat aren't actually tied to that of the other players.

Let games be cohabitive! Let us play together, not with the goal of sacrificing ourselves for the cooperative victory, not with the goal of crushing our opponents beneath the heel of our competitive dominance, but simply existing together for a time in the same game and seeking our own personal victories.

 

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