Cooperative Versus Competitive Gaming

Is winning all that important? Sure it feels good. Isn’t it the best way to show off your skills and prove you had fun?

We live in a world where school activities such as band, speech, and theater have become pressured to adopt a sports-like mentality just to stay relevant, understood, and funded.

Competition can be found almost everywhere. We like to prove our worth. We have an engrained need to step into whatever arenas life offers and rise up as celebrated champions.

I often joke that I’ve lost more games than I’ve won. I especially like to stress this when hosting games for younger players. It gives us a chance to talk about why I like playing games differently and that winning and losing aren’t always the most fulfilling part of the experience.

Have you ever purposely lost a game? I’ve done so for a few different reasons. It most often happens while I’m teaching a game to a room of new players. I find it more important to learn rules and different strategies to play. I’ll even admit here that I’ve also thrown a few games for the sake of keeping old friendships. Some people REALLY have a hard time with not winning.

Winning should be celebrated. Being able to lose well is also an important life lesson. Try your best to build an environment where your players want to come back and play again.

I’ve found cooperative gaming is a solid way where everyone can appreciate having fun. We can all win or lose together. I prefer the types of games where we’re all working together to beat the game itself. I’ve also been known to set up experiences where it’s a team of players going against just me. At the end of these game sessions I feel like we’ve all won because we’ve had shared fun.