Boardy Games

The classic case of non-zero sum cooperation games is Terra by Bruno Faidutti. It's a simple card game wherein the players are trying to make a profit while not destroying the Earth biosphere completely. I find it a very interesting design in that I'm convinced it can't be won when played in an optimum manner - this is because the players most of the time have enough leverage to insist on getting points on the expense of the commons, which leads to everybody losing. I've never finished a game in victory, mine or anybody else's. A grim prognosis of the Earth's future, all told.

A more complex and older example of the same is The Republic of Rome, in which the players compete to become the dictator-for-life in the Roman republic while administrating the expanding imperium and defending it against outside threats. Just like Terra, it's quite possible to lose this game by having everybody push hard for their own victory. Unlike Terra, players don't actually get to exchange common welfare for points with impunity, which means that the game can actually be won.

A simple and enjoyable example of the opposite situation is Cockroach Poker, in which only one player will lose the game, and the best play is to cooperate with the other players to ensure that it won't be you. Everybody else wins after the loser is found. This is actually a pretty common set-up, and a key clue towards building games where cooperation is fostered but players still compete: by allowing more than one player to win the game makes cooperation feasible, while still allowing for losers.

I've been thinking about making this sort of game as well. The difficulty is really in the ritual sphere of a boardgame - in the real world we have plenty of situations where cooperation is a mutual benefit, but within the context of a game you're always helping the other player towards victory. I can write in the rules that "everybody who finishes with a positive score is a winner", but the players will value the highest score as the best one anyway. So you need to take care of the player psychology to make the game have satisfactory competitive aspects while fostering genuine cooperation. Interesting possibilities there, to be sure.

There's a wonderful Swedish game called "Kampen om citadellet" based on the Mutant Chronicles franchise. not sure if it's availible in English.

In that game all players except one cooperate to complete a mission in the Citadel, where the last player plays the Dark Legion. Thing is, you get points for killing monsters, and the monsters are finite, so you all have to cooperate to complete the mission, or the Dark Legion player wins, but you also want to make sure you're the one who gets the most points. The gameplay works very well, and part of it is because of the very clever Doomtrooper cards. Every card has two effects, but you can only use one of them. One effect is always beneficial to the group, and the other one is always detrimental to another player. This gives rise to many interesting decisions.

All in all, a very good game that works on these principles. The Dark Legion position rotates between missions, so the balance always shifts, too.

EDIT: Here it is. Apparently it is (was) availible in English, too. Hooray!

Eero, I hadn't heard of Terra, but I loved some of Faidutti's stuff from Days of Wonder so I'll have to check it out! Thanks for the recommendation.

Multiple-winner games are the area in which I'm most interested as a designer; Bricolage works on that principle, but is a bit more of a Blank White Card-leaning game rather than tightly, mechanically competitive/co-op. Some friends and I tried another game with similar principles called Imperious Gnomes (which remains unfinished).

The idea was that you had a number of devices which could be built with varying quantities of different parts; the middle section of a Cogwheel Whatsit might require either two copper bolts or five self-hammering nails, etc. Players would represent different factions which wanted to build the devices with as many of their "favorite" parts as possible, and occasionally get a mission to sabotage one device or another. It was usually in everyone's best interest to see the device built, but not necessarily to see it done the same way.

I agree that player psychology and "leaderboard syndrome" is an important consideration; if you enable multiple winners, you need to somehow level out their victories. Maybe it would work to have running scores, but have each player inherit a random score at the beginning of each new game, especially if that "team" were coupled with some kind of mechanical differentiation. "Look at that, Blue Team's got the high score three in five times--I wonder if there's a way to counter their advantage?"

The game Betrayal at House of the Hill manages this in a very interesting way.

During the first part of the game, everyone is pretty much cooperating, exploring (and "building") the house, and strenghtening their characters. Then, somewhere mid-game, there is a mechanism by which one of the players becomes "the betrayer". Effectivelly he is against everyone else now. If the betrayer fullfills his goal, everyone else loses. If he is defeated, everyone else wins.

The interesting part is that the betrayer is choosed randomly. That way no one knows who will be the one, nor what will his goal be when the time comes.

So during the first part of the game, you are mostly concerned about empowering your character, but you don't want anybody else getting particularly stronger. You never know who might become the betrayer. At the same time, you want to keep everyone else at a lower, even advancement level (since you could become the betrayer yourself).

An interesting aspect is the fact that you really can get into the "group win" mentality. After the betrayer is revealed, sometimes you even decide to sacrifice yourself in order to give your team some extra time, or to get a special tactical advantage that might be needed. And in the end your sacrifice doesn't matter all that much! If the betrayer is defeated you win, even if your character didn't survive!

Heh! It is a very intense and fun game.