People have lots of different tastes, and some like coop more than competitive, some like competitive more, and some prefer a robust mix of the two.
Also, I’m not sure who “they” are and which decades are at issue: pute cooperative board and computer games have been around for a long time, and games that mix coopeative and competitive elements either via symmetrical teams or all-against-one play are even older, or at least widely seen earlier.
I'm not aware of any cooperative board games that are older than 20 years. If there are any they must be really obscure. People did jigsaw puzzles for the cooperative experience, but those are really dull and I don't think people really consider them board games.
In general, board games and card games with teams have a long and proud history. See eg Bridge.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_board_game#History...
In my play groups, whenever Scotland Yard comes out, people usually jostle for the opportunity to play Mister X. We have to 'force' people not to be the enemy team.
Of course, different people have different preferences.
Btw, table top role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons are cooperative and have been around since the 1970s.
(Keep in mind that the Dungeon Master is _not_ the enemy. If they were, they could just always kill all the player characters almost immediately.)
That is just because people like to be the criminal. We had a board game with robbers and police were one guy had to be the police and everyone else were robbers, and nobody wanted to be the police because that role was boring. Of course in Scotland yard people wanted to be mr X.
But in a pure cooperative game everyone can play the fun role instead of forcing one to play the boring role (or everyone but one playing the boring role as is the case in Scotland yard).
This cops n robber game from 1943: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10709/tjuv-och-polis
> Dungeon Master is _not_ the enemy
But he isn't a part of the adventuring group, so he isn't playing the game he is just running the game. Some people like to run games, but many just want to relax and play.
No. You are right about exciting vs comparatively 'boring'. But that's not because of the thematic dress-up as a 'criminal'. You could just as well have an identical game where Mr X is a good guy, and the chasers are a criminal mob.
(Or both sides are morally grey nondescript groups of eg different spy agencies.)
In any case, different people have different tastes.
And for many people, competing is fun. And not something that's forced on them against their will. Nor something that is 'not nice'.
As a really extreme example (from a logical point of view): have a look at a casual chess game. You can view it as both players cooperating in exploring the fixed acyclic graph of legal chess positions.
Each player is only there because they want to cooperate with the other player in the project of playing a game of chess.
They might even allow each other to take back moves, if that makes for a more entertaining game for them.
The latest in cardboard based entertainment is a lot more fun than the old Ameritrash of Monopoly and 'Game of Life'. My native Germans had a few decades of a head start there, but modern boardgames, even from the US, generally have surpassed Eurostyle games from a few decades ago.
So, I agree that cooperative games are more fun now than cooperative games a few decades ago (or even most boardgames from that time, cooperative or not). But that's mostly because game design has gotten a lot better in general.
> There were no technical limitations preventing such cooperative games to be made 70 years ago, all they lacked was understanding of game design.
Well, I would say better understanding of game design _is_ a technological advance. Just like eg Newton working out a faster way to calculate more digits of Pi is a technical advance (or the lifting of a limitation), even though Newton would have been using the same writing implements to do his calculations as the people 70 years before him.
Using an approach which explicltly excludes team games and probably excludes semicooperative games (games in which the players are in competition to win, but also have to cooperate to avoid an all-players-lose state), this 1972 game is claimed to be the first cooperative board game; I don't know that its actually the first, but its definitely older than 20 years.
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/08/retro-the-very-first...
But thanks, it is interesting to see what people tried in the past that didn't work. It took so long to crack that formula, but once we did it was easy to replicate and now coop games are everywhere.
All cooperative games can be competitive games to the players determined to compete. Even if there's a shared goal that requires everyone to contribute, someone is going to contribute the most (even if only in their own mind) and can withhold or adjust their support to undercut someone else without sacrificing the end goal. And sufficiently competitive people may not even mind if the supposed goal is lost, if it provides an opportunity to noticeably excel.
To some people, the word "game" implies competition. To others, it implies cooperation. I, like most, prefer to get a mix of both from any game. I enjoy watching the Halloween Baking Competition, and particularly enjoy the parts where bakers help each other even as they're trying to come out on top. (Though there has been a suspicious amount of it this season, which makes me wonder if it's somewhat staged....)
It can be wonderful, or something you try once to never even mention it again.
We enjoyed the overcooked stuff, but came close to arguments a few times. Worked best when we communicated what each of us was doing.
“It Takes Two”, OTOH, was really good and worked very nicely, at least in part because division of labour is built into the game mechanics in various places.
Also there was a bit of a solo boardgame boom around 1980 with some games also supporting (or at least suggesting) playing together with others, but it was somehow forgotten and then someone rediscovered around 2010 or so. I find it strange that I never saw a coop game from before the late 1970's though, and it is not because I have not been searching for them.
Serving customers is a rather cooperative affair between, supplier, workers and customers etc. Have you ever participated in the economy?
Of course, all parties are generally free to choose who they want to cooperate with. Customers can switch coffee shops, if they like the offerings of the other guy better. Workers can switch jobs, too.
-it's much harder to design a good cooperative game as opposed to a good competitive game
- there are much more games designed today
- it's much easier to build a good coop game and more people are trying these days because there is a precedent that it can be done
They are, I think still 'rares' today because game wise they are less intense and deep, so people really into gaming will prefer other games. But they are still a lot less rare than 40 years ago because there are more positively presented in culture and common and it's a lot more easy to convince people to join a board game night, especially if tell them they can avoid human competition and role playing.