Yesterday in class, we played cooperative board games. These games pitted the players against the game rules and systems. These games are a nice change of pace from a single player story based game or a competitive multiplayer game, since we had to work together and strategize and communicate in order to win.

My group played Pandemic, a game where there are four plagues that spread throughout the world and it is our job to stop the plagues from spreading and to find cures. Each player has a different role in the game, like a dispatcher who can move other player’s pieces, or a scientist who can find a cure with one less card, and a quarantine specialist who can prevent outbreaks in cities they’re in or any neighboring cities. These roles help make the players feel like they’re contributing to the game because they can do things that other players can’t. It encourages the players to work together and use their abilities together. A dispatcher can move a quarantine specialist a couple extra spaces so an outbreak doesn’t occur, or a scientist can cure a disease early in the game so that when the medic passes through cities, they don’t need to take an action to remove the disease from the city. 

I have always enjoyed cooperative games like Pandemic because it’s approachable. Anyone can pick up the game and feel like they are playing a big part in the success of the group. A coop video game that I think does a good job at this is Borderlands. The characters that the players choose have different abilities; phase locking enemies, throwing down an exploding turret, going bezerk, the list goes on. When you play in the cooperative mode, you can pair your abilities together, like phase locking an enemy, then throwing the exploding turret at the enemy to blow them up. Like Pandemic, Borderlands is also approachable to different types of players. If you want to max out your skill tree and attach the best mods to mow down your enemies, you can min-max your character. But if you just want to explode a bunch of psychos and have fun, you can do that too.

Cooperative games require coordination and proper communication to get the most out of the game. In Pandemic, planning a few steps ahead and talking with your teammates is almost essential to beating the game. In Borderlands, communicating when to coordinate attacks and use abilities is helpful to ensure that you beat the bad guys. This communication is what helps make cooperative games so fun and so engaging.

Sources:

Pandemic, Z-MAN Games, 2007