Creative Collaborative Game Model

1. Introduction

The goal of this proposal is to reduce the competitiveness that is widespread in our society. The competitive mindset is evident in a wide variety of human endeavours. People compete with other people, be it individually or in groups (families, companies, nations), for the exclusive right to utilise whatever is believed to be in short supply. Sometimes scarcity is artificially created specifically to foster competition, sport and games being obvious examples.

The effect of this mindset is that it creates a culture of winners and losers, where winners get to enjoy life’s spoils and losers have to make do without them. This has a number of undesirable consequences, ranging from psychological scars to death due to preventable disease or starvation.

There are many ways in which we are conditioned into being more competitive, starting from an early age. Of interest to this proposal is the role that games, particularly manufactured games with preset rules, play in the process.

2. Overview

The purpose of this document is to present an alternative gaming model, one from which competitiveness is altogether absent, as are the associated concepts of winning and individual scoring. Naturally, the change in playing experience cannot be accomplished by sacrificing the entertainment value of the game.

The proposed model combines elements from two distinct domains: Both of these domains exhibit a sense of purpose and accomplishment. With competitive interactive games it primarily derives from winning. With solitary activities it stems from creating something or solving a problem.

In an effort to minimise the likelihood of competition, the proposed gaming model adopts the creative approach of certain solitary activities, and combines it with the interactive nature of certain competitive games. Specifically: 3. Example 1 – Toy Railway

This game already exhibits all the characteristics of the proposed model. The task of building a railway from components is highly creative. Given a sufficient number of parts, it can be performed simultaneously by multiple people. The task typically proceeds by each person working on a different section of the railway. Their efforts are then combined into the finished layout on top of which the trains are run.

4. Example 2 – Lego

Lego blocks (and similar products) can be seen as a more general version of the toy railway game. Because the block design is completely open-ended, the task of building something with them is even more creative than the construction of a toy railway. However, the collaborative aspect is lost in the process since there is no obvious way for different builders to combine their work. This usually makes it a solitary activity even when multiple people are involved.

The collaborative characteristic can be introduced by restricting the flexibility of the building blocks just enough to ensure that all the builders work in the same direction. One way to do this is to provide pre-built skeletons that need to be filled out by contraptions made from general-purpose building blocks.

For example, the pre-built skeleton might be that of a dinosaur and might consist of a spine and connection points for the head, arms, legs, wings and/or tail. Different people can work on different parts of the dinosaur and attach their creations to the skeleton to create the finished product, often to comic effect.

5. Example 3 – Scrabble

Scrabble is a word game played by several players on a specially designed board. Each player has a number of lettered tiles that she uses to make words on the board. She scores points based on the value of each letter and its placement on the board. The objective of the game is to outscore other players, which usually translates to putting together longer and more difficult words.

The game has a pronounced creative aspect in combining letters to form words, and placing words onto the board to form a rudimentary crossword puzzle. It also has a competitive aspect that derives from individual scoring.

One way to turn in into a creative collaborative game is to change the scoring from individual to collective. The objective can then become trying to beat the previous game score achieved by the same players, or perhaps to put down the longest or highest-scoring word. Alternatively, scoring can be omitted altogether, relying on the richness of the game to hold the players’ attention.

Another change that can be made to stimulate collaboration is to permit letter exchanges between players. For example, the player whose turn it is can exchange one letter with each other player, subject to their consent. This can help develop the sense of mutual support in pursuit of the common goal.

6. Example 4 – Monopoly

Monopoly is a game of chance based on the concept of market domination by a single entity. It is played on a circular board by several people who compete with each other for the possession and development of property. The more and better developed property a player has, the more wealth he is able to acquire from other players, eventually forcing them out of the game.

The game is neither collaborative nor creative. Consequently, a lot would have to change to remake it along these lines. The competitive aspect could be eliminated by removing private ownership from the game – hotels, railway stations and other elements would need to be jointly owned and managed. This would render money redundant, since there would no longer be a need for trading. Some other means of limiting what the players can accomplish within a turn would take its place. For example, the number of actions that they can perform per turn could be restricted, or the choice of actions could be governed by chance.

The creative aspect could be introduced by enriching the infrastructure that needs to be developed. This element of the game is presently simplistic since the attention is on trading. With the trading gone, it could be extended to encompass a variety of buildings, power and water supply, building of roads, provision of food, and many other concepts.

With the competitive aspect gone, collaboration could be introduced by ensuring that no player can single-handedly create the stated infrastructure. This could be accomplished by placing each player in charge of a different part of the infrastructure, as well as by ensuring that no part can function in isolation from the others.

For example, one player would provide power for the infrastructure, another manage water supply, and still another construct buildings. Some buildings would be dependent on external power and water for their functioning. Some aspects of power and water management would in turn need specialised buildings.

A detailed design of a game built on these principles will be presented in a separate proposal.

7. Social Implications

Adults to whom I have described the concept of creative collaborative gaming have struggled to imagine how it would work, or rather, what would make it appealing. Reservations were usually expressed with respect to established competitive games like Monopoly and Scrabble. It took some time – and some playing – for the unfamiliar concept to grow on them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, children didn’t experience such difficulties. Not having been conditioned by the competitive nature of the original games, they were quite happy to immerse themselves in their new creative element right from the start, without wondering what the point of the game was if not beating the other players.

This leads me to conclude that the proposed gaming model is going to require a lengthy period of time to soften the competitive mentality of adults. It is much more likely to have a pronounced effect on children who have not yet been conditioned into this way of thinking. Because of the amount of time that children spend playing games, replacing competitive with collaborative games could have a definitive influence on their mindset, some of which they would hopefully retain as they grow into adulthood.

8. Responsibility for Implementation

Collaborative games are presently very difficult to find. Competitive games completely dominate the market. If we want this to change, we need game manufacturers to supply us with collaborative games that we can purchase in the place of competitive games that we are purchasing now. When such an opportunity arises, the responsibility is on us to make use of it.

We don’t have to wait for such a change in the game production pattern, however. Some games can be made collaborative by minor tweaking of the existing game rules, as described in the Scrabble example. We can also make our own games instead of depending on what we can find in the shops, or buy general-purpose building blocks (like Lego) from which to construct them.

Ultimately, if we value the change of mentality from competitive to collaborative, it is up to us to take responsibility for bringing it about.