Competition and Cooperation

The key to the whole games thing is challenge. Challenge, as Csikszentmihalyi points out so clearly, is central to the experience of flow, it is the invitation for us to engage, for us to develop and refine our abilities and master evermore complex tasks.

In cooperative games, the challenge has to be flexible, negotiable, and always changing for us to sustain the experience of play: let's see how long we can volley the ball back and forth across the net, let's see if it's more fun (challenging) if we raise the net, play further away. Maybe you should stand closer to the net and me further. Maybe I should use my non-dominant hand. The goal is to play together, to have fun, to engage each other.  If we're not having fun, we increase or decrease the challenge.  Cooperative games are difficult to sustain - the require creativity and sensitivity in order for players to arrive at the kind of challenge that will keep them all in play, regardless of how different their abilities might be.

In competitive games, the challenge is non-negotiable and if we want to have fun playing the game together, we have to be close in abilities. The closer, the greater the challenge.  In competitive games, If we're not having fun, we have to find other people to play with. This is everywhere evident in professional sports, from chess to football. In competitive games, we wind up playing with people who are like us in skill and capability.

In cooperative games, we are able to engage an entire community into play, regardless of differences in age and ability, and more often than not, it is these differences that prove to be the source of the challenge, the very thing that makes the game inviting and worth playing.

Cooperative games nurture diversity. Competitive games, uniformity.

from Cooperation and Competition

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith