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> cooperative board and computer games have been around for a long time I'm not aware of any cooperative board games that are older than 20 years. If there are

> cooperative board and computer games have been around for a long time 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.

eru 3y ago
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/438/scotland-yard https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/438/scotland-yard was released in the 1980s. And it's far from the first. (This one has teams that cooperate internally and compete externally.) 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_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_board_game#History...
- Jensson 3y ago
  Scotland yard is a competitive game, I played that, it isn't cooperative. It is a team based competition. Cooperative games doesn't have an enemy team. Forcing one person to be the enemy team is not very nice, I'm not aware of any game that didn't have that competitive part that is that old.
  - eru 3y ago
    > Forcing one person to be the enemy team is not very nice, [...] 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.)
    - Jensson 3y ago
      > 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. 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 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.
      - eru 3y ago
        > That is just because people like to be the criminal. 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.
        Jensson 3y ago
        But you can look at the explosion of fully cooperative games the past decade to see it wasn't really an understood concept before then. There were no technical limitations preventing such cooperative games to be made 70 years ago, all they lacked was understanding of game design.
topherclay 3y ago
Maybe your point still stands, but Arkham Horror is pretty popular and it was released 36 years ago.
- Jensson 3y ago
  That game apparently got a reboot 2005. But yeah, that seems to be a true cooperative games, no player forced to play the enemy team, be a spy or a dungeon master or the like. Thanks for telling me about it!
dragonwriter 3y ago
> I'm not aware of any cooperative board games that are older than 20 years. 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-cooperative-board-game.html https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/08/retro-the-very-first...
- Jensson 3y ago
  Looks like the hard part was figuring out how to make cooperative games fun then. That game doesn't sound very fun, so not many heard of it. 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.

eru 3y ago

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/438/scotland-yard https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/438/scotland-yard was released in the 1980s. And it's far from the first. (This one has teams that cooperate internally and compete externally.) 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_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_board_game#History...

Jensson 3y ago
Scotland yard is a competitive game, I played that, it isn't cooperative. It is a team based competition. Cooperative games doesn't have an enemy team. Forcing one person to be the enemy team is not very nice, I'm not aware of any game that didn't have that competitive part that is that old.
- eru 3y ago
  > Forcing one person to be the enemy team is not very nice, [...] 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.)
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > 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. 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 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.
    - eru 3y ago
      > That is just because people like to be the criminal. 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.
      - Jensson 3y ago
        But you can look at the explosion of fully cooperative games the past decade to see it wasn't really an understood concept before then. There were no technical limitations preventing such cooperative games to be made 70 years ago, all they lacked was understanding of game design.

topherclay 3y ago

Maybe your point still stands, but Arkham Horror is pretty popular and it was released 36 years ago.

Jensson 3y ago
That game apparently got a reboot 2005. But yeah, that seems to be a true cooperative games, no player forced to play the enemy team, be a spy or a dungeon master or the like. Thanks for telling me about it!

dragonwriter 3y ago

> I'm not aware of any cooperative board games that are older than 20 years. 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-cooperative-board-game.html https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/08/retro-the-very-first...

Jensson 3y ago
Looks like the hard part was figuring out how to make cooperative games fun then. That game doesn't sound very fun, so not many heard of it. 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.