On January 1, I took a long airplane flight to Hawaii. In preparation for that flight, I got a copy of a Steam adaptation of one of my favorite co-op games, for play on my laptop during the trip. It was The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game (DFCO). Now, this raises a question: when is…
Category: Co-op Thoughts
Co-op Thoughts: Losing the Game
In Meeples Together, one of our prime assumptions is that you’re playing the game to win. Certainly, there can be any number of anti-cooperative incentives that encourage players to do things that are contrary to victory, but they still occur within the spectrum of winning and losing: players often angst about their anti-cooperative incentives because they…
Co-op Thoughts: Subverting Cooperation through Roleplaying
In Meeples Together we write quite a bit about subverting cooperation. For the most part, cooperation is easy, so a designer needs to figure out how to convince players not to work together — through limitations, restrictions, or anti-cooperative limitations. The more a design can convince players to spoil their own game … the better! This year,…