Elements of Cooperative Board Games

Today, I went out and bought a copy of Pandemic, a recent and fairly well-received board game. Having no one else to play with right now, I read over the rules and attempting to play it with myself taking the roles of each of the players.

I also went to Target, Wal-Mart, and Toys R Us to look over their selection of board games to see what's basically on the shelves these days.

But first things first.

Pandemic is a board game for 2-4 players. The players play the role of CDC agents trying to contain and find the cures for four different diseases ravaging the world. They travel from city to city, trying to contain outbreaks.

The instruction manual can be found here: http://www.zmangames.com/boardgames/files/pandemic/Pandemic_Rules.pdf

Oh, and the Shadows over Camelot manual can be found here: http://static.shadowsovercamelot.com/lang/english/images/sc_rules_en.pdf

Some trends I've noticed in both. And I'm not going to try to go into player experiences too much. I want to strip away the aesthetics, go past the dynamics, and examine the bare-faced mechanics behind the systems. I'll try to reconstruct the dynamics and aesthetics from there.


Mechanic:The games have a shared victory. All of the players win, or all of the players fail.
Dynamic: The players do not try to hinder each other, and will help players to be in a better position to win.
Aesthetic: The players feel a drive to teamwork.

Mechanic: The game board is made up of different areas. Players have individual avatar tokens, and they can move independently of each other.
Dynamic: The players will split up to address multiple areas at once, or assemble in the same areas to influence what occurs there more strongly.
Aesthetic: The players, while acting as a group, still behave as individuals

Mechanic:For every player turn, an event occurs that causes an area to move closer to a condition that will push the players towards losing.
Dynamic: The game's difficulty scales with the number of players. The players will try to deal with "hot zones".
Aesthetic: The players feel pressure to work stave off defeat, but it is not overwhelming or too easy for their number of players.

Mechanic: Movement is NOT randomly rolled.
Dynamic: Players choose a place from among the locations they may legally move to and have perfect control over their movement.
Aesthetic: The players feel that the game involves more strategy and less chance. They feel less frustrated with not being able to go to places they want to go.

Mechanic: Player turn are limited to a small number of actions.
Dynamic: Player turns end quickly, and it is a given player's turn again relatively soon.
Aesthetic: Players do not feel bored waiting for other people to finish their turns. The action feels fast-paced, and player efforts and "enemy" efforts move such that a struggle is clear.

Mechanic: Players have information that is not visible to other players, in the form of a hand of cards.
Dynamic: Players are unable to act with perfect information. Players try to communicate with each other to gain information.
Aesthetic: The players feel tension and uncertainty with the lack of information, in spite of working with the other players.

Mechanic: Players cannot give cards or other resources to each other except in special cases.
Dynamic: Players try to work together in ways that do not involve giving each other resources whenever and wherever they please. They try to find ways to work as a group without having to directly give items to each other. They may work to fulfill conditions where they can give resources to each other directly.
Aesthetic: The players are reinforced as individuals since they are distinct characters. They feel pressure to seek each other out so they can hand off and receive resources.

Mechanic: Players are usually unable to interact directly with each other.
Dynamic: Players do not work together unless they are trying to accomplish tasks together. They do not travel together by default.
Aesthetic: Players have individual accomplishments they may be proud of instead of only a long series of group accomplishments.

Whew. That was rough. Took me at least a couple hours to compile the list of mechanics and figure out the meaning behind all of this.

I had some concepts for designs, but I may do away with them after examining these MDA structures more closely. They do lead to a VERY strong design structure that has won awards, and these trends repeat in other cooperative board games as well.