Looney Labs Educators Mailing list Archive

["Carol Townsend" <edu-support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 4/4/07, Kate Jones <kate@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

What would be more palatable is if each player made moves that would enable
all players to succeed. I build a bridge for you, and you build one for me.
The game doesn't end until everyone has succeeded.

There are some great games out there (and some not so great....) that do have this as a mechanism.  For example, there's a Canadian game company that is all about cooperative games

http://www.cooperativegames.com/
and their sister site:
http://childandnature.com/index.html

I would love to see some good cooperative games in Ryan's eventual curriculum, but that can't be the whole curriculum.  It isn't indicative of our current society of game play, after all.  Most games out in the market aren't cooperative.  It's a great topic to explore in this class, I think - but it won't be able to be the only type of game he presents, I think.  

Granted, just because a game is competitive doesn't make it better for teaching logic and strategy and other good game-playing skills.  The same can be said of cooperative games as well.  I've seen some lousy games that were touted as "GREAT" simply because it's cooperative.  A game has to be engaging all the way to the end, be it competitive or cooperative, or I just won't want to play it.


 

I don't want to see people win by making others fail. I can accept winning
through making the best moves within the environment of the gameboard. I
want to see people compete against their own best skill, not to undermine
the others. I want to remove malevolence as the prime operating directive in
games. The current world situation is making it desperately urgent to come
up with a new paradigm for humanity.

I'm totally with you - and this topic would be a great one for some writing activities in the class.  

One of the things on the Icehouse Wiki page:
http://icehousegames.org/wiki/?title=Main_Page

is this statement:
When designing games with Icehouse pieces, you are encouraged to break the unwritten rules that players are used to in other games... rules like "you have to take turns", "my pieces are in my color", and "you have to play on a board."

I think I'd like to add in:
Break the unwritten rule of "it has to be competitive..."

Hmmm... I think I'll start a thread on the Icehouse list, just with this thought in mind.  Hmmm....


-thoughtfully,
Carol