By Kaysee

Cooperative board games are the kind of board games I like to play with my partner. I enjoy working through puzzles together with him and discussing strategies to beat a game. Even when there are communication limits, winning as a team feels satisfying. The immersive feel of some co‑op board games (much like a GMless RPG, but with tokens, a more structured storyline, and less dice rolling) keeps us wanting more. Still, after trying many co‑op board games, I realized we live in a bubble, in Germany, where there is a huge variety of board games, so co‑op titles are easy to find not only in game stores but also in bookstores and some discount supermarkets. Abroad, however, we often struggle to find them in random bookstores even when other board games are available.

What co-op

Co‑op board games are games in which two or more players do not compete against each other; instead, they work together to achieve a common objective or reach the same final goal. Co‑op games are less common than competitive ones; only 12.74% of the board games listed on BGG are co‑op[1]. One could wonder why there are so many fewer of them compared with competitive games.

Co-op in board games seems to be a fairly new mechanic. If you ask someone who doesn’t play board games what they know about board games in general, chances are they would imagine and describe a game where two or more players are competing against each other. And if you tell them that there are board games where players don’t compete, they would react as if it was something really new. Even I thought that co-op is a new thing as I associated co-op games with Pandemic[2], which was only released in 2008. Yet there were co-op board games that were released even before that. Reiner Knizia’s The Lord of the Rings, a co-op game released in 2000, is one of the games that influenced Pandemic[3]. And even earlier than that, Wikipedia[4] claims that The Landlord’s Game by Elizabeth Magie, patented in 1903[5], can be played in co-op mode. But after reading the rulebook[6], I don’t think it can be played co-op in the non-monopoly mode. It’s still much more interesting mechanically and thematically than Monopoly though.

In the 70s some co-op games were developed by a company in Canada called Family Pastimes. They only produced co-op games, as the founders claim that children can gain sociological benefits for playing co-op games[7]. Even though they said that they received orders from countries outside Canada and some interests from teachers and the United Nations[8], the company is still small and doesn’t have a scope as wide as Parker Brothers. Family Pastimes to this day is still a relatively small company. Even in Germany the first game that won Spiel des Jahres was a competitive one. The earliest year where a co-op game became popular was in 1981, when Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective was released, which was also the first co-op game that won the SdJ in 1985[9]. The thing about this game is that it has some similarities to the tabletop RPG Call of Cthulhu. It’s possible that its popularity has something to do with the fascination for TTRPGs such as Dungeons & Dragons at that time, which are typically co-op, and not about wanting to play co-op games in general. Much like how co-op video games such as MMOs, many of which were influenced by D&D[10], are more widespread and popular than co-op board games.

What I view as the scarcity of co-op board games today may be attributed to the long culture of competitive board games worldwide. Unlike video games, war games and other board games such as chess, Go, and shogi have been existing for hundreds of years. They were invented during times where people were more likely to compete for resources to survive or use them to practice for war. They are still very popular to this day, not just because they are fun to play (I find them fun to play I admit), but also because there are pro tournaments[11], which further increase their popularity. Not to mention, wargames have been widely popular for decades (moreso in the US than in Europe after the wars)[12]. On top of that, the mass production of Monopoly and having a version of Monoply of every IP that I could probably think of might have fortified the idea that board games can only be played competitively. The long tradition and nostalgia[13], mass production, and marketing of competitive board games also resulted to having a huge demand for competitive board games[14]. Given how competitive games are more widespread, it wouldn’t surprise me if many people believe that the default mechanic for a board game is competitive and that many of those who play board games are more used to playing competitive board games so much so that changing how they play board games could be a challenge in and of itself.

Why co-op

There’s something about having those shared moments whenever my partner and I play co-op games regardless of the result of the game. But I noticed that playing co-op games can be a bit more intimate than competitive games; it may involve trusting other players in your group, having confidence in them and hope that they could equally trust you with your decisions without adding pressure to them and to yourself, and making sure that it is a safe space to lose and that it’s fine if your group were not able to beat the game.

Playing co-op games involves cooperation- a certain mindset. Not being used to having a specific mindset when playing co-op games may lead to some undesirable outcome in a gaming session. Playing co-op games does not necessarilly eliminate possible social conflicts within a group. This can be seen from the reports of players experiencing quarterbacking (or alpha gaming[15]). The conflict that players might have in co-op games is different from the type of conflict that players have in competitive games; it’s much more personal and undesirable in the former whereas in the latter the conflict is just part of the game and may be desired and agreed upon[16]. Staying inside the gaming space[17], the space where one steps in and agrees with all the rules that are within it, is one thing but behaving in such a way that wasn’t agreed upon by others is another.

Playing co-op board games seems to require so much of players, but one very fascinating thing I noticed is that playing co-op games has lead some groups to have their own systems to prevent alpha gaming which involves learning how to respect others and giving chance for others to express what they think[18]. I don’t know if getting used to doing this will extend outside board gaming, but I still think it’s a good thing to be able to come up with creative ways of preventing conflicts and exercising a form of respect that is different from the form of respect practiced when playing competitive games[19].

But it also doesn’t mean that people who aren’t used to cooperating when playing co-op board games are incapable of cooperating outside of playing co-op board games. There is also a sense of cooperation that is present in some competitive board games, but this is dependent on the mechanism of the board game and is still different from the type of cooperation that is possible or expected in a co-op board game[20].

Playing co-op board games also allows players to have more fun experiences even in sessions where they didn’t win[21]. While there can still be shared experiences when playing competitive games, the feeling of losing and winning is not shared. With co-op games, especially the narrative ones, losing doesn’t feel as bad since the experience is shared. One example is when my partner and I played Fate of the Fellowship; even if the result didn’t feel so rewarding, we still had fun during the game. We also had fun in some games where we lost. Having that shared experiences, which include joint decision-making and imagining some scenarios together, are for me some of the many things why I love co-op games so much.

Now and Finality

While co-op games are still not as widespread as competitive games, co-op games are gaining more recognition and it seems that the demand for them is also increasing. Co-op games such as Gloomhaven and Spirit Island are some of the highly rated games on BGG. The most recent Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres games are co-op[22]. That said, I don’t think that it will replace competitive games in terms of popularity any time soon. And I also don’t think that noone should play competitive games or that they shouldn’t exist anymore[23], but playing co-op games exposes people to a different type of bonding experience where losing and winning are shared, where the metagame and the social interaction, the form of respect, are different from what one experiences and exercises in a competitive game. And maybe some day when the general public think of board games, they wouldn’t just think of competitive games but games that could be enjoyed by a group of people (or a single person) without having to compete against each other.

[1] This is based on the number of board games categorized as cooperative out of all the board games listed on BoardGameGeek on 18.05.2026. It is even less than that as I noticed that some of the games on the list were wrongly categorized as co-op.
[2] Matt Leacock’s Pandemic (2008)
[3] On his blog post, Matt Leacock mentions that Pandemic was influenced by Reiner Knizia’s The Lord of the Rings.
[4] See Wikipedia – Cooperative board game
[5] There’s an article and a book written by Mary Pilon that provide more details.
[6] See Landlords Game Rules
[7] In this interview with Jim Deacove, one of the founders of Family Pastimes, they also claim that they were contacted by the United Nations, psychiatrists and teachers regarding the possible effects of playing co-op games. Whether a cooperative board game can improve children’s social behavior incomparison to competitive games is still debatable based on the article The behavioral effects of cooperative and competitive board games in preschoolers by Malin Eriksson, Ben Keward, Leo Poom, and Stenberg (2021).
[8] See this interview in 1978
[9] Spiel des Jahres winner in 1985
[10] See The Board Game As a Narrative by Pawel Bornstedt (2024).
[11] There’s the Fide World Championship and a long list of chess tournaments worlwide. There’s also a huge shogi tournament in Japan called Osho.
[12] See Pawel Bornstedt (2024)
[13] In Nostalgic bonding: exploring the role of nostalgia in the consumption experience by Holbrook and Shindler (2006) discuss the effect of nostalgia in terms of consumer behavior.
[14] Market.us report says that the demand for board games is increasing, but the industry is still lead by companies that produce Monopoly and other traditional board games.
[15] See Roleplaying as a Solution to the Quarterbacking Problem of Cooperative and Educational Games by Josh Aaron Miller (2021)
[16]This isn’t to say that social conflict doesn’t happen in competitive games. It does happen especially for some players who have difficulties accepting defeat.
[17] I don’t believe that we can all be completely in what is called a Magic Circle, where we have a certain way of thinking and behave in a certain way that is allowed in the game world and is completely untouched by the real or actual world. It is a term coined by Huizinga, Johan (1938) in his book Homo Ludens: a Study of the Play-Element in Culture. I believe that there’s an aspect of us that affects the game world and vice versa.
[18] Reddit may not always be the best source of information, but some Redditors on r/boardgames have shared some interesting solutions to prevent alpha gaming in a respectful way without resorting to conflict.
[19] Respect that players give to their opponents in a competitive game (e.g. accepting defeat) is different from the type of respect that players give to each other in a co-op board game setting.
[20] See Cooperating to Compete: the Mutuality of Cooperation and Competition in Boardgame Play by Melissa J. Rogerson, Martin R. Gibbs, and Wally Smith (2018)
[21] See The Allure of Struggle and Failure in Cooperative Board Games by Douglas Maynard and Joanna Herron (2016)
[22] Spiel des Jahres’ Game Archive
[23] See Melissa J. Rogerson, Martin R. Gibbs, Wally Smith (2018)

Many thanks to Max for proofreading.

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