My first collaborative game experiences

It is hard to state what my first collaborative game experience was as it depends on how you define it. Personally I subscribe to looking at it from two perspectives; one involving collaboration outside the game itself and one that involves the in-game multiplayer experience we have grown accustomed to today. Even today I feel both are equally relevant, but naturally the in-game collaborative game experience dominates my gaming schedule today.

My first memory of collaborative gaming was with the 1982 Atari classic Choplifter. A friend taught me the basic concepts of the game, and then after this we had a part competitive and part collaborative relationship when playing. Competitive regarding score and progress, but at the same time watching each other and discussion problematic elements of the game and trying to solve them as a team. This collaboration introduced a social aspect to the game even if at any given time only one of us was actually playing.

A few years went by and I got my first computer, a Commodore 64, and with it all of the early games of the 80s. This included the game Bruce Lee (1983, Datasoft Inc.) which became my next collaborative memory. Conceptually the same type of game experience as with Choplifter, but this time the collaboration ended with a complete success and the game was completed. Alas completing the game just meant you would start again from the beginning, but it still felt ‘special’ to have made it to ‘the end’.

Shortly after the success of Bruce Lee we discovered M.U.L.E and everything changed. While competitive at its core – naturally you want to win – it also included options for collaboration. Both keeping the ‘colony’ alive as well as making sure that the computer did not win created a window for a collaborative gaming experience, and many hours were invested in this game at the time. Even if it would take some years until we could sit at home and enjoy a multiplayer experience this game will always be my first.

I truly believe that a good game should include a social element. And even if you play the game alone the experience can be enhanced by having someone to share it with. That said, even outside my gaming I prefer collaboration to competition. When comparing the element of winning versus participation I believe that participation will always end up as the most important of the two. Given this, combined with the fact that it feels better to have everybody ‘win’ and at the same time avoid forcing anybody to ‘loose’, games the focus on collaborative game play are just more interesting. And of course it never hurts to be able to grab a beer with your collaborators to get some time away from the computer screen…