Collaborate versus cooperate?

Taken from Merriam-Websters online dictionary;

collaborate
: to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something
: to give help to an enemy who has invaded your country during a war

cooperate
: to work together : to work with another person or group to do something
: to be helpful by doing what someone asks or tells you to do
: to act in a way that makes something possible or likely : to produce the right conditions for something to happen

In terms of gaming ‘cooperate’ has become the common term for playing together with others. At the same time my thesis focuses on a gamified solution and is not a ‘game’ as such. Which is why I early on chose to use ‘collaborate’ when referring to the objective of my thesis prototype. The use of ‘achieve’ as part of the definition for ‘collaborate’ also weighs in for choosing this term. But even so I am worried about the loss of attention my work will have from a gaming perspective as ‘coop gaming’ has become something of a standard when referring to this kind of social interaction.

I found an article online discussing the similarities and differences between these words and from this perspective the outcome of an innovation process is ‘owned’ by the ‘collective’ that worked together to make it happen. A cooperative effort does not automatically hold this kind of ‘collective ownership’.

Another comparison also implies a difference in the ownership of the final outcome where ‘collaboration’ implies that it is collective, and ‘cooperation’ does not hold the same strength of common ownership as you can participate or help with generating the outcome without holding any rights on the outcome.

When doing my initial analyzing of games I found that the individuals ownership of both their character/avatar as well as the items in their inventory are very important. At the same time they feel a mutual ownership of game achievements that require a team effort. This leads me to think that for an innovation process the idea and its content when it is ‘completed’ in the gamified solution needs to be ‘owned’ by the collective that worked with it, but that as an individual you can take credit for certain parts of it. Working with the game analogy this makes the completed idea an achievement, but the parts that it is made up of are virtual items ‘owned’ by individuals.

As I am interpreting collaboration and cooperation at this point there is a path here representing an players involvement with an idea. A player will go from being unaware of an idea to be aware of it, then interested in it and then seeking involvement. When becoming involved you move from contributing to cooperating to collaborating. For a gamified solution to work all of these levels of involvement must be represented and have different interactions connected to them to help clarify their differences. And the players level of ownership to an idea is central to making this part of the gamified solution work.