Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Competitive, Cooperative, and Cohabitive, published by Screwtape on October 1, 2023 on LessWrong.

(I've been writing this in bits and pieces for a while, and Peacewager was the impetus I needed to finally stitch it together and post it. Peacewager sounds like a really fun game and an example of the thing I'm talking about, but I do not want this whole genre to get called Peacewager Games when I think I have a better title for the genre.)

I believe there is a missing genre from existing games, and this genre feels large enough that it should contain maybe a third of the games I can imagine existing. More serious game players or game theorists might already have a name for the thing I'm pointing at, though the first three game design majors I asked didn't know of one.

Let me back up. I'm going to assume for the moment that you've played some games. I don't have a strict definition of "game" I'm working with here, but let's start with definition by example: Chess is a game, Hide and Seek is a game, Pandemic is a game, Apples to Apples is a game, Poker is a game, Magic: The Gathering is a game, Werewolf is a game, Among Us is a game, Hanabi is a game, Baseball is a game, Football (American or European) is a game. I'm not trying to do some narrow technical definition, I'm waving my hand wildly in the direction of a pretty natural category and I'm not planning to do anything weird with the edge cases.

Chess is a competitive game. In chess, you're loosely simulating a war between two evenly matched factions. When you play chess, there will be one winner and one loser. Sometimes instead there will be a draw. Anything that is good for you when you are playing chess is bad for your opponent and vice versa. You can be mistaken about what is good or bad for you; you can offer trades of pieces to your opponent because you think it is a good trade for you and they can take the trade because they think it is a good trade for them, but this is ultimately what's called a zero sum game. Your loss is their gain. "Eurogames" where you're trying to get the highest score are competitive in nature; if you could pay ten points to cost every other player twenty points, you'd do it.

Pandemic is a cooperative game. In Pandemic, you're loosely simulating a global pandemic and the response of the international medical community. When you plan Pandemic, either all the players win, or all the players lose. Anything that is good for you when you are playing Pandemic is good for your teammates, and anything that is bad for you when you are playing Pandemic is bad for your teammates. You can lose things for yourself; you can spend resources and pay costs and run out of good cards in your hand, but ultimately this is also a loss for your team since they want you to have good stuff.

There is of course the circumstance of competitive team games, like football. If I'm playing Football, I'm trying to help out my team like it's a cooperative game, and make the other team lose like it's a competitive game. This adds a little to the picture, but doesn't change the basic dynamics much. Again, I'm not doing anything weird with edge cases here. There's also multiplayer games like Risk, where it might make sense to make a temporary alliance to cooperate with another player while still ultimately knowing only one of you can win. Hidden role games like Werewolf or Betrayal At House On The Hill are usually competitive with teams. (A team of one and a team of the rest of the players is basically a team competitive game.)

Picture these as two points on a continuum. You can compete, or you can cooperate. Seems simple enough. You can, if you like, extend this into a metaphor for how humans relate to one another outside of just games.

Except for this really isn't how human beings actually operate in a wide range of circ...