How Do Cooperative Games Affect Children's Behavior

The movement to develop a higher quantity of less competitive, more cooperative games started in the early 1960’s. During this time, games, like Dungeons and Dragons®, started to emerge as large powerhouses in an economy that was driven be games that put players purely into contest with each other. The shift from a competitive game to one that let players work together toward a common goal took, and continues to take place across the gaming community. The effect these games can have on young children and teens has been studied and using them to effect the behavior of children has been tried. More recent cooperative board games include Max, Harvest Time, Pandemic, and Forbidden Island. These games are all played by a group of players who must …show more content…
437). The study focused on how using cooperative games effected the behavior of children ages four to five compared with how using competitive games effected the children’s behaviors. The study used seventy preschoolers form four different classes in three different schools. Their behavior was recorded and the results quantified as percentages of cooperative behavior and competitive behavior. A baseline was set by not instructing the children on any games to play during their play time. They were allowed to play in any way they wished, but the board games, both competitive and cooperative, were not made available. To see the effect of competitive play on the behavior of the children, the teacher would give instruction of a competitive style game and then allow the children to choose whether they wanted to play or not. Cooperative games were introduced with the same procedure. Each session ranged from ten to thirty minutes to observe the behavior of the children as they …show more content…
The first lesson is that “You’ve got to have friends.” This teaching is crucial to children when they are starting to find people to call friends. Through cooperative play, a child can form a bond with the other children who are all working toward the common goal to defeat the game. During competitive play, in contrast, the children may form rivalries among each other to be the best above everyone else. The skill of being able to work toward a common goal is a life skill that children need to develop. The second lesson cooperative games teach is that “Teamwork makes the dream work.” This lesson teaches children that they are not always being fought against by everyone, but that there are people with them going for the same goals. These shared goals can be striven for together so that everyone has an easier time achieving success. The third lesson teaches “There’s strength in numbers. The more people you help, the better your chances of saving the world.” The idea of this one is to teach the value of cooperative behavior to as many people as possible so that they can all work together in the future. The fourth lesson is “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try, you can get what you need.” This lesson shows that sometimes there will be undesirable outcomes of certain choices. In a game, the unpredictable nature of some of the game’s