Amy Jo Kim makes the case for co-op game design at Gamification 2013

It’s the question Amy Jo Kim keeps asking herself, the one she knows will guide her to creating a game that’s fun, that has meaning, that will keep people coming back. It’s not how to create a better leaderboard, or how to use audio and visual effects to create a compelling user interface. It’s this: “What can my players accomplish together?”

Kim, an internationally recognized expert in online social architecture based in Burlingame, Calif., offered the question in her keynote speech at the Gamification 2013 conference in Stratford, Ont., as an indication of how game design has changed. She urged her fellow practitioners to transcend traditional win-or-lose style rules of play and embrace a more collaborative approach that appeals to a wider, more mobile and social demographic.

“This is where people playing are framed as partners, not opponents. They win together and lose together,” she said.

Unlike what’s known as “zero-sum” gaming, where head-to-head competitions involved conflict, rules and a quantifiable outcome, Kim said she is focused on “co-op” games that involve structured experiences with rules and goals that are fun to play. Offline games such as Double Dutch, Pictionary, karate and charity walks are all good examples of this non-zero-sum game design, she said.

In some respects, Kim’s theory helps explain the emergence of gamification, where gaming elements are introduced in a non-game setting like training employees or managing customer loyalty programs. It may also be inevitable: Kim showed statistics that indicated 93 percent of children aged 8-13 are now playing games online, whereas the largest group for Facebook, which is filled with social gaming apps, are people 55 years and older.

“It’s not the domain of 18 to 24-year-old males anymore. It’s a much larger addressable market,” Kim said. “That’s why the traditional gaming firms are scrambling to figure out how they deal with this changing landscape.”

How to create co-op games

One of the best ways to think about co-op game design, Kim suggested, is to focus less on players beating each other than beating a system. She pointed to FoldIt, an online game involving protein research that brings players together to solve a series of puzzles. Instead of self-directed goals, players are working together on a shared outcome. There are other, even more well-known models.

“Minecraft has been one of the most influential platforms for collaboartion, especially in education, than we’ve ever seen,” she said. “People go on YouTube and see what you can build and they realize you can’t do it on your own. They need to band together with other people.”

Co-op games should also empower players through shared resources like weaponry, or access to special levels or rooms. As more players are now accustomed to pressing the “like” button on Facebook, Kim also recommended integrating social gestures in games like voting, joining or meeting up. There are games where people can “shout” at each other to replenish their powers, for instance. “These set the tone for the entire environment,” she said.

Perhaps most importantly, co-op game design needs to have rituals that celebrate achievements in ways other than the solo victory laps of zero-sum games. The Nike+ app offers a lesson here, according to Kim, offering statistics of distance covered by groups of runners across its database rather than just one user. “It’s about enhancing that collective sense of ‘we,’” she said.

Although it may require a different kind of thinking for creators of digital games, Kim said the idea of co-op games has existed for a long time. Just talk to a group of kids after they’ve been playing hopscotch.

“What you hear over and over isn’t, ‘I beat my friend!”’ she said. “It’s, ‘I had a lot of fun with my friends.’”

Gamification 2013 wraps up on Friday.