Game Design Patterns for Collaborative Player Interactions

Abstract

Collaborative (or cooperative) games became very popular over the recent years. Aside from being received well by players, great collaborative games also offer the potential to train their players’ ability to work in teams. However, some other games include additional players without adapting their design appropriately, which may lead to games where the players hardly interact with each other and with little to none benefit when another player is present. This paper aims to improve this situation by introducing game design patterns for collaborative player interactions. Being extracted from well-received games, these patterns can be used as guidance for collaborative game designs fostering interaction between players. The interactions are classified along several dimensions (e.g. spatial and temporal) and can therefore be easily selected for specific situations. An example game design where some of these patterns were applied is also described.