Collaboration is two or more people coming together to achieve a common objective. In games, this is often referred to as teamwork. Teamwork is often necessary to successfully complete an objective and can lead to better thriving in games. When established poorly, however, it can lead to in-game disruptions.
- Set up environments for effective teamwork by giving clear goals to be completed by players with diverse skill sets.
- Help players find complementary teammates through systems that deliberately pair players rather than randomly pairing them.
- Give teams effective mechanisms for communicating their needs.
- Give teams positive feedback on progress, individual recognition, and team recognition.
- Set a standard and expectation of sportsmanship that is then enforced both positively and negatively.
What great teamwork looks like
Thriving teams work seamlessly together in pursuit of their goal, but this doesn’t just happen through random groupings of players. A thriving team is meticulously put together and consists of highly skilled and motivated players who are willing to work together and help each other in pursuit of a clear objective so that they can obtain recognition / status upon their success. It is accomplished through interdependent collaboration, open communication, trust, and shared decision-making. There are several attributes to successful teamwork:
- Commitment to shared goal and success — Everyone on the team should have a clear idea of what the goal is and be motivated to successfully complete that goal.
- Interdependence — Players should be able to achieve more together than they can as individuals. If it is possible to be successful without teamwork then most players will choose that route, rather than finding a group to work with.
- Open communication — Being able to interact and communicate is important for effective teamwork. This doesn’t necessarily mean talking, it could be in-game pings / emotes / voicelines. It’s just important that they can communicate their needs in a way that feels safe for them to do so.
- Positive feedback — To continue being successful, the team needs positive feedback not just on their progress throughout the objective but from objective to objective as well, so they can feel a sense of mastery in the environment.
- Appropriate team composition — A successful team needs to have the right composition of individuals. Not only do teams need the assigned roles required for the content (tank, DPS, support), they need the correct make up of leaders, followers, etc. so the team can work smoothly together.
- Accountability — Teams need to feel there is accountability among the group. While this can mean that players own up to the mistakes they made, it also means that team members get recognition for their individual contributions to the group.
- Sportsmanship — Reputation is important in-game, and sportsmanship makes teams more successful. When sportsmanship is lacking, losses are often met with accusations and blame rather than coming together to better each other’s abilities and master the game more fully.
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Designing for Harmony with Reciprocal Features
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What are the benefits of teamwork?
- Better problem solving — Teamwork allows for better and more innovative problem solving. This is especially true when teams are composed of diverse players.
- Enhances mastery — Players participating on teams are better able to increase their mastery of games. This is mainly through mentorship with stronger members of their team as well as the more innovative problem-solving skills that are found on successful teams.
- Leads to social stickiness — Players who have positive experiences playing with others in-game are more likely to stay engaged in the game, especially when they have repeated positive interactions with other players.
- Sparks creativity — Teamwork sparks creativity as players are able to bounce ideas off each other. This is again increased on diverse teams where replies are less likely to be ideas the original player had already considered.
- Builds interpersonal skills — Collaborating with others will help build interpersonal skills of communication, shared decision-making, confidence and ability to take and give constructive criticism.
What does good look like?
Many of the signs of successful teamwork will be dependent on how players interact and collaborate in your game, but there are some generic points to consider:
| Success signs | Warning signs | |
| Individual | Participates on a team Uses team communication tools | No team engagement Reports teammates |
| Group | High participation in teams Successfully engages in team activities Repeat plays with same team members Team progresses over time | Low team participation Low completion rates of team activities relative to the number of attempts |
| Community | Recognition of team status Competes and supports with sportsmanship | Harmful attitude towards loss and / or other teams |
Now what?
See related content below or all articles on collaboration.
References
- Harris, P. R. & Harris, K. G. (1996). Managing effectively through teams.
- Johns, G. (1996). Social behaviour and organizational processes. Organizational Behaviour: Understanding and Managing Life at Work.
- Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, R. T. (1995). Social interdependence – cooperative learning in education. In B. Bunker & J. Z. Rubin (Eds.), Conflict, Cooperation, and Justice.
- McDaniel, S. H. & Salas, E. (2018). The science of teamwork: Introduction to the special issue.
- Tarricone, P. & Luca, J. (2002). Successful teamwork: A case study.
- Thomson, A. M. et al. (2009). Conceptualizing and measuring collaboration.
- Wageman, R. (1997). Critical success factors for creating superb self-managing teams.
- Xyrichis, A. & Ream, E. (2008). Teamwork: A concept analysis.
