Collective Intelligence
Cooperative Games and Group Performance
In the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, the Russian hockey team was a heavy favorite to win the gold. They were stacked with incredibly talented players and had the home ice advantage to boot. But they never gelled – the players that were prolific scorers on their normal teams did not score, and their play was just poor overall. The team didn’t even qualify for the medal round, in a shocking result.
On the flip side, in 1980 the Men’s US Olympic hockey team, which was made up of college athletes, came together and defeated the Soviet Union and Finland, both heavily favored, in the Miracle on Ice.
Many tabletop games have us play as teams. Cooperative games are a classic example. Pandemic, The Mind, and Just One all make players work together as a team to defeat challenges and emerge victorious. And there are competitive team-based games as well, like Captain Sonar. I love the social dynamics in this type of game, and have designed two of my own – Pit Crew, and Space Cadets: Dice Duel.
About a decade ago researchers started taking a closer, methodical look at how teams operate. Many believed that simply putting the smartest or most talented people together would result in the best performing team. But that turned out not to be the case at all. Researchers learned that the performance of a group, which they called the Collective Intelligence of the team, could be quite unrelated to the talent of the team members. The whole could be way better than the sum of its parts.
The key work in this field was performed by Anita Woolley. She learned that a lot of factors that you might think would help the team actually don’t. This included inter-personal relations, for example. Teams comprised of people that all really liked each other did not perform better.
Teams were tested in four areas – the first was their ability to generate new ideas. The team had to brainstorm as many ideas as they could in response to certain prompts. Next was remembering information, where they had to complete a variety of memory tasks – looking at pictures or videos for example, and then answering questions about what they saw. Third was choosing correct answers, where they had to solve word scrambles or sudokus, and finally executing tasks, where they had to perform various physical tasks like typing.
And she learned that there were several criteria that led to better-performing teams. The first was the number of women on the team. As the percentage of women on the team increased, the performance increased, until it peaked at about 2/3 women. As the percentage of women increased above that, performance dropped.
Next was social perceptiveness. Teams composed of people that were good at identifying what other people are thinking or feeling, or their emotional state, generally performed better.
Third was Cognitive Styles. People have different ways of thinking – mathematical, artistic, verbal, and others. Having a mix of cognitive styles on the team helped performance.
Another was ethnic diversity. Having a variety of ethnicities on the team generally improved performance.
The final factor in creating high Collective Intelligence was amount and quality of communication. If all members participated in communication, the team performed better.
While the original studies looked mainly at teams in business settings, a 2017 study performed by MIT looked at teams that play the popular video game League of Legends. League is a so-called MOBA game, where two teams of five players are battling to destroy the opposing teams core. There is a high level of both tactics, strategy, and coordination to play effectively.
They replicated several of the standard findings about how to create teams with a high Collective Intelligence. In a sample that was highly dominated by males – 97% men, in this case – they found a strong correlation between the number of women on the team, and the team’s performance.
They also found an interesting relation in communications. In traditional group tasks, one of the communication aspects that is tied to high performing teams is equality of communication. People have an equal chance to voice their concerns. This was not the case for League of Legends teams. In that case the teams that had equal communication did worse than those that had a hierarchical structure, with a clear leader that did most of the communicating. In a fast-paced real time game like League that makes sense. My gut tells me that for a game like Pandemic, with no time restrictions on discussions that an equitable communication structure would lead to better play.
However, I was not able to find any studies about team performance in board games. This may be an interesting area for research. If you’re aware of anything in this area, please let me know.
But in the meantime – if you want to win that coop game, have a mix of men, women, and different ethnicities in your game. And pay attention to others feelings, and give everyone a chance to communicate and share equally. I guess my kindergarten teacher was on the right track.
Zenobia Award
The studies on Collective Intelligence show that groups benefit from diversity of all types. And the game ecosystem is no exception.
Diversity in gaming still has room for improvement, although it is way better than when I first started gaming and attending cons back in the 70’s. However, there is one big bastion of monoculture - historical simulation games.
The Zenobia Award, started a few years ago by Harold Buchanan and Volko Ruhnke, aims to bring more diverse voices and topics into the world of historical gaming.
The first competition was wildly successful, with many of the entrants receiving publishing contracts, including Tyranny of Blood, Winter Rabbit, Molly House, and Rising Waters.
I’ve been honored to be a board member and sponsor. Applications for the current competition just opened up. If you have a suitable design, please consider entering!
This video contains full information about this year’s competition: