Honing Communication Skills and Other Soft Skills Through Co-op Games Article

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Honing Communication Skills and Other Soft Skills Through Co-op Games

Mar 29, 2023 | 1 Votes

by Mel 10 rate Although single-player and multiplayer modes in gameplay historically form the core of modern video gaming, cooperative (“co-op”) mode has become an essential part of the modern game today because of its benefits in education, communication, and other soft skills.

Games Educate Kids - Honing Communication Skills and Other Soft Skills Through Co-op Games

Games Educate Kids - Honing Communication Skills and Other Soft Skills Through Co-op Games

Communicating, solving problems, handling stress, managing time, making decisions, following instructions, quick thinking, as well as working in a team are skills that students can learn and practice while they are playing cooperative games. These skills are valuable for students to use in education and future careers.

In this article, we discuss how co-op games can help hone a player's soft skills both in the video game realm and, more importantly, in real life.

Cooperative video games, often abbreviated as co-op, are a video game type that allows players to work together as teammates, usually against one or more non-player character opponents.
It is distinct from other multiplayer modes, such as competitive multiplayer modes such as player versus player (PvP) or deathmatch. Playing simultaneously allows players to assist one another in many ways: passing weapons or items, healing, covering fire in a firefight, and performing cooperative maneuvers such as boosting a teammate up and over obstacles.

In its simplest form, cooperative gameplay modifies the single-player mode of a game, sometimes with broader modifications to the story and gameplay. Examples include beat 'em up games such as Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, and Die Hard Arcade. Other co-op games such as Left 4 Dead and the Payday series are designed for cooperative gameplay, with each player taking a special role in gameplay or taking advantage of having multiple players in an impactful way on gameplay.

Co-op games can be played over a network via local area networks or wide area networks, such as in the Destiny and Borderlands series. In contrast, other co-op games can be played locally using one or multiple input controllers. Some games, such as Mario Kart Wii and Call of Duty's co-op modes allow two players from the same console to play with others online.

Co-op gameplay has been gaining popularity in video games in recent years as controller and networking technology have developed. On PCs and consoles, cooperative games have become increasingly common, and many game genres—including shooter games, sports games, real-time strategy games, and massively multiplayer online games (MMPORG) such as World of Warcraft —include co-op modes.

While there are no practical technical limits to how many players can be involved in a cooperative game, the industry has settled on games that support up to four players as an informal standard. This comes from a combination of factors. Historically, cooperative arcade video games maxed out at four players. Similarly, consoles that supported local co-op play on the same screen also maxed out at four players. There is also a human factor, according to various developers. While having more than four players involved could make a game more interesting to play, this starts to exceed a comfortable number related to social interactions between players and may cause segmenting of the larger group into smaller ones, while up to four players encourage cooperation and coordination within that group.

Apart from encouraging cooperation and coordination, co-op games have been found to help hone other soft skills while players engage in the different aspects of co-op games, such as:

Playing with One Another Rather Than Against Each Other

Co-op games are not competitions. They're games you can play with other people, not against other people. What the best co-op games offer is camaraderie, teamwork, and sometimes, if you totally slip up, the comfort of your friends being on hand to save the day and do the hard work of winning for you.

Players enjoy the game as well as each other because they share resources and make decisions. The fun comes from the setting and the mood of the game's story - not from striving to become the winner. During gameplay, players are able to practice how to be in the world with other players who have the same goals. So, when players cooperate and use cooperative skills, including listening, sharing, negotiating, etc., they are learning beneficial relationship skills. These skills help foster positive concepts of teamwork and collaboration with others in the real world.

Teaching Resource Management Skills

A common concept in cooperative games is the sharing of resources between players. For example, two players managing one team in a real-time strategy game, such as StarCraft, will often have to draw off the same pool of resources to build and upgrade their units and buildings. The sharing of resources, however, can be as simple as the system used in the Contra games (and other shoot-'em-up/beat-'em-up games), where a player who is out of spare lives could "steal" a life from the other player so both players could continue to play at the same time.

Facilitating Sharing, Caring, and Appreciation for Other Players

In a co-op game, no one is ever eliminated. Players can bond and have fun with each other without worrying that others may be proven to be luckier or better at the game than they are. After a game, the players can play another game to challenge each other without causing additional anxiety. Also, players, regardless of their temperament, will discover the internal benefits of encouraging others.

Players learn that cooperation can be fun. Because the individual needs of the confident and less confident players are met, everyone has opportunities to develop confidence and self-esteem.

Creating Better Relationships Between Students

This is the conclusion reached by the collaborative research carried out by the Aalborg University in Copenhagen and Future Classroom Lab, a Danish research facility experimenting with new ways of using technology in educational environments.

The research has investigated how gaming can be used in classrooms, and more specifically, how co-op games can affect relationships between students.

"Our goal was to delve into the benefits of gaming and specifically highly co-op-based gaming within the classrooms," explains professor Thorkild Hanghøj. "The kids know and love highly competitive games like CS: GO and Fortnite, but we introduced them to a more cooperation-based game, in which they need to collaborate to even have a chance of winning," Thorkild adds.

The choice of the title fell on Torchlight 2, a fantasy, cartoonish co-op game in which players fight against computer-controlled enemies to advance through the levels. It's a simple game, yet deep, and the goal is to get through waves of enemies and defeat bosses. And to make things even more competitive, the teachers asked their students to turn the difficulty level to maximum.

The experience showed an improvement in communication skills, better well-being and higher motivation to learn in the respective subject fields. On top of that, new friendships were born across the classes – and the assignments were both exotic and exciting.

Developing Pro-social Behavior

One Texas Tech University researcher wondered about the implications of teaming up with others in video games and how this differs from playing alone, competitively, or not at all. What the research found was that playing video games cooperatively with others can seemingly lead to widespread benefits by making players think helpful behaviors are valuable and commonplace.

John Velez, an assistant professor of journalism and electronic media in the College of Media & Communication, studied how cooperating with other players in both violent and non-violent video games extended to social situations after the controllers are put down. The results of one article suggest playing cooperatively with others can eliminate the negative effects of violent video games on players' aggressive behaviors in the real world. Another related study demonstrated playing cooperatively with a helpful teammate in a non-violent video game not only increases pro-social or helping behaviors toward teammates but opposing team members as well.

"What we found was cooperative play seems to have the biggest effect in terms of decreasing aggression toward other people," Velez said. "We found that playing with a helpful partner increases the expectation of others to reciprocate that pro-social behavior and generally be helpful. That applies to not only the teammate, but to others as well. The other interesting thing we found was when playing with a helpful teammate, you're nicer to the other team you just competed against that tried to beat you, even though you don't expect them to give it back to you."

Meanwhile, similar research by Greitmeyer and Cox (2013) studied the effect of cooperative video games on cooperative behavior. They found that the pairs that played cooperatively showed increased cooperative behavior as a result of increased cohesion which activated trust norms.

Encouraging Language Development

One of the most basic benefits of a co-op game is how it advances the development of language. Players learn vocabularies as they invent, are exposed to, and use new words.

Researchers agree on one point of language and literacy development: practice is at the heart of improvement. Players need to figure out the fastest way to communicate to each other, and this is usually through creativity and the speed of typing a message. Regular language might not be the fastest way to exchange information, so players often create new types of language to fit their needs. These types of communicative languages need to be catchy, easy to remember, and ubiquitous among the game players.