"Hi, my name is Tekopo and I'm an Alpha Gamer"
Slow claps from the others in the meeting.
"Sometimes I just can't help myself 'helping' other people when they perform their turns in a co-op even though I know I shouldn't. Look, I know everyone here knows those moments when one of your friends is making a move that is OBVIOUSLY less than optimal, and you feel a need to interject and tell them what to do. I know this is a bad thing and I shouldn't do it..."
General nods from the audience.
"...but I feel this isn't a problem with me. It's a problem with the game!"
Audible gasps can be heard, people start shouting.
"Now wait, let me explain! Basically, if the game is..."
Before he can finish, Tekopo is dragged away by men in black suits...
Okay, the above might be a little bit hyperbolic. Don't get me wrong: I do think that alpha gamers are generally a negative in a hobby that attempts to be as inclusive as possible: newbies shouldn't be driven from a game simply because they don't have enough experience in games as a whole. And people shouldn't simply take over other people's turns simply because someone made a choice that they see as sub-optimal.
But I do believe that design can affect the degree to which a co-op is "alpha-gameable". Although it is important for certain players (me included) to inhibit your instincts to instruct others, I do feel that the game itself can take steps to prevent such situations from happening. Some designs, by their difficulty, can actually create situation in which, if players don't play exactly in lockstep, they are likely to lose.
One good example of this is Pandemic. In Pandemic, due to the way that you can exchange cards and the victory conditions of the game, it is necessary to co-ordinate almost completely. And the way that Pandemic attempted to avoid this situation is laughable: you can't show other people your cards. This would be fine if not for the fact that there isn't any restriction on what you can tell your fellow players: although this adds the extra step of asking what cards someone has, it doesn't prevent the alpha-gaming from occurring.
But there are plenty of co-op games that have more effective methods of stopping a player from monopolising a game. The mechanisms used in order to achieve are mostly centred around placing real time limitations, or hiding information in meaningful ways, or preventing the players from discussing certain aspects of the game. Although some of the games that I will mention don't fully remove the alpha-gamer effect, they do make significant effort to minimise it, and thus are some of my favourite co-ops because everyone involved in the game will have an actual impact on the outcome. And some of the best designs understand that co-ops tend to be more fun when everyone can interact meaningfully, and thus adjust their difficulty settings in order to account for this.
Finally, although this article is meant to help reformed alpha-gamers, the games are all good of their own accord and enjoyable for all kind of gamers!
Real Time Co-ops
This sub-category of co-ops aims to minimise alpha-gaming by just overwhelming a potential player with too many things to do in a very limited time. I think overall this works, although if the time limit is too long for the actions required, the alpha-gaming instinct can creep back in. Some of my favourite co-ops are within this category.
Space Alert: Space alert is a wonderful real time co-op: each player takes the role of a crewmember of the the Sitting Duck class exploration ship, and their duty is to look after the ship as it warps into an unknown area, scans stuff for 10 minutes, and then jumps out. Sounds easy, right? Well, unknown space is full of dangers and the ship is literally made by the lowest bidder and keeps breaking in new and amusing ways. The mechanisms involve a 10 minute segment where you program all your actions and threats keep popping up all the time, followed by a resolution phase where you reveal your cards and find out what actually happened. Due to the frantic pace of the real time segment, and the fact that the action/movement cards are played face down, it's impossible to do everything for everyone, although usually it is helpful to have someone make sure that threats are being dealt with. And, if it starts getting too easy, it's easy to increase the difficulty with more difficult threats (of which there are three different difficulty colours: white, yellow and the dreaded red). This game features one of the most interesting mechanisms I have ever encountered: during the real-time phase, you can use the ship board to coordinate your actions, but the state of the board potentially isn't the actual state of the game. It almost feels like a deconstruction of board games, since the usual assumption is that (barring rule mistakes), the board reflects the true position of the game. But enough philosophy.
Kitchen Rush: In this game, you are all aspiring restaurant owners that need to make sure that the restaurant receives good reviews and makes enough money to stay afloat. The mechanisms of the game are quite interesting as well: you use sand-timers as workers, and can only move them once the sand has run out. Each player is encouraged to do their own thing by picking up orders and fulfilling them, but the difficulty, even at the lower levels, is hard enough that in order to succeed you will need to co-ordinate with others: maybe you need a specific spice or type of food and someone is already out buying stuff. There are plenty of ways to help each other and although at first I was afraid that the game would be too much of a solitaire experience (due to how the dishes are prepared), this didn't prove to be true after repeated plays. Alpha-gaming in this game is almost impossible, since you will always have to worry about your own thing as we as contributing to the bigger picture, and the time limit is so tight that it is impossible to tell others exactly what to do.
Spaceteam: In this little gem, you are (again) the members of a spaceship crew flying in space while their ship is falling apart. The game is based on the best-selling app of the same name, where you get a panel of switches and dials and get instructions that you have to get your friends to perform. The difference in the card game version is that, instead of shouting instructions, you instead have a hand of tools and limited time, and malfunctions can only be fixed by certain tools, which means that in order to fix something you'll have to (repeatedly) ask your team-mates where the damn Y-throttle is. Along with malfunction, there are also anomalies, each with their own crazy condition that you have to fulfil (like, for example, having to play the rest of the game without the use of your thumbs because you suddenly realise that you are a robot). The game is frantic and impossible to alpha-game, because you will have too much on your plate in terms of both fixing your malfunctions and making sure your friends get the right tools. The only issue with the game is that, as far as I know, it is quite hard to find for purchase.
Limited Communication
Sometimes the best way to deal with alpha-gamers is to just tell them to shut up. Games in this section usually deal with an alpha-gamer problem by preventing most if not all of type of communication that allows a player to tell others what to do.
Mysterium: In Mysterium (Sesto Senso, or the Sixth Sense, in Italian, which is the version that you can see in the left) one of the players will be playing a ghost that has been horribly assassinated, while other players play the role of paranormal investigators tasked with finding out what happened. The ghost helps the investigators by affecting their dreams, which is done by playing cards with esoteric art, which hopefully should point to the right culprit, with the right weapon and the right location. The game is wonderful because it takes some of the essence of Dixit, and instead of a creative effort, turns it into a puzzle of sorts. The only way that the ghost can communicate with the investigators is through the use of the dream cards and to tell them if they wrong or correct: any other communication is prohibited. About the only issue that I have with the game is that the end-game can be a little anti-climactic, especially in the rule set that I played with.
Codenames Duet: Based on the best-selling Codenames game, Duet is a twist on the formula where instead of two opposing teams, the players are working together to find all of the agents on the board. I actually prefer this version of the game because along with providing a harder puzzle than the original, it allows both players to both guess and give clues, which means that you aren't forced to have someone be the spymaster. The base game of 9 turns/9 bystanders is hard by itself, but you can also make it part of a campaign in which the difficulty gets higher and higher. Due to the limits in communication, the alpha-gamer problem doesn't crop up in this game because, like Codenames, any extra information from the clue giver apart from the standard <word>:<number> and placing the correctly coloured tile is cheating, and easy to enforce.
Hanabi: The theme of Hanabi is that you are constructing a firework display for a festival, but really the aim of the game is that you have to play cards in 5 different colours in ascending order, from 1 to 5. The trick is that you have to hold your cards backwards, so everyone but you knows what you are holding, and are only allowed to play your own cards. During a turn, you can give a clue by spending a clue token, but the clues are limited to telling someone either all of the cards of one colour or number that he has. Experienced groups will soon develop a series of implicit rules and since the only communication is limited to giving a clue, alpha-gaming is impossible. One issue that arises is that some groups like to create explicit rules which totally defeats the point of the game. Just don't create any explicit rules and you should be fine.
Character Asymmetry
I tend to view this category as weaker as the other two I explained above, because character asymmetry sometimes doesn't really alleviate issues. For example, the fact that different players in Pandemic have different character abilities doesn't really stop players from being able to direct the game. Games in this category either have other factors to prevent full co-operation, or have your character develop throughout the game, thus making it impossible for someone to truly know exactly what the capabilities of your character are.
Legendary Encounters: Originally Legendary was a Marvel deck building game that mixed competitive and cooperative elements (to its detriment, in my view). Legendary Encounters, on the other hand, can be played fully cooperatively and uses the Alien series of films as a theme, which is one of my favourite series. The mechanism used in the game is a deckbuilding mechanism similar to Ascension. You have two currencies, one used to buy new cards and the other one used to defeat aliens that attempt to kill you. The game also features a market row of cards that is constantly replenished as cards are bought. Now usually the above mechanisms in a competitive deckbuilder would make me run for the hills, but I think the effect is lessened due to the cooperative nature of the game (although the dual currency is still an issue because you can build dud hands of mixed currencies). Although alpha-gaming is difficult, it is still possible since once a player reveals their hand, an alpha gamer can still say stuff like 'oh you should buy this card and defeat this alien with those cards'. So this is a more of a tenuous recommendation if you have serious alpha-gaming issues.
Gloomhaven: The current hotness in terms of dungeon crawling, Gloomhaven has a really interesting card-based attack system which makes a good job of forcing you to think about what you want to do and forcing you to make interesting, tactical decisions throughout the game. It also features hundreds of scenarios that are gradually unlocked as you explore the game. The game itself has been hyped so much and even my usually sceptical-self has to admit that the hype is justified. The different roles in the game play very differently and can also be built in very different ways, and along with the asymmetry, the game prevents players from doing full cooperation but preventing players from saying exactly when they will act in the initiative order. This allows players to make their own choices before everyone reveals what actions they will take. This is by far my most played game of the past month (and also features the only picture of a game in the middle of actual gameplay in this article).
Spirit Island: I've only had a chance to play this game a couple of times but I liked what I saw. The players take the role of spirits on a island (you don't say!) that are trying, with the help of natives, to kick out invading colonialists. Although the spirits start weak, soon they build in power, and eventually are able to send pillars of fire raining from the sky, along with floods, tsunamis or even just driving the invaders insane. What makes the game interesting is that each of the spirit is radically different and while some specialise in attacking the invaders, other might be focused on causing fear or defending the natives. As well as that, there are multiple ways to develop your spirit, which means that two plays with the same spirit are unlikely to be exactly the same. Alpha-gamer syndrome is prevented due to the way that you develop your spirit and the fact that you aren't allowed to say what you will play before reveal.
Competitive Cooperative Games
This category is a bit of a catch-out because most of the games within it aren't really full co-op games. Having an opposing team can help to prevent alpha-gaming, however, because of course you don't want to reveal all your plans to the opposing players.
Captain Sonar: Players in this game take the role of submariners, split into two teams of 4, each trying to hunt the other. Using erasable marker plans, the Captain will set a route, while the First Mate makes sure that the weapons and scouting equipment is powered, the Engineer fixes any issues and the Radio Operator attempts to track the enemy team. Since the game is played in real time, there's no time to micro-manage and everyone has to make sure that their are performing their role to the full extent of their abilities. What is truly interesting about the design is the way that the Radio Operator can track his opponent: the Captain of each ship has to shout out the direction he is going, thus allowing his opponents to hear his movements. The Radio Operator then makes note on these directions and uses a laminate sheet overlaid on top of the map to find out where the enemy went. Frantic, desperate and madcap, the game only suffers when a captain is too quiet and other people can't hear what he is saying.
Pit Crew: Players are members of a pit crew, and need to make sure that they fix their car, fuel it and change the tires as quickly as possible. The way to do this is simple, you need to play numbered cards in the correct order/place in order to perform the action in question. Once you are done, you can roll a dice as fast as you can, advancing for each 6 rolled, with the rolling only stopping once both teams have completely fixed their car. Due to the pace of the game and the fact that each player has their own hand of cards, it's difficult to tell others in your team what to do, neatly avoiding the alpha gamer problem. I think after some games it can become a tad repetitive, but overall there is enough to make it enjoyable as a small box game.
Battlestar Galactica: As members of crew of the Battlestar Galactica, you are trying to run away from the Cylons and reach the mythic Earth, but some of your fellow crew-members are Cylons in disguise attempting to prevent you from reaching your goal. Full co-operation in this game is, of course, impossible, since the people you are attempting to help could be the bad guys and you have no way to know until it is too late. Although I enjoyed this game when I used to own it, it has way too many expansions of dubious value and it's almost necessary to have a list of expansion items that you want/you should throw away. I still enjoy the base game now and again, though.
The Resistance: This classic traitor game has the players taking the roles of resistance members, sending out people to perform missions from the cause. Unfortunately, double agents infest the resistance, and only other double agents know who they are, and if even one of them is sent to a mission, they can potentially sabotage it. I've played this game far too much and I still enjoy it. Although you can't fully alpha-gamer it since you don't know who is good or bad, it is still possible to dominate the narrative, especially if playing with quieter gamers.
Conclusion
Although there are potentially many other games I could have touched on (especially in the latter category, within the traitor game genre), I think some of the above are some of the co-op games that I've enjoyed the most throughout my years of gaming, and some of the ones in which I've had the best results of everyone enjoying the game, not just one player. Enjoy and let me know of any instances of annoying alpha gamers, or even of your favourite co-op in the comments below!
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