Shared play can bring a community closer, but only if it is built to: mix the teams often, give groups goals they can reach only together, and keep conduct in the game separate from judgments about work. Fixed rival teams that meet every week can harden into factions. Treat the closeness from play as modest and maintain it deliberately.
How games build trust between community members, and how to design teams so they bring people together instead of dividing them.
Play Builds Bonds, And Can Also Break Them
The parent article says people who play together trust each other more. There is support for part of that: doing something rhythmic or coordinated together makes small groups cooperate more in experiments (Wiltermuth and Heath, 2009; recalled). Games also create shared memories and show different sides of people.
The opposite is documented too. In a classic field study of boys at a summer camp, split into two groups that then competed, hostility between the groups grew (Sherif and colleagues, the “Robbers Cave” study of the 1950s; recalled, and later critics have questioned how the study was run). Giving the groups goals that needed both to cooperate reduced it in that study. The design lesson holds whatever the details: fixed teams in repeated competition can produce factions, and shared goals can heal them.
What You Need
- Mixed teams drawn by lot or by rotating colours
- Cooperative goals such as a team puzzle, a shared challenge or a community target
- A norm separating play from work — what happens in a game does not carry over into work assignments or council decisions
- An eye for who is left out
Method: Designing For Closeness
Step 1: Draw teams fresh each time. Lots, numbers or coloured stones. Avoid captains picking in turn, which repeats the humiliation of being picked last.
Step 2: Alternate competitive and cooperative games. See Competition vs Cooperation Balance.
Step 3: Include everyone by having several roles in each game: scorer, caller, timekeeper.
Step 4: Do not turn play into evaluation. If a person’s behaviour in a game is used against them at work, they will stop playing honestly.
Step 5: Watch the group. If two factions are forming, change the teams or the game before the feeling sets.
Common Mistakes
- Letting rivalries build. Same teams every week breed factions.
- Humiliating the loser. Respect norms from the first game; see Competition vs Cooperation Balance.
- Using games to settle real disputes. A real dispute needs the process in Conflict Resolution.
- Treating the observation of personality as a licence to judge. Learning who is competitive or generous is for understanding, not for ranking.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Skill Development Through Games — what games actually train
- Combine with: Social Bonding Function — the music parallel