Fun Without Winning or Losing

2026-06-15

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June 15, 2026 Fun Without Winning or Losing We have been raised – and, in turn, raise our children – to take on faith that recreation requires competition, that half the people playing a game must try to defeat the other half. (They “cooperate” only with their teammates, and only in order to triumph over the other team.) In a true cooperative game, by contrast, everyone on the field – or gathered around a table indoors, in the case of cooperative board games – is working together toward the same goal. There are loads of such games for kids an...

June 15, 2026 Fun Without Winning or Losing

We have been raised – and, in turn, raise our children – to take on faith that recreation requires competition, that half the people playing a game must try to defeat the other half. (They “cooperate” only with their teammates, and only in order to triumph over the other team.) In a true cooperative game, by contrast, everyone on the field – or gathered around a table indoors, in the case of cooperative board games – is working together toward the same goal. There are loads of such games for kids and adults, and you have to experience them to realize just how much fun competition isn’t.

RESOURCES:

Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Houghton Mifflin, 1986/1992) – https://www.alfiekohn.org/contest/

Terry Orlick, The Cooperative Sports & Games Book (Pantheon, 1978) – https://amzn.to/33rltfY

https://www.cooperativegames.com/

https://familypastimes.com

A note from Alfie Kohn:

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PRODUCTION SUPPORT: Ultraviolet Audio
ART: Abi Kohn

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