WILLIAMSVILLE — Like many Americans, I grew up playing Monopoly, the famous board game that teaches players how to become real estate magnates.
I remember the thrill of passing “Go” and collecting $200, the delight of owning a railroad or a prime property like Park Place, and the anxiety of having to come up with the rent when I landed on someone else's high-rent turf.
Basically, playing Monopoly indoctrinated me (and so many others) in cutthroat capitalism, and I accepted the zero-sum worldview that for there to be a winner, there has to be a loser as well.
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Andrew Stachiw, one of the founders of Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA), the company that developed Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperation, confesses that he loved playing Monopoly as a kid.
“I never lost,” he told me. “My neighbors hated me. My dad stopped playing with me. He didn't like the person I became when I was playing.”
I know that person Andrew became; I developed a kind of gleeful, hard-hearted meanness when I played with my brothers. I didn't just want to win, I wanted to win at my brothers' expense.
And I can now confess with both sadness and remorse, that I sometimes used those game-honed skills in real life situations, crushing my adversaries with the same vigor I'd learned with fake money at stake.
When I played Monopoly, landing on Community Chest was considered bad luck. From the game, I learned that donating to a local charity was a liability; in real life, I see it as a privilege.
In my own defense, games are a great method of subconscious learning.
So, what better way to effect a paradigm shift in the culture than to invent a new game?
That's just what Stachiw and Bryan Van Slyke have done with Co-opoly.
Sure, Co-opoly is a terrific game for learning about cooperation and cooperatives, but the reason it succeeds is because it's fun and engaging - as games are meant to be.
Subconsciously, though, Co-opoly players learn that they have to work together, they have to talk and to listen, and they have to speak up as individuals and to think as a group.
The game also teaches empathy, as each player has an assigned role; and the game exercises the group's narrative imagination, as players invent and foster their respective businesses.
Most of all, players of Co-opoly learn how to - well, cooperate.
Brian told me about a “reformed banker” who holds biweekly, community events where people come to play the game. The organizer reports increasing numbers showing up at each event.
And Andrew told me that he interviewed a father who turned to Co-opoly when he became concerned at how much his older son dominated his younger one. After playing the game, the younger boy said, “Dad, I think the game is going to help us get along better.”
Getting along better seems like a worthy goal. Picking it up subconsciously by playing a game - even better.
Best of all, though, is that Van Slyke and Stachiw are young entrepreneurs, using the cooperative model to teach socially responsible capitalism - something that could benefit all of us - one hundred per cent.