Competitive Games

I played a lot of games with a friend and his family today, but as I did so, I noticed a troubling trend with almost all games: they're competitive. There are winners. Players actively try to win the games, sometimes by actively trying to make the others lose. If I recall correctly, all of the players in each of the games I played today played cards that directly, negatively affected other players. I liked some of those games in spite of this, but this is one of the main reasons I generally prefer D&D.

Dungeons and Dragons is a cooperative game. In D&D, players work together to achieve a common goal. In D&D, everyone can win. D&D has its drawbacks, but forcing players to work against each other is not usually one of them.

I am not a competitive person. I don't much care for winning at the expense of others losing. I would rather work with other people than against them. That's one of the many reasons I like D&D. I like that D&D lets people have fun together without pitting them against each other. I know that competitive games can be important because they teach people (abstractly) how to succeed in life, but cooperative games can also be important for the exact same reason. Life doesn't always have to be competitive, and I'm glad that games don't always have to be competitive either.