How Cooperative Online Games Build Habits of Helping Others

At the food bank where I coordinate volunteers, I can usually tell within one shift who has played a lot of cooperative online games. It is not that they are faster or stronger. It is the way they work with strangers. They ask what needs doing instead of waiting to be told, call out when they are about to move a heavy crate, notice when someone else is struggling, and cover a gap without being asked. When I mentioned this to one of them, a nineteen-year-old who had just spent four hours sorting tins, he laughed and said, "It's just like a raid. You watch the healer."

That comment stuck with me. Cooperative games train certain habits of helping, and some of those habits carry over to real volunteering surprisingly well. Others do not. As someone who manages around sixty volunteers alongside a full-time job, here is what I have noticed.

What cooperative games reward

Cooperative online games are designed so that players succeed together or fail together. That design rewards a particular set of behaviours.

Watching teammates. In games like Overwatch, Deep Rock Galactic or any raid in a large online game, you need to know where your teammates are and whether they need help.
Filling gaps. If the team lacks a healer or a tank, someone switches roles. Good players adapt to what the group needs, not what they prefer.
Communicating clearly. Short, useful call-outs: "reviving", "out of ammo", "behind you".
Reviving the fallen. Many co-op games let players revive downed teammates, often at some risk to themselves.
Sharing resources. Ammunition, health and loot are often distributed to whoever needs them most.

Deep Rock Galactic is a good example. Its community is known for a friendly culture, with a common in-game phrase encouraging players to help each other. Experienced players regularly guide newcomers through missions without being asked.

Habits that carry over to real volunteering

Asking what the group needs

The best new volunteers, gamers or not, ask "what needs doing?" rather than "what do you want me to do?" The difference is subtle. The first person is scanning for gaps. The second is waiting for instructions. Co-op players often arrive with the first habit already formed.

Role flexibility

On a busy Saturday, our food bank might need people on sorting, packing, the front desk or the delivery van. Volunteers who switch roles cheerfully are worth their weight in tins. In games, switching roles for the team's sake is normal. In real volunteering, people sometimes resist leaving the job they came to do.

Clear, short communication

"Heavy box, coming through" and "we are out of pasta bags" are exactly the kind of call-outs that keep a warehouse safe and efficient. Co-op gamers often do this naturally.

Noticing who is struggling

Watching your healer's health bar is not so different from noticing that an elderly volunteer has been lifting crates for an hour and needs a break.

Habits that do not carry over

For balance, a few game habits that cause trouble in real volunteering.

Speed over care. Games reward fast completion. With food, people and vulnerable clients, care and accuracy matter more than speed.
Optimising everything. Gamers love finding the most efficient method. Sometimes that clashes with a process that exists for safety or dignity reasons, such as how clients are greeted or how food is checked.
Treating mistakes as resets. In games, you retry. In real volunteering, some mistakes, like giving out food past its date, have real consequences.
Expecting constant feedback. Games give rewards every few minutes. Volunteering often involves dull, repetitive tasks with no visible score.

Can games actually build helping habits?

I am not a researcher, so I will be careful. Studies on prosocial games, games that reward helping, have found some short-term increases in helpful behaviour after play, though results vary and long-term effects are less clear. My own observation is narrower: co-op games seem to give people practice at working with strangers toward a shared goal. That practice makes the first few volunteering shifts less awkward.

The awkwardness of the first shift is underrated as a reason people stop volunteering. Walking into a room of strangers, not knowing where anything is, worrying about getting in the way: plenty of people come once and never return, not because they disliked the work but because the first hour felt uncomfortable. Players used to joining random online teams seem to find that hour easier. They are used to arriving in a group of strangers, working out the roles quickly and getting on with it. We now try to make that first hour easier for everyone, with a short tour, a named buddy and a simple first task.

What games do not provide is the motivation to show up for a cause. That has to come from somewhere else: caring about the issue, a friend who asks, or simply wanting to do something useful with a free Saturday.

Recruiting volunteers from gaming communities

After that conversation with the nineteen-year-old, we tried something new. We posted a volunteer call in two local gaming community servers, framed in terms they would recognise: "Looking for a squad of four for Saturday mornings. Roles: sorting, packing, front desk, runner. No experience needed." Eleven people signed up in a week. Seven are still with us a year later.

A few things helped:

Squads, not individuals. Friends volunteering together stick around longer.
Clear roles. People liked knowing exactly what each role involved.
Fixed sessions. A regular slot, like a weekly raid night, was easier to commit to than flexible hours.
Visible progress. We started posting how many food parcels each shift packed. A score, essentially.

Fitting volunteering around work and other commitments is its own challenge, which I cover in volunteering with a full-time job without burning out.

What volunteering gives back to gamers

Several of our gaming volunteers have told me something I did not expect: they enjoy volunteering for many of the same reasons they enjoy co-op games. A team, a shared goal, a clear role, the satisfaction of a job done together. The difference is that the parcel they pack ends up on a real family's kitchen table that evening.

If you play cooperative games and have ever wondered whether you would make a decent volunteer, you probably would. You already know how to watch the healer. More on getting started is in our Volunteering section, and you may enjoy our piece on how online game guilds work like volunteer groups.