Well, that's what decades of fear mongering against "Communism" and "socialism" get you - a nation too afraid to be branded socialist if it actually pulled resources to fix a problem.I totally agree. I know people sorta treat gaming in general as just sorta like a geeky side-hobby, but, gaming's pretty sophisticated nowadays, and tabletop gaming always was sophisticated and required teamwork and problem solving. Modern games tend to focus on small teams... 4, 5 people on a team. It's much more about teamwork than about what you do as an individual in so many games. Much like the things people are always saying are virtues gained out of playing a sport.
In fact I'm sure even the non-gamers here have probably heard the reputation that Koreans and Asians in general have as being like... "ridiculously good at gaming." Of course in some regards it's a stereotype and it's not universally true in every type of game. However, one game dev who had designed games both for US and Asian market releases had a comment about the playtesting process and the differences he noticed in reactions to game design between the two markets.
Americans were much more resistant to the notion of needing others to accomplish a goal together... and would avoid doing it unless it was absolutely necessary.
By comparison, Asians culturally had a much friendlier grasp of a collectivist sort of approach.
I'm sure he took some heat for saying that, but I also think you could probably get many or most American gamers to agree if you asked them-- Americans hate working together, and generally are stubborn and difficult about it. If it's at all possible for them to do something solo instead, they'll generally prefer to do it that way. Even if it decreases the chances of the team winning, or hurts the team overall.