In the first post of this series, I break down the problems with co-operative gaming; why more isn’t always better.

1. Cooperative Buzz

Much as ‘multiplayer’ was the hot buzz word for games in the Oughts, ‘co-op’ is the buzz word for the 2010s. Like most buzz words, it implies something great without necessarily delivering it. Let’s look at the ‘multiplayer’ buzz; suddenly every game needed to have ‘multiplayer’, but very few really understood how to do ‘multiplayer’. So for every ‘Quake’ and ‘Counterstrike’ there was another game with laggy netcode, unbalanced weapons and awful level design. Multiplayer was the Frankenstein created to fulfill the publishers need to have a feature on the back of the box. 10 years later, we might be a little closer to understanding that ‘multiplayer’ is not just dumping players in a room with a bunch of single-player weapons and having them kill each other until somebody wins.

Let’s examine the ‘cooperative’ buzz. Although it’s not as prevalent as ‘multiplayer’, is undeniable the number of games featuring some sort of cooperative play is on the rise. And why not? Gamers love the concept of co-operative gameplay and publishers see an easy way to increase the number of units sold. After all, if your game is fun with one person, it would be twice as fun with two people, right?

2. Clones and Robots

Here is where it starts breaking down. Developers assume because they can create a engaging single player experience and a good multiplayer mod they can simply ‘fuse’ the two to create co-operative gameplay. I’ll discuss the story issue first. In the worst case, we have a mysterious ‘clone’ of the protagonist appear, who is never explained and completely destroys story continuity, such as in Halo: ODST (where the hell did that guy come from?? symptom). The slightly better scenario is illustrated in ‘Gears of War’ or ‘Army of 2” where each player is a unique character. However, now we have new issues – because we don’t want to force players to play co-operatively, sometimes the second player has to be controlled by an AI…who acts completely differently than a real human player. Can you imagine trying to watch a movie where the actor is replaced with a robot stand in for half of the film? Unless you’re watching a movie about robot body stealers, it’s going to make for a very disconcerting experience.

3. It’s a whole new ballgame

The second issue is that co-operative mechanics are fundamentally different than single player mechanics. I remember the first time I played ‘Command and Conquer’ online. I was playing the game just like I would in single player – spread out base, conventionally placed  static defenses, a perfect balance between defense, units and teching. My opponent fast teched to helicopters and commandos and blew up my MCV in the first 5 minutes, while I was still playing Sim Base. Same units, same game mechanics, totally different game.

I mention this because it illustrates how a lot of game designers approach co-op; it’s the same game with an extra player. Except it’s not; even with the same mechanics, you’re dealing with a totally new scenario. What was fun in single player doesn’t necessarily translate into multiplayer. For example, dealing with health and ammo in co-op creates a feast and famine paradox. If you keep the same amount (famine), you may end up with both players low on ammo, or one player will all the bullets and one who has to always use his knife/shovel/fist. If you’ve balanced your game properly for single player, this generally sucks. What if you double the amount? Suddenly you’ve got two rampaging killing machines instead of one – forget balance, now it’s a contest to see who can get the higher killcount. Whats interesting about this exercise is that the two scenarios described can actually make a fun co-op game, but only if the designer adjusts the gameplay accordingly.

Is there any way to handle the attack of the clones? Can we ever make co-op as fun and balanced as single player? You can judge my theory in part 2 as I present my plan to put co-operation back in co-op gaming.