Kotaku

What The Heck Happened to Co-Op?

Over at bits & bytes & pixels & sprites, they are sitting in the lotus position and wondering where all the co-op games have gone:

From that time forward, I expected at the very least, every shooter to have Co-Op. I didn't even care if the game sucked, I wanted my Co-Op. Unfortunately my prayers weren't answered. I mean why wouldn't developers want to reward gamers wth the option of playing with their friends and not just against them?

The problem, as I understand it, is that the average game in this day and age uses an immense amount of scripting to get its story across and set off game events. But while you can predict one player's actions pretty easily to set off in-game events, if there's another player running around in a different area, the complexity jumps up dramatically. Game devs would love to put in co-op (and they damn well should, despite the difficulties), but it simply can't be inserted into single-player games like it used to be.

Dear Next-Gen, Can Co-Op Come Out and Play? [BBPS]

7:40 AM on Fri Jul 7 2006
By brownlee
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