Cooperative video game
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Cooperative gameplay (often abbreviated as co-op) is primarily a feature in video games that allows players to work together as teammates with the absence of player-controlled competitors. Cooperative gameplay is usually built around the single player mode of a game, modified to allow additional players. Often the story is modified and the difficulty level is increased depending on the number of players in the game. Players assist other teammates in many ways: passing weapons or items, healing, providing covering fire in a firefight, and even cooperative maneuvers such as boosting a teammate up and over obstacles.
Compared to competitive multiplayer, co-op gameplay has been gaining popularity in video games over the past years [1]. Though, technical limitations use to hinder the increased action or graphics required for simultaneous co-op play, notably on early-generation home consoles. As controller and networking technology has developed, allowing for more games to allow more than two players on PCs and consoles, cooperative games gained in popularity, especially in first-person shooters and sports games.
Home consoles
Though consoles from the second generation of video games onward typically had controller ports for two-player games, most systems did not have the computing or graphical power for simultaneous play, leading most games that billed "2-player gameplay" as feature to merely be the single player game, alternating players, with competitive multiplayer being less common.
Many arcade beat 'em ups, such as Double Dragon, were ported to less advanced systems. Alternating play replaced the arcade's co-op play in the NES version (although Double Dragon II and III for the same system did retain their co-op gameplay, with the added feature of enabling or disabling friendly hits). Most other titles featuring 2-player were head-to-head sports titles. Though most of the console beat 'em ups were arcade ports, original franchises such as Streets of Rage and River City Ransom also became popular.
The run and gun genre was also popular for co-op games. Contra, for instance, was far more successful in its NES incarnation than it was in the arcade, and is famous for being one of the most popular co-op games ever, and was followed up with several sequels. Gunstar Heroes for the Sega Genesis and the Metal Slug series for the Neo Geo were also well-received titles.
Co-op games in the RPG genre have generally been less common on console systems. The 1993 action-RPG, Secret of Mana for the Super Nintendo offered two- and three-player action, once the main character had acquired his party members. Final Fantasy VI offered a form of alternating co-op play for its battles, with the second player taking control of half of the characters in the party. Namco's Tales series allowed multiple players to take control of individual members in its real-time battles in some of the titles, such as Tales of Symphonia, while the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance games replicated the Diablo formula for consoles, offering 2-player simultaneous play through the game's campaign.
Electronic Arts has produced successful co-op titles in history, as their various sports franchises have been consistent best-sellers worldwide for over a decade. The original NHL Hockey and Madden NFL installments on the Sega Genesis were key games, allowing two players or more to play against the CPU. Installments of both series, among other official sports franchises developed by EA, are published annually.[2]
Many console games support split screen displays in order to show 2 or more players in different regions of the game. Split screen displays would usually split the main screen into either 2 or 4 sub-regions so that 2-4 players could roam freely within the game world. Many first-person and third-person shooter games use this technique when played in multiplayer co-op mode, such as the console versions of games in the Rainbow Six series or the fifth installment of the Call of Duty series, Call of Duty: World at War.
With the Nintendo 64, having four controller ports started to become a standard feature in consoles, as the Dreamcast, Nintendo GameCube and Xbox all featured them. As larger multiplayer games became feasible, cooperative gameplay also became more available. The latest generation of video game consoles all feature wireless controllers, removing the past local player limits. However, its effect on multiplayer is probably less pronounced than the advancement of console internet capabilities. In most video games co-op, if present, is an optional game mode, but in titles such as Army of Two and Left 4 Dead, it is the main focus of the gameplay.[3]
PC
The release of Doom in 1993 was a breakthrough in network gaming. Though arguably deathmatch was both the most influential and most popular mode, Doom's co-op gameplay was also significant. Up to four players could travel through the entire game together, playing on separate computers over a LAN. Unlike many co-op games, the game's campaign mode was designed primarily for single player, but the difficulty was tweaked to compensate for extra human players. The following three games produced by id Software (Doom II, Quake and Quake II) all featured co-op modes.
Since around the year 2000, most FPS developers have forsaken co-op campaign play, opting to focus more purely on either a more detailed and in-depth single player experience or a purely multiplayer game. Epic's Unreal Tournament series has practically eschewed single player altogether, and the most significant releases of Doom 3, Quake 4, and both Half-Life titles shipped without cooperative gameplay modes. The moddability of these titles has enabled fan-created add-ons which enable co-op play in many of these cases, though.
Co-op still exists in the form of competitive teamplay, which has generally overtaken deathmatch as the dominant form of online FPS multiplayer, with titles such as Counter-Strike, Battlefield 1942 , Medal of Honor and Call of Duty gaining dominance in the early to mid-2000s.
Serious Sam and Serious Sam II, both first-person shooters by Croteam concentrated heavily on the co-op gameplay.
Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo was immensely successful, largely due to being the flagship title of Blizzard's online matchmaking service, battle.net. Though local network play was an option, the game's popularity came from its internet play, allowing many players to fight through the entire single player campaign together.
Most early computer role-playing games were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, but restricted to single player due to technical restrictions. The earliest RPGs featuring co-op were MUDs which would eventually became the MMOG genre, though it is debatable and variable if and how much these online worlds are designed around cooperative gameplay, depending on the rules of the virtual space.
Later PC RPGs became more powerful and flexible in simulating the shared real life RPG experience, allowing players to collaborate in games over the Internet. The D&D-sanctioned Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games allowed up to 6 players to play through the campaign mode over network.
2000's Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption was the earliest CRPG to feature an online mode where a "storyteller" controlled a campaign much like a Dungeon Master, shaping and altering the game world against a party of human-controlled players. Atari's Neverwinter Nights was an official and comprehensive D&D simulator, featuring even more robust game-creation tools and developing a sizable online community. Besides an active modding community providing many fan-developed campaigns, the game was officially followed up with several commercial expansion packs.
Gameplay characteristics
Resource management
A common concept in cooperative games is the sharing of resources between players. For example, two players managing one team in a real-time strategy game, such as StarCraft, will often have to draw off the same pool of resources to build and upgrade their units and buildings. The sharing of resources, however, can be as simple as the system used in the Contra games (and other shoot-'em-up/beat-'em-up games) where a player who is out of spare lives could "steal" a life from the other player so both players could continue to play at the same time.
Platform games
In cooperative platform games or games that use similar elements, both players occupy the same screen and must coordinate their actions, particularly in respect of the scrolling. If the scrolling is limited to forward directions only, players can potentially cause the death of each other. For example, one player lagging behind could cause problems for his partner, as the screen will not scroll onward. A slow player could be fatal to his partner's attempt to complete a jump over a chasm, if say the chasm appeared on the screen but the ending surface however did not. In the vertical levels, one player can scroll up far too quickly and inadvertently kill the other player in the process, as the other player would literally have the ground beneath him disappear.
A way to counter this problem would be to use a camera that zoomed in and out over an entire level, keeping the players within the camera, but by still having an operable camera that does not require you to see the whole map at once. This type of camera will be used in New Super Mario Brothers Wii, for four player cooperative gameplay.
Local & Network Co-op mode
Co-op video games feature a multiplayer co-op mode which allow multiple local or network players to team up while playing the single player story. Local players either share input devices or use multiple controllers connected to a single console. Network co-op players join an existing game running on a game server via a computer network. These networks can vary from local area networks to wide area networks.
Due to the complexity of video game coding, co-op games rarely allowed network players and local players from mixing. A notable example is Mario Kart Wii, which allows two players from the same Wii console to play with others online. This does not come without its limitations, as the two players must always be on the same team in online battles.
Game Ending
Many co-op games feature a different ending when completed with multiple players. These games would sometimes not show the full ending, but rather a subset or short ending. The player would be required to complete the game in single player mode to view the complete ending. Bubble Bobble, on the other hand, was the other way around: both players had to survive co-op mode to get the good ending.
Some co-op games even feature a new ending when completed in co-op mode. This new ending is unlocked only when players work as a team to complete the game. This ending is sometimes customized to suit the characters which were used to complete the game. This increases the replay value of the game. Many beat 'em up games on console employ this method to increase replay value. Beat-em-ups such as Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, and Die Hard Arcade even allowed co-op players to fight to the death at the end of the game.
Other games, such as Unreal, are modified by server administrators to restart after the single-player ending sequence; in some cases, the contents of the inventory of the players are also retained.
Video games with Co-op mode
- For the manually edited sortable table of games that feature cooperative gameplay, see List of cooperative video games.
- For the automatically generated list of games that belong to this category, see Category:Cooperative video games.