We love co-op games; the camaraderie of friends, the stories that come from downing that final boss when the odds were against you, and that shared sense of accomplishment. Not all co-op is equal, however, and some of those experiences impact our overall psychological health. Jason and Katrina Pawlowski dive into these experiences to take a good look at what kind of behavior these experiences encourage, and what can/is being done to improve it.
During this year’s GDC, Ashly Burch (writer/actor for Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin? and voice of Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2) and Rosalind Wiseman (author of the The Guide: Managing Douchebags, Recruiting Wingmen, and Attracting Who You Want) held a panel on “The Connection Between Boys’ Social Status, Gaming and Conflict.” The panel discusses the role and impact games have on developing teenage boys, both positive and negative. We don’t really realize it when we play these games, but from a male perspective (which the vast majority of games are written in), there are certain behaviors that are reinforced. Behaviors like being able to shame someone, being popular with women, and even being a little detached from everything. There’s a lot of good content in the panel and it’s well worth the time to watch the whole thing, but there’s one part in particular that caught our notice. Specifically, while discussing what can be done to address the issue of games reinforcing certain characteristics and behaviors in males, Ashly Burch stated:
Part of achieving happiness is social connection and meaning beyond oneself, which stands to reason that a supportive and healthy cooperative environment could be really impactful for gamers in a positive way without sacrificing their sense of being a badass. So what if cooperation was incentivized and fun in games instead of being a necessary evil or irrelevant?
The idea of “incentivized” co-op is one that isn’t exactly new within co-op gaming, but it’s the first time it’s been called out to such a degree. What it boils down to is this: when you’re playing through a co-op game with someone, do you feel like you have a reason to engage in cooperative play with that person? Are you both receiving some benefit through that cooperation that encourages you to continue to do it? In this case, the benefits are directly tied in with the game itself and progression, rather than the more abstract benefit of being able to socialize with a friend (which is certainly beneficial, but a phone call or video chat can let you do that).
The example used in the GDC presentation, and the game that is one of the better test cases for this concept, is Dark Souls. Cooperating with other players, and more often than not random players, has direct benefits for both parties. For the host, having two friendly phantoms makes the boss battles and navigating through the levels far easier. What’s more, beating a boss means you progress further in the game and can move on to the next challenge. There’s even a covenant (think of it as a group you can join with special rewards unique to that group) in the game that rewards you for summoning phantoms that are in the same covenant.
For the phantoms - the cooperative players that are summoned to a game - beating a boss restores your humanity so you can summon others to your game. These players also gain knowledge of the overall area, knowledge of the boss and its patterns, and they can do so without the usual penalty (losing all souls) of dying. A summoned phantom that dies just goes back to his or her world has no negative impact on the phantom whatsoever, though it’s not the best scenario for the host player.
What we have in Dark Souls, and Dark Souls 2, is a cooperative system where both parties directly get in game rewards for cooperating with each other and have a solid in-game reason for doing so. Helping others is purely rewarding and the whole thing can be done without any direct verbal communication. There are some friendly gestures you can use to show your excitement or appreciation towards the others, but that’s about it. Cooperating is entirely optional, too, meaning that a player can play through the entire game without summoning a single other player if he or she wishes. As Ashly states:
You're not restricting anything from the player, you're actually broadening their possibilities and opportunities in the game.
The other side of this coin isn’t “non-incentivized” co-op, as all co-op inherently comes with some measure of incentive. Even if it’s just having a friend there to talk to while you play there are benefits to playing a game cooperatively. Rather, as alluded to earlier, the other side is co-op that negatively impacts the overall gameplay experience and exposes you to some kind of negative behavior. These negatives carry over with us into the real-world and may be doing more harm than we realize.
Think of any co-op game you’ve played over the past two or three years where the second player is relegated to an “assistant” type position (Super Mario Galaxy, for example). These types of games may be fun to play with anyone who hasn’t been gaming for a great deal of time, but they also eventually begin to wear on both players. The player controlling most of the action may eventually start to feel like he or she would be able to progress further if he/she wasn’t waiting for the other player to catch up, and the other player may start to notice how little is actually being contributed by them. After a time, neither player has any real incentive to play that game together. What’s more, the next time you want to play a co-op game together, maybe you decide not to do so. Maybe you play while the other person watches. Maybe that person stops asking to play as many games with you in the future.
There are also those cases where player progress isn’t shared, or it’s very limited. A good example of this would be Dungeon Siege 3. The core of any good action/RPG game is looting and progression. In Dungeon Siege 3, the host player could do this in their game, but any player that joined would only be progressing the host; meaning all that loot and experience would stay with your friend while you went back home empty-handed. That’s fine if you plan on consistently playing with the same person, but it really stinks if you, like so many players do, want to play the game on your own. This was particularly a problem when it came to local co-op for many games where both players had their own PSN or Xbox Live ID, and progress could only be saved for one person. In cases like these, co-op becomes deferred as well. Players opt not to cooperate as they see no direct benefit to themselves in doing so. This is a bit more subtle behavior, but it reinforces that broader idea of “going it alone” and being detached. Why ask for help when it inconveniences someone?
Perhaps the worst offender in these terms is the so called “co-op-etition.”
First, what is co-op-etition? This is a Co-optimus made-up word that means two things: cooperation and competition. Games that immediately come to mind exhibiting this style of co-op are Gears of War's Horde Mode, Shoot Many Robots, Left 4 Dead, Halo’s Firefight; basically anything that puts you on a team with others against computer opponents that then compares your individual score, kill count, or whatever else with the other players. Whether in the story or outside of it, the team happiness will change if you attach individual scores to each player’s performance.
This type of scoring can help those that are highly competitive be incentivized to help the team overall, and even motivates some people to do better. However, it can also cause a lot of friction with the camaraderie of the team dynamic otherwise inherent in co-op gaming. Players begin screaming at one another, name calling and the fun times that could have been experienced are ruined because of the one thing in co-op that makes it not cooperative: an individual score.
The score can be anything in a game; racing lap times, kill count, items collected, whatever that game deems necessary to gauge how well individual players are doing. This is done even though they’re ultimately supposed to be a part of a team against the computer. In many ways, these types of co-op are carryovers from the days when the only multiplayer people knew was the competitive type.
One of the writer's here often opted to played these co-op-etition games in an “assistant” type role simply to avoid that conflict with others. That means merely helping by picking up the slack, cleaning up missed opponents, and almost playing on their own in the back of the group to avoid stepping on any scores – which causes yet another issue. Instead of hearing “You stole my kill, you expletive!” the cries changed to “This person sucks, why are they even playing?” ringing through the headphones among other much less polite things, exclusively from male players exhibiting behaviors from the “box” mentioned in the GDC video.
The “box” according to the video is what the male population has to do to achieve high social status. In the case of video gaming and online interaction, the boys interviewed by Rosalind claimed the best way to attain social status are: strong verbal skills (able to put someone down fast and often be funny), being ultimately detached, and good at video games but not obsessed (not trying too hard). In the form of competition, gaming opens up the box to create a ranking system much like the playground pecking order many experience in high school or career ladder at work later in life. Combining co-op and competition sounds great in theory but alternately opens a whole can of worms that has players stop wanting to play online at all, even with people they know.
At this point, you may be thinking one of two things. Either “gee, are there any good co-op experiences out there that aren’t Dark Souls” or “I think you’re going a bit far with all this.” To the latter, we say: no. Psychological and sociological studies are just beginning to dive into the realm of video games, which is good. For many, video games are nothing but the cause of so many issues we see in today’s society. Those of us who play video games know this isn’t true but we often have a hard time expressing why.
The why is now laid out for us: games are a reflection of the norms and behaviors already present in our society, they are not the source of these things. Think of the last time you played a game online with a group of random people and one of them made a mistake. Did you forgive them and just figure “hey, everybody makes mistakes?” Or did you get frustrated by them? Did someone else in chat make a comment about what the person did and rather than stick up for them, you laughed and went along with it? Or maybe just stayed silent? This isn't behavior unique to gaming at all. It takes place in school, at work, and our everyday lives.
If you were in the “are there any good co-op experiences other than Dark Souls” camp, the answer to you is: absolutely yes, though they may not be as incentivized as that particular example. Any game that features a full co-op campaign with shared progression, such as Diablo 3, Gears of War’s campaign mode, Borderlands 2 and more, are the types of co-op experiences that started this very site. They harken back to the days when two friends would sit on a couch together and work together to beat a game. Communication is key and if you want to make it through, you support your partner(s). We even put that idea into our definition of co-op gaming.
The thing to watch out for are those games that cover up their competitive spirit with a layer of co-op. As mentioned earlier, the overall design philosophy of cooperative modes in the past few years seems to have stemmed from taking elements of competitive multiplayer and meshing them with cooperative elements. For a while, it seemed like every game had a “horde” mode, and people started getting tired of it. What distinguished Gears of War’s Horde mode from Halo’s Firefight mode, aside from different player/enemy skins?
Trends in gaming change constantly and perhaps the one benefit of those co-op-etition modes is they raised the overall awareness of co-op as a whole. People wanted more co-op games and, without really being able to vocalize it, they wanted more “incentivized” co-op. They didn’t want to hop into a game, be called 50 different slurs, and then walk away with a hollow victory. So, the trend is starting to turn; thanks to changes in the industry and a rise in independent developers with the creative freedom to explore different ideas, and thanks to us.
It's actually important to note that we are an active part of this whole formula. We can still make some of these games with the negative aspects of co-op fun if we recognize the behavior in ourselves and others, and make an effort to change the norm. Rather than putting someone down in a co-op session for not pulling their weight, we can encourage them. Instead of always being “player one,” give someone else the controller and we can be “the assistant.” We can start asking developers for games that have incentivized co-op, and encourage them to remove any kind of competitive aspects from co-op play. Maybe one day, we can have online gaming sessions that really bring gamers together in a way we haven't seen since couch co-op was the only option.
Ultimately, it's up to us to stop the hate and really change these trends. As Ashly states:
I think we all have some basic understanding that sexism and racism, people that exhibit those traits don't just fall from the sky like Titans and spread horribleness everywhere…