Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.

Sometime ago we held a contest, partnering with t-shirt website Splitreason.com, to design a co-op themed t-shirt.  We had tons of great entries, but an entry by a user named Ville took the cake with a coin-op inspired design.  

As a new father, I often have to game with my loud sound system turned down so far that the air conditioner makes hearing game dialogue fairly difficult. Recent games with fun stories,  good voice acting and great music (Red Dead Redemption, etc.), lose a lot while played watching subtitles. So, enter the Primal Gaming Audio Wireless Headset: I needed headphones, but I don't have the scratch to afford a slick pair of Astro A30's, nor do I really want to deal with a multitude of cords. Can these cans silence my mighty air conditioner whilst also allowing me to game or watch movies in peace?

Well, holeeeey crap!  The Electronic Entertainment Expo is next week, that's E3 for short, and Co-Optimus is going to cover it.  Rather, Jason and I are there with the rest of the team manning the fort.  Festivities kick off Sunday evening with a Natal event - so stay tuned.  So while some of the staff is gaming what little they can, most is gearing up to bring you guys great co-op exclusive news!

Colony of Gamers has posted an interview with Splash Damage Creative Director, Richard Ham, concerning the upcoming 8 player cooperative Brink.  While co-op is discussed a bit, we do get some good details on how character progression will work as we bring our different characters between games.  The game will even offer an option to power level up a new character with "extra XP" from another.

As the avalanche of pre-E3 news keeps rolling, we bring you news of an interesting upcoming Xbox Live Indie Game.  Named Zero Point, it's brought to you by a couple former Bioshock developers, Tyr Edge and Fennec Black, who have formed a company named LunaVu.  Zero Point is described as an action/strategy hybrid, and looks very impressive.  You play the role of a technician, defending your research equipment from blob-like alien Creeps.  Your Plasma Cannon destroys foes, and the mobile Lunar Shepherd tool herds Creeps around as they avoid it's headlights. 

Dead Rising 2 may finally be answering gamers dreams by adding co-op play to the series, but it's also going to make that dream with your buddy a little uncomfortable by adding some softcore porn.  Ok, it's not really adding naked ladies to the game, but Capcom has announced a partnership with Playboy magazine to bring real covers of issues into the game as well as a secret issue to find.  

Activision has announced a sequel to last year's DJ Hero in DJ Hero 2.  While the core gameplay looks to be identical, developer Freestyle Games has instead focused on features and social play.  It's unclear whether the guitar and turn-table co-op mode is making a comeback, instead we now have a mode where a player can pick up a microphone and sing along with one or two DJs.

Hungry for a new co-op brawler to wrap your hands around? We are too, and it seems Necromachina is ready to fill that slot. Resembling a Castle Crashers/Castlevania mashup on a neo-Earth, Necromachina features 4-player co-op and is developed by none other than Square-Enix. Based on the trailer, we have decided the game has individual character powers unleashed by an MP (Magic Points) gauge, as well as co-op combo's if more than one player unleashes at the same time. Until recently, Necromachina was titled "Moon Diver," and is said to be an XBLA and PSN title in the near future.

If you play Left 4 Dead or Left 4 Dead 2 on the PC, you probably know there's a pretty robust L4D modding community. The mods can be pretty hit or miss, depending on how invested the modders are, but I, myself, am loath to pass up a perfectly good opportunity to shoot, decapitate, and otherwise maim zombies in new environments for simply the price of my time spent downloading the mod. A highly-anticipated (it's been in the works for a long, long time) Left 4 Dead fan-made campaign has recently been released, entitled "I Hate Mountains." It sports five new maps containing a mansion, lakefront, lumberyard, and uh, we're assuming mountains through which Francis and company must trek. 

USA Today has posted a story covering Rock Band 3, Harmonix's upcoming music game release.  As hinted in the Green Day Rock Band demo, keyboards are included, to the satisfaction of Liberace fans everywhere.  This will bring the upper limit for co-op to seven at a time: bass, guitar, lead vocals, two backup singers, a drummer, and a keyboardist.  Tickling the ivories has been a fan request ever since the original Rock Band, and as the next logical step for the genre, it's great to finally see it.

Electronic Arts has announced that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will be getting its four player co-op DLC on June 22nd (June 23rd in Europe) for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.  The price will be $10 or 800 .  This content will allow players to complete objective based missions against enemy AI on specific maps from the game's multiplayer mode.  The content should also add new achievements and trophies.