Posts Tagged co-op
Why Resident Evil 5′s Co-op Worked so Well
Posted by The Management in design, games on July 31, 2011
Resident Evil 5 is notorious for its stiff controls, frustrating partner-AI, obtuse interface, questionable quicktime events, and an incredibly silly storyline. As one would expect, these elements don’t make for the most compelling single-player experience.
However, the game’s co-op mode is incredibly fun and rewarding.
For all its faults, Resident Evil 5 has some very high production values.
The Standard Co-op Setup
Most action games encourage players to work together by turning a Prisoner’s Dilemma into a Trust Dilemma, i.e., making it so that helping each other out is always the most beneficial course of action for everyone involved. To achieve this, friendly-fire and other possible sources of griefing are diminished or removed, enemies are tweaked to take on the firepower of multiple players, and player-goals are designed around non-competitive challenges, e.g., everyone gets an achievement for defeating the boss instead of one person getting an achievement for the most kills.
Healing a defenseless comrade is another common mechanic that ensures players try to help each other out. Letting a partner die diminishes the chance of success — or can even result in a game-over screen — so all members of a team can usually depend on friendly aid. This in turn fosters a reciprocal relationship facilitated by special indicators that display the location and status of everyone else in the group.
In addition to resuscitating nearly-defeated partners, RE5 also lets one player save the other from various health-draining, potentially-lethal grappling encounters.
Forcing gameplay-cooperation at specific script-points is common as well, e.g., having one player boost another to higher ground in order to proceed. While these sound good on paper, such statically-defined activities are rarely as satisfying as letting the players come up with their own strategy for traversing a level. With that said, scripted gateways serve to differentiate the gameplay and ensure that each player feels like part of the team.
All of these co-op elements are present in RE5, but there are many more as well.
All The Extras
A great example of something that’s conducive to cooperative play is RE5′s shared-healing mechanic. Whenever any healing item is used (except for the eggs), both characters get healed if they’re standing close to each other. This encourages players to communicate and plan rendezvous points in order to get the most value out of their reserves.
Communication is also made easier by the fact that all firearms come equipped with laser sights. Laser sights allow players to point directly at areas of interest simply by aiming at them. The visible laser-pointers reduce the amount of explaining needed for proper communication, and they’re cleverly implemented as they give a secondary function to an existing mechanic.
Looks like both of them could use a little healing.
Another interesting element is that both players must activate the map-exit in order to transition to the next area. Some players complained about this being a bit inconvenient, but I personally thought it was a great decision. Having a loading screen suddenly pop into view while sniping an enemy can be quite jarring. The wait mechanic prevents this from happening, and it allows both players to fully explore each area without feeling rushed.
Whenever one player activates the exit, his point-of-view also swirls around to show his teammate. This is a neat little touch as it informs the player to the whereabouts of his partner, which in turn let’s him quickly decide whether to stick around at the exit or go back into the field.
Money is another important asset in RE5, and here the game takes a cue from a various co-op RPGs. In order to prevent players from squabbling over treasure, both players simply receive the full monetary value of each collectible. While this is definitely not realistic, it prevents anyone from worrying about splitting the loot and keeps the focus on the action.
Finally, the level and enemy designs make it beneficial to communicate and devise on-the-spot tactics. Maps tend to be closed off arenas with multiple paths, and they allow players to split up and cover each other from different vantage points. This is especially important when fighting the more powerful enemies as attacking them from alternating directions helps expose their weak spots.
The above mechanics enhance the standard cooperative template, but there’s one more element that makes RE5 special.
From Good To Great
Each player has a 9-slot inventory, and all items take up a single slot. Some items can stack within a slot as well, but only up to a point.
While this might seem like plenty of space, the real estate is at a constant premium.
The 9-item inventory greatly affects how the game is played.
The weapons in RE5 are differentiated by their damage output, area of effect, firing rate, range, penetration, clip size, and chance of scoring a critical hit. The enemies and environments are well tuned to these attributes, creating situations where one firearm is much more useful than the others. Since each weapon also requires a custom ammo-type, it’s impossible for a single player to hoard all the goodies. Instead, each player must take on a specialized role.
For example, one player keeps a group of enemies at bay with a shotgun while the other snipes some archers in the background. Or one player pilots a vehicle while the other showers fast-moving opponents with a semi-automatic. Or one player leads a boss up a path with some explosive barrels, while the other uses his handgun to blow them up from above.
In addition to the standard firearms, though, the inventories must also accommodate healing items, armour jackets, and miscellaneous other collectibles such as proximity bombs and stun rods. It’s very easy to fill up the available slots, but the ability to trade items alleviates the issue.
Trading also encourages additional cooperation, especially when one player’s path leads him to stacks of ammo for the other player’s weapons. Although enemies never drop ammunition for weapons neither of the players possess, forking paths often force players to collect items they don’t really want. This in turn creates a unique flow to the game: an area is entered, its enemies are dispatched, the players scavenge for loot, and finally they regroup to heal up, trade, and get ready for the next challenge. The pattern doesn’t keep the players tightly tethered together, but it always brings them back to help each other out.
Successful cooperation is eventually rewarded with plenty of unlockable costumes and gameplay modifiers.
Like most co-op games, RE5 ultimately needs players to cooperate with each other; progress can’t be made if one person refuses to play along. If both people are on the same page, though, the game’s rich tactics and inter-player interactions elevate it above the co-op modes of its contemporaries.
Split-Screens and Widescreens
Posted by The Management in design on June 20, 2010
Split-screen modes in videogames are often pejoratively labeled as the “little brother” feature. I think the association was always there, but only recently has the term itself gained popularity.
With the advent of XBLA, PSN, etc., console gamers are playing multiplayer titles the same way their PC counterparts have been for years: online. Supporting both online and split-screen modes is not a trivial task, so the older brother — much to the younger one’s assumed chagrin — ends up hogging the console. If a split-screen feature is present, though, both can enjoy the game at the same time, hence the “little brother” moniker.
Of course developing multiplayer games for a single screen has been around for ages. Shmups, puzzle games, rhythm titles, rail shooters, etc., often only require a single screen to accommodate all the participants. Other genres like scrolling beat-’em-ups or fighting games tend to lock or stretch the playing field to attain similar results. However, when a title requires a large physical separation between the players (such as in a racing game), console titles have generally relied on a split-screen approach.
Split-screens (especially with 3D games) are computationally expensive, so their implementation tends to be quite basic: each player gets his own personal rectangle of real-estate. In two-player games, this means dividing the screen into two portions with either a horizontal or a vertical line.
It might look pretty (if a bit wide), but I didn't enjoy Gears of War's horizontal split-screen co-op.
On older, squarish TVs neither the horizontal nor the vertical approach could really be that graceful, but the horizontal split became a de facto standard. It made sense since much like human vision, games were more horizontally oriented. It was the lesser of two evils.
With the rising popularity of co-op and the advent of widescreen HD TVs, though, I assumed this would change. My HD TV’s picture-in-picture option allows me to vertically split the screen between two visual streams, and it works quite well. After all, 8:9 is a lot closer to 4:3 than 16:4.5. It’s something developers have started to address — despite the fact that many current games are designed for a 16:9 aspect ratio — but split-screens still tend to be a bit of a mess.
To improve their implementation, I would suggest the following:
— Provide an option for either a horizontal or a vertical split-screen mode. Automatically selecting one might seem user-friendly, but it’s also a very divisive issue. Once split-screen is implemented, it should be relatively simple to support both modes, so why not let the player choose which one he prefers?
I didn't know Splinter Cell: Conviction had a vertical split-screen co-op mode! I was going to wait a bit for its price to drop before picking it up, but now I'm tempted to get it just so I can play it with my roommate (hi Dave!).
— There’s no rule that says 100% of the screen real-estate must be taken up by the players’ viewports. This can often produce a warped and cropped appearance, so why not try to maintain correct aspect ratio (in either mode), and use the remaining space to display a minimap, the inventory, HUD components, etc.?
— The major issue with vertical split-screens seems to be the lack of peripheral vision. It’s a legitimate complaint, but one that also seems easy to address with a little bit of field-of-view tweaking. FPS games in particular have been reducing the FOV for quite a while now, and widening it for split-screen modes should be very simple to do.
Thoughts?
Co-op Storylines
Posted by The Management in writing on June 29, 2009
It might not be that apparent, but storytelling used to be a very interactive phenomenon. Dig a bit into its roots, and you’ll find plenty of examples/evidence.
From the Neverwinter Nights website, one of the tutorials on how to use the DM/GM tool.
Interactive storytelling in videogames, though, is a bit different. Aside from Neverwinter Nights attempting to simulate a Game Master‘s campaign, the typical arrangement is to have the player(s) progress through a predefined arc. If no arc exists, then the game is usually devoid of any real plot. Many simulation games take this approach with few pre-determined goals and no real characters, drama, or concrete story-structure. The player has little to empathize with, and the game is excused as being tool for the story itself, i.e., the player creates whatever story he desires in his own head. This might work very well for gameplay, but it tends to force the player into becoming the sole storyteller and audience, which isn’t as universally appealing.
Of course I’m also a bit biased as I prefer finely crafted, authoritative stories. These afford little room for changing major plot points, but the minor details can still be left up to the player. For example, in the grand scheme of things, it makes little difference if the player takes a bus or a taxi to the villain’s lair as long as the villain’s identity is not variable. Change too many significant plot points such as that one, though, and the story begins to lose its cohesiveness. The player becomes aware that there is no “true” plotline, and he starts transitioning from the role of the audience to that of a storyteller who’s not really in control.
When I was a kid, the noncanonical "What...if?" series were something of a guilty pleasure for me.
It’s a very gray area, and some people still enjoy an enormous amount of narrative freedom, but I find that it dilutes things as a whole. Instead, I prefer story-driven games to give me a large amount of gameplay freedom without presenting me with grand, “what-if” scenarios.
This has been a pretty popular approach in games, with some pulling it off better than others, but I haven’t really seen in done in any cooperative titles. Granted the popularity of co-op is fairly recent, and it’s a concept that’s still very rough around the edges, e.g., duplicate collectibles, constant teleporting to fit cutscenes, respawning glitches associated with trigger spots, etc. Despite these gameplay issues — and, in a way, as a possible solution to some of them — I’ve been mulling over a game that would combine a preset plotline with multiple human players. The idea behind it is to abandon the “single decider” role and make every character a part of the story, giving each one power to affect it.
A good destination for grafting this concept might be a Brothers In Arms type game.
Now imagine you and your friends as a group of Allied soldiers sent into enemy territory on a vital mission. Obviously you want to keep each other alive and fight as a well-oiled machine, but you also need to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. Here’s where each of the players begins to have an individual impact as the squad itself is punished and rewarded as a whole.
Let’s also assume that each player takes on a role of a specific character. The Staff Sergeant roughly plots the route of advancement, the logistics officer decides on the mode of transportation, while the translator is tasked with negotiating with the locals to acquire the necessary vehicle.
In addition to purely gameplay oriented aspects, though, this can extend to the plotline itself.
Although it was quite good in parts, Brothers in Arms failed to be the videogame version of Band of Brothers. Maybe the characters just didn't get enough screen-time?
Upon reaching their destination, the squad kidnaps a renowned scientist that’s notorious for conducting experiments on war prisoners. One of the characters despises him based on his past experience with liberating concentration camps, and wants to kill him right there and then. Another one of the troops, though, had his family snatched away by enemy forces, and the scientist promises to divulge information about his loved ones if he’s allowed to escape.
What would make this even more interesting is if these choices were (at least sometimes) presented each player in secret, ensuring that his companions were unaware of such pivotal moments. This could create a very intimate bond between each player and the game’s story, and make each one feel like a big part of it.
Now these kinds of choices would be difficult to balance for everyone involved, but they would make for a drastically more immersive experience. What’s more, they could also enhance the single-player mode with more human characters that don’t just act as obedient automatons. Instead, they could base their decisions on the player’s actions, with some randomization thrown in for good measure.
Group participation has been tinkered with a bit in MMOs, but those games tend to be stories of each player’s character, and group events usually boil down to fighting a big and powerful monster. There’s a lot more possibilities beyond just that, though, and I’m curious if any of these AAA games that laud their co-op campaigns will risk exploring them.
About
Hi, my name’s Radek Koncewicz, and I'm the Creative Lead of Incubator Games, a small development studio I started with a few former coworkers.
I think a lot about videogames, and when I find the time, I post those thoughts here on this blog.
