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[Glass]

Over at Crankshaft Games we were thinking about the lack of local CO-OP games found on the XboxLive channels compared to other consols such as Nintendo Wii (Mario Bros. Wii) and on the PS3 (Little Big Planet).

Maybe we're off on a tangent and should be straightened out but it seems that Xbox isn't quite embracing the social aspect of gaming as well as other consoles have. Someone dare take a stab at this and explain why?

Would local CO-OP also have a space on PC? You know, hook up some controllers and away you go or will it never stand a chance?

This are important questions for our upcoming title Party of Sin and would like to know what you guys think about it.

I look forward to reading you replies.

Alex

[Shane]

Personally I'm dieing for it. Castles Crashers has it and is one of the most popular indy/arcade games on there. Halo 3 too.

Very few games have it, but those that do do very well.

[Snakey]

Coop in any form always works.

The only problem on the PC is that usually the screen real estate is quite small, so unless you can fit people on the same screen it can be a bit hectic. Trying to even play 2 player coop in split screen on a PC is quite painful.

[deemen]

Assuming you can fit everything on one screen, I think the biggest barrier for the PC is controllers. You can't fit more than 1 person on a keyboard comfortably and not many people have enough gamepads to make it worthwhile.

[Melly]

This has nothing to do with the Projects forum. Read the rules next time.

Moving.

[s0]

Would local CO-OP also have a space on PC?

At least in my experience, yes it would. I've played countless sessions of Crimsonland in local co-op, not to mention all those classic arcade beat 'em ups and run'n'guns on MAME.

Also

You can't fit more than 1 person on a keyboard comfortably

You can.

[alspal]

Coop in any form always works.

No it doesn't. It's not a magical feature you can just throw in and expect it to work.

Assuming you can fit everything on one screen, I think the biggest barrier for the PC is controllers. You can't fit more than 1 person on a keyboard comfortably and not many people have enough gamepads to make it worthwhile.

What on earth? Computers have the largest array of controllers ever. There's a billion gamepads, joysticks, keyboards, steering wheels, etc. etc. out there! It's just like buying a 2nd controller for a console.

[Cevo70]

You have to dig through the junko, but there are some decent co-op indie games.  Dysnomia is actually a pretty tight, higher production value XBLIG with co-op.

[Stegersaurus]

I think there are a few games that are local co-op on XBLA and XBox. 2 games on Wii and PS3 do not make those consoles embracing it and XBox not. Gears of War I played through on local coop with my brother. As has been said Castle Crashers is a 4 player beat-em-up on xbla, and if I remember correctly Splosion Man also has co-op focused levels where you travel through them with a friend to splode each other to help get the other to more and more difficult spots.

[psy_wombats]

Well for one thing I was instantly reminded of that flow chart... let's see if I can find it.


Ha, but anyway, I'll stick up for Castle Crashers, which I found fairly fun for that style of game. Didn't enjoy "i maed a gam3 w1th z0mb1es" but I seem to know a lot of people that do. The one console I really can't think of anything for is the PS3 actually. Only one that springs to mind is Little Big Planet, which I can't stand for whatever reason.

What on earth? Computers have the largest array of controllers ever. There's a billion gamepads, joysticks, keyboards, steering wheels, etc. etc. out there! It's just like buying a 2nd controller for a console.

This might be true, but it's certainly not as common as purchasing a console controller. I don't know anyone with multiple keyboards, and despite myself and a bunch of friends being into fighters, can't think of anyone with a gamepad for it.

[Derakon]

I have two extra input devices for my computer beyond my keyboard and mouse. They are...a PS2 controller and a DDR dance pad, both of which plug into a PS2-to-USB converter.

Go figure.

[William Broom]

Coop in any form always works.

No it doesn't. It's not a magical feature you can just throw in and expect it to work.

It... kind of is. For example, the co-op feature in Psi-Ops was terrible. They literally just took the singleplayer mode and mapped half of the controls (moving, shooting) to the first controller, while the other half (aiming, psi powers) went to player 2. So you were both controlling the same character. But it was fun, because co-op.

[JMickle]

multiplayer balances itself. there's no need to create any kind of level design or AI to make sure the game isn't too difficult or easy, all you need to do is make sure neither player has any bias (one starts out with a rocket launcher, the other with half a wet twig)

For that reason, multiplayer pretty much always works.

EDIT: shit didn't read the topic properly.

[DeadPixel]

As far as multi-player indie games on the Xbox 360 goes there exists a pretty large barrier to entry.  No Live support during a trial game. 

This means that to sell your game you either have to have an AMAZING single player experience that allows them to consider whatever MP you may have as a bonus, OR you make a local co-op version which assumes they have someone nearby immediately to sit down and play with them.  It has to be immediately, too, because once that trial is over (even if they make it that far), they generally won't be coming back to trial your game if they don't buy it right away.

So for MP on XBLIG, you have to basically make a great SP game with a great MP part tacked on.  A solely MP game will never sell well due to people not being able to actually EXPERIENCE the MP before they buy, which will create a low population of online players, which will make the MP terrible, and it all just spirals down into a large stinking pile.

Exceptions exist, of course, like everything, but this is generally the deal.