Single-Player Co-Op.

Since the days of coin-munching arcade classics like River City Ransom, cooperative (co-op) gameplay has evolved alongside the industry and expanded to new genres, challenging players to reach new goals while working together.  Co-op gaming has become a sub-genre all of its own in recent years, including campaigns strongly recommended for two or more players.  Co-op titles include Army of Two, Resident Evil 5 and 6 and Left 4 Dead.  Portal 2 even has a single-player campaign and a co-op campaign, the latter actually requiring two players, although the others previously mentioned provide solo players with computer-controlled partners.  Even more recently, the rise in solo game campaigns that require players to take control of more than one character, even simultaneously, has led to the emergence of a new sub-genre of gaming: single-player co-op.

In the past, co-op gaming was loosely understood to involve two or more players taking control of characters who work together to achieve a goal they can’t on their own.  There are parameters that separate it from other genres, though.  For example, party systems in role-playing games involve multiple characters, but since one player controls all the characters alternately as one force and RPG’s are so clearly defined by their other characteristics – of gaining experience points, leveling up, training characters to complement one another as one cohesive unit, etc. – RPG’s can hardly be called cooperative.  The same goes for many online shooters like Call of Duty or Battlefield, in that even though many players can play together in a game mode to get the most kills on a common enemy – the other team – those titles are played online against other humans.  It’s more of a warzone than a cooperative goal-based story.

If we introduce the caveat that co-op frequently involves the cooperation of two or more characters working towards a common non-violent goal, the genre lines become much clearer.  Co-op often sees puzzles where one character needs to press a button or hold a door open for another, who can then proceed and let the first character through; or a particularly large or heavy lever that must be pulled by both characters.  Often times in the last 10 years, this two-character progression was delivered via artificial intelligence (AI) partners.

AI partners are designed to take the reins for a character that could – or should – be controlled by a second human.  In the PlayStation 2 classic Ico, players control a young boy helping a princess, Yorda, escape from a large castle.  Yorda never ventures far from the boy, who players control, and he can call to her to come to him, hold his hand or make one character help the other up a high ledge.  Yorda is controlled by the game; her actions are never intended to be fully guided by human hands.  Although players influence her actions with their controller input, she has some independence and can follow, wait or assist on her own.  On the other hand, the past two main entries into the Resident Evil franchise – numbered 5 and 6 – were both designed for two live players to progress through their campaigns, sharing resources and conquering monsters and puzzles together.  If a gamer plays alone, the game provides an AI partner with whom to play.  This partner automatically targets and shoots enemies, finds resources for themselves and the player and performs its required actions during two-player puzzles.  However, both Resident Evil titles – 5 especially – have come under fire for the AI partners’ problems, including standing in front of the player while the player fires at enemies, using resources too greedily, doing too little damage or firing too seldom.  Resident Evil 6 alleviated this situation somewhat by giving players the option to control how aggressively the AI partners attacked enemies with firepower.

The next step towards single-player co-op came in 2013 with the releases of Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us.  Bioshock Infinite, a first-person shooter/action-RPG hybrid, put players in the shoes of Booker DeWitt, a detective who must escort a young woman, Elizabeth, through a flying city and back down to New York.  Elizabeth serves as an AI partner, though her part in the game was cleverly designed by Irrational Games.  Elizabeth doesn’t fight in combat, but players also don’t have to protect her.  She takes cover automatically in a firefight and players are only responsible for Booker.  Elizabeth also randomly finds resources like in-game money and ammo for the player that wouldn’t appear in the world otherwise.  After years of problems across the industry, Irrational gave players an AI partner who was more help than hurt.  The Last of Us followed suit with Ellie, an AI partner for the player character Joel.  The Last of Us is largely a stealth game, and AI partners in gaming have a tendency to unintelligently hide in the open and blow players’ covers, compromising both the scenario and the fun.  Developer Naughty Dog solved this problem so simply it’s hard to believe it took so long:  When Joel is unseen, Ellie is invisible to enemies no matter what.  This occasionally led to the shattering of the player’s suspension of disbelief, with Ellie sneaking from cover to cover directly in front of enemies who still fail to see her.  Even still, it was a relief to many gamers that Ellie’s occasional stealth mistake wouldn’t necessitate an unwanted firefight between Joel and the villains.

Two recently-released titles helped bridge the gap between AI partners and single-player co-op.  Grand Theft Auto V was released in September of 2013 and allowed for on-the-fly switching between up to three player characters during its missions.  Players are encouraged – though rarely required – to change between controlling three criminals to plan heists, rob banks and more.  Also, the Lego video games that take on popular film franchises (Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones, etc) offer players AI partners who can hold their own until a puzzle or locked door necessitates player interface, at which point players must switch characters and control their partner while their former character becomes the AI.  Players can switch back and forth at any time, and even must do so at times.  Both Grand Theft Auto V and the Lego series are even used as cases of single-player co-op by Scott Clarke in an article for IGN.  Clarke cites the necessity in the Lego titles of one player controlling two characters alternately.  For Grand Theft Auto V, Clarke discusses overlapping narratives with its three protagonists.  While his logic and points are sound and far from incorrect, there is one problem with each title that makes them slightly imperfect examples of single-player co-op.  With respect to Scott Clarke, in the Lego games – most recently Lego Marvel Super Heroes – the non-player character of the moment is still controlled adequately by AI.  S/He moves, jumps, attacks and climbs with no assistance from the player.  This leads to the suggestion that the player can stick to one character except when necessary to switch, which makes the second character more of a tool for one player’s progression than his or her own independent person.  Likewise, in Grand Theft Auto V, its open-world setup and extended independent character campaigns mean that the player can stick to one of its three protagonists for potentially dozens of hours, provided the player isn’t involved in a mission that requires two or all three of the playable characters.  Much like the Lego titles, gamers can spend a protracted amount of time playing with one character while the other are AI-controlled, only switching when is necessary or when they feel like it.  It’s worth noting that the title of Clarke’s article is “The Evolution of Single-Player Co-Op,” so he isn’t arguing that either Grand Theft Auto V or the Lego titles are necessarily perfect examples of the sub-genre.

By first defining what single-player co-op isn’t, we can approach a definition of what it is.  The final hurdle to jump is that some would argue that the “cooperation” in co-op games must be between two human players.  However, since the player characters represent the gamer as an avatar in the game, is it any less cooperative if one player could control both characters on-screen at the same time?  Is it not still two characters, controlled ultimately by human hands, acting together in real-time (or near real-time) towards one common non-violent goal?  This is the essence of single-player co-op: understanding cooperative gameplay as the symbiosis not between two players, but between two playable characters – even if those characters are controlled by one player.  When two or more characters are controlled in real-time by one player, not by option but by necessity, the ludology of that game exudes single-player co-op.  This sub-genre loses the second player and drops the AI partner – even one who must occasionally be player-controlled – in favor of a much more even-handed experience controlling multiple characters equally.  There are more examples of this in the industry than one would expect.

Escape Plan, a launch title for the PS Vita, tells the puzzle-adventure tale of Lil and Laarg.  Lil is a thin humanoid character; Laarg is a large and overweight humanoid.  They must work together to escape imprisonment by a short villain who wishes to experiment on and ultimately kill them both.  Lil can take sips of coffee from coffee machines found throughout the game to give him a temporary speed boost.  He can also suck steam from cracked steam pipes and blow up like a balloon, allowing him to float through portions of levels.  Laarg, on the other hand, can use his girth to break through wooden walls and floors or press heavier switches so the two can journey through hazardous areas.  Early areas pit players in control of one character or another, but by and large they find themselves working together to traverse the perils of their world.  Players control both characters, swapping between them in-the-moment by tapping their respective icons in the top corners of the screen.  Players are also responsible for their every action: if the player starts Lil or Laarg walking, the player needs to stop them.  Besides this, there is no protagonist AI in the game, and unlike the Lego titles or Grand Theft Auto V, character switching is a constant necessity for a large portion of the game.  Lil and Laarg not only have different skills to aid their escape, but both must be walked safely through every level together by the player to continue.  Escape Plan launched alongside the Vita in February 2012 and was ported to the PlayStation 4 in October of 2013.

Thomas Was Alone was released as a Flash-based browser game in 2010, ported to PC and Mac in 2012, then to PlayStation 3 and PS Vita in 2013.  Putting players in charge of a series of rectangles traveling through rooms, Thomas Was Alone requires the thinking and platforming skills of most puzzle-adventure titles.  Since, like Escape Plan, its characters have different skills and abilities of which to make use, Thomas Was Alone also asks players to switch between characters constantly throughout the game.  Thomas is the first character, though players will be alone with him for as little as the first 10 to 15 minutes of the title.  After that, real-time character switching becomes the norm as Thomas and over a half-dozen other characters offer their services of jumping, bouncing and double-jumping through the game.  The PS Vita port even allows players to switch characters by tapping them on-screen.  Again, no AI will help the player and the game is single-player only.  Their cooperation is very similar to Escape Plan.

Quantic Dream exhibits a fine line in the single-player co-op discussion.  In Quantic Dream’s previous release, Heavy Rain, players controlled four protagonists over the course of the title.  The game was divided up into approximately 50 scenes, much like a movie, and introduced the four characters systematically.  No character had his or her own separate campaign, but rather the game played out chronologically, bouncing between characters as necessary.  The ultimate goal was to discover the identity of a serial killer and stop him before he claimed his next victim.  However, the amount of time spent with each character per scene helps separate Heavy Rain from single-player co-op, not to mention that the characters rarely interacted, and when they did, players controlled one character while the other acted automatically according to a script and motion capture done in-studio.  Switching between characters was done at each scene break, by the game.  Then, Quantic Dream’s 2013 release Beyond: Two Souls introduced a second-screen app for a second player to take control of Aiden, a ghost companion to the main character, Jodie.  Alternatively, as a single-player title, players must control both Jodie and Aiden, changing between them multiple times per area.  Aiden is bound to Jodie, so players don’t have to incessantly move him like they do the protagonists in Escape Plan or Thomas Was Alone, but Beyond still has many elements of this new sub-genre.  For one, switching between two characters on-the-fly is the name of the game.  Secondly, players must utilize both Jodie and Aiden very regularly to progress in the game, which evens out player experience with each character.  The two depend on each other incessantly throughout the title and are both controlled almost exclusively by the player, with the exception of not having to maneuver Aiden every step of the way.  However, given Aiden’s partial locomotive control by AI and his depiction as a supplement to Jodie’s character – she has a body, he doesn’t; most people only interact with her, not him; and so on – the decision is left to the player to decide whether or not Beyond is definitely single-player co-op or if Aiden is more of a user tool like the Lego titles.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is perhaps the purest example of single-player co-op.  In Brothers, players control two siblings on an adventure in a mythical land to obtain a rare medicine in hopes of curing their dying father.  They encounter trolls, giants, a Dantean arachne (half-spider half-human) and more.  Ludologically, Brothers requires that one player control both brothers simultaneously and at all times.  To control both of them, players move each brother with a thumbstick on the PlayStation 3’s Dualshock controller – the older sibling with the left stick, the younger with the right.  They interact with objects with a press of the L2 or R2 trigger, respectively.  These simplistic controls allow players to successfully navigate the game with two characters at once.  Together, the boys solve puzzles, evade monsters and journey to a tree of life for their father’s cure.  Early in the game, in an underground mine of sorts, the two boys are separated by a small chasm.  A length of chain runs along a track but is interrupted by mechanically-operated doors.  The older boy must cling to the chain while the younger runs to flip switches that correspond to each door, holding them open so his brother can pass through safely.  The younger boy is stuck on his platform, so when the older boy reaches safety at the end of the track, he drops from his chain and manually operates a wooden crane to pick up his younger brother and reunite them at the base of the crane.  Co-op puzzles like this litter the game and illustrate the kind of cooperation siblings show in times of crisis.  Gamers get a perfect idea for how families must work together to solve a problem as they guide both brothers with their hands.  At one point in the title, one brother is absent and the player only controls the other.  This section is positively jarring, as gamers have spent hours training their brains and hands to work in tandem and are now left with one hand motionless while the other continues, highlighting the feeling of incompletion one can feel in a relationship when alone.

Single-player co-op is an emerging sub-genre and will either rise to prominence or fade away as developers continue to utilize it – only time will tell.  In the meantime, audiences and developers can look at the history of clumsy AI partners and on the other hand competent character-switching like Grand Theft Auto V or Beyond: Two Souls to guide them to the future of single-player co-op.  Successful titles in this niche have included Escape Plan, Thomas Was Alone and especially Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.  If the play style continues to be received as well as these recent titles, more groundbreaking games like them will surely come to pass.  While maybe not as large a genre as first-person shooters or RPG’s, single-player co-op is clearly finding a home. 

Beyond: Two Souls.  Dev. Quantic Dream, 2013.  PlayStation 3 Game Disc.  Sony Computer Entertainment, 2013.

Bioshock Infinite.  Dev. Irrational Games.  2013.  PlayStation 3 Game Disc.  2K Games, 2013.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.  Dev. Starbreeze Studios, 2013.  PlayStation 3 Digital Download.  505 Studios, 2013.

Clarke, Scott.  “The Evolution of Single Player Co-Op.”  IGN Jan. 5, 2014.  http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/01/05/the-evolution-of-single-player-co-op Web.  Feb. 1, 2014.

Escape Plan.  Dev. Fun Bits Interactive.  2012.  PlayStation Vita Digital Download.  Sony Computer Entertainment America, 2012.

Heavy Rain.  Dev. Quantic Dream.  2009.  PlayStation 3 Game Disc.  Sony Computer Entertainment, 2009.

Ico/Shadow of the Colossus Collection.  Dev. SCE Studios Japan, Bluepoint Games.  2001, 2005, 2011.  PlayStation 3 Game Disc.  Sony Computer Entertainment, 2011.

The Last of Us.  Dev. Naughty Dog.  2013.  PlayStation 3 Game Disc.  Sony Computer Entertainment, 2013.

Thomas Was Alone.  Dev. Thomas Bithell and Bossa Studios, 2010, 2013.  PlayStation Vita Digital Download, 2013.