Cooperative Control

[woo]

So I just wrote up an article (http://portal.theoreticalgames.com/portal/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/29/Default.aspx) about Cooperative Control but wanted to get some discussion going to find examples of games that fit the mold of Cooperative Control that I've missed over the years. I think everyone has an experience, and I'd love to hear them and how they could be improved.

So what is cooperative control? From the article:

The key elements of Cooperative Control are as follows:

- Two or more players are responsible for different aspects of the same in-game object. The most obvious example is Pilot/Driver and Gunner of a vehicle, but we want to extend this control scheme beyond the basic vehicle concepts as well. If you want to say this more abstractly, there should be an inseparable interdependence between the players.

- The control scheme is such that there is added depth to playing cooperatively versus controlling the object in a single player environment. I certainly realize that gaming is a solitary experience in many cases, so to be commercially viable, I think single player control is crucial, however there should be aspects of the control that make it advantageous to play it cooperatively. For example in Whirled! (http://whirled.greatgamesexperiment.com), the Right trigger will fire your blade, by default, in the direction your ship is facing, but by using the Right analog stick to aim and then pulling the right trigger, you get much more control. Now, is it possible for one player to control both sticks and be pulling the trigger at the same time? Sure... but it's pretty difficult.

- There should be independent goals in addition to the mutual goal of survival/success. This is really something that is lacking in games that weren't designed from the ground up for Cooperative Control. What usually results is one guy is dodging/blocking while the other is shooting. And while those are independent goals, additional elements should be added to create a sense of accomplishment for each player. For example, running over an Elite while driving the Warthog. It's not simply about positioning the Warthog in the right place for the driver, it's possible to take out enemies all on your own. We are actually still working on this in Whirled! and we'll hopefully have more to show with that soon.

- Ideally, the two players should be competing while cooperating - say for number of kills or competing for the same resource. This isn't strictly necessary. Halo, for example, really didn't have any contention between the players over anything except where the Warthog was going. So it's not a hard and fast rule, but it's something to bear in mind in your design.

I also believe that Cooperative Control needs to take place throughout the majority if not all of the standard single player experience. So while Halo may demonstrate aspects of Cooperative Control, and while it's great that you can play the entire single player experience cooperatively, I'd hesitate to categorize it as a truly a Cooperatively Controlled game. Bonus points go to the game that utilize Cooperative Control in a multiplayer competitive environment.

So - here's the topic of discussion: Have you played any games this way? If so, what? What was good, what was bad and how could the experience be improved? Suggestions welcome for how to improve the concept/definition of Cooperative Control as well. If you want to provide feedback on Whirled! (http://whirled.greatgamesexperiment.com), then all the better!
-Andrew Douglas
http://theoreticalgames.com
edit: removed image link from post - sorry, didn't realize it would cause problems.

[soniCron]

http://static.greatgamesexperiment.com/badge/game/whirled/gge180x135.png (http://whirled.greatgamesexperiment.com) That's a quick way to get images turned off in these forums... :rolleyes:

(Nice writeup, btw! :) )

[Surrealix]

Yes, nice post.

Cooperative control is one thing I really enjoy playing with friends, you get such a sense of satisfaction when you complete your goal. One of the few games I've come across with what you're describing as 'true' co-op play is Alien Swarm (http://www.blackcatgames.com/swarm/), a mod for UT2004.

The players (usually about 4 - 6) each control a member of a marine platoon with significantly different skills (ie, technical guy can hack into communications, medic, heavy weapons soldier) and have to work as a team to get through the level. If players don't work as a team, you never get very far at all.

Also while playing though, the players are competing for awards (kills, accuracy, 'braveness' etc) which have a material value at the end of the level in the form of upgrades.


On a more general note, I think it's a real pity there aren't more of this type of game around. Other mods/modes for games (sven co-op, halo) usually just allow multiple people to play through single player levels - meaning players don't actually have to work together to get through. Bring on the co-op :cool:

[soniCron]

I concur. Cooperative games are a huge turn-on for me. Some of my favorite gaming moments involve Halo co-op. :p

[VinceA]

For my master thesis I actually created a collaborative game. I was controlled with a fixed bar, that could be lifted up and down. It really worked out well. The participants/player got really involved with the experience. We wanted to also make the collaboration a physical effort, hence the novel interface. The game was programmed in Virtools, with levels of increasing demands of collaboration. Basically what we found were that this kind of gaming really works. If you want to check out a video and some documentation go to:
http://www.creative-gun.com/colabInstallation.html

By the way we also made a singel player version of the game at:
http://www.creative-gun.com/BuddyBall.html

And most important.. we had a blast makeing it ;)
Cheers

[Pyabo]

I think the last game I played like this was Combat for the Atari 2600. :) Wasn't there a mode where one person fly the plane and other person fired?

[Spaceman Spiff]

I think the last game I played like this was Combat for the Atari 2600. :) Wasn't there a mode where one person fly the plane and other person fired?

I thought there was, but a quick check of the manual doesn't reveal anything. Maybe it was Air Sea Battle (Target Fun)?

If I recall correctly, Age of Empires had a cooperative control mode in multiplayer, where by setting your player number the same as someone else, you both (or three or more) controled the same logical player. Everyone could issues orders to any of that player's units in realtime and it took coordination to make it work well. In practice, usually one person would be in charge of villagers and resource gathering, and the others would handle the military, scouting, etc. Having your co-teammates in the same room, or on Speaker Phone really helped.

[ZeHa]

There was a game for the C64 called "Flash!" that also had a nice co-op playmode:

http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=2800&d=18&h=0

It looks like Mario Brothers and it's similar: enemies come from the upper tubes and walk down. In this variation, one player controls a cloud in the sky which can fire lightning onto the enemies, which makes them freeze, and the other player is jumping around the level to kick them off the platforms and get score. It was also possible to hit the other player with the lightnings, but of course this should be avoided since it wasn't a battle game ;)

If you played as a single player, you controlled both at the same time; the cloud was moving a little slower, though, and your dude couldn't get hurt.

[Mikademus]

So I just wrote up an article (http://portal.theoreticalgames.com/portal/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/29/Default.aspx) about Cooperative Control but wanted to get some discussion going to find examples of games that fit the mold of Cooperative Control that I've missed over the years. I think everyone has an experience, and I'd love to hear them and how they could be improved.
Thanks for the post, it was an interesting read and I quoted it in a blog entry about just cooperative control (http://noeticus.wordpress.com/2007/03/24/cooperative-control/)!

This is a something I've been frustrated with for some time now, that we've yet to see an current and conceptually thought-through example of "cooperative control"-based games.

What we have are games in which you can cooperate, which is not really the same thing. Still, that you can ride in vehicles controlled by other players and fire weapons (yours or its) in on-line FPS games is probably the closest thing we have today. It undeniably adds a certain something, but it is still a very weak rendering of a great potential.

Of course, vehicular combat is what you immediately think of, since that's what we're already familiar with, but it is the new possibilities we should be thinking of; like on-line RTS games where one player is responsible for research, one for base building, one for resource acquisition, one for military strategy, and several for battalion command, or something.

One problem, though, might be that these kinds of games would start mimicking reality a bit too much - division of labour and control - which might take away a (large?) bit of the fun...

[woo]

I'm glad you found it interesting and I liked your write up as well (note: the direct link to my blog post appears to be busted). Unfortunately I think old school game players are significantly more interested in this concept than game designers seem to be, which is a shame. I think there are a lot of younger gamers (or maybe more accurately, those who have only recently started playing games) who really don't even know it's what they want because there's really nothing out there for them to play that way. It seems as though if you didn't have or weren't alive for the atari 2600, you don't know what you're missing.

Yeah, there's really a long way to go with the concept, and massively cooperative gaming (to coin yet another term :) ) would certainly have it's own set of design issues. But I think if you keep the concept small and focused on cooperative control, then tackling issues like competition for resources/kills/etc and coordination for things like where to go, or how to accomplish a goal help alleviate any of the issues that come into the equation when there's a division of responsibility. I know it works because I've experienced it... and it was good. The question remains how well it scales and how well it can do in today environment.

It's kinda like talking about adventure games of the early 90's. :) Whatever happened to games like King's Quest, right?
-Andrew

[Mikademus]

note: the direct link to my blog post appears to be busted
Dang, thanks for the heads-up, fixed the link! (Also edited my above post so that it links to the correct blog article! *ashamed*)

I agree with you in that old-school gamers are more receptive, but I think that is because they've been part of the computer game revolution, and seen games go from technically simple but content-wise extraordinarily innovative to technically stupendous but content-wise vapid. I myself still think a bit in 8-bit ways, that is, I don't expect marvellous graphics, I immediately look for game play and innovative concepts. Needless to say, I've been increasingly disillusioned for the last decade to the point where I'm rarely playing games anymore. However, so as not to kidnap the thread, because we more experienced gamers are generally more open for concepts is simply because that's what we were brought up on: games that challenge the status quo. However, the rock-sold basic principle for most computer games now is "kill something, preferably bloodily; antagonistic individuality is good".

Still, if we did make a great genuinely cooperative game perhaps we could inject the concept into the meme pool, because big business dictated contents and concepts atm, and they are fundamentally moribund, more so with increasing expenses. So perhaps it IS up to indies to do this.

It's kinda like talking about adventure games of the early 90's. :) Whatever happened to games like King's Quest, right?
-Andrew
Sierra On-Line, Lucasarts Games (LOOM!!!), Legend of Kyrandia with sequels, Simon the Sorcerer... The late 90's were the death of Genuinely Good Games. Or rather, mass-market and big money were the death of them.

/me grabs brownie to console myself

-Mike

[Cartman]

Space duel (http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9647)was my favorite simultaneous 2 player game. It sucked when one of you got destroyed and the line between you would lite up like a fuse until you exploded too. Great game.

[TheFakeCow]

Excellent post. It sparked all kinds of interesting conversation in my team.

I know there is another post about one-switch games, and I haven't been following it too closely, but what about a co-op one-switch game where each player has a switch that does something different. I don't think I have seen anything like it in any competitions/forums/etc, and I can't imagine it would really be considered 'cheating' in the spirit of those discussions.

[woo]

Thanks! Yeah, if a two-switch game can be cooperatively controlled where each player has responsibility for just one switch, it wouldn't be cheating the definition in my opinion. But I think the same design considerations exist for making it a good cooperative experience. I'd love to see what you come up with!
-Andrew Douglas
http://theoreticalgames.com