Split Screen Co-op Is Dying

kube00 writes "Split-screen co-op and local multiplayer are becoming things of the past. What happened to cramming a bunch of gamers into a room with two TVs and doing a system link match in Halo? Where have the all-night GoldenEye matches gone? Like the arcades of gamers' youth, the local multiplayer and co-op bonding experience has been replaced with individual gamers and a network."

Comments

Damned shame

[Nursie]

Split-screen co-op is a sociable way to spend an evening with a mate or two (drop in a few beers too, of course).

I was most upset when it wasn't included in Resistance 2, after Resistance 1 had it. Turned it from an awesome shared experience to taking turns and one of you being a bit bored.

Re:Damned shame

[devbox]

It's even more sociable accepted way in Asia, where arcades and co-op arcade games still flourish. There's always lots of teenagers playing those games in malls and arcades.

Actually gaming in general is more social in Asia. Even if you play on computer, you go play in a net cafe with your friends and theres always other people around and playing with you - instead of you playing alone in a dark basement.

Re:Damned shame

[Narishma]

Go ahead and find me a fighting game that doesn't have split screen (lookin forward to Marvel vs. Capcom 3 BTW).

Fighting games don't have split-screen, they have same-screen multiplayer.

Re:Damned shame

[AltairDusk]

Did you ever play video games with friends when you were a kid? I remember playing Goldeneye with 3 friends split screen on a 15" TV and we managed just fine. Playing 2 way or 4 way split screen on the 46" LCD I have now would still beat playing one player on that tiny screen for each person playing.

I suspect the real reason split screen is disappearing is that both the PS3 and the 360 have already been pushed to their hardware limits and the game devs are having difficulty making split screen run without killing the framerate or dropping down the graphics level.

Re:Damned shame

[Rexdude]

No. David Wong said it best:

The advantage that consoles have over, say, PCs, is that you can play from your comfy sofa. The reason the sofa is considered the pinnacle of furniture technology is because there's room for other people on it.

Yet, here's Grand Theft Auto IV, boasting about its robust multiplayer, and if you think "multiplayer" means inviting the gang over to play, get drunk, laugh and high-five each other until the break of dawn, too bad. You can't do that. Want to play with friends, they must be kept at arm's length, faceless at the other end of a broadband connection. Grand Theft Auto IV multiplayer is a world without hugs.

A little further down, the reason:

Sorry, you know damned well that technical limitations aren't the reason everyone is dropping split screen. Every previous generation had it, in times with much less powerful systems and few widescreen TVs.
You're dropping it because four players on a split screen are playing off one $60 copy of the game. Four players playing online need four copies ($240).

Grown Ups.

[Seumas]

When you grow up, you find that you have less time for gaming. You find that some of your friends and colleagues stop gaming, because of life. Of those who still game, you have fragmentation among their preferred platforms and then fragmentation among the games they invest their time in. If you've managed to find one or two like-minded folk who happen to want to play the same game on the same platform, you have to deal with aligning everyone's schedules so that they can get together. Then, you get to lug some hardware around and rearrange furniture.

It's far easier to just have a seat on the couch or office chair and make use of that thing called the "Internet".

Re:Grown Ups.

[Seumas]

You have the dynamics of the influence backwards. While I'm sure all game developers are eager to sell more copies of the games, I doubt anyone but the in-house platform guys give a damn about influence the sames of more controllers and battery packs.

People have difference lives and expectations than ten and fifteen years ago. The average gamer is no longer kicking it in a college dorm room or wasting an after school evening with their buddies in their bedroom. There is more distance between gamers, more hectic lives, less interest in dealing with sharing screens (why would you spend money on a nice huge screen just so you can split it by two or four, again?). It's the same way a lot of people don't do LANs anymore (though, of course, some do).

The thing that is actually disappointing, to me, is the lack of community server experiences. Especially where consoles are concerned. I'm used to years of playing one or two specific games on the PC at a small handful of servers (more than one of which I've owned and operated, myself at some point). You may not know everyone on the server. You may not befriend them. But you kind of have an idea of the atmosphere of the server and you do get to know certain personalities and have an enjoyable gaming experience.

On the console, you just randomly connect with twelve random people selected out of the hundreds of thousands who are playing that game online right now and then you're connected with another twelve random people that you'll probably never *ever* see again, fifteen minutes later. And because it's not a community server, you don't have the community vibe. You don't have the "server for laid back adults" or "the server for hardcore loudmouths". You just have twelve random people every few minutes. And, of course, 90% of those people are someone's annoying fucking brat child screaming racist and homophobic comments into a mic or singing some god awful song into the mic like it's the fucking Apollo.

I don't see much interest or any benefit for the majority of gamers in retaining "local split screen" type experiences, but I see a desperate need to find a way to handle this whole decentralized, vast, meaningless ocean of multi-player gaming that consoles keep ushering in with every passing year.

Re:Grown Ups.

[xouumalperxe]

If you've managed to find one or two like-minded folk who happen to want to play the same game on the same platform, you have to deal with aligning everyone's schedules so that they can get together. Then, you get to lug some hardware around and rearrange furniture.

You got it completely wrong. If I own a console, a game, and two controllers, and the game supports split-screen (or, more generically, local multiplayer with just one screen -- most beat'em ups don't really split screen), we can play the game together. There's no "happen to want to play the same game on the same platform" here, it's a matter of "people are here, they feel like playing a game, these are the ones I have that work". And this is why the Wii got its reputation for "the console for people who have actual friends": if someone visits me and they enjoy games, Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, House of the Dead: Overkill, Super Smash Bros. and Wii Sports are all games we can just pick up and play (and those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head from my own collection, without going into the Guitar Hero or Raving Rabbids sort of games). While not exactly a "hardcore" gaming experience, being able to push the controller off my opponent's hand while I try to overtake them in Mario Kart is a much more satisfying social experience than calling out "owned" over Ventrilo :)

Re:What?

[Seumas]

Why, when I was a kid, young people socialized around burgers and malts at the local grease pit. And the burgers were a nickel. And we respected our elders.

Split screen?

[Endymion]

You don't need to split the screen to play Contra!

Proper co-op should be one screen.

Re:Split screen?

[Tharsman]

This. Who needs split screen to play Rock Band with friends? How about New Super Mario Bros?

But some games, like Racing games and FPS, are really not viable without split screen, and I always hated that unavoidable fact.

That said, I got to poke holes into TFA. From TFA:

Games such as Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye, Halo 1 and 2, Mario Kart, Twisted Metal 2 were the meat and potatoes of co-op games.

From the list they mentioned, the new Wii Goldeneye supports Split Screen.

Donkey Kong Returns also supports 2 player coop, no split screen required.

The latest halo game, Reach, also supports Split Screen.

Mario Kart supports Split Screen.

I have not seen a Twisted Metal game out in ages, and would love to see a new one, but last non-combat racer I played had at least 2 player split screen support.

In the end, the article does not even list games that he hates to be missing Co-Op, it does go on to claim Arcades seem to be lacking co-op, but the only point it ends up having is that Bet-Em-Ups (the games he list) seem to be nowhere to be seen in the arcade room. These days Arcades are dominated by fighters, racing games (that in the arcade room have ALWAYS delivered multiplayer via networking and multi-booth setups) and gun games that tend to always support two player modes.

I ponder if it was posted by a kid that was upset due to one specific shooter not supporting split screen, nothing new since I recal reviews of forgetable shooters in the PSX (that had me properly forget their names) complaining the lack of coop modes.

Maybe he is upset about the rising number of story-driven games that don't force a second player on screen. Its hard to tell because he didnt bother to make his point, TFA is reduced to a cenile old man whining about "The Good Old Days"

Do the math

[Erbo]

Split-screen multiplayer: Requires 1 console, plus 1 copy of the game.

Online multiplayer: Requires N consoles, plus N copies of the game, plus N online service subscription fees.

Which scenario do you think the console and game manufacturers like better?

Not on the Wii it isn't

[Zouden]

Super Mario Bros Wii supports 4-player co-op. And it seems pretty stupid to ask "Where have the all-night GoldenEye matches gone?" when there's a new GoldenEye game for the Wii that supports 4-player split screen just like the original.

Wii

[bcmm]

That's easy: local gaming has mostly gone to the Wii, and you and I don't really play with the Wii.
This flowchart is surprisingly true as well as being funny.

Re:Online Not a Replacement for Split-Screen

[Fallus Shempus]

No, but there are plenty of 35 year olds who have kids that want to play (Lego Star Wars etc sell well enough, and even up to Halo).

My eldest loves killing all the brutes while I'm still trying to figure out where they are... "It's OK Dad I'll let you kill the next one"

Also there are some wives/girlfriends who sometimes play.

You're not looking.

[Spit]

The most popular titles today all have excellent couch co-op and multi features. Examples:

Halo Reach
CoD Black Ops
SMB Wii
SM Cart
Gears of War series

There are also countless local multi games available on services like Xbox Live Arcade and PSN..

Re:What?

[Unkyjar]

Let's see... that was the 1950's when you were a kid...so that makes you 65 years old or more? Get off my lawn grandpa, we put you in a nursing home for a reason.