[Edit] The Co-op Gaming Bill of Rights
[Edit: have posted an updated Co-op Gaming Bill of Rights based on everyone's feedback here. Enjoy!]
Happened to read Penny Arcade today and was rather taken by a quote of Tycho's:
Army of Two is forward thinking in that your equipment and cash persist, no matter where you are playing or who you are playing with. Where it is less forward thinking is that you can't join a friend's game unless you have already beaten the level they have selected. In many games, but especially in co-op, people are going to be traveling through the game at their own pace, and players should be enabled in their efforts to play this cooperative game cooperatively however they like. It's as though we need to create a kind of Co-op Bill Of Rights, so delineate in clear terms what we consider bedrock in terms of functionality. In essence, we'd like the games to cooperate with us.
In particular I was particularly stuck by the comment about defining what a gamer considers bedrock functionality for co-op gaming. This sort of thinking is very similar to some of the thinking we do with the industry around platform features, and it got my co-worker Krotus and I chatting about what features might be considered as being the basic "bar" for a co-op title. The industry has come a long way in just a few years, and we wanted to see what we might come up with that we'd like to see in future titles. A little bit of whiteboarding later we came up the list below... and would love your thoughts on it!
I should note that any thoughts posted here aren't any sort of official Microsoft communication or commitment. Just because we might all have some good ideas on what a co-op game should look like doesn't mean the industry will necessarily follow them. That said, there are also a lot of great designers and producers out there looking for ideas - something here might just spark a thought they can run with... so have at it! A first stab is below - looking forward to your feedback, and I'll commit to publishing a "final" draft here once everyone's chewed on it a bit (final being relative since these sorts of things evolve over time).
Required Features All Future Co-op Games Should Have In Our Humble Opinion:
All co-op games should allow players to play cooperatively through the rich, single-player experience. Doing so through suspension of disbelief (ie, when cinematics refer to only a single player) is ok, though not ideal.
Players can join a co-op game in progress at any point within the game's story, regardless of their own, personal progress through the game.
Players who join into a co-op game in progress are awarded achievements for their accomplishments, even if they haven’t gotten lead-up achievements. For example, joining a game in progress and then killing the fourth boss gets you the “4th Boss” achievement.
A game that allows co-op online play should also support co-op play locally, either through LAN or split-screen (ideally both). An online subscription should not be required to play co-op locally on a LAN.
Cool, Harder to Implement Features We'd Like to See in more Co-op Games of the Future:
Design core gameplay around the concept of two or more players playing cooperatively together. This means game mechanics or puzzles that require two players to play together to progress, and not simply enabling two people to play through a standard FPS level together. Examples include Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Army of Two with concepts such as dual-trigger activities (two buttons must be pressed at same time to open door), helping traverse terrain (boost up/rappelling), and combat coordination (dual-sniping, distract guard while companion attacks from behind).
Story and cinematics change to acknowledge additional co-operative players playing through rich, scripted "single player" campaign. Examples include Resistance, Halo 3, etc.
If additional, downloadable content is needed to play the game cooperatively online, consider ways of A) notifying a player up front of that need, B) linking the user to where they can access that content (needed for paid content), and C) if possible, consider sending the content directly to the user P2P.
Build larger-scale co-op campaigns that allow greater than two players to play together. (One example of this are reports of Resistance 2 on the PS3 supporting 8 players playing cooperatively together at the same time.)
[Edit: wanted to point out that Co-optimus is having a great discussion in their forums on this topic, as well as Major Nelson's blog comments on the same. Great feedback folks... keep it coming!]