Over the last eight years or so I have found that more and more games, indie or triple A, have been removing local multiplayer/spilt screen in their campaigns and multiplayer just because online multiplayer exists. To many, this may not be a problem as they are happy enough to use the online multiplayer to play with their friends, but some of my fondest memories with games are the ones where I am playing spilt screen with my brother or friends in the same room. This group enjoyment and sharing of gameplay in the physical sense, not just visual and audio, is something that I have been missing over recent years. Some of my most enjoyable nights while I was in university were the nights my mates and I sat round and played games together with local co-op. I have no doubt that if we played the same night but over online multiplayer it would have been nowhere near as fun or entertaining. 

 
 

Now I understand that there are many genres of games which are still using local multiplayer and online multiplayer such as Fighting, Sports, FPS and Driving games. My thoughts are less focused on these genres as their main focus is on the competition between players, and as a result local co-op has not been fading as much in these genres, although there are still cases in these genres as well. My thoughts are more focused on RPG, Platformers and Single player style games, which are including multiplayer and then neglecting local co-op in their games. 

  

I don’t think I would be out of line if I said that I think most people who have been playing games for a lot of their life would say that some of their favourite memories of playing games are not the ones where they are sitting in a room by themselves, but the ones where there are with a group of friends and playing games together. An example from my childhood with a game which easily didn’t need local multiplayer but did have online multiplayer options was Fable 2. My brother and I played through the whole game together which added much more to the experience of the game.  

The reason why I am using Fable 2 as an example is because it fixed the problem which games suffer from nowadays where the producers want multiplayer in their game but neglect putting in local co-op, assuming most people play online. Fable 2 fixed this by letting you play together offline even though you couldn’t use two main characters at the same time in co-op. It gave you the option of playing a pre-set henchman character as player two, which is all you needed, as the enjoyment came from playing the game together. 

  

This is in stark contrast to when my brother and I played Dark Souls 2 and 3 which were released in 2014 for 2 and 2016 for 3. Both have online multiplayer but are missing local co-op which could have made the game more accessible for a wider audience. For my brother and I, we had to take it in turn when we played together, which took some of the fun away from the experience.  What annoys me about this is that the game has the capability for you to summon your friends into your game to help you play with you online, so the game is balanced and capable of letting players go through the game with two or more players, but you are denied the pleasure of playing together just because you are in the same room. 

The game could have gone the same route as Fable where player 2 can use a set character as I understand having two levelling characters in local co-op could be a very expensive/extensive process for the game. I am not suggesting that all single player games should have local co-op as that can take away from the experience of certain games; it is the games which enable multiplayer in solo/campaign-based games and then neglect the local co-op players even though the game is clearly able to be played with more than one player. 

  

I think there are many reasons why games have been going this way in recent years. The most obvious is that more people have access to online play, which therefore makes it the biggest audience for game designers. In fact, I know people that won’t buy a game unless it has multiplayer. However, I think this reason contradicts itself because if a company wants to try to get the biggest audience they can for their game by adding multiplayer to the game, removing local co-op is already alienating some of their players even though the game has the capability of having multiple people playing at once in a more taxing state, that being online which brings the problem of servers for the company as well. I know games are a business as well, so one reason for the fading of local co-op could simply be money. The extra cost of adding in local co-op, even in a minimal sense like having a ghost/henchman character as in fable, is a concern. In addition, the fact that companies don’t want two players buying one game instead of two playing the same game together make some developers worry. Finally, some may be concerned that adding local co-op makes the game feel as if it is all about the co-op.  

  

Looking into the future, I do have hope that local co-op will come back to popularity because I feel like gamers are craving gaming in the physical again, due to the over saturation of online media now. The idea of arcade machines and playing games together is more appealing. Hopefully the games industry will grow to embrace that games, single player based or not, should always been given the option of local co-op, so we can bring back player two.