Please devs, stop assuming I have 3 other friends.
Even if you have more than 3 friends, when you’re an adult and you or your friends have different schedules, may be parents, etc, it can just be a nightmare to get all 4 together at the same time.
It makes me so mad when I see game on steam feature “online co-op” and in reality the co-op in game is “join your friend and help him sometimes as a guest” Dark Souls style. I swear me and my friend had to refund like 5 games recently just because it turned out all of them had that. Now we just play Valheim while waiting for something good to drop.
This is near and dear to me, and I’d say it goes beyond just co-op. We used to get “the whole package” with a game. Arguably Call of Duty is one of the few still offering it. We used to have games with campaigns and multiplayer. Story mode and challenge rooms. Other modes of play sitting alongside the main event to round out the package. Now developers look at any data point to see how many people are using it, and if the number isn’t high enough, they cut it. But that’s a mistake. Most people might only dip their toes into these side features, but they can usually be implemented relatively cheaply (because of asset reuse), and they can add a ton of value even if most players don’t spend a lot of time in them. Co-op is one of those things.
The games that used to offer these co-op modes tended to stop getting attention from their publishers. Then once they’ve got a multiplayer mode, they try to make it a live service and monetize it instead of just letting it be. I was screaming at my monitor when I read that Naughty Dog open letter about canceling the Last of Us multiplayer game that said they had two choices and neither of them was making a multiplayer game that they just sold for a box price and didn’t manage as a live service; the possibility, seemingly, had never even crossed their minds. Co-op games can’t just be a campaign you play through once with a friend; they have to be PVE grinds where you play the same content over and over until the next pack of it comes out in a few weeks. The likes of a Baldur’s Gate 3 or an It Takes Two feel rare by comparison.
There a more games released now than ever, there are also more coop campaigns than ever.
https://www.co-optimus.com/games.php?campaign=true&playerCount=2
This site doesn’t seem to let me link to more specific filters but if you set release year to 2024 and choose a specific platform they list 214 PC titles, 128 Switch titles, 124 PS5 titles, and 97 Xbox Series titles from last year !
Edit: its a weird site, it wasn’t applying all the filters in the link it generated. So I’ve simplified the link and summarised the numbers.
That list counts very generously, even with those filters applied.
Yup, we’ve played every Borderlands game, It Takes Two, Palworld, Rotwood, PlateUp, LEGO Harry Potter, Deep Rock Galactic, Outward, Stardew Valley, Cult of the Lamb, Sea of Thieves, Baldur’s Gate 3, Grounded, Don’t Starve Together… We also play other ‘competitive’ games co-op against bots, like in Beyond All Reason, Marvel Rivals, Overwatch, and Predecessor. I could go on but I could list games for a while. Definitely always looking for new ones though.
Portal 2 co-op is dope.
