Who Killed Split Screen Co-op?

[The White Hunter]

Last night my roommate and I set up an old-timey game system, called the Playstation 2. Back in the day it was quite a well-known platform, with a plethora of games of all kinds. It was even capable of supporting four players at once, if they had the controllers and a pair of multitaps. Truly, it was a wonderful system, where friends could gather and shoot the balls off each other in four-way split screen deathmatches, laughing at each other's deaths and having a grand old time.

Now, the term "multiplayer" is only used in reference to the practice of connecting to another game system over an internet connection, or "interwebz," and randomly joining some twatrocket's circle jerk where you can't see the person you're interacting with and can, at best, only hear their static-y voice blaring childish obscenities at you as they slap their virtual dicks across your face and imply that you and your mother both enjoy it.

The world may have forgotten this relic of the past called Playstation 2, but its capabilities are still worthy of note. My roommate and I had a kind of fun that seems to have faded from the world. Timesplitters is a dead language, and no one seems to care that the beauty it brought the world is not even remembered today. What happened, my friends? Where did we go wrong? Where is the current-generation Timesplitters or equivalent?

Split-screen co-op is still around but it is becoming a rare beast. Left 4 Dead has it, CoD usually has some way to play splitscreen be it zombies or spec ops or just playing with bots (it's why I buy CoD frankly, the co-op is fun witha buddy on the couch).

But things like DEad Space 3 lacking it sorely disappoint me and it needs to make a resurgence, it's a selling point to people if nothing else and if the co-op is already there you may aswell have it.

I miss it being omnipresent though.

 

[The White Hunter]

To be honest the "Oh so awfull Blops 2!" (its an ok game) does have 4 player splitscreen with bots so yeah... Not too shabby I would say

Not to mention Zombies, Modern Warfare 3 had splitscreen in spades and it's where all my enjoyment of CoD comes from. Sitting down with a mate and kicking the rse of bots (or having our arses kicked by bots, does happen)

 

[teebeeohh]

i have never played splitscreen in my life.
i don't get the appeal, my console owning friends played a lot of goldeneye deathmatch against each other splitscreen and i never got the appeal, we called always seeing were everyone is a wallhack. And coop, well i am not a big fan of coop in general, i barely tolerate it Borderlands.

 

[Trucken]

The problem with splitscreen-gaming is, in my opinion, that it has rarely been good. It would always mess up your field of view no matter how big your TV was.

And I wouldn't say that splitscreen is dead, but it has evolved into directlink. It's not as simple as splitscreen since you still need two of everything, but it's a far superior gaming experience in my opinion.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

I guess it does make sense that the publishers did it. A group of 4 friends buying a game once and playing it together was fine, but it suddenly became possible to make all 4 of those friends buy their own copies, and their own systems. 4 times the profit. Which is a thought that turns my stomach. Yet another older convenience that has been negated by the almighty greed of corporate financial officers.

See, I don't give a damn about the hardware limitations. The PS2 and the N64 could handle it, and the PS3 and Xbox 360 can handle it too. Future Perfect took nary a hit to graphics or framerate to support four people at once, and I refuse to believe that the PS3 can't manage what the last gen could. Just make the graphics and environments a secondary concern. I think most of us (in this thread at least) would gladly pay for a new IP that did what Timesplitters did as well as it did, at the cost of cutting edge graphics. Seriously, does anyone go back to Future Perfect and lose interest because of the graphics? If you do, you are a hoity-toity twat.

Graphical capabilities do not have to define every new release. Give it a distinctive style, like Borderlands does, and you can find ways to cut corners on the actual processing demands. Even if you have to go all the way back to late-PS2 style graphics, big deal. It would be totally worth it.

Which is why I know now that it was the profit motive and greedy executives that did it in. Money grubbing whore bastard fucks.

 

[Little Gray]

Well the correct answer is nothing did because plenty of games still come out with split screen multiplayer and co-op. It is really only the less known games with smaller budgets that ditch it. Its a feature that really does not get used very often anymore and is severely limited by technology. As the graphics on games get better and better it causes split screen to put to much pressure on the systems.

 

[TheMann]

In an impressive subversion of this, Valve recently added split-screen co-op in Portal 2, for the PC. It's partly to promote the "Big Picture" mode on Steam, but I still heartily approve of this. I wish Gearbox could be persuaded to do the same for Borderlands 2, but that would probably be difficult at this point. More devs and publishers could take a cue from this. You might sell slightly less copies, but that will be made up for with a massive amount of good publicity.

 

[Twilight_guy]

The internet combined with the fact that its easier to find one guy on your coast ready to play against you as opposed to one friend in your house ready to play against you, killed it.

Also, Travelers' Tales is silently weeping in the corner over the fact that you not only don't acknowledge them but have not acknowledge their contribution to split screen technology. You should feel ashamed!

 

[Kinitawowi]

Meh. The greatest multiplayer game of all time never needed split screen.

http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/d/d9/Bubble_Bobble_ARC_Round013.gif

 

[FoolKiller]

There are still a few that can be played split screen and are lots of fun. Borderlands and its sequel, RE 5, Left 4 Dead, and so on. I personally miss things like the 4 player coop action RPG. The last one that I remember was Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I love me a good co-op, and I like having a gaming buddy slouching on the couch, but I gotta hand it to multiplayer for giving each player a full screen to operate rather than constrict gameplay with a split screen. It helps immersion and makes gaming comfier. I still co-op but I'm not utterly shocked at the prevalence of multiplayer.

 

[surg3n]

There are still a few that can be played split screen and are lots of fun. Borderlands and its sequel, RE 5, Left 4 Dead, and so on. I personally miss things like the 4 player coop action RPG. The last one that I remember was Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2.

You mean like those 'Heroes' D&D games on the XBox? - There is D&D Daggerdale in the XBL store that looks pretty good. I like these games, but they seem to have evolved into games like LeagueOfLegends - which I'm not a big fan off. It's like they play best when it's a small group of 3 or 4, playing in the same room on the same screen, it's like a shared adventure that way. When it's all online, well people just bugger off and do their own thing, and that tends to just be a lot of grinding.

There is also Dungeon Defender, which if I'm honest I'm a little dissapointed in. It's like Torchlight and Tower Defense had a baby, then wished the baby was more like Dungeon Keeper.

 

[Strazdas]

The internet did. As the popularity of gaming online grew, split screen was used less and less. Rather than going over to a friend's house to play games, kids these days are going home and playing together online. It just isn't a feature that gets used much anymore.

i can rebute your post with one word: hotseat.
hotseat games were the most awesome part of many strategy games. grab a few friends and play together chattering meanwhile. you cant organize that over the internet like that anymore. sadly publishers decided to skip that option because they wanted peopel to buy more copies and usei nternet services (yes im looking at you civilization 5)