Theory

[icycalm]

Topic.

[Evo]

Video Games are fun when you have one that allows you to play on the same side as a friend and play against the computer together.

Light Gun Shooters are great fun when you two player it, and playing a hack and slash or shooter co-op with your girl/boy friend or even just your friends can be a heap of fun too. Serious Sam, Time-Splitters, and so on...

I would love to see RPGs where a couple of you can create characters and then all play in the world at the same time, just like a pen and paper game - and have the game adapt to all your actions - not necessary to the scale of an MMO. Even MMOs can be fun sometimes.

In a sport it is a really great feeling when you and your team operate with precision and you work together like a hive mind.

Something like Planetside, where when you get a large group to synchronise their efforts you end up creating a massive event that may give you a great story afterwords.

But I voted Versus.

This is the real meat of games. Wei Chi, Chess, sparing in real life or in the arcade, Death Match and Capture the Flag.

When do I feel the most exhilarated when playing a game that involves other people? When I know that's a real person on the other side.

Sparing on the mat or at the arcade stick, it's your skills versus theirs. It is when you prove your mastery over the complexities of the game, when your chest tightens, and you can feel your blood.

When I play even a team sport, its not all working together as a team that makes me love it. It is dominating the other side. Or scraping in a victory, and beating them when they thought they had it set.

Beating a computer is nothing to beating a flesh and blood person - at least until that computer is just as complex and unpredictable...

So I voted Versus.

[Volteccer_Jack]

I voted Co-op.

This is at least partly because I'm not competitive by nature. I don't enjoy beating people. My only motivation is self-improvement. If I do play against someone else, it's merely as a measure of my own abilities, or because playing against a better opponent will allow me to improve more than a weaker opponent would.

I see a human opponent as just a different "difficulty setting" than a computer. While they are far more unpredictable than a computer, human nature makes them fall into a similar rut. The best I can say of human opponents is their ability to react, which is extremely uncommon to find in a single-player mode.

Whereas working together with someone flawlessly truly showcases both players' adaptability and skill.

Unfortunately, really good co-op is hard to come by. I think Gears of War is the most recent co-op to really grab my attention and make me love it.

[bullethell]

I voted versus. Co-op is fine when you and a team of players are trying to succeed into something special in a MMOG but versus is more fun especially when you are near to him/her physically. So in other words I would vote co-op if I had not played a single round of Street Fighter 2 back in the ''arcade'' days. But you cannot change the past, at least for the time being.

[Bradford]

I voted versus. I think being a member of a good team with each team member executing their role according to a common plan to achieve victory is extremely satisfying. However, doing so against another human team is even more so. At the end of the day, I think it's the satisfaction of defeating another human opponent that is greater than the team-membership satisfaction, but it is not easy decision.

[adrenalinq]

I like to fight with real people. Always imagine that they uninstall/throw pad into the screen after defeat. I worked in internet cafe for some time and somewhere I have great video from security cam (cant find it...). Ok, I will write about footage. Big guy runs through the cafe and looking into everybody monitors, pressing TAB to look nickname in Counterstrike. Then he found the guy, cried "Fucking boxer" (means that guy killed him in back while hiding in boxes), took his keyboard and smashed him with it. Buttons flyed everywhere.

I played Q3 on a pro level (my brother plays even now). Then played Guild Wars for a long time (Russian Invasion guild).

Greatest thing about versus is that AI will not say GG to you or call you cheater after defeat. Or show his ass in game-cam. I like this stuff.