Theory

[raigan]

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/state_of_ ... ing_media/

A great piece, BUT on the subject of co-op, you may be mistaken -- it really depends on whether or not you meant "networked co-op" or "same-computer/console co-op".

Adding networking to an existing/in-development game is one of the most non-trivial changes you can make, and if there hasn't been any planning in anticipation of this it can be virtually impossible (without a total re-design of the code from the ground up).

Even _if_ networking has been planned from the start, it's still a huge draw on resources -- for smaller downloadable games (say, XBLA) the effort required to support networked multiplayer can be at least half of the total programming effort.

Of course, if you only meant non-networked co-op then your point is valid -- depending on how well the software was designed it could still be a huge problem, but in this case it's not a problem a priori, it's due to laziness and/or lack of foresight, and in the best case it should be a trivial change.

[Jon R.]

Developers bring that up a lot, but the necessary question is why they'd not plan for co-op in games where it'd be a nice feature. And the only answer i can come up with is that they simply don't want to because they think people don't want it, which they then use as a reason for why they don't want to. Most of the games where it would've been nice already had network multiplayer support, and most of the games with co-op support cast a lot of doubt on the reasons why others don't. How many games can you think of that had networked vs. multiplayer, but was clearly not going to be played in that capacity beyond the first few weeks or months?

As for the effort, no one cares. Co-op doubles the replay value at minimum. I've played System Shock 2 through several times, two of which were co-op. The effort isn't worth it only if developers don't care about making a game that's worth replaying. Which might actually be the case.