Why I Think Couch Co-Op is Vital to the Industry

Next week Gears of War: Reloaded comes out and with it comes a larger budget game (sort of since it's just a remaster) that has one of the best, most fun features that games have ever had and will ever have. Couch Co-Op. Who doesn't have memories of playing games on their couch with their friends or family. Playing through games like Halo or older Lego games, or Mario Karts or Castle Crashers or the original Gears of War, or Stardew Valley, or many others.

But for a long while, couch co-op is something that bigger games have dropped. It's been something that has been viewed by many companies as expendable since you can now just have online co-op. This is a problem, one that I believe has genuinely hurt the industry. So today I figured I'd go over how Couch co-op helped form the industry, how losing it has been a serious loss, and how it's mild resurgence should lead to a renaissance of couch co-op games.

Couch co-op made games an experience not a commodity

For a very long time in gaming history there was literally only local co-op. The internet wasn't anywhere close to existing at the state where it could handle online play so naturally people just played next to each other. This lead to people learning how to play games by watching their friends play, to memories of playing against your friends competitively and just barely beating them, and to developers pushing to make the couch co-op experience as ideal as possible. Devs wanted people to form memories with their friends next to each other because being next to each other is an experience.

Once Online play got introduced online co-op and couch co-op coexisted for a long period of time. Online co-op introduced a new hurdle for people to be able to play and experience the game together. However, both people had to own the console and the game. This was such a large barrier and lead to people still using couch co-op rather often, including myself. It was always easier to have one person own a game and have them host their friends over to play locally. Always. These memories formed people into life long gamers. It made people think about games as an experience between friends not as a commodity you had to all own.

When couch co-op was dropped as a feature things started to fall downhill for co-op. This isn't to say that online co-op can't be great, I've enjoyed that a lot with several different games. But there's fundamental differences when you're all in your own respective homes and on your headsets and can't physically see each other. You're able to do something else without people to interact with. It's more sterile, separate. It can definitely be helpful to connect people across the world but couch co-op is far more of a bonding and fun experience.

For instance, in Destiny you'll often have moments where one player has to go do something like eat or go to the bathroom and that leads to their character just kinda standing there while everyone else just has to wait. Online wise this is fucking boring. Sure we find ways to entertain ourselves like pushing that persons character off the edge, reviving them, then doing it again, but that's not as interesting as being in the same room as someone and being able to chill and chat. Mics can sometimes cut out, they can go loud for some reason, they can pick up someones super heavy breathing. Online experiences here can be fun but, as I said, they separate you from everyone else. If this was going on in-person like back in the Halo days then you could joke with each other much easier, you could pick up on actual visual cues on whether or not people are having fun or are tired, you can provide better advice on how to help people play correctly because you're right there.

This is why LANs are popular, even today, because people are social creatures and that's what Couch co-op gave us. It gave us an experience with friends or people who will be our friends soon because they keep headshotting us from across the map and we desperately want to see how the fuck they are doing that. It allowed us to not have to all have the same game and constantly be spending more money to all be able to play the games together. It let people focus on the experience of playing and being around other people, of being in a social situation without having to spend money to get there. Couch co-op made gaming into the social experience it is today.

The loss heard around the industry

Losing Couch co-op has truly reshaped the industry into a new beast. Before, developers had to consider how to strike a balance between good graphics and stuff like that while still allowing the ability to play locally with your friends. But once the industry dropped that feature devs were able to start pushing farther and farther into the "BETTER GRAPHICS = BETTER GAMES" direction. We stopped thinking of ways to be clever and create games that would look good without being too much work. The industry just decided that local co-op was a feature worth losing. Not only worth losing for better graphics but worth losing for more money. When couch co-op was dropped people finally had to buy the game to play with their friends thus driving sales. Sales increased not just because of better graphics but because people now had to buy it to play with their friends so as usual there is a monetary connection.

You could, technically, draw a line from couch co-op being dropped to the current problems that drive the industry. Developers are often focused intensely on having uber-realistic graphics because it looks good not because it makes it a better experience to play. Fidelity and realism has become such a driving force that they are spending tens of millions of dollars per game just to achieve it. It's taking longer for games to come out because of this kind of thing (as well as other reasons of course).

Couch co-op provides a limitation you have to work with as a developer. It provides you a hard line that allows you to be clever and figure out ways to make your game look visually interesting without pushing your games into the realism trap. That limitation allows for faster Dev times because you can't get distracted with all of that fidelity bullshit when you have to have local co-op.

For instance, let's look at the developer of It Takes Two and Split Fiction(SF), Hazelight Studios. They took almost exactly 4 years between It Takes Two and Split fiction. SF is their most ambitious game yet with how visually diverse it is. So it's not surprising it took a little longer between those two than between A Way Out and It Takes Two which was 3 years. But this developer is the quintessential couch co-op developer right now because they take that guiding light as a way to limit themselves. That limitation allows them to make memorable experiences and all within a much more realistic time frame.

Meanwhile, other developers who should be using Couch co-op as a guiding light, aren't and that's leading them into getting stuck in a deeper and deeper drive for realism. For instance, 343 Industries (now Halo Studios) took 6 years between Halo 5 and Infinite. Infinite ended up being a big letdown during that time. Why did they spend so long on that? Well there's a lot of reasons of course, largely having to do with constant contractor turn over and terrible management, but I'd argue the main problem was also about their core idea for the game, an open world Halo. Halo has been a game that has had Couch co-op be a guiding light from the beginning and yet 343 dropped it for Infinite because the whole idea behind it just wouldn't work. When you have such a massive world and 4 possible players trying to render the world 4 times and deal with 4 checkpoints is a massive clusterfuck. Now, if 343 had taken their own promise to heart and had Couch co-op as a required feature from the beginning they likely would have had to work within that limitation and figure out a better way to go about their vision for the game. Even if that means dropping the open world entirely (did Halo really need to be made into an open world with Ubisoft-like enemy encampments?)

Limitations make the best art, and when the industry dropped couch co-op it was a loss that created a culture that had so few limitations it was unhealthy.

Resurgence should mean a renaissance

With many smaller modern games coming out with couch co-op as a core part of their game we have hit a moment where there is a resurgence in the feature that allows people to have similar experiences as they used to back in the day. Hazelight Studios has been the gold standard here but there's far more games that have been allowing it, although I've personally enjoyed Baldur's Gate 3 the most since I played that with my partner and it was a fun experience, but this resurgence hasn't seemed to phase many of the bigger games out there.

Call of Duty and Battlefield both have had couch co-op in the past, why can't they have it again? Particularly Call of Duty has hit a massive rut when it comes to...well...everything about the games so why not also introduce couch co-op again? Yesterday there was the Gamescom 2025 Opening Night Live stream where the new Black Ops was a massive part and they focused on how you can play the entire campaign in 4 player co-op (here's a link to the Microsoft Press Release about it). But that's part of the problem I'm trying to say, games are supposed to be an experience and Call of Duty, as frustrating as the series is, is also supposed to be something you experience with friends. So why not make that even easier? Why not allow you and 3 other friends to jam together in person and play split screen?

When a game like CoD picks back up the ability to play couch co-op we have truly entered a new era of renaissance. Sure there are loads of truly amazing indie games that have the feature, they are almost always far better games than CoD could ever even hope to be. Yet, indie games are almost their very own industry with how unique they are compared to the larger AAA industry. Indie games show that there is a genuine yearning from those who play games to have couch co-op. It's something that people loved back when they were younger, it's a feature that, for many, can help decide if they even end up buying a game. Why have bigger games not listened?

This resurgence is amazing and I do hope it leads to more and more games having couch co-op as a feature because right now it's not enough. We need a true couch co-op renaissance.

The Conclusion

At the end of the day, all I am saying is that couch co-op helped the industry. It was a limitation for games, sure, but that limitation was beneficial. Games don't need to be stuck in "realism" if it makes them less fun or less capable of being able to be enjoyed with your friends. Limitations create the best art, they make it so the artists have to be clever and create something that doesn't break that line. It allows for unique experiences to thrive.

I think it's incredibly important to just keep in mind that gaming is meant to be shared. Whether that be through playing on the couch with your friends, playing virtually through PSN or Xbox Live or just Steam, or through when you're chatting about the recent single player game that came out and what your thoughts on it are after you have gotten to a certain point. Games are experiences, couch co-op helped that become an integral part of the industry, so I believe it deserves its due and needs to be included in more games. Not because I just want to be able to play more games with my partner without having to buy two versions, but because I believe it is a feature that makes games better for everyone.

Meow,

Cat

P.S. If you want to look through some games that have couch co-op, here's a link to the steam tag page for that feature! Personally, I will always recommend Baldur's Gate 3, Stardew Valley, Lego: The Skywalker Saga, Portal 2, and Divinity Original Sin 2. All of them are wonderful experiences when played via online but are another level when played through couch co-op. Enjoy!