Co-Op Gaming
I’m not talking about the actual mechanics of the game those have over all gotten better as we have progressed with newer hardware and better development techniques. What I am thinking about is the social aspect of the coop experience?
Those of you that are around the same age as myself might remember hanging out in smokey dimly lit arcades with cola stained carpets and ground in fag butt. Was it the compelling games that drew us to spend hours playing Gauntlet and the Simpsons or was it something else? For me it was a mixture of both. I was and still am socially inept so with hindsight it was maybe a attempt by me to meet people with similar interests. More likely it was because I really wanted to finish a game that was just too bloody hard for me to finish alone! 
What I remember beemn so great about that time was the social interaction that two people got with each other as they progressed through a game. Working as a team seeing something awesome for the first time. I remember the first time I got to the end of Capcom’s SideARM with some random dude I met in Galaxy (My local arcade) one afternoon when I should have been in school in a French class. Someone that like me loved the game and with through coop team work we both managed to beat the game on one credit to our mutual satisfaction. Well it was actually more like screams of pleasure at actually beating the bloody boss and loads of jumping up and down. I’m still friends with that guy now and since then many years back we have played many a game together.
As I think more about it it’s been quite a while since I have had that same sense of achievement even though I am a avid coop gamer and play often with friends all over the I just don’t find myself having the same sense of excitement when we overcome a boss or see that awesome vista in Gears of War. It’s just not as intimate. I miss it.
Even recently I have memories of playing Street Fighter 4 and Soul Calibur4 with a close friend religiously every week. Sat there on the sofa joystick firmly planted on laps the tenseness hearing the other person breath more heavily as the excitement builds. Ok so its more versus that CoOp but it’s still social and you know what it’s awesome. It was one oif the great things learning something and sharing it with another person then playing again a constant discovery and migration of information and strats. This is what’s missing now. The whole experience as gotten diluted, maybe by distance I don’t know but I yearn to have those days back.
Do I think its possible to recapture that intimacy and get that feeling back? I’m not sure we can. Even with all the advancements in social media and collaboration I just don’t think it what the current generation of gamers want. Most new generation games are geared towards multi-screen play making playing in the same place at the same time rather hard. With the decline in arcades going out to experience that is really no viable. So without a shift in the development of games and by that I mean a shift in trending genre favouritism then I think the time of the classic intimate coop experience as passed as we move towards a more sterile more sombre coop experience.
Luckily we do have emulators so get out there and get your coop on your miserable fuckers!