Poll: Co-operative or Competitive?

[Esotera]

Why not both? I've been playing DayZ a lot this week and I love the fact that you can choose to play cooperatively with friends or just random strangers, or alternatively handcuff other players and force feed them rotten kiwis.

Otherwise I guess it depends on the game or how I'm feeling. Split-screen Halo death matches will always be fun, but sometimes it's cool to break it up with a cooperative firefight or campaign mission. I guess I tend to play the cooperative stuff a bit more, mainly because it's more relaxing?

 

[Idiosynthcratic]

It depends how good my friends are at the game. If my friends aren't as good or are much better than me, then I'll prefer co op. If they are around the same skill level, then competitive is more fun.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Local co-op all the way. Tough there aren't that many local co-op games any more.

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

I actually enjoy all four to roughly an equal degree. It's all dependent on my mood, really. Sometimes I like to work cooperatively with others. Sometimes I just want to tear up the scoreboard in a competition.

In the end, though, I tend to prefer anything that incorporates some amalgam of cooperation into it's game-play. Even if it's a competitive game but especially if it's a narrative driven experience.

For example, four of my favorite online/local games are built almost entirely around this concept. Specifically: Left 4 Dead 2, Sven Co-op, Portal 2, and Dota 2.

Left 4 Dead and Dota are pseudo-narrative-driven competitive games wherein it is absolutely necessary to work with your team to defeat your opponents. So, in essence, you either cooperate with the team or you lose.

In Sven and Portal's case, it's a mixture of many things but first and foremost it's about playing narrative-driven campaigns with other players. In fact, in both, many of the campaigns you play require more than one player to complete.

So really, I'm not entirely sure which option to pick. While I guess one could argue that I lean more towards cooperative play, I'm not really picky about whether it's local or online.

I guess I'll just pick local as, in a general sense, communication is easier in that scenario.

And let's face it...without communication there's no such thing as "cooperative play".

 

[novem]

Co-operative (PC) online.
Competitive (Console) local.

If a game has a cooperative campaign I enjoy playing it online with friends because it?s much easier than getting them over to my house. The only competitive games I enjoy are things like fighters which are best experienced with couch hot seat play.

 

[Dominic Crossman]

Coop local, then competitive online, then competitive local, then coop online.

I like coop best but online randoms can be complete morons (personality and/or skill)

I loved subspace embissary in ssbb for two reasons:
Its the most fun ive had playing a game (coop) ever
My friends are pro gamer good at that game so competitive is no go. (On that game at least)

 

[Ratty]

Ideally, local co-op. But I voted online co-op because it's so much easier for everyone to set their schedules with, you can almost always get more friends to join an online co-op game than a local one.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

I like cooperative in either form - local when I'm playing with my fiancé is great, but we enjoy competition locally too - online I strongly prefer cooperative multiplayer to competitive - it really reduces the jerk bag interaction significantly in my opinion to be in cooperative situations.

 

[COMaestro]

I've gotta go with local co-op, followed by online co-op. I think some of the most fun I've ever had is Diablo 2 LAN party and Resistance 2 online co-op campaigns. If you go way back, I loved playing Contra and Life Force on the NES, and Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Super Smash TV on the SNES.

Competitive can be enjoyable as well. I know I've had fun with Last of Us MP (which is both co-op and competitive, you really should have been more specific in defining them), and since Brotherhood, I feel Assassin's Creed has been one of the most innovative MP games. Fighting games, especially, can be fun, but really only locally and with a group of people when you pass off the controller when you lose.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Does having your computers all hooked up to play games together count as local? If so, then local. Don't have to worry about headsets, and if someone is being a douche then you can thump them.

 

[gillnavisingh]

Thank you all for your insight everyone.
This data will prove invaluable as I continue my studies.
I'm keeping the poll intact and the thread unlocked as I want to see how this all progresses from here on out.

Just in case there was any misconceptions, Multiplayer can include consoles and PC in either Local or Online form.
"Local" can include Local Area Network (like the original Halo: Combat Evolved or StarCraft had) but will also include portable games like the Gameboy and DS family.

In addition, Local is not just limited to splitscreen like Borderlands or Mario Kart, but also sharedscreen like Castle Crashers or New Super Mario Bros U.

Also, considering that I've been really into CTF sort of games, I would put my two cents into Co-operative, either Local or Online.