A split from Couch Co-op: Why the gaming industry has lost its love for split-screen

When gaming moved from the Arcade to the Living Room they still maintained their social aspect through split-screen cooperative gaming. Instead of you and your best friends huddled around a machine down at your local arcade you were now able to sit in the comfort of your home with your group of friends and slowly develop a hatred of that one friend who you could never beat. One of my earliest gaming memories includes co-op gaming, sitting in my Living Room and playing Goldeneye on the timeless Nintendo 64 with my Brothers. As the Internet became a more prevalent part of daily life and indeed a necessity to expand the gaming experience, it allowed gamers across the globe to connect and battle it out or coexist to create some truly awe inspiring gaming moments.

This trend has come suddenly and swiftly with the dominance of Microsoft’s Xbox systems and Sony’s PlayStations. Previous consoles did not have the capacity of technological know-how to include a wireless device within the console itself, meaning that the focus on many games in the past was to bring the fast paced and frantic gameplay to life by involving those near to you and immersing an entire room into the chaos that is unfolding on your slither of the screen. The AAA titles for consoles such as the Nintendo 64, GameCube, Sega’s Dreamcast and a whole host of other consoles were not necessarily based around but included a competitive and re-playable multiplayer. However with the ever-rising army of PC gamers the love for local LAN parties and multiplayer over the Internet brought the gaming industry to a new level. In hindsight this was signalling the decline of Split-Screen gaming.

For myself, gaming is something that is very much based around friends and family. Each year I spend time finding new and exciting split-screen games so that I can spend my evenings socialising and enjoying gaming with friends. Whilst some of the AAA titles in the new generation of consoles have continued with the tradition of split-screen, they have increasingly focused on the online aspects of the game. When I first started playing Call of Duty: Black Ops III I immediately played online split-screen with my brother. However the first thing I noticed was how the miniscule each portion of the screen was, because in putting all the information on the screen (HUD, Score, Scorestreaks) it completely reduced the size of the actual playing screen, therefore those choosing to play split-screen are almost at a disadvantage as it can be difficult to identify an opponent in the distance, whereas in single screen the distinction is much clearer.

It wouldn’t be a fair or balanced article if I didn’t discuss the reasons why the gaming industry has lost focus on split-screen. Firstly with the increased power, storage and capability of the new generation of consoles, developers have been focusing on the resolution and definition of the gameplay. Which is mostly in response to reviews being focused on the quality of the image over the content. Secondly there is an element of profit making, because the gaming industry, after all, is a competitive industry where unfortunately profit often triumphs over gamer experience. By reducing the amount of 2 and 4 player split-screen and increasing online gameplay developers are increasing their profit margin. This is because it encourages people to buy their own consoles and therefore their own copy of the game and the DLCs that come with them, in order to play and interact with their friends online. However it is very difficult to attribute the profit margin of a game or developer to purely one factor and even after researching a few specific examples there is no definitive trend between a games losing split-screen modes and an increase in the sales of the game. For example Bungie’s Halo 5: Guardians was released in October 2015 without split-screen (for the first time in a Halo game) and was recorded as having the largest first week profit of any Halo game ($400 million), although Halo 3 is recorded as the most sold Halo title (around 12 million copies). In short developers have stepped away from split-screen modes in favour of online gameplay, improving the single player graphics and saving time and resources in developing the split-screen mode and offline play.

There will always be titles that will remain true to the fans of sofa sharing multiplayer, such as the Super Mario party series and some more recent titles that have kept the split-screen movement alive, such as 7 Days to Die, the frantic Overcooked and dedicated split-screen title Screen Cheat. But the industry is now moving away from those nostalgic years of split-screen. On the human aspect of split-screen it was a way to socialise, a place where acquaintances would become friends and friends would become enemies because someone thought it’d be funny to fire a blue shell at you on the last lap of Rainbow Road! With split-screen multiplayer you could control who was invited or who you played with, however there is very little control in most Online Multiplayer and this can result in cyber bullying and can have the adverse affect on the confidence and social aspect that split-screen would provide.

In a world where Online has completely taken over, there is a small pocket that will remember fondly those split-screen days, and will always seek to find those titles that remain true to the sofa sharing multiplayer format that has brought us joy and pain over the years. How else would we be able to tell which friends have your back and which will turn on you in a moments notice.