Gearbox On The Past, Present, And Future Of Co-Op Play

With the original Borderlands, Gearbox presented one of the most seamless, accessible co-op experiences seen to date on consoles.

With the original Borderlands, Gearbox presented one of the most seamless, accessible co-op experiences seen to date on consoles. It was great fun playing solo, but the addition of a friend (or three) really served to make it something special. It'll come as no surprise that cooperative play will be a large part of Borderlands 2 as well, so we talked to game design director Paul Hellquist and game designer Jonathan Hemingway about their thoughts on the past, present, and future of this breed of multiplayer.

What’s the first co-op experience you have memories of?

Jonathan: Contra. Contra is it. Me and my older brother. I don’t think we ever got to the point where we could beat it without the 30 lives. We could totally take it down with 30.

Paul: First co-op…I think it was Doom II. That was probably my first co-op.

So you weren’t a big NES or arcade gamer?

Paul: I did have an NES and I rented everything that our small-town video place had, but my brother didn’t play them with me. Jeopardy was adversarial, I guess.

Jonathan: Contra is the one I could get my older brother to play with me. With my friends, sometimes we’d play Bubble Bobble or something else.

Did you actually manage to beat Bubble Bobble?

Jonathan: I did! I never beat it two-player, no one would ever agree to “Come on, let’s play all 106 levels!.” “No Jon, no…you’re insane.”

Throughout the history of co-op play, what do you consider the primary milestones? What titles really pushed it forward?

Jonathan: It started out really simple, right? Contra technically had co-op, but there really wasn’t much special other than “we’re both on the screen at the same time shooting the same bad guys.” There’s a lot to be said for an experience that’s very simple like that. Today, World of Warcraft is an example of a big co-op game where a lot of their class design really solidifies what their co-op is. “Oh, I’m a tank. My job is to stand up front. Oh, I’m a healer. I’ll keep you alive. I’m an AOE nuker, or I’m a disabler,” whatever. That’s a much more locked-in co-op experience. Very, very different from Contra, where you’re just playing together. [In WoW] you have specific roles and you succeed or fail as a group.

Paul: Even though there had been first-person shooters on consoles prior to Halo, I think Halo was the one that sort of made it an actual genre. When they did co-op, it also brought that to the masses. I think Left 4 Dead was another big moment, because they had their adversarial stuff and that was great, but playing against the zombies with a group in something other than a class-based thing was another really strong moment. As the future looks back on us, I hope Borderlands will also be seen as one that really brought co-op to a lot of people who hadn’t done it before.

Jonathan: For me, going back, Diablo was another one. I mean, Diablo is the root of Borderlands. I played a ton, ton of co-op on that one.

Paul: Yeah definitely, that’s a good one. We played a crapload of that. We had all kinds of LAN parties for Diablo when I was in college. Now that you mention it, that was really one of the ones that I did the most of.