Earlier this year, my wife and I started playingSplit Fiction. More than two months later, I would say that we are still in the ‘started playing Split Fiction’ phase and nowhere near the ‘finished playing Split Fiction’ phase.
What’s Your Motivation?
This prolonged time with the game surprised me because she was my partner forIt Takes Twoback in 2021, and we blitzed through Hazelight’s previous co-op classic in a few days. But, as I write this, I realize the crucial difference. I wasreviewingIt Takes Two and, without that external pressure, it’s easy to lose the motivation to keep going in a co-op game. Even one that both players like.
This can obviously happen with single-player games, too. I’ve stalled out in many a game I was enjoying because, eh, it didn’t really fit my mood. SureMetaphor: ReFantaziois great, but I didn’t feel like dungeon-crawling for dozens of hours late last year, so it’s been (maybe permanently) backburnered.
When you have two people whose moods need to align, it gets even trickier. Maybe your co-op partner really wants to play Split Fiction, but you had a long day at work and just want to watch some mindless reality TV. Maybe you really want to play Split Fiction, but your co-op partner has to cook pasta puttanesca for her evil guardian and his terrible friends.
In this scenario, Violet Baudelaire is your co-op partner.
The point is, lining up multiple people’s schedules can be tough, and that goes double when it’s something as low-commitment as playing a video game together. It’s different for tabletop games likeDungeons & Dragons. You have to leave the house. Somebody might be cooking a meal for everyone. Members of your party might have turned down other commitments. You might actually be letting someone down if you don’t show up. But, with video games, the stakes are usually lower and more nebulous. That’s okay, we’ll play tomorrow. And then tomorrow never comes.
We made the mistake of starting another co-op game,Sunderfolk, not long after Split Fiction, so now they’re cannibalizing each other’s time slots.
The Co-Op Dynamic Can Help, Too
Of course, this dynamic can also go in the exact opposite direction. During the first month of the pandemic, I played throughHalo 2 and 3in quick succession with one of my high school friends. We blitzed through them. I had nothing better to do, he had played through them many times growing up, and so we talked about how his first baby was on the way while he carried me through both campaigns.
He has four kids now, which is one of those data points that makes the beginning of the pandemic feel like it was about 100 years ago.
When you get in a groove with a game, you can really just sail through it. And, as someone who had never played the Halo games until early 2020, it was satisfying to soar through 2 and 3 at roughly quintuple the speed I made it through Combat Evolved.
That’s the benefit and the negative of co-op. You’re playing with another person, which means learning to work together with another person. That can mean finishing two Halo games in a couple of sessions. But, it can also mean getting stuck in Rader’s imagination-drainer for way longer than anticipated.
