Buried in a recent Xbox One update,
little heralded and with little fanfare,
Microsoft rolled out a new way to play games with those you care about most.
Let's talk about copilot mode.
Also, special thanks to Gem for stepping in as our artist today.
♪
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The idea behind co-pilot mode is simple:
It lets you remap a game's controls across two different game pads.
This may not seem like a big deal, but it solves so many problems for designers.
It gives so many more options to players,
and it comes at so little development costs,
that I cannot believe that no platform holder has done this before.
First, let's talk about what this does for sharing games with kids, or parents,
or people who might not be as good at games as you are.
James, for one, is super excited to play something like "Enter the Gungeon" with his littlest nephew.
In that game, there are these screen clearing bombs called "blanks"
that you can set off when things get too hectic.
How great would it be to map the blanks
to a young niece or nephew's controller so you can play together?
How fun would it be to shout "BOMB!" when everything gets crazy,
and how excited will they be to press the button
and watch everything blow up around your character?
Now, will you play it better with their help?
No chance!
You would almost certainly fare better if they just sat and watched.
But this is such a great and meaningful way to play together
that simply was not possible before.
That is an amazing thing.
Especially because the games developers
didn't have to put any resources into it.
By simply offering this feature as an option,
Microsoft has given James as a player,
the opportunity to design into his games,
and experience that he can play with the people he loves.
And the game devs didn't have to sacrifice
any part of the core game experience to accommodate it.
And throughout my life,
I've had plenty of people that I wanted to share this medium with,
but they were new to games.
Even if they were willing to sit alongside me and just watch as I played,
they still missed something key to this medium:
The interactivity.
And being able to give them just a small taste of that,
would go a long way to explaining why this medium is so compelling.
But there are other problems this solves, too.
Our industry has a huge problem with accessibility.
Most of our games are made for people with a full range of movement in their hands.
And very often, even when the developers want to make their games
accessible to people who don't have that advantage,
it's a problem of resources.
I mean, we've had to face this question ourselves:
Do you spend your resources making your game 3% better
for 97% of your audience?
Or, do you make it 50% better for 3% of your audience?
That's a tough call.
And when money is involved,
the decision almost always comes down on the side of the broader audience.
And while co-pilot mode definitely doesn't completely solve that problem,
it does give players much more control over how they approach our games.
Over the course of working in the industry and making Extra Credits,
we have met so many people
who have come up with the most ingenious ways
to play their games out of necessity,
finding ways to play them with their chin or their feet.
Because most games just weren't made to be accessible for them.
Having the ability to spread out a game's controls across 2 game pads,
and having the ability to place both controllers where it's most convenient,
will do so much to help make our games more accessible for these players.
And the best part is that Microsoft doing this at the platform level,
makes every game on their console become more accessible.
Heck, even the ability to simply scroll through a Netflix menu on the console might be made easier.
So not only does this allow many more people to enjoy games,
but allows more people to use the platform in general.
That's not just better for everybody,
it also makes good business sense.
For that reason alone, I'm shocked we haven't done this before.
But there's one other great thing that this feature adds.
and that is the ability for all of us to invent
the craziest co-op experiences we can dream up.
I mean, we've talked before about how
couch co-op is often a pretty hard feature to justify focusing on
in the modern game development environment.
And co-op mode may not be able to replace that, but still,
imagine how much of a riot this could be with friends.
You think driving around in GTA is ridiculous now?
Try doing it with two people in control.
Imagines the bonkers Dark Souls challenge runs people are going to dream up,
with the ability to map buttons across multiple controllers.
There is a huge pile of these weird interesting game variants
that we as players can come up with.
Now, will these novelty modes be something that we want to play all the time?
No.
But will they be a lark for a few hours?
Heck yeah they will!
And really, when it comes to couch co-op,
isn't that what we're looking for most of the time?
What's more, this could spawn all sorts of ridiculous, interesting,
or just plain impressive "Let's Plays" for us to watch,
as people come up with all new challenges
for the games that they thought they had mastered.
Who knows?
We might even find a whole new form of charity competition event springs up around this feature.
Now, time will tell whether or not co-op mode lives up to its potential,
but the simplicity and elegance of this idea, gives me great hope.
It really does shock me that
something this cheap to implement hasn't been tried before.
It answers so many of the major design problems
that we're trying to solve in today's industry:
Issues of family play, accessibility, and couch co-op.
And it addresses them not in a one-off single game solution sort of way,
but rather, at least to some degree, for every game on the platform.
I would not be surprised if the other platform holders follow suit.
Because this seems to be a very low effort fix for the kind of returns it provides.
And if that happens, it presents the intriguing question
of what this is going to mean for design.
As a designer, James would love to have an easy way
to throw a simple, even if imperfect family mode,
and zany co-op mode into his single player games,
just by putting in a new button mapping.
I mean, just think about what even having a family mode as a menu option
would mean for how many people play.
I cannot wait to see what sort of
creative forms of co-op y'all come up with out there.
See you next week!
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