The Second Player – Investigating
Asymmetrical Player Representations
in Local Co-Operative Games
Mikael Jakobsson
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
+1 617-452 3218
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
“[Player one] is not a natural species: he is a historical idea. [Player two] is not a
completed reality, but rather a becoming, and it is in her becoming that ... her possibilities
should be defined.” (de Beauvoir 1949, 38)
When games allow two or more people to play collaboratively using the same system, the
way the second player is represented is often restricted in different ways. Sometimes the
limitations are not noticeable on screen, such as an inability to create save points or
getting achievements. These are restrictions to the system representation of player two as
an autonomous individual who may wish to continue on their own or with another
partner. Other times the second player is literally represented as a support character who
is there to heal or otherwise assist player one. In some games, player two is not even
represented by a character on the screen (e.g. Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo 2007) where
player two only appears as a star shaped cursor).
I have taken the liberty to replace the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in the leading de
Beauvoir (1949) quote because her description of “the second sex” resonates with my
findings of how “player two” is being constructed in contemporary gaming practices.
This paper will be the first from a study focusing on local co-operative play. The
empirical materials consist of participant observation notes from a substantial number of
co-operative play sessions, interviews, gameplay assignments including debriefing
sessions, web materials, and podcasts.
The issue of how the second player experience is designed sometimes surfaces in games
media. A recent example is when Jonathan Hemingway, Lead Designer at Gearbox,
described the characteristics of one of the playable characters in Borderlands 2 (Gearbox
2012) like this: "for the lack of a better term, [it is] the girlfriend skill tree” (Yin-Poole
2012). The gamer and his girlfriend dyad is prevalent within the gaming community, here
seen in a reader comment on an article about the game Deathspank (Hothead 2010):
“The couch-co-op is sadly really only a girlfriend thing...I can't see a fully-fledged, cardcarrying GAMER being satisfied with playing as the 2nd player poof the wizard or
whatever his name is called. But seriously, my girlfriend loves it. No sexism just my
experience with it.” While the girlfriend mode debate has centered on the terminology
Proceedings of DiGRA 2013: DeFragging Game Studies.
© 2013 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of
this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author.
used, my study shows that the way player two is represented in local co-operative games
is fraught with assumptions about who player two is and what player two is capable of.
I do not deny that there are times when a male expert gamer and his girlfriend or child
both wish to alleviate problems playing together arising for different skill levels. But
attempts to solve these problems may produce representations of player two that run the
risk of perpetuating problematic ideas about who and what a gamer is. This parallels how
women are designated roles in popular media (as well as society) of limited autonomy
and in support of male protagonists. I will elaborate on this issue offering different
perspectives and discuss possible alternative approaches to the design of player
representations in asymmetrical co-op dyads.
Keywords
Player two, Co-operative play, Console gaming, Gamer culture, Gender and technology,
Social construction of technology
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The empirical material for this study has been collected over an extended period of time
with a number of people volunteering their time and effort for little or no compensation. I
am grateful for all this help and would like to extend special thanks to Maria Lundgren
and Cathleen Gendron for their relentless efforts in the role of player one. I would also
like to thank MIT Game Lab, Comparative Media Studies and MIT for contributing
resources for this project.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
de Beauvoir, S. (1949) The Second Sex (trans. H. M. Parshley), Vintage, New York,
NY, 1974.
Gearbox (2012) Borderlands 2 [Xbox 360], 2K Games, New York USA: played 20122013.
Hothead Games (2010) Deathspank [Playstation 3], Electronic Arts, Redwood City
USA: played 2010-2013.
Nintendo EAD Tokyo (2007) Super Mario Galaxy [Wii], Nintendo of America,
Redmond USA.
Yin-Poole, W. (2012) “Borderlands 2: Gearbox reveals the Mechromancer’s
’girlfriend mode’” Eurogamer. Available at http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/
2012-08-13-borderlands-2-gearbox-reveals-the-mechromancers-girlfriendmode (accessed Oct. 2012)
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