Adversarial Couch Co-Op: Joshing
and Griefing in Co-Located
Cooperative Gaming
Mikael Jakobsson
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 452-3218
[email protected]
Keywords
Co-located games, cooperative games, player interaction, joshing, griefing.
ABSTRACT
Co-located cooperative gaming, colloquially referred to as couch co-op, offers unique
player interaction experiences. It is a rich area of inquiry where significant aspects of the
experience are co-constructed in the moment through interaction between players,
technology, and environment. Understanding these interactions has substantial
implications for the development of games for entertainment as well as other purposes.
The literature on cooperative games mainly deals with online co-op or avoids making a
distinction between local and online play (e.g. Björk & Holopainen 2004, Seif El-Nasr et
al. 2010). There are exceptions that explicitly put focus on co-located interaction (eg.
Aarsand & Aronsson 2009, Dahlskog, 2012, Gajadhar 2012), or co-located games (eg.
Zagal et al. 2006, Grønbæk et al. 2007, Jürgensen & Rasmussen 2009) but these only
scratch the surface of the many aspects involved.
As part of a larger project on co-located cooperative gaming, we have engaged in
substantial amounts of participant and non-participant observations playing and observing
over a hundred different co-op games with participants differing in sex, age, and gaming
habits. While the focus has been on video games, we have also studied board and card
games. We have also conducted in-depth interviews and gathered information and
personal accounts of couch co-op experiences from the web and other sources.
Rather than broad strokes outlining of the properties of couch co-op interaction in
general, the purpose of this presentation is to provide a rich description of one particular
aspect: adversarial couch co-op. While players per definition share goals or objectives in
these games, it is a well-known but previously not studied phenomenon that the
interaction between collaborating players sometimes involves competitive or disruptive
elements.
It may seem contradictory that a cooperative game mode leads players to act against each
other, but it is the collaborative framework that generates the key ingredient: trust. Take
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© 2014 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of
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the football gag in Peanuts (Schultz 1950-2000) as an example. The reason Lucy can
perform her prank is that she and Charlie Brown are on the same team. In couch co-op
games, there is usually more give and take, but the players are bound together by trust,
and stretching that bond creates a tension resulting in engaged and often innovative
interaction.
Game developers have identified the pleasures of this playful adversarial interaction and
games like Rayman Origins (Ubiart 2011), Ratchet & Clank: All-4-One (Insomniac
Games 2011), and Battleblock Theater (Behemoth 2013) are full of hints that joshing
with the other players is encouraged. Way of pitting players against each other include
keeping separate scores or to provide first come first serve access to limited resources. In
describing the gameplay of Ratchet & Clank All-4-One (2011), one of our informants
said: “It’s eighty percent cooperative, twenty percent: That’s my box!”
Players have always found ways to be adversarial, but in older games this could often
make the progress grind to a halt. Two informants (brothers and self-declared hardcore
gamers) stated that The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (Nintendo 2004) is
unplayable. The possibility of picking up and throwing other players off cliffs coupled
with a need for all players to complete the levels was an insurmountable obstacle for
them. This surprised me who only had played the game with older, more casual,
academics and not encountered these issues.
One of our informants repeatedly displayed an adversarial trait that goes beyond joshing.
He seemed to be fine with causing failures for the whole team, without it being the result
of escalating joshing reciprocity. We noticed that this griefing (Foo & Koivisto 2004)
behavior was consistent between different games and genres, but that it differed
depending on the participants and the level of challenge that the game provided. It
seemed that as long as a game kept him on his toes, he did not grief, but as soon as the
game allowed the players to relax a little, he would start forming malicious plans.
When we were playing the Animal Crossing: Sweet Day mini game in Nintendo Land
(Nintendo 2012), he managed to convince the players on his team to employ an elaborate
but ultimately suboptimal strategy, which led the team to lose repeatedly. My reading of
the situation was that he constructed a new game where getting the teammates to do what
he told them became his goal, rather than winning. He had cast himself in the role of the
traitor; a role familiar from board games such as Shadows Over Camelot (Cathala &
Laget 2005).
My presentation will further discuss these and other emergent characteristics of
adversarial cooperative play.
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