Published Again!

[Jedi Master]

I did it once a couple of years ago, now in the latest Holiday Issue of CGW I once again got a letter published.
For those of you who get it, or see them at newsstands/bookstores and can open them, I'm on page 26--the big box with "All Together Now" at the top: my rant about coop in games. (I AM Robert Z! )

[Grifter]

I'll look for it! perhaps you can cut and paste the letter here?

[Jedi Master]

Here it is in its entirety:

What's wrong with game developers nowadays? Why has coop in games become the
feature devs love to avoid? Do a search for "coop mod" on the net and you'll
find some 111,000 (yes, that comma is in the right place) hits.
How on Hell, Mars, or Earth could Todd Hollenshead claim that PC gamers
aren't interested in it like console gamers are??

Far Cry: coop mod
AvP2: coop mod
UT2k4: top-down coop mod and great bots in every shipping mode
Serious Sam: coop was the only MP mode ever played!
Hidden and Dangerous and its addon were EXCELLENT played coop.
H&D2--stupid BF42-wannabe MP, no coop!
STALKER was announced it would have it, then that it wasn't.
Painkiller should've had it.
Far Cry was "cry"ing for it, with its open-ended approaches, but the mods
all have serious troubles.
NOLF2's coop maps were great, but too few, and the expansion Contract JACK
did away with it again.

Developers always seem to give the same tired answers--PC gamers don't want
it, the AI can't handle it, the scripting would need to be fixed too much
(so get rid of it then!), blah blah blah--can we talk about our AWESOME
shaders or COOL environments now??

I'd love it if you'd do that thing that journalists do so well: pin down
those being interviewed and force them to answer a question they want to
avoid! If you can't get the ones working on games soon to be released to
answer, get the ones who have no fear of reprisals (like id, Valve, Crytek,
etc) since their games are already out or finished to explain themselves.
I do not and never plan on owning a console. I like sitting at my desk, not
the couch. I have a wife who uses the TV to watch TV and not me playing
games. I enjoy the modding of games with new content, user-made not just
from the developer, which consoles don't allow. The very notion that coop is
too hard to do now when it was commonplace before, after years of advances
in programming and PC hardware, is ludicrous.

Add it in a patch if you don't want to hold up the release for testing it.
Make it a beta patch and don't support it even, but GIVE US COOP IN FPS
GAMES, "TACTICAL" OR OTHERWISE.


Robert Z.