14 DAY TRIAL // Cooperative gameplay seems to be one of the most present videogaming trends of 2009 with a lot of titles, like Borderlands, selling well mainly on the strength of the experience they can offer when played with one or three other buddies.
Even Modern Warfare 2, traditionally focused on a single player experience and a separate multiplayer component, is offering a Spec Ops mode, where bits taken from the campaign can be tackled by two players. And it seems that role playing games might be next to be taken over by co-op, with BioWare poised to be on the front lines of the charge.
Ray Muzika, one of the co-founders of BioWare, told Videogamer that “We would consider it. We haven't announced anything on that front yet, but those are interesting ideas,” adding that “They could make a great gameplay experience. Whether we'll do them or not remains to be decided.”
With Dragon Age: Origins now shipped and with Mass Effect 2 set to arrive in January of 2010, BioWare is probably focusing most of its efforts on the creation of The Old Republic, the Star Wars-inspired MMO that might arrive later in 2010.
The game should create an online experience blending single player-like story lines for each character with the inherent interactions between players, the mark of the MMO. The experience gained in making The Old Republic will probably serve BioWare well if it decides to implement a cooperative feature in the second Dragon Age or in the third Mass Effect.
Of course, BioWare has already included multiplayer in Baldur's Gate 2 and in Neverwinter Night, with a full Dungeon Master system. The problem is that this kind of functionality takes up precious development time that can be used to create more content for the single player campaign, the traditional focus of the computer role playing game.