The game outside the game

How often does a game give you a team of characters to use at your discretion, only to then offer a single-player only experience? How often in an online game are you basically fighting against random people instead of working together to work through a storyline together?

These things probably happen more often than not. Major RPG after major RPG get released every year and have failed to recognize the value of co-operative gameplay; not to mention several other genres that have yet to see any co-operative gameplay elements at all (I'm probably one of the world's biggest Fire Emblem fans, for instance, but even I can see that that game would rule so hard if I could play with a friend online or off). I don't intend this to be a screed about the lack of compelling co-op multiplayer options in gaming. There are more than a few games that really do emphasize co-op in glorious ways (New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Left 4 Dead come to mind).

No, for this article, I'm here to talk about Tales of Symphonia. Or Tales of Vesperia, or Tales of Whatever. From an adult's perspective – one that's basically seen every corner of stereotypical anime storytelling – the Tales of… series is egregious in its combination of completely nonsensical and confounding plots along with every anime character type ever. Strip away any of the more interesting elements of a Final Fantasy game, make the characters even more extreme in their anime influence, and you've basically got any one of these games.

Tales of Symphonia, in particular, really fits into what I mean when I'm talking about "the game outside the game," though. Because for all its faults ToS has a brilliant inclusion – four-player co-op. Basically, the way it works is that on the world map and in dungeons, the game is controlled by the first player. When the game goes into battle mode, though, all four of your party members can be controlled by a player. Battles take place in real-time and the characters essentially control like Smash Bros. characters, making the battles intuitive, challenging and fun. Because each of the characters has (as is typical in a JRPG) a particular role (i.e., mage, fighter, healer, etc.), the game ends up encouraging honest to goodness roleplaying, as each person in the room playing becomes one of these different types, instead of one person becoming many types.

My experience with Tales of Symphonia is probably not common – I'm guessing that most people who played it didn't get four of their friends together over the course of a month or two to play through all 50 hours of the game together. Yet, those 50 hours ended up being one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life not because of how the game was designed, but rather because of the way that we, as players, created meaning outside of the game. Each one of us took a different "role" and during the game's many (and lengthy) text-based talking head scenes, we would read our character's lines aloud. The experience was akin to doing a script reading for an (extremely) lengthy play and ended up giving each of our characters more of a connection to us as the players than they probably deserved. I wasn't Matthew, playing the game at that point – I was Lloyd.

It might seem strange to have four grown men (OK, I was about 18 at the time) basically participating in a convoluted digital game of make-believe, but the experience ended up bringing us closer together as well – we, all four of us, had both gone through an incredibly long journey, as well as created an entire game parallel to the one we were actually playing.

Currently, I'm sort of recreating this experience with my girlfriend as we play through Final Fantasy 7. There's obviously not even any implied co-op in FFVII – it was designed as a single-player only experience. Yet, we've found a way to legitimately play the game together. As I enjoy exploration more, I control Cloud while on the world map and in the dungeons. My girlfriend enjoys controlling the battles, so when I hear that dreadful random battle "whoosh" sound, I immediately pass the controller off to her. It's like a tag-team style of gaming that has made the experience much easier to slog through.

These sorts of experiences, of creating meaning through interpersonal relationships outside of the game, is something that I think is almost exclusive to offline gaming – online gaming more overtly stresses its rule structure, and besides XBox Live voice chat (or WiiSpeak or whatever the Playstation has) with your friends, it's hard to make these sorts of parallel structures. I know that entire communities exist online for guilds or what-have-you, but these sorts of things are almost encouraged by online gaming.

I fear that with the advent of extreme technology that games are becoming more prescriptive in their intents. The element of imagination that went into, say, playing "two player" Track and Field on the NES where I would control the d-pad and my brother would control the A and B buttons, are being inadvertently tossed out the window. There's a certain way to play a game now (even an open world one) and while I'm certain that with enough ingenuity someone out there could find a way to play GTA4 in a crazy two-player style, I doubt anyone sees that game and even wants to try.

As I mentioned before, there is hope, and that hope comes in the form of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which doesn't give the players any objectives other than to finish the level. How the various players do so is completely up to them, and the interpersonal connections on the living room couch are a game unto themselves. Navigating the various emotions and relationships (both being created and/or being destroyed) are complicated enough for a Jane Austen novel, and yet they happen entirely organically. That's an incredible feat, and one I hope to see replicated in gaming's future. If we can't create our own meaning, hopefully enough developers see the usefulness of at least giving us the tools to try.

(I'd like to open up the comments section for people to describe some experiences that they've had like this, because I'm sure some of you must have. I'm always on the lookout for games that make excellent co-op games even when they're not designed to.)