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When Live was first introduced the first question for every new game in development was, ‘will it have online multiplayer?’ After the massive success of Gears of War 2, Resident Evil 5 and Left 4 Dead the question now seems to have evolved to ‘does it have online multiplayer coop?’
There's no question that playing in a team together is great, the shared glory of a victory and helping each other out gives you a big warm heart glow. It takes the fun of playing games with your mates and removes the sting of getting humiliated by ten year olds at Team Deathmatch games. Sesame Street was right, cooperation is fun.
I spent a lot of time playing coop games over Live and I have noticed that people seem to develop certain personality traits. No matter who I play with, everyone seems to take on a certain role in the game. I’ve decided to categorise these personalities so gamers can be clear on who and what they are and to make it easier for new gamers to spot them in the wild.
The Leader
 The Leader has plans, he or she has strategies and ideas, they can predict the ebb and flow of battle and they know when it’s time to fall back and dig in. The Leader is an essential element in any coop team… and nobody will ever listen to them.
Sure they’ll hear instructions but it takes the army months to teach high school drop outs to duck and cover. You can’t expect a group of gamers to respect the chain of command during a caffeine fuelled Friday night game session. Not that The Leader minds either, he’ll continue babbling squad talk and issuing commands, whatever it takes to get his boys home to their wives and babies, get them back to the world.
It’s a terrible shame really, The Leader could be the next Genghis Khan or Julius Caesar, an undiscovered military genius of prodigal talent. In some far future scenario he could be the one to lead us in the fight back against the Apple Macintosh OS running machines that become our iOverlords. But he’ll never know it and neither will his team mates.
So what use is The Leader to online gamers? Well, as anyone involved in politics will tell you,when things go pear shaped, it’s always good to have someone to blame.
Often heard saying:
“Okay, lets do this thing by the book”
“Check you’re corners people”
The Kid
 You’ve seen the character in dozens of movies, Orlando Bloom in Black Hawk Down or Charlie Sheen in Platoon. That bright eyed idealistic youth who goes into conflict and either learns the hollowness of battle through some deep trauma or suffers some horrible crippling injury, amputated limbs are par for the course. He is The Kid and Live is full of them. If you see someone join your party in that last second before the game starts nine out of ten times it will be The Kid.
After barely a minute of his prepubescent screeching through your head set, like a splinter of ice in your ear drum, you’ll want to be the one to cause the aforementioned crippling injury to him. Worst of all, if you don’t take the hard line and tell him to expletive off or shut the expletive up immediately he will assume that you are his friend and send a friend request in which he idly mentions that you seem ‘cool’.
The Kid will always be the first person booted from a game, either by a brutish host or quickly voted out to make way for someone's mate. The Kid is a curious creature, so quickly derided, yet we were all a Kid online once. Also try and ignore the fact he is better than you at every game.
Often heard saying:
Unintelligible homophobic cursing, drowned out by Linkin Park played at full volume in the background.
The Lone Wolf
 This extremely frustrating game companion may have been right behind you a moment ago but now he’s disappeared. You shouldn’t be worried, you’ll get an on screen notification of their death a few minutes later. One minute they're providing cover and backing you up and the next they've stepped into the shadows to, theoretically, take guerrilla warfare to the enemy. Unfortunately it never works out like that.
The Lone Wolf has watched too many movies, particularly movies from the 80's when Hollywood was helping America heal their collective manhood wounds after the ass whipping of Vietnam. As a result the Lone Wolf is confident that while the team holds the front they can slink behind enemy lines and do some real damage. This strategy only really works about one tenth of the time and that's usually out of pure dumb luck. There's a reason people tend to stay in groups during war time, people on their own tend to get killed. The Lone Wolf is akin to a suicide bomber without a bomb, so yes, even stupider than a regular suicide bomber.
In their defence the Lone Wolf is usually in the top half of the score board for kills, but this is often out balanced by a staggering number of deaths. Not to mention all the deaths caused by his absence as his team mates were expecting someone to cover them who wasn’t there.
Often heard saying:
"…shit, I’m dead", usually after a prolonged period of silence.
The Rage
 He’s not angry with you, or the game, or his ISP, although he may curse all three in a spittle flying, vitriolic rant screamed into his mic. He’s just angry, The Rage most likely has an enlarged hypothalamus or some other genetic condition that makes them almost immune to being composed or calm. They are edgy, abrasive, angry people.
Oddly their actual game playing will never be affected by this anger. They might be quaking with frustration but they’re thumbs and fingers are sure and steady as they try and overcome the source of their anger. In actual fact they make ideal team mates as long as you’re quick on the mute button. It is possible that The Rage may go ‘off the deep end’ which will result in a Rage Quit. The Rage will reach a new level of cursing and ranting and his voice will fade in and out as he swings his controller and headset round his head; the angry shouting will be suddenly cut short by either the controller flying lose and hitting the wall or a massive aneurysm. Like that Tupperware in you’re work fridge you don’t know who it belongs to or the drug problems of your favourite celebrity, it’s best to just ignore The Rage when they are having ‘a moment’.
It’s also highly advised that you think carefully before attempting the Halo 3 Vidmaster Annual achievement with a potential Rage player. (especially if they don’t know beforehand that it has a 0 gamerscore)
Often heard saying:
"Expletive this expletive-en game, I’m expletiving expletive, expletive-en had expletive-en enough of this expletive".
The Achievement Whore
 This expletive person has joined your squad, a team that it has taken you an hour of cajoling and organising to put together, and fully intends to drop out of the game as soon as he does that one thing he wanted to do. He won’t mention it before hand because he doesn’t want to be kicked for being The Achievement Whore, but that’s just what he is. This is a person who has broken the bones of his chosen hobby and greedily sucked the marrow dry until there is nothing left but a hollow husk. A person who has taken their passion and turned it into a tragic obsessive compulsion.
It won’t matter what part of the game it is, level 49 of Horde in Gears of War 2, waiting for the rescue helicopter in Left 4 Dead, as soon as The Achievement Whore reaches that magic number of kills or tags that specific enemy with that specific weapon, he out, catch ya later, good luck and all. When that vacuum is created at that crucial moment, then things start to suck, really suck. Before long your team admits that they are now screwed and drop out; leaving you to send an angry and impotent negative gamer review.
There is a sub species of Achievement Whore who trolls for difficult Slayer game style achievements. They can often be heard begging people to let themselves get run over with a Mongoose or stand together to get killed with one grenade. These people should have their toe nails pulled out.
Achievement Whore, I despise you.
Often heard saying:
"Ding, I’m out".
The Stoner
 The Stoner isn't someone whose necessarily wasted, or in any state of inebriation at all. But my god that won't stop them telling you how high, wasted, drunk, messed up they are right now. Like totally. Five minutes of conversation with The Stoner will have you reaching for that single player game you haven't quite finished yet, like totally. They prattle endlessly, engaging you in long conversations about the last time they saw you on Live and everything that has ever happened to them since then, occasionally pausing to ask if you know someone.
Other than proclaiming their lack of mental capacity over and over again and their inability to realise no one cares just how out of it they are, in fact we're much happier not knowing, The Stoner will also demonstrate a complete inability to listen to anyone else, often wandering in the wrong direction or getting lost within the first few minutes of gameplay. In fact the Lone Wolf and The Stoner often accidentally team up in the course of a match, the Stoner providing human cover for the Lonewolf. They certainly seem to walk the same road as far as intellect and ability goes.
If The Stoner seems to have frozen in place, not moving and not responding to hails over the mic, it's pretty safe to kick them, they've fallen asleep.
Often heard saying:
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've got the downloaded maps", he doesn't.
"Just going to the bathroom, back in a sec", he won't be.
The Intel
 Possibly the only genuinely useful member of a coop team. The Intel has, well, intel. They know where all the weapons drop, they've memorized all the bad guy spawns and the wave patterns, they know the maps inside out. They use a television with a definition only equalled by a proton microscope, or at least that's the only way I can account for the fact they can see a sniper in the distance when all I can see is background pixels.They might not be particularly good at the game but they've compensated by memorising every training video on youtube, every game faq they can find, everything. If you've wondered, as I often have, who it is that keeps Bradygames in business by purchasing their game guides when all the same info is available for free on the internet, wonder no more, The Intel has a book shelf stacked with game guides.
The Intel knows all and sees all and is never happier than when he's communicating this information to his team mates. This is what The Intel lives for. Like a personal trainer he urges and goads them to new heights of excellence and achievement, reaching scores and waves they never thought possible, pinging new ranks and levels all over the place. The Intel is your personal game guru.
Unfortunately he's just such an annoying know it all little shit he tends to get kicked in the first match.
Often heard saying:
Well nothing, you kicked him didn't you? His team mates are often heard lamenting the fact they kicked him about two matches later
The Fear
 You might remember that kid from school, they had an asthma puffer around their neck on a piece of string, leaves blowing in the wind could bruise them and if they even so much as saw a peanut shell they would die gasping horribly. Heck you might have been that kid, if you are I'm sorry about taking your lunch, take comfort in the fact it wasn't very good. The Fear is a lot like that kid, he or she is just absolutely in terror of their health dropping below 90%. They regularly break off the attack to run back to a health pack or back to the spawn point to recharge, or basically just any where away from combat. They're saving their health for some imaginary last moment final stand that never comes. Or when it does come, all their team mates have been killed when they've abandoned them to run like a chicken and they get steam rolled.
When you can't find a health pack any where, it's because of The Fear, when you fall back to cover but can't duck down because someone's there all ready, it's, you guessed it, The Fear. The Fear has got defence and self preservation down to a fine art, in an online RPG they'd be a tank character, except they'd never go on raids. The Fear is easy to spot between games. Just check they're achievements, no matter how many hundreds of hours they've played The Fear won't have the achievements for healing others in Left 4 Dead.
Often heard saying:
"Ahhh, taking damage, falling back", the damage is usually the splash from the rocket that killed you.
By now you probably know which one you are (personally I'm three). Don't feel bad, you play an important role in every coop game, you keep things interesting. Honestly, if everyone played sensibly and worked as a team like they were supposed to things like Gears of War 2 Horde mode would get boring real fast.
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Comments
Never got in to a good co-op game. You know, Op Flashpoint is due out soon with 4 player co-op. Just saying.