Refusing to Compete, Choosing to Cooperate

Everybody's Talking at Once

ETAO Podcast, Episode 91.

http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/etao.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/etao-podcast-91-co-op.mp3
Drew and Lucio check in on the state of co-op games, especially online ones, in this strange isolated times. How has co-op changed over the past few decades, both in character and in quantity? Why are we so drawn to cooperative games, and why (for us) does team competition just not scratch that same itch? And when you get right down to it, what the hell is up with the guys who grab you and throw you off in Fall Guys?

It’s a conversation about cooperation in games, and the broader, deeper value of cooperation in general. Plus, we talk about Goemon’s Great Adventure, because of course we do!

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• I didn’t have my footage handy, so the image above is from this longplay of Goemon’s Great Adventure. We salute you, longplayers!

• You can indeed go all the way back to our first and second episodes (interviews with Jake Kazdal and Davey Wreden, respectively) and our third (Lucio’s debut) though the magic of the archive.

• And here’s Drew’s conversation with Kenny Lee, of Cellar Door Games.

• The Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition has online co-op, but not couch co-op. Apologies if that wasn’t clear.

• A few times in this episode, we mention the streams that we’ve been doing lately. Like Lucio says, they’ve been on at odd hours, but they’re good stuff—and you can watch them, if you’re so inclined, on YouTube and Twitch.

• Here’s that video about Call of Duty.

• Unravel, not unravelled.

• Streets of Fire is the movie I was thinking of. D’oh.
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“All The People Say (Season 3)” by Holly Hyperion.
“Burning My Soul (Flaming Edo Castle)” from the Goemon’s Great Adventure OST, by Shigeru Araki, Yasumasa Kitagawa, Hirotaka Kurita, Yusuke Kato and Nobuyuki Akena, produced by the GOEMON Sound Team.

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Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.