As I grow older, I notice I tend to lean more and more towards playing games solo. It’s not that I’ve become anti-social or don’t have people to play with. It’s more that co-op games are harder to navigate, the older you get. Sure, everyone in your group needs to be on the same page and schedules need to line up. But even if you can jump through all those hoops, there are still hurdles with how co-op games work today.

One reason is that there are some multiplayer games that you feel obliged to make your main game. It could be due to a battle pass or other seasonal event. Maybe you just really want to unlock a specific item, or maybe you paid for the battle pass, so now you feel stuck, tied to that game to make the most of your purchase. If you and your friends are all in agreement, that this is the game you’re going to focus on, great! If not, you need to split your time, and maybe it ends up becoming a solo experience as your friends move on to other games. You don’t want to feel like that money is wasted, and the fear of missing out on the event could also help drive friends away. If they can’t devote the time or the money to stay up to date, they might just drop.

Another way it can be hard is if the game itself isn’t friendly to players not being in sync in terms of progression. For me, the two genres that this most applies to are MMOs and survival games.

MMOs are pretty obvious in how this works. If you decide to play one with friends and if someone progresses further than the other, it can cause some issues. It might be small things, like the player that is further ahead may just have to replay content. Which isn’t bad, because maybe there is some loot they didn’t get, and the content is still rewarding.  But the most likely scenario is that it turns into homework for the player that falls behind. Some content can’t be done together, and I’ve had instances where I’ve had to follow a friend around while they played catch up to where I was in the story. It wouldn’t make sense for me to keep playing and put myself further ahead. That makes MMOs very hard to play with friends if someone isn’t as dedicated as the other and I myself have been stuck in the awkward position of just having to walk away from a game because I’m too far behind. When you and your friends are in sync, it can be fun as you can just go through content, and I personally think it’s been some of the most fun I’ve had in my time gaming. But if someone falls behind or if you’re trying to convince someone to jump into a game you’ve been playing for years, the hurdles are pretty difficult to overcome. Final Fantasy XIV is pretty bad at this it has a good story, but if someone were to start now, they’d need to go through 6 game expansions to catch up. World of Warcraft lets you start at the current expansion, but there’s so much lore and story that new players would most likely have no idea why certain story beats are big deals.

Survival games are hard in terms of co-op because the content is you trying to, well, survive. But say a friend plays without you, on the same save, and solves that problem of survival. What do you do when you jump on next? The core struggle here is that you didn’t learn how the mechanics of the game work when it was at its most difficult, and maybe you missed out on skill points, recipes or story because you missed a session or two. Maybe when you last played, the base you and your friends built was made of wood, and it kept crumbling and needed constant maintenance. You miss a session and join, and now that same base is made of steel and doesn’t need maintenance anymore. Another example is that maybe you and your friends just barely figured out how to make firearms in the game, but ammo is a huge pain to make. You log back in and find stockpiles of it, and ammo is no longer a concern. The core gameplay loop in a survival game is trying to stay alive, figure out the systems, and grow/learn to file down those rough edges. But if you log in and all that is handled, where is the gameplay for you? If a survival game has a story, then this isn’t all that bad. Yes, you still maybe don’t know how to build certain things, and you’re stuck relying on the one friend who mastered the game to do everything for you. But at least you can make some impact and participate in that boss fight or raid. To me, the one survival game that really worked well was Grounded by Obsidian. You had a mystery to solve, and you had to find these secret labs. As long as your friends left that content alone, they could build a base of their dreams, and you could hop on to work through the story. But survival games like Age of Conan or even No Man’s Sky, there isn’t much to draw you in if you have a friend who can do all the heavy lifting for you.

I think the worst game for co-op, at my age at least, is Grand Theft Auto Online. The main attraction of the game is the heists, big multi-stage robberies, and they are some of the greatest, but also the most frustrating gameplay missions I’ve done with friends. They require a ton of setup, and you need all friends accounted for because they are so specific in setup that you can’t play unless all 4 slots are filled. But it’s also all the work and setup needed to be able to afford them in-game. Nothing pays as well as heists, but if you want good gear, maybe a fast car, and to be able to be able to start some of the jobs it all requires a ton of in-game money. This one hits home because I recently wanted to replay them, and I just don’t think it’s going to happen. There are new heists that have been added, but they require I buy facilities for millions of fake dollars, and the fastest ways I can earn money requires that I play with my friends. But I only pitched them on playing the heists, not grinding jobs and running cargo to earn the money needed. I can’t really do it on my own either, because some missions warn you that you need multiple people to run cargo because it will spawn multiple cars. The answer at that point would be to just play with randoms, but I’ve done that and it’s definitely not my thing.

So where does this leave us? There are some bright spots for some co-op games out there. The recent trend of simulator games, games where you can work at a fast food place with friends or run a cleaning company are dead simple, but you’re also not pushed to feel like you need to play solo. Action games, like the newer Ninja Turtle games or Big Helmet Heroes, are games that you can just jump in and play with no setup and will always work. I think the key is to communicate with your group on what you feel like playing, but you have to also totally be fine that maybe nothing lines up at the moment. That could be scheduling, like I mentioned before, but also interests. I have friends that I know will never pick up an MMO, and I’ve suggested a game, played it, and realized I was the only one having a good time. Gaming as you get older means that your tastes are going to be more refined you’re going to have less patience for some games that used to be your favorite or mechanics that you could push through now just turn you off to the game entirely. The best part about this problem is that there are always new games coming out and one will stick, hopefully, with your friend group. But also, don’t worry so much or give yourself a headache about what to play or worry you’re wasting time trying to find that one good game. Maybe paths are diverging, and maybe you spend more time talking about what you’re playing than actually playing together. It’ll all be fine, there’s a lot of games that you can talk about, and who knows, maybe something sticks and you learn about a game you never would have before.