For Miller, former editor of the video game and entertainment website IGN, playing a couch co-op game with his wife is more engaging than “just sitting down and watching another Netflix binge session.”
“It’s the type of thing that I was missing from every game that I saw on console that I wanted to play together with my wife,” said Swen Vincke, who is also Larian’s chief executive. “We like RPGs and we like really getting into it, but there’s really no ability, or there was very few games that let you go on an adventure together on the same screen.”
“I think that there’s actually a missed opportunity in doing so,” he said, noting that people who play games like Larian’s “Divinity: Original Sin 2” together tend to play for a longer period — some more than a year. “Every couple, every relationship, there’s a power balance that shifts continuously,” he said. “Playing with that as game developers in the game, and then provoking those emotions in players, it’s cool.”
Josef Fares, founder of “It Takes Two’s” Sweden-based developer Hazelight Studios, said part of what makes couch co-op special is that we are “social creatures.” In “It Takes Two,” a young girl’s imagination and desire for her parents to stay together transforms them into toys, forcing them to explore their home and their yard.