Shotgun: Multiplayer Etiquette for Single Player Games

Last Updated on November 1, 2022

Single player games are great, but if we can agree on gaming as no less than interactive media, with multiplayer games stacking on top ad infinitum, then there is a space between the two; a multiplayer that isn’t. A shotgun game, a single player experience wherein a second person may be playing intermittently but certainly not simultaneously. Something we probably all used to do a lot of before someone put fibres inside the internet.

The game itself may or may not be multiplayer. It could even be Resident Evil on the Game Boy for instance, but let us hope not and agree to make no further mention of that portable house of horrors. Let us instead shuffle over to the passenger seat and see what the view is like from there.

A good shotgun game doesn’t require the shotgunner to know the game at hand, they can just be along for the drive, although if they are going to take a turn when the current player dies they really ought to be on nodding terms with the mechanics. It just isn’t social otherwise. Likewise, there are times when the shotgunner is too well acquainted and their presence is awkward and debilitating, like when you are ghost racing on Sega Rally and the passenger has set the current best time. That isn’t social either but somewhere in between is a sweet spot, like cruising up the M6 toll road with a good companion. Let us follow the rules of etiquette.

Firstly, get the eating or snacking out of the way. I understand that’s a hassle but grease of whatever form is not welcome on the controller. It just isn’t. I am not a fusspot in general but can we at least agree on that? Yes? Fantastic, let’s go ahead and have a sit down.

But already oh no… how to arrange the seating? Are we in a speak-easy type situation? You are in my house, but if there is a dedicated chair in your situation, then dibs has already been dabbed and you are going to have to get comfy in whatever is left. Round at my eldest brothers’ house I absolutely know where I am to sit and I think in general, these pieces know where to arrange themselves.

Then, if needed you can adjust the screen a little. Just a little though if you are not the owner. You know how people are. At least we are all settled in now so just the minor detail of what game to go shotgun on? Something placid and ripe with shiny objects for the shotgunner to point at and yell, like Jumping Flash or else speedier and a little awkward like Duke Nukem on the Saturn? No, we’ll go with something in between like Tomb Raider which has a set pace and simple enough controls, once you get over the delay thing.

Tomb Raider gives things for both player and shotgunner to get on with, in particular, the recumbent will be expected to be always scanning the environment and seeing between the pixels to spot what might be just a jagged hieroglyph or else that all-important lever. Once spotted, the shotgunner must raise voice or otherwise exclaim, perhaps with pointing at the screen, but never going so far as to touch it. See earlier.

So the participation of the non-participant is to be aligned with the player but chronicling the screen away from him. All the while, he will be waiting for his turn and this is where the ambience of the room can take a turn. I have seen such a rage between otherwise deep friendships during a two-player session on Super Mario Karts that it required international aid to step in.

I have watched control pads end, Clash cover style, just a moment or two into a game of FIFA International. Tempers will flare but there is another behavioural thread that can weave into the ambience of a shotgun session and it is far more damaging. It is the sinister thread. Perhaps the current player has been playing a little too long with his plaything and has started showing off a little. You know the type and something needs to be done to restore balance. It festers in the heart of the man in the waiting chair.

But then chance…. He just saw out of the corner of his eye that French bloke who keeps showing up to shoot Lara. Saw but didn’t say. Already he is doing the calculations that Lara is dead and it is his go. Better yet he knows where the attacker is going to come from so will be pistoled up and prepared. Then, after killing him it will probably be a good half hour of puzzling which the shotgunner can work out for him.

Sinister stuff. Do your best not to indulge in it, but be aware that it is probably going to happen anyway. When I feel my brother has had long enough to escape a four star cop rating on Grand Theft Auto, I simply stop telling him which directions the police are taking on the map. It’s not diabolical and is perhaps some sort of happy medium between tedium and sinister. Sinister with a smile… hang on.

Let’s leave that and return to Tomb Raider, which had genuine qualities for a co-operative experience. It was a palpably atmospheric game down to a combination of art design, scale, and the limitation thereof. I had it on Saturn and it chugged along like a fine narrow boat, the limited view exposing a frequent threat about the dark ahead. Will a dinosaur appear from out of the blackness and attack you? No! It’s a massive sphinx! Gawp inducing stuff for us all back then, and ever closer to cinema quality. Much for the shotgunner to enjoy, but it has to be their turn to have a go again, before the controller goes from warm to clammy. Take it. The moment has come and the ambient etiquette of the room turns. And on and on, back and forth until a wife or partner eventually comes in and points out that you both have been at this for hours and it is either time to go to sleep or go to work.

Delete where applicable.

I have always found shotgun gaming to be by and large a most chumly way to deposit some time. Perhaps it is the common cause of the experience, the all-for-one attitude that gets Lara to her next save crystal. It can even surpass the experience of proper two-player gaming in some sense. I recall playing the first Halo both cooperative and shotgun style. There was more action cooperative but oh my, the vistas you could take in when you were just watching someone else play Mr Chief. What art direction… but that will have to be for another time because either that is my wife or else the morning alarm.