DROP-IN/DROP-OUT
Co-op design where players can join or leave a session in progress without stopping the game — the second player picks up a controller and appears, or disconnects and their character reverts to AI or despawns.
- SOLO-DEV COST HIGH
- TIMING REAL-TIME
- COMMON IN CO-OP · SHOOTER · ACTION-ADVENTURE · LOOTER-SHOOTER
The LEGO games made couch drop-in a family-friendly signature, Borderlands scales loot and enemies live as friends join, and It Takes Two's Friend Pass extends the philosophy to invitations. Designers build drop-in/drop-out because the alternative — lobby ceremony and restart friction — kills the casual co-op moment where someone on the couch says 'can I play?'. The hard problems are all in state: what happens to the joiner's progression, how difficulty and economy rescale mid-encounter, and what the departing player's absence breaks. Key decisions: whether joiners share the host's progress or bring their own character (Borderlands' persistent characters versus LEGO's session avatars), how loot and XP split, and whether the game pauses, scales, or substitutes AI on departure. Pitfall: mid-mission joins that dump a new player into a context they can't parse — good implementations spawn joiners near the host in a quiet beat, not inside the boss arena.
SEEN IN
- BORDERLANDS 3
- LEGO STAR WARS
- IT TAKES TWO