The Co-op Mode
The Co-op Mode is a fifteen minute long, web-based show published every Sunday where gamers Seth Cheek and Chris Kohler play a variety of different cooperative video games. Always recorded live, the purpose of the show is to share the often funny and exciting experiences that come about when two long-time friends have fun gaming together. The show also gives viewers some insight into what the co-op modes of various video games have to offer should they be interested in purchasing those games in the future.
Chris uses an external USB Elgato Game Capture HD for the video and game audio into an Apple iMac. This is why Chris' point-of-view is typically the one you see in the show. The voice chat audio is recored using Skype and a plug-in called Call Recorder which does multi-track recording. The duo typically records around one hour of footage per episode. After recording, Chris syncs the chat audio tracks with the game footage using Quicktime Pro. The audio tracks are cleaned up using Sound Studio and then added back to the video footage. The final clip is imported into iMovie 11 and edited into the down to just the best 15 minutes of footage. Including recording, each episode takes around five hours to produce.
We totally appreciate everyone enjoying our show and we're flattered by your offers to friend us however we can't just add everyone to our friends lists. We do like to play with other people from time to time but mostly we tend to play with with people who we know personally. There's also the issue of having a ton of friends online causing constant pop-ups that could interfere with our show recording. Instead of accepting friend requests, we try our best to interact with our viewers via comments on YouTube, Twitter and e-mail.
We typically play across Xbox Live or PSN when we play together however we sometimes do play split-screen when a game only offers this option or we think it might be more interesting. When we play over the Internet, our chat audio is recorded using Skype, not from the built-in voice features of the Xbox or PS3, which is why it tends to sound much better. When we record split-screen, we get together and use two microphones in the same room.
Our goal is to feature as many different games on our show as we can. As long as it has co-op, we're interested no matter how silly or old-school the game may be. However, we also realize that some games are more popular than others and as long as there is something new or interesting to be shown we will sometimes replay the same game several times. Feel free to always leave us feedback or comments and let us know what you enjoy us playing but also keep in mind that we don't want to only play the same game over and over.