Split-Screen: Videogame History through Local Multiplayer Design

By looking at videogame production through a two-vector model of design—a practice determined by the interplay between economic and technological evolution—we argue that shared screen play, as both collaboration and competition, originally functioned as a desirable pattern in videogame design, but has since become problematic due to industry transformations. This is introduced as an example of what we call design vestigiality: momentary loss of a design pattern's contextual function due to techno-economical evolution.