This one’s for Karl.

Not a lot of cooperate games feel cooperative to me.

We all win or lose together, sure; we are cooperating in the strictest sense. But if there's a sense of camaraderie, it's typically due to the fact that I'm playing with friends I've known for 20 years and not a direct result of the mechanics or setting of the game itself. It's rare that I would feel compelled to high five a stranger after a success, and rarer still I would make bad tactical or strategic decisions with no inherent mechanical benefit just out of a sense of camaraderie. I don't know, maybe I'm just a curmudgeon.

But when I play Deep Rock Galactic, even with total strangers and without voice chat, I feel like I'm playing with friends. Or at least coworkers. And I will absolutely risk my life, and mission failure, in the name of never leaving a dwarf behind.

DRG uses its mechanics and setting to create and enhance a sense of camaraderie in the player, which creates a game where players truly cooperate. Not just because they have to (though they do), and not because they are rewarded for it (though they are), but because it feels like the right thing to do.

And since Elden Ring has a patch downloading, let's dig deeper.

First up, your employer.

You all play as fantasy dwarves in a sci-fi setting. You work for Deep Rock Galactic, a company that has set up a mining operation on the planet Hoxxes. You're housed in a space station ("the rig") that orbits Hoxxes, and each mission sees you and your team drop down to the planet's surface, complete an objective, maybe complete a secondary objective, and hoof it back to the rig.

Missions vary. You mine minerals, secure a precious stone, collect fossils, disrupt an enemy mining faction, even gather up a few alien eggs.

You don't see a lick of it.

You're paid your measly salary for the "job well done," rest up in your bunk, and do it all again the next day. You don't sell the minerals, you don't get to keep the Heartstone, you're actually told "don't ask" what the eggs are for.

DRG is an on-the-nose satire of the worst of blue-collar industrial work. The company is awful. Hoxxes is a beautiful world being hollowed out by greed. DRG installs massive networks of pumps and lines to extract liquid morkite, but then only blast off the storage container and leave the rest behind. They construct robot-tank-drills that are dropped on the planet, drill a massive tunnel to their target, suffer through an attack while cracking the shell of a Heartstone, and then explode in the process, leaving the entire machine inoperable and left behind; the prized pearl safety blasted home.

Hell, the doors to the escape craft are programmed to not open until the mission's bounty is safely secured on board. When you go in to salvage the remains from the previous shift's failed crew, it's the minecarts full of minerals and the expensive dropship you're repairing and returning; the fate of your coworkers is...not profitable.

But you don't have time worry about any of that shit. You're just here to make a paycheck, score some gold, have a beer, and maybe go out in a blaze of glory killing some bugs. ROCK AND STONE!

In this setting, the other players are coworkers; instantly bonded over the common enemy of "management." Management, that adorns your work space with motivational posters, scolds you for messing with office equipment, heartlessly praises your contributions to the company. It's played for laughs, and the game is obviously fun to play, but the job you're doing sucks, and you all know it, and you're all in it together. It's a simple but perfect conceit - easily understood and empathized with by all but the sliver-spooniest among us - that quickly bonds players beyond having simply been matchmade.

Second up, your tools.

There are four classes in DRG, each with access to a mutually exclusive set of weapons, grenades, abilities, and movement tricks. Each kills bugs in different ways.

But I'd argue the main antagonist is Hoxxes itself. Sheer cliffs, massive caverns, cramped tunnels, rain and snow and lava. Each class can overcome the varied terrain in its own way, often making the obstacles easier for the whole team. You can do everything you ever need to by yourself, but every mission there's a point where you look at something you want to get to and say "damn, if we only had a __________." And resign to inefficiently hacking away at a rock by hand.

So the classes just sort of naturally work together and make everyone's life easier. And it's not special combos or anything each player has to know, it's just that the most obvious way you would play a class also happens to benefit everyone else.

In games like Left 4 Dead there are often "cooperative" moments, where one player is pinned or damaged helplessly until another player does a thing to free them (DRG has these, too). These are fun, but forced. In Deep Rock, you cooperate because it's legitimately harder not to.

So the coworkers on your team are actually helping, even accidentally. And you appreciate that help because you couldn't have done it remotely as easily on your own. You feel like a real team, even if it's just a bunch of dolts running around randomly and hacking at stones.

Next up, your happy hour.

I have a lot of gripes with the design of the buffs in DRG, but how they are delivered to the player is unquestionably great.

While toiling in the mines, you often happen upon various plants you can grab and bring home. You can hand these over to the bartender and buy a round of dwarven ale for the whole team. These will do anything from buff your health to reducing fall damage to making pickaxe attacks more powerful.

And this is really just another part of how the setting manifests in the mechanics, but it means you drop into a game with fellow coworkers you have some common ground with, someone orders a round of beers you all chug, and you race to the drop ship because the first dwarf in the door will literally yell "FIRST!" for all players to hear.

And it's brilliant that the cost of beer doesn't change, but you always buy a full round. These are your coworkers, and you're all about to go risk life and limb for management. Chin up, I'll get this round. Cheers! FOR KARL!

Last up, your company... chat... system (this metaphor has gotten completely out of hand).

There is a communication system built in the game, relying on a pointer and marker, context-sensitive callouts, and an "all-purpose" button that has your dwarf holler out one of many variations of "ROCK AND STONE!"

The design of this phrase is clever.

It's not really positive or negative. It's a salute. An acknowledgement of the other dwarves and of our brotherhood. Of the fact that we all know this is a shit gig but damn do we love digging and drinking and killing bugs. Dance until you pass out, wake up with your ass hanging out of a medical gown, then armor-up, get planet-side, crush some bugs, and maybe even find a bittergem.

But it's also vague, and the phrases are chosen at random. They can kind of mean anything.

I fall into a hole and go down during a fight, but the Gunner drops a shield on me to push the bugs off, revives me, and launches a zip line that can carry both of us up to the escape pod.

Me: "Rock and stone, brother!"

Gunner: "ROCK....AND.....STONE!"

Me: "Rock solid!"

That conversation could mean a million things, but they're all fantastic.

But it can't easily be used ironically. And since it's a motto, a salute, it's always affirming and so it's hard to use negatively. If your teammate survives it means "Well fought!" and if they go down it means "I got you, buddy!"

At worst someone using it as they revive you will randomly sigh a "By the beard!" which comes off as more of an eyeroll and a "Get off yer lazy arse and ROCK AND ROLL AND STONE, BROHTA!"

Just because you put a positive phrase in your game doesn't mean all the communication is positive, as anyone can attest to who has watched the ball whizz past their Rocket League car and into the goal while their teammates drive around honking "Great save! Great save! Great save! Great save!"

And if you think I'm overplaying the effect of this salute:

I’ll be bold and make the claim that “Rock and Stone” plays a big part in how we’ve succeeded in making a game that has generated one of the best, friendliest, and most non-toxic communities for any multiplayer game in our experience.

- Mikkel Martin Pedersen, Game Director, Deep Rock Galactic

It's little things, but it adds up. And when my dwarf hollers "Never leave a dwarf behind!" I believe him.

Remember those robot-tank-drills that sacrifice themselves for the dwarves to bring home one Ommoran Heartstone? Well, her name is Dotty.

Hi Dotty!

And she's with you that whole trip. She goes through hell to get to that Heartstone, and she drills and suffers through an onslaught of bugs, giant boulders, and laser beams. All to fall apart once the inner layers are breached.

But every time, her head blows off intact. Her eyes are still lit up, and she beeps and boops when you pick her up. She seems fine, just needs a new set of wheels and a fresh coat of paint. The escape pod drops a couple clicks away, and even though you can't run or shoot or use any abilities or grenades while holding Dotty, we damn sure get her out every time. Even though there is zero mechanical reward or benefit for doing so.

Management thinks of Dotty the same way they think of us: reliable, but expendable. Here to do the work, crush some bugs, a dig a big-ass hole in the ground. She's not even a real player, but by the beard, she's one of us. And you never leave a dwarf behind.