I always just assumed the people I was playing with were looking at my screen, so naturally, I looked at theirs. It's been so long since I've played split screen competitively. I can't even remember exactly when. Perfect Dark I think, so roughly 2 decades ago.

The first thing that came to mind as I read the topic. Here is a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxVOWW1ZHYs

Maybe.

The best time I ever had in a video game though was playing Mario Kart 64 split screen 4 players on a 20 inch CRT tv.

I know a guy who had the best time eating dirt, it’s not really any argument though.

Nah, it only makes the game more fun since the other person can't go camp somewhere. What's next, listening to the sounds of the other player is cheating? Duke Nukem 3D had very iconic sound effects when entering certain areas so you could have where someone else was in lan match.

When playing splitscreen the map is usually to big to randomly walk into each other. Without being able to see where the other is the match would be pretty boring.

Couch multiplayer = best multiplayer

It's usually cheating, but since it's so easy to do, it's easy to do even half-accidentally. As a result, it's not necessarily a great idea to design splitscreen multiplayer in a way where watching the other parts of the screen actually is cheating. In practice, that probably eliminates most cases of competitive multiplayer.

As someone who started with Goldeneye and continued with classic 4p splitscreens like mario kart, halo, call of duty 2 and mw2
I can say with passion that watching all the screens is also making you a better player, as it increases your situational awareness, info gathering, multitasking and timing

Edit seeing as its an even playing field

And neither is yours.

How so? I said a game which is compromised by me looking at the TV while playing it is badly designed. Sounds like a very valid argument to me, care to elaborate what you find wrong with it?