Multiplayer Media | The Generalist

The pieces concerned what might be termed “multiplayer mode”—that is, a growing cultural trend for creators to work on projects in loose conjunction with one another rather than in the strict hierarchies of Fordist production facilities or in the isolating individualism of post-Fordist freelance life. Multiplayer mode, they argue, is more empowerin... See more

Many of our most interesting and impactful projects will be multiplayer. We'll work together to create art, make games, tell compelling stories, and build new technology. Many of these initiatives will be fundamentally "headless," or lacking a singular leader. Instead, emergent groups will arise to tackle different problems and earn more responsibi... See more

Despite the fact that humans are wired for collaboration, single-player is our default mode of operation. Single-player game mechanics are baked into our infrastructures and platforms; in Western cultures, they’re baked right into society itself — school, social life, you name it. Everything has been designed with the mechanistic worldview in mind;... See more

In a world where multiplayer mode is the norm, we transcend the traditional boundaries of collaboration, extending the concept far beyond gaming or professional teamwork to reshape the very fabric of society. Maybe then, they’ll start building statues of groups of people (and include our more-than-human co-conspirators, too)

The stories our culture tells about creativity almost always concern individuals: think Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Kanye West. These stories are tempting because they are simple, because they appeal to our veneration for individualism, because we love our heroes. We have very few models for storytelling that concern small groups of people, or ent... See more