When Multiplayer Went Mainstream

"Multiplayer media” represents the next frontier for creativity and collaboration. The greatest novel of the next century, the most immaculate film or game, will be architected by vast, opt-in networks. Rather than involving a few dozen contributors, thousands will participate, creating something closer to an artistic MMPORG rather than a humble gu... 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

R: I think in a very wide sense, web2 was mechanically very single player. Particularly in social and the way we think about online production. Web3 has put people in a very cooperative - multiplayer mindset. Even if it’s primarily language-based. DAO’s, NFT Collections, DeFi Pools, etc… that all takes far more than 1 to make it a reality. Tha... 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)

Pre-internet games were sold in stores and teams that had worked on it moved on. With the Internet came “connected games” that allowed ongoing updates. Latest trend: games adding many meta layers which are aimed to keep users engaged often with no real connection to the game itself (live concerts in games, a card collection or virtual pet layer whi... See more

This is hardly a profound observation. It has been clear for many years that the Internet made it possible for new communities to form, sometimes with astonishing speed. The problem, as Zeynep Tufekci explained in [Twitter and Tear Gas](https://www.twitterandteargas.org/), is that the ease of network formation made these communities more fragi... See more