When Multiplayer Went Mainstream

Multiplayer mode may be democratizing in enabling user-generated finance, but it will only be empowering if it gives people the resource and access to good teams. Whether that can happen remains one of the most important questions of our current technological revolution.

Technology has gradually shifted from the material to the abstract—from physical goods to information. This, too, is democratizing in its way: we can’t all access or shape steel, but we can spout and relay facts and opinions. Just as significantly, it means that revolutions are increasingly mental, reshaping our relationship to space...

Each age finds ways to close the relative distances of time and space in bringing humans into closer contact, communication, and community—enabling not only new forms of collectivization but the growing power of consumers and fans in giving feedback to centralized collectors and creators. At the same time, we move into greater and greater isolation... See more

The fact that multiplayer mode today, however, has very little to do with leftism and has instead become something of a corporate standard for user-generated online universes in Roblox, TikTok, Twitter, Crypto, and Github, raises what’s perhaps a more interesting question. How has multiplayer mode changed and developed over time?

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