The Golden Age of Multiplayer

[ed. 39 million views. Wow. They stole my moves. Actually stumbled onto this while reading the following essay and was captivated by the animations. But also, it's beginning to dawn on me how many subcultures are out there - the scale - doing all kinds of unimaginable stuff (tens of thousands? hundreds?). For example, I posted something about cast iron seasoning below, and have personally watched the evolution of online guitar instruction over the last few years (and the personalities its produced), which has also exploded. Maybe this is just obvious stuff, but it seems incredible that so many people have coalesced into so many different communities over so short a time sharing their experience and expertise.]

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The Golden Age of Multiplayer: How Online Gaming Conquered Video Games (The Ringer):

Globally, there were more than 1 billion gamers playing online in 2022, emphasis on playing online. Gaming has its eras. We’re living in the golden age of online multiplayer.

This golden age began a few years ago. In May 2016, Blizzard Entertainment released Overwatch, a team-based hero shooter that pits players against each other in game modes like capture the flag. A year later, Epic Games released Fortnite Battle Royale, a cartoonish survival game in which up to 100 players duke it out to be the last person standing. Gamers suffered no shortage of online multiplayer titles in the late 2000s and throughout the 2010s, but these two titles, Overwatch and Fortnite, brought the subculture to critical mass.

In October, Blizzard launched a long-anticipated sequel, Overwatch 2, hosting more than 25 million players across all platforms in the game’s first 10 days online. Epic countered with a new “chapter” of Fortnite—a new map, new mechanics, new rules—available to more than 250 million active players across all platforms. (...) In August 2013, Square Enix released Final Fantasy XIV, the odd MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role-playing game, in a long-running and largely offline single-player series. A decade later, FFXIV hosts more than 27 million users total, with more than a million players on the servers on any given day. The biggest online multiplayer games often become subcultures unto themselves. (...)

In recent months, I’ve spoken with a variety of developers and players, and I’ve asked them to weigh in on a simple premise: Online multiplayer has become the dominant mode of video game culture. Most agreed; some wondered whether the multiplayer boom would eventually come at the expense of single-player game development at the major studios.

Gaming is more social than ever before, and gaming is extremely online. This shift was long- and hard-fought. It’s the story of exponential improvement in telecommunication infrastructure and matchmaking algorithms. But it’s also the story of a once-fractured subculture maturing, for better or worse, into an almost seamless monoculture.

by Justin Charity, The Ringer |  Read more:

Image: YouTube