• Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    7 months ago

    Second Life, Ultima Online, VRchat, countless others. In UO people used to just hang out near the banks and talk to each other for hours as people came and went to deposit items or retrieve things. It was a very social experience, people would chill with their friends, roleplay, talk about life. All they really needed was cool clothes, ridable llamas, a neat environment, and an excuse.

    • Bloobish [comrade/them]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Halo 2 and especially Halo 3 multiplayer saw thousands of game styles spawned outside what the devs at Bungie initially thought (griffball anyone?), give the tools and a good gameplay loop to gamers and a community will likely spawn around it very easily. Compare that to the hollow shitfest of the "metaverse" trying to commodify everything (cuss tech capital is running out of monetization pathways) and it's really clear you can't just artificially astroturf a community that wouldn't naturally form.

    • Flyberius [comrade/them]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Star wars galaxies had a great mechanic where bard players would play music to heal accumulated damage of other players. As a result, cantinas became the place all players would gather and it became a real social experience. Also I think you healed faster if you were unencumbered by clothing, so a lot of people were neckid.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        7 months ago

        Yeah, that was really cool. I never played it but I heard it was really something before that NGE update.

    • lorty@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      7 months ago

      Yes, people did that because social media didn't exist. If you want to chat there are a million other platforms that are infinitely more popular than any in game chat.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        Yeah but they were fun and pro-social. There were/are no skinner box machinations, no mtx, no advertising, no attention economy.

        Any platforms you'd reccomend? I'm not familiar with anything like the old AOL IM chatrooms. It's just reddit, facebook, twitter, and various other hellsites.

        Is IRC still around? It must be. Hmm.