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I have what I think is a unique perspective on this. Private small self run social media already exists. It's personal Minecraft servers. When I was younger I
by hemloc_io 5y ago
I have what I think is a unique perspective on this.
Private small self run social media already exists. It's personal Minecraft servers.
When I was younger I ran a Minecraft server out of my toaster of a PC. Friends hopped on, made their own little houses, built stuff and talked. Friends would pass in and out and in order to get in you had to be invited! I'd say max there were 10-20 people on there somewhat consistently.
It was great, and better than social media or even game for hanging out with your friends IMO because it emulated synchronous human interaction instead of just setting up feeds where everything has to be "perfect".
It was easy enough for a 14 year old to setup, and administer. Mods made it hackable and fun.
I guess the metaverse was already a thing back then huh?
- mitchdoogle 5y agoI can't help but think that kids today are doing something like this in their own way. And that the real thing people miss when they wax nostalgic is youth.
- michaelbrave 5y agoI see kids today doing this a lot with "Among Us", Fortnite and Minecraft still. Among us basically functions like a chat room but you can control who enters, password protect it, set rules for the game etc
- EamonnMR 5y agoI wonder if minecraft's sticking to private servers as the first class multiplayer helped keep it relevant.
- countvonbalzac 5y agoi did the same thing, minecraft servers were an amazing social experience for kids
- hemloc_io 5y ago100% and it got me into tech too :) Learn a lot with spare time on your hands and wanting to build something for your friends!
- shepherdjerred 5y ago+1, I never would be where I am today if it weren’t for running a Minecraft server.
- moooo99 5y agoMe too! If it wasn’t for Minecraft I probably wouldn’t be where I am now. Pretty much the first time I wrote code was because I wanted to build a Minecraft mod. It was (unsurprisingly) absolutely horrible, but it was the start of a long learning journey.
- kome 5y agoi feel old... wasn't minecraft released like yesterday? like in 2012? how can you be an adult person now?
- drorco 5y agoThis has been like that with many multiplayer games to some extent before the age of matchmaking. Someone sets up a dedicated server with certain mods/game configuration, and that would be yours and other randoms favorite server. Over time, you'd actually become a community. I've gone back to play Unreal Tournament 2004 this past year in such dedicated servers, and it made me realize how badly matchmaking ruined the sense of community in MP games.
- danieldevries 5y agoSurely you meant UT99... ;-) A sprawling list of servers to join. Ahhh the memories. headshots jumping off the upper area of deck16. Console gaming and auto joining servers like in CoD. Bleh. Zero sense of community. Before we all met on IRC quakenet in random clan channels.
- thegeekpirate 5y agoSpeaking of UT99... it's still getting patches https://github.com/OldUnreal/UnrealTournamentPatches https://github.com/OldUnreal/UnrealTournamentPatches > OldUnreal took over maintenance of the Unreal Tournament code base after reaching an agreement with Epic Games in 2019.
- danieldevries 5y agoThank you for the heads up!
- brnt 5y agoPerhaps it isn't surprising that when interaction is designed to be disposable and replaceable, i.e. matchmaking, no real community can form.
- dustymcp 5y agoThis is what killed wow classic when dungeon signup was introduced
- INTPenis 5y agoYes games have been a social forum for over 2 decades. But they're not federated like ActivityPub nodes are.
- indigochill 5y agoIMO this is what a metaverse should be: just a federated game. Actually, Open Simulator (an open source implementation of Second Life's protocol) is kind of already that, although one might debate whether it's a game and the tech is pretty dated by this point.
- mocheeze 5y agoDid the same thing in a Minecraft predecessor called Blockland. Even ran a big mod pack that was all about social stuff like having IRC inside the game client. And what you say about invite-only is totally true. I used to run a fansite about an Xbox game that was still "unannounced" and the community was very non-toxic because I started a private forum on the IGN message boards where it was only full of people that mentioned the game elsewhere. What a time!
- Zababa 5y agoSame thing for me, Minecraft servers were part of my "social media usage" when I was younger. I like how they offered different degrees of interactions. You have basic chat and private messages, but you can also go on Skype/Mumble/etc and talk to people. These days I kind of have the same thing with a private Discord server (5 people including me) and Twitter. My Twitter account is private, most of my friends (~10 people) are also in private. I can have a window on the "outside world" by following stuff from the outside, but interactions are limited to me and my friends. We usually set up a new Minecraft server every year and play a lot for a month or two (most of us are still students), and having a 3D world that we can modify at will is always very special. I've thought a lot about what the future could look like for us. I have this idea of a "3D coworking space", though for now frequent Discord calls and Twitter interactions are enough. I do miss the feeling of building something together and living in a (virtual) space together. Just like it's easier to remember things with a mental palace, it's easier to remember the memories we made together while visiting our Minecraft servers.
- snakeboy 5y agoI've heard some positive reviews about gather.town[0] for virtual co-working, though I've never used it. The demos look cool though. It lacks the creative element of Minecraft though. I'm not sure to what extend the worlds are customizable. Curious if anyone has used it and has an opinion. I've tried FocusMate, though that is along the "match-making" model, and I didn't get much out of a random pairing for 1 hour at a time. [0] https://www.gather.town/ https://www.gather.town/
- Zababa 5y agoFor me the real lack of gather.town is not the creative element but 3D. I have great immersion in 3D spaces, but really poor immersion in 2D spaces. From what I see and from my point of view, it's a very small improvement over a Discord server with multiple vocal channels.
- endisneigh 5y agoYou can’t even send photos with Minecraft though. It’s certainly a social experience but in no way comparable to say, Facebook or instagram like Friendcamp in the article
- jeffparsons 5y agoThat sounds like a feature to me. If I was hanging out with a friend in person and they kept showing me pictures of other stuff in their life I'd get bored pretty quickly. If I'm hanging out with someone, I want to be talking with them and doing stuff with them, not getting a slideshow of their most glamorous recent moments. Each to their own, I guess, but I find the normal mode of interaction on "social media" (including all that photo sharing and commentary) to be super weird and undesirable.
- nextlevelwizard 5y agoPeople don't really "hang out with their friends" on social media. If you don't realize interactions with people are different when you are: face to face, in same VoIP call playing same game, playing same game with text only, in same VoIP but not actively doing same thing, and on a website like Facebook or Twitter there really is nothing to even start conversation on. Yes, of course, if I play Minecraft with someone there usually no photos shared, but we probably are on Discord for VoIP and use the screen sharing function if we want to show something.
- pawelmurias 5y agoShowing pictures of stuff we talk can be pretty interesting. Having friends show me a video of how the procedurally animated spider created walks, some crazy place they visited or how the new girl they are dating looks like isn't boring.
- kortilla 5y agoNext you’ll tell me you can’t look at ads!
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoIt depends what you're looking for. If it's a relationship, you probably will do better looking for another medium, but for pure fun, it's a perfect setup.
- orangepanda 5y agoHow meta
- danaris 5y agoWith no sarcasm or irony whatsoever, this is a fantastic way to stay connected with people—if you can be online at the same time as them regularly and they all actually want to play Minecraft. The advantages you get with a more traditional-style private social media site are accessibility and asynchrony.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoI had that experience as well but with Tibia instead of Minecraft. It was essentially IRC with an embedded MMORPG. Everyone I knew played it. We'd gather somewhere to train our characters and chat. Good times. At some point I started hosting Open Tibia servers for my friends, even opened it up for strangers later. Lots of fun and was my first programming experience with C++ and Lua.
- gurleen_s 5y agoThis used to be the case with TeamSpeak/Mumble too back in the day. Some of my favorite memories as a teenager was setting up Teamspeak servers on a Linode box and setting up everything. I’m glad Discord is making that easier for kids today.
- iriri8 5y agoYeah they don’t want you to realize that it can all be done locally much more easily now Wireguard or similar simple VPNs would make file sharing 1:contacts makes everything easier now. Kubernetes + Kilo obsoletes cloud DCs. But you won’t get to participate in agency manipulating big business that way.
- donmcronald 5y ago> can all be done locally much more easily now > Kubernetes + Kilo How is maintaining an app on top of a Kubernetes cluster easier than setting up a Minecraft server on an old PC back in the day? Who pays for that and maintains it?
- jrm4 5y agoYup. A bigger point on "small social networks" that it's taken years for me to learn; I've always dabbled in the idea of social networking as its grown up, hacking together a little thing that looked like twitter before twitter for my friends, etc. Here's the thing that may save you if you're trying to pull one of these together: You can't do it without something else. Meaning, the idea of a "local" Twitter/Facebook killer is great but (if you're me) no one will see the value and you won't be able to onboard ANYONE without some sort of "social carrot" separate and apart from the mere idea of "hey, new social network." (This is one of those ideas that nerds like me just have trouble digesting, so hopefully it helps someone get through this. I've tried and failed this many times over. Will probably do it again :) )
- SavantIdiot 5y agoYes, but look at the audience. My elderly parents and inlaws and cousins aren't going to play minecraft. I want to give them a Facebook clone that isn't a Facebook spyware product.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI don't think minecraft has enough features to replace the likes of instagram or facebook. Most people aren't gamers.
- taneq 5y agoFunnily enough I've just recently set up a minetest server and it's been quite an interesting learning experience. Heartily recommended. :)
- jeanncoln 5y agoI agree that many gamers expect Metaverse world, but I didn't expect it would happen this fast.