STOP BUILDING BEAUTIFUL STATIC WORLDS (a rant from #LostLevels 2019)

STOPBUILDING.txt

STOP BUILDING BEAUTIFUL STATIC WORLDS

have you ever been in a nominally communal space
patrolled by corporate security guards
who'll yell at you if you dare to customize the space in any way
or do anything that isn't officially sanctioned by the company in charge of the space?

well I was thinking about shopping malls but ok

but no seriously
I think we've currently got a huge problem with third places in general
who here has heard of third places before?
basically they're sort of informal community meeting places separate from both the home and the workplace
and we have fewer and fewer of them, especially spaces that are open to all
and even fewer that the community is allowed to modify to suit its own needs!

third places are vital to community health
and they NEED TO BE OWNED BY THE COMMUNITY
otherwise they'll remain permanently inhumane, because people aren't free to use them in the ways they need to
and you'll get awful fragmentation all throughout your society

Facebook and twitter are trying to be third places
but they are the shopping malls of social media
you are not allowed to take action to customize or improve them at a structural level
they're owned by mega corporations that decide what you need FOR YOU, without ASKING YOU
and games have the potential to be an alternative to that!

so games - social games like minecraft and fortnite - are becoming our NEW DIGITAL THIRD PLACES 
they are the community gathering spaces for a whole generation of kids who are growing up online
and critically, these games work as third places in part because they enable players to change their environment!

right now the level of customization is more superficial than it could be
and the rules are still set from the top down by the corporations that own the game platforms
but imagine a digital social game where players can script simple behaviors in-game
can create their own mods in-game
where there's some sort of community governance structure in place for each server, so the inhabitants of that server can customize the space however they see fit
digital third places that are OWNED BY THE COMMUNITY
and that THE COMMUNITY IS ALLOWED TO IMPROVE

people are DESPERATE for communal spaces that they're actually allowed to improve
and as game designers, we're uniquely well equipped to give them these spaces, at least in the digital realm

we've done this before, with MUDs!
but no one talks about that anymore!
and the ideas are worth revisiting, maybe more so now than ever!

and so I implore you
STOP BUILDING BEAUTIFUL STATIC WORLDS
and start building CONSTRUCTION TOOLS FOR DIGITAL COMMUNITY GARDENS

thank you!