Key Principle
People play together for five core reasons: competition, collaboration, meeting up, exploring friends, and exploring themselves. Games are social instruments — they provide balanced challenge through human opponents, enable group problem-solving, offer low-pressure excuses to be together, and reveal character under pressure. "You can learn more about a man in an hour of play than a year of conversation." (Attributed to Plato, Ch. 24)
Communities extend game lifespan through what Will Wright calls the "period of contagion" — the time window when a player is so excited they constantly talk about the game. When this period doubles, the number of people who buy the game can increase tenfold (Ch. 25). Players start for the game but stay for the community.
Every community has three player tiers: newbies (learning IS the game), players (immersed in mastery), and elders (game exhausted, needing meta-games like governance, content creation, and teaching). Designing for all three tiers simultaneously is the central challenge.
Why This Matters
Single-player dominance was a temporary technological anomaly, not a human preference. Multiplayer is the historical and biological default. Yet multiplayer games cost roughly four times their single-player equivalents due to debugging and balancing complexity (Ch. 24). This asymmetry means designers must extract maximum social value from every feature — making community design a high-leverage concern, not an afterthought.
Games without community have a fixed excitement half-life. Players burn through content, stop talking about it, and viral spread dies (Ch. 25). Community membership extends the contagion period, turning players into evangelists. The economic and design case for community investment is therefore not about retention alone — it is about exponential reach.
Good Examples
- Toontown Online healing system: Players could only heal others, never themselves, forcing communication and mutual aid. Solo-completable multiplayer games diminish community value. Forced interdependence made cooperation the core loop rather than an optional layer (Ch. 25).
- Easter egg hunt age tiers: Ages 2-5 hunt easy eggs, 6-9 hunt hidden eggs, 10-13 hide the eggs and feel honored by the responsibility. This elegantly illustrates newbie/player/elder design — elders get a meta-game (hiding) rather than a harder version of the same game (Ch. 25).
- Obscenity filtering for griefers: Show the griefer their own obscenity but filter it for others. Without feedback that the filter triggered, the griefing game becomes boring. This removes the reward loop rather than policing behavior after the fact (Ch. 25).
Counterpoints
- Perception of cheating is worse than cheating itself: The worst effect of cheating is not unfair outcomes — it is that honest players stop playing because they assume they cannot win fairly. Designing visible fairness matters more than designing actual fairness (Ch. 24).
- Banning griefers escalates conflict: Griefers see themselves as higher status because they can spoil what others care about. Punitive responses validate that status. The design solution is to make griefing boring, not to police it — remove the reward loop and the behavior extinguishes (Ch. 25).
- Solo-completable multiplayer undermines community: If every activity can be done alone, players have no structural reason to cooperate. Community value diminishes when interdependence is optional rather than designed-in (Ch. 25).
Key Quotes
"You can learn more about a man in an hour of play than a year of conversation." — Attributed to Plato, Chapter 24
"Players start for the game, stay for the community." — Jesse Schell, Chapter 25 (paraphrased from core principle)
When the period of contagion "doubles, the number of people who buy the game can increase tenfold." — Jesse Schell, Chapter 25
Rules of Thumb
- Design for forced interdependence — if players can do everything alone, community is cosmetic
- Support all three community tiers: give newbies mentors, players mastery loops, and elders governance and creation tools
- When experienced players leave for lack of elder content, newbies lose mentors and the community collapses
- Make griefing boring rather than punished; remove the feedback loop that rewards antisocial behavior
- Architecture shapes community: design spaces where the same people encounter each other repeatedly
- Shared property (ships, guild halls, territory) forces cooperation and communication
- Obligation is social glue: promises, favors, and gifting bind people more than shared fun alone
- Address the perception of cheating, not just actual cheating — if players suspect it is possible, honest players leave
- Multiplayer costs roughly 4x single-player; extract maximum social value from every feature
- The four elements of community (McMillan & Chavis): membership identity, influence over something, fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection
- Community property and gifting mechanics create obligation loops that drive retention and viral spread
- Competition is uniquely efficient: it simultaneously provides balanced challenge, worthy opponents, interesting problems, relative skill assessment, and complex strategy
- Single-player dominance was a historical anomaly; design with the assumption that social play is the default
Related References
- Worlds, Characters, and Spaces - Worlds host communities
- Game Balance and Economy - Economy drives community dynamics