Multiplayer

  • The reference comes from gaming, where multi player technology was/is hard and different than #single player experiences title:: multiplayer
  • Has come to mean
  • Dec 4th, 2022 Mark Upton kicked this off in a #Tools for Thought Rocks thread on Mastodon: id:: 63b705ac-2245-46c8-a50f-6e70920e38e5

    • Question for the #ToolsForThought community:

      What is the origin/history/evolution of the term “multiplayer” in relation to TFT?

      …and has it stabilised around a consistent/shared meaning?

  • My answer:

      1. multiplayer notes == multiple people editing multiple documents over time (eg Notion, many hosted wikis, some sort of git process)

      2. collaborative editing == real time editing of one document by multiple people

      I think (1) is rare because the space is so fixated on Markdown and files on disk.

  • Gordon Brander‘s first post on the Subconscious Substack included it
    • ((63b708b2-da9e-4394-b134-339f40fd0b43))
  • Me on Mastodon:
    • So putting collaborative real time aside, multiplayer asynch needs:
    • a common user account layer
      • a sync protocol
      • some way of displaying changes / versions / edits / annotations by others, ideally labeled in such a way that you can tell who did them
      • permissions
      • notifications
    • I n a centralized server architecture this is easy — everyone has user accounts and all data is in the database and the app takes care of everything. aka “most SaaS apps today”