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A comment on Ready Player Two – What the Multiplayer Web Can Learn from Video Games.

Re:Ready Player Two – What the Multiplayer Web Can Learn fro... by hgs3 on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @05:19PM (#37934918)
This is a pedantic comment, but the terminology is confusing. Games have "players" so their sync systems are called "multiplayer," but regular software has "users" so their sync-systems should be called "multiuser." The page reads strangely mixing the terms "user" with "multiplayer."
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Re:Ready Player Two – What the Multiplayer Web Can Learn fro... by nwenzel on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @05:36PM (#37935112)
Maybe. But user is like a consumer. So HN is multiuser, but seems weird to call HN multi-player. Live concurrent interactions feels like something more than multiuser. Just my 2-cents, but multiplayer as in multiple users acting and interacting is a good use of the term multiplayer.
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Re:Ready Player Two – What the Multiplayer Web Can Learn fro... by Slartie on Thursday October 19, 2023 @02:36PM (#37946741)
Let me guess: you are not regularly playing multiplayer computer games?

I totally feel hgs3's confusion when reading the discussion here or that website. I always confuse the use cases - "are they now talking about computer games, or are they talking about the broader scope of any kind of software in which multiple users can act concurrently within a shared environment?".

I think this confusion would be much less severe if I hadn't been an avid gamer for decades and thus had a very specific idea of the meaning of the term "multiplayer".

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Re:Ready Player Two – What the Multiplayer Web Can Learn fro... by mrkeen on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @05:50PM (#37935242)
Its logic is based on the logic that's been in "multiplayer games" for decades.

On the other hand all web software is "multiuser", which doesn't tell you anything.

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Re:Ready Player Two – What the Multiplayer Web Can Learn fro... by itjustisthough on Friday October 20, 2023 @07:50PM (#37962760)
That’s just the terminology these days. Multiplayer == “live” multi-user including visualizing what other users are doing at every moment.
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