Online Games


'Andreas Lange Andreas Lange

Ever since there have been computers, people have been playing with them, and ever since those computers have been linked up in networks, people have been playing online games. On one hand, networking has enabled digitally-supported play to get back to the very roots of gameplaying: after all, it’s been the advent of network games that has made it possible to play not only against the machine but also against human adversaries and alongside human teammates. What’s new, however, is that playing together is no longer tied to a specific locality. Instead, play goes on in a virtual game world that can feature any number of forms, skins and interfaces, which the players can customize pretty much at will.What had initially been restricted to purely textual worlds due to limited bandwidth and processing capacity and assumed a distinct form solely in players’ imaginations has subsequently developed into incredibly detailed and globally accessible game universes that thousands of processors are constantly generating anew.

Online games are in the process of morphing from the pastime of a few specialists to a part of everyday life that we take completely for granted. They have long since ceased being “just” games; rather, as communications platforms, they’ve developed in a wide variety of directions. Today, they serve as our virtual shopping malls in which customers can purchase real merchandise for real money, as well as our online singles bars. They are simultaneously workplace and playground, museum and pub, concert venue and conference room. How one behaves in them and the objectives one pursues are matters left up to the mentality of the individual user. They confront us with issues that are by no means exclusively germane to the virtual world, but rather assume increasing current relevance in a capitalist society in which the process of globalization is accelerating. These questions have to do with our personal identity and our self-image, with our understanding of society and the possibilities of participation in it, with the relationship between private property and common property and between the private and public spheres,with surveillance mechanisms and the possibilities of evading them, and with questions having to do with access to resources and information, and with equality of opportunity. All these issues are brought forth in online (gaming) platforms with unusually intense clarity—as if in a caricaturist’s distorted image—and they’ve occupied the focal point of discussions that have been going on in and about this domain. Let's take advantage of the opportunity that presents itself here and peer into this crystal ball.What’s at stake in this game is nothing less than our mutually amicable coexistence, whereby the virtual level will be increasingly difficult to distinguish from the “real” one.

Translated from German by Mel Greenwald

MILESTONES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF METAVERSES
Compiled by Andreas Lange