Friends vs the World: How Objectives Are Met in Groups of All Sizes.

Multiplayer gaming is full of complicated social dynamics that appear to depend on many factors. The objective of multiplayer games often relies on the collective objectives of the individuals involved, but the objective of these individuals changes drastically depending on their situation. For example, as I spoke about in class, if someone were to play a competitive multiplayer game with their friends in person, they would have the option to fully communicate their personal objectives to each other and would have the potential to easily coordinate their collective objectives for the game. The friends would have the option to cooperate with the goals of the game or they would have the option to do whatever they want and potentially be punished in the game by their friends or be told they are not allowed to play unless they cooperate with everyone involved. This ability to control the situation and the outcome of the game makes sense in the context of such a small group that is made up of friends who have a personal connection with each other and would in theory be able to convince each other to cooperate.

How is this cooperation still able to occur even when there is a large group of strangers who have the potential to have any number of goals within a collective game? In the example of “Twitch Plays Pokémon,” there is a singular game being played by multiple people who all have to potential to have equal involvement in the game if they all choose to continuously contribute to the choices made within the game. If the collective goal of the game becomes to complete the game, then the people who wish to “sabotage“ this goal have equal ability to contribute movements to the game that lead them to the completion of their own goal as those who make contributions to the overall goal of the game. This makes it all the more remarkable that people would be able to come to a consensus at all as to what should be the outcome of the game. This is similar to the idea of youtubers asking their viewers to do inconsequential things such as matching the likes and comments on their videos. In cases like this and those who played Pokemon on twitch, it actually becomes significantly more beneficial to have an overwhelming amount of players so that whatever becomes the most popular objective is able to compensate for and outweigh the rest of the players who wish the have an alternative outcome.

It is somewhat counterintuitive that it is often more simple to allow large groups of people to make decisions and achieve goals compared to small groups of people, but this is comparable to the idea of mob mentality in that ideas are able to spread much faster within a game when there are massive numbers of players since they know a majority will have to form if there is to be any progress made within the game, and this majority is usually quick to form and evolve. When there are fewer players, a person knows they only have to compete with a few people in order to have their objectives dominate the goals of the game, so they are more likely to be combative and try to find a way to maintain individual control within the game.