A game that can be modified and repurposed outlives the uses it shipped with

The argument

A second argument offered for this position concerns what the game has become in other people's hands. Proponents note that it is open enough to be altered, extended and used for purposes nobody designed it for. Players write their own rules and content, run shared worlds with games of their own invention inside them, build working representations of real places and machines, and teach with it, using a world of units as a way to demonstrate something in three dimensions that is hard to show on a page. The argument is that this changes where the supply of reasons to play comes from. A conventional game offers what was made for it, and when that is exhausted the game is finished. Here a large share of what there is to do is produced by the people playing, continuously and without needing anyone's permission, so the available content grows rather than depletes. Proponents argue that this is why the game does not follow the usual pattern of a release, a peak and a decline, and why a player can return after years away to find things to do that did not exist when they left. Holders of the view add that the social structure built on top of this is itself a reason to stay. Shared worlds persist between sessions, so a player returns to something other people have changed in their absence; communities form around particular styles and particular servers; what one builder works out gets copied and improved by others. Proponents argue that a game used in this many ways accumulates a kind of infrastructure, and that leaving means leaving the infrastructure rather than merely stopping playing.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents argue that this describes the consequences of popularity rather than its cause. Player made content, servers and teaching uses arrive because a game already has a very large audience, so citing them to explain the audience reverses the order. They also note that many games are more open to modification and have attracted nothing comparable, which suggests openness is not what did the work. Others object that the infrastructure argument applies to any long running online game with persistent worlds and communities, and so fails to pick out what is distinctive about this one.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Player made content, servers and teaching uses arrive because a game already has a very large audience, so they are consequences of popularity rather than its cause. [Rejecting P2] Many games are more open to modification and have attracted nothing comparable, which suggests openness is not what did the work. [Rejecting P3] Persistent worlds and the communities around them are features of any long running online game, so they do not pick out what is distinctive about this one.