(Dis)Connected: The Joys of Asynchronous Play in Multiplayer Games
When you think of a multiplayer game, what do you think of? If the words painted a picture, what would that picture look like? I think there are a plethora of pictures that fit the bill. Two fantasy warriors fighting a dragon together. A bunch of people with weapons beating the shit out of each-other. People building and surviving together.
What do all of these pictures share? What makes each of them an accurate depiction of a multiplayer game? For the purposes of this video, I will draw focus to two key aspects of a multiplayer game:
- Each scenario involves multiple individual players. In order for a game to be multiplayer, we could say that it must allow for a minimum of n players, where n >= 2.
- Each scenario involves multiple people in a single game world. Whether fighting a dragon, building a house, or shooting each other with guns, the players in all of the examples I listed are in the same ‘world.’ Insofar as we can think of video games as ‘worlds,’ we can also extrapolate that when we play a game, some portion of ourselves, even if you think it is just our attention span, is inhabiting that game world as well.
So, you could say that in each of our previous examples, multiple people, at least two, inhabit a distinct ‘game world.’ That’s a multiplayer game for you.
But there is another unique aspect present in all of all of the examples I have described. Beyond at least two people inhabiting a distinct ‘game world,’ each example involves something called synchronous play. Synchronous is an adjective used to describe events “happening, existing, or arising at precisely the same time” (Merriam Webster online dictionary).
Synchronous play, then, in the context of multiplayer, is play (between players) that happens, exists, or arises at precisely the same time. In a shooter game, the teams play against each-other in real time. In a building game, the players build in real-time. You get the idea.
Synchronous play is the predominant form of multiplayer found out in the wilds of video game development. Not without good reason, either — synchronous play is the most similar to physical games and sports, when you think about it.
I would not hesitate to say that the synchronous aspect of play greatly contributes to the ‘gravitas’ of physical sporting events. This effect hardly needs explaining, as we experience synchronous existence every day.
Synchronicity describes an important element of an event that specifically relates to time. Whatever philosophical predilections one holds on the nature of time, we generally operate under the assumption that it is ‘real,’ insofar as it enables us to establish a narrative existence. To keep it within the bounds of this topic, when we describe synchronous play, we are describing one type of relationship between players over time.
Now, let’s form a dichotomy between synchronous play, and that which is not synchronous play. Let’s call this type of play, oh, I don’t know, how about: asynchronous play. Let’s describe asynchronous play as the contrapositive of synchronous play. Simply, Synchronous play is play that arises or occurs at precisely the same time. Asynchronous play is play that does not arise or occur at precisely the same time.
While I have just created a divide or dichotomy between synchronous and asynchronous play, it should be noted that a game can display aspects of both types of play. Let’s take Minecraft, for example. Let’s say that Alice and Bob are both on the same minecraft server at the same time. They are building a base together and collecting materials. Alice and Bob are engaged in simultaneous play.
Now, let’s say that Bob logs off of the minecraft server, because it is past his bedtime. Alice has no bedtime (airhorns), so she continues playing. By the time Alice logs off, she has built a new addition to the base she and Bob worked on earlier. She also leaves materials for Bob in a chest. When Bob logs back on again, he is alone on the Minecraft server.
Despite being alone, he finds new additions to the base since the last time he came on, and finds the materials Alice left. This is an example of asynchronous play between Alice and Bob. Despite occupying the same multiplayer world as one another, Alice and Bob have now done so at different times. They are temporally askew from one another, and only the ‘physical’ digital trail gives indication of their interaction with one another. Yet, that interaction is still quite real.
Whether asynchronous play is the sole form of multiplayer in a video game, or if it is mutually extant with synchronous play, it is a unique phenomenon. It is two or more people writing letters to one another, except in the form of play.
For that reason, I want to turn to a few games with asynchronous modes of multiplayer play. By analyzing a few asynchronous multiplayer games, I hope to provide you with an idea of the unique gameplay opportunities provided by asynchronous play.
Message systems are an obvious gameplay opportunity for asynchronous multiplayer. A messaging system is a term I use generally: in the case of Minecraft, we see messages placed through the use of signs. In a roleplay server I used to go on, these were used for town message boards. This use-case is intuitive, as it is how message boards in the physical world work as well. Message boards deliver a message from author to recipient across time, asynchronously.
In the Splatoon series, players can write and draw their own messages, which will be displayed in the plaza. This form of communication builds culture and community within and amongst the game’s players. That being said, Splatoon’s messaging system is by no means its focal point. As a gameplay element, it almost exists as an ‘aside’ to the real gameplay of ink and shooting things that Splatoon defines itself by.
What if a game explored messaging as its core concept? Enter Kind Words, a 2019 video game by the indie company Popcannibal. Kind Words is a game entirely about writing letters. You can send out letters requesting others write back to you, you can answer other folks’ requests for letters, or you can send out paper-airplanes, if you just want to get your words out there.
The game is unabashedly asynchronous. The game is also unabashedly positive in theme. This is due, in no small part, to the developers’ passion and moderation. The game understands the implicit responsibility of brandishing itself as a messaging service. Internet chat-rooms, certain social media websites, and WoW Barrens chat circa 2008 (check on this? What year again?) all prove that, left unmoderated, a messaging service on the Internet can take a nosedive into toxicity.
I actually asked the community of the game about the game itself! What makes the game special, why do people continue to spend time with Kind Words? I got results the very same day, in-fact in the very same hour as I posted my request for letters. You can see once such response below.
I find them heartwarming and illustrative of the community feeling the game fosters. This game has created a community, and the devs know it too! They’ve continued to update the game all these years, and even continued to moderate it, despite being such a small team. Their dedication to fostering a digital world of kindness is a pinnacle to what games can be, beyond combat and competition.
Let’s try to push all of that heartwarming material aside, now, and talk about a developer who uses asynchronous gameplay to create experiences almost diametrically opposed to that of Kind Words’s experiences: Fromsoftware.
It is cliche to talk about Fromsoftware’s game design, and for good reason. Fromsoftware engages in game design with passion, and they craft holistic, well-thought out games.
The Fromsoftware style of multiplayer is unique, both synchronously and asynchronously. However, I won’t be covering the nature of cooperators and invaders (the synchronous play) in this video. Instead, I want to focus on the messaging system and the present in most Fromsoftware games.
First, the messaging system. The messaging system in Fromsoftware games is iconic. Fromsoftware presents players with a curated selection of words and clauses to comprise messages. Players can then combine clauses using conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs to communicate ideas. It sounds like I am just describing language, but Fromsoftware’s method is really special.
First off, as the messaging systems’ available diction is curated for the game itself, the messaging system can be used to describe actual entities within the game. The most famous, or perhaps, infamous, of these entities is the illusory wall.
u/PIPhilosopher on Reddit.
For all intents and purposes, the Fromsoftware messaging system allows players to indicate to other players where these dastardly illusory walls are. At the same time, players might just choose to write “illusory wall ahead” at every single wall they see. Fromsoftware allows players to react to these asynchronous messages, but upvotes are sometimes malicious in and of themselves. You may see a sign that says “try jumping” at the edge of what seems to be an endless cliff. But… the message has 1000 appraisals! Do you take the chance?
In most games, you might say “no way,” but Fromsoftware games actually include bizarre circumstances such as invisible pathways. The messaging system is a crucial aspect of Fromsoftware’s multifaceted, bizarre adventures. Fromsoftware worlds constantly challenge dichotomies, and the idea that anything is solely good or evil, or this, and not that. Similarly, other players’ messages can be either a boon or a bane.
Fromsoftware’s messaging system also enables players to establish asynchronous rapport. I use rapport to mean, non tactical communication. Just banter. In Dark Souls 2, a plethora of skeletons appear throughout the player’s journey. It is my experience that it was common for players to leave messages, such as “don’t give up, skeleton” next to these skeletons.
Sometimes, this banter is a comment on the sublimity of the games. I can’t tell you how many times I saw the message “O, Elden Ring” while gazing at amazing sights in Elden Ring. Sometimes, you just want to let somebody know that that thing is a stone astrolabe.
Whatever the case may be, this asynchronous rapport builds community inside and outside the game, similarly to the Splatoon series. In the case of Elden Ring, however, messages can be tied directly to gameplay elements as well, making messages feel like a back-and-forth not just between players, but also between players and the developers.
You might be noticing a trend. Asynchronous play isn’t always a messaging system, but it almost always plays with notions of communication at the very least. In Kind Words, people communicate to alleviate the pains of the day-to-day. In Fromsoftware games, people communicate for… many reasons. To help, to hinder, to meme, whatever.
Death Stranding takes asynchronous play to another level. In Death Stranding, a messaging system exists, but in nowhere the same form as Fromsoftware’s messaging system. Death Stranding’s messages are actual signs. These can range from signs displaying information about the terrain, signs that give a heads’ up to the presence of enemies, or signs meant to encourage the player. As an interesting note, these “encouragement” signs tend to boost the protagonist’s stamina a little bit.
Death Stranding’s use of literal signs is on-point for the game’s theming and gameplay. In Death Stranding, you play as Sam, a courier who delivers packages across a post-apocalyptic, allegorical United States. The game is heavily invested in themes of physicality and traversal of natural environments.
While human enemies exist in the game, the environment is Sam’s most consistent and belligerent foe. Terrain hazards are the first method by which the environment ‘attacks’ Sam. Water can quickly sweep him away. A misstep on a mountain can send him tumbling.
But it isn’t only terrain that Sam has to deal with. Rain doesn’t really exist in Death Stranding. It is replaced by timefall. Timefall is like rain, except it ages everything it touches. As Sam is a delivery man, this is most dangerous for him. Staying out too long means degradation of precious goods.
Snow is also a threat to Sam, as it incurs the dangers of both terrain and timefall. It makes Sam’s movement slower and more laborious, and it also ages his packages worse, because the snow sticks to the containers more so than rain does.
To make matters worse for Sam, his inventory is worn on his person. The more packages he carries, the more dangerous his adventure becomes. Sam can place packages on his back and pile them up high, he can place packages on his arms and legs, and he can hold packages in his hands.
Each location has upsides and downsides, and most importantly affects his center of gravity, and his inertia. As Sam’s center of gravity moves upwards and to the sides, his traversal becomes lopsided. Sam also gains inertia, or resistance to acceleration, because inertia is a property of matter, of which Sam has a lot of at most times.
Planning a trip and selecting the right gear is half of the battle in Death Stranding. The game features a map system wherein you can create multiple subpoints.
This is where the game creates difficulty. In most missions, the only objective is to get the packages to their destination, and you are graded on the damage they sustain. However, some missions add timers. This modifies the gameplay loop. Rather than creating a safe path, you want to take risks, but not too many.
Timefall sections of the journey also essentially serve to force a timer upon you, as your packages face direct risk from the oncoming spooky rain. These sections also serve to hold the game’s primary occult enemy, BTs.
BTs are sort of ghosts that have merged with the ‘real’ world. If Sam gets too close or makes too much noise, he risks alerting them, which in almost every case, leads to a situation where Sam’s packages are going to become damaged, or worse, destroyed.
Death Stranding’s world is hell. It’s hell for Sam — which is where the challenge arises for the player. While the player as a solo individual can do a lot to aid Sam’s journey, such as packing essential gear like ladders and rappel lines, Sam is at his best when others are helping him out.
Signs are not the only way that others (others, as in, other players, other Sam’s) can help Sam out. No, in Death Stranding, players can build actual structures. Some of these structures are just the makeshift ones you deploy across your journey. Stuff like ladders and rappel lines have chances to show up in other players’ worlds. You may find a ladder handily draped across a stream, meaning you never have to place one yourself.
Other structures take a lot more deliberation and preparation. The simplest, but perhaps most useful structure you can build, is a bridge.
Bridges do exactly what they do in the real world. They let you go over things. Other structures, such as the timefall shelter, allow Sam to take a break in rainy areas, and the little umbrella-bases even deploy a vapor that restores the condition of the exterior of Sam’s packages.
These structures are the epitome of asynchronous gameplay in Death Stranding, and perhaps one of the best uses of asynchronous multiplayer in any video game. When you encounter another player’s structure in Death Stranding, you can give it likes. The higher your player level, the more likes you can give to a structure in the first place.
Life exists in entropy, however, and thanks to the timefall, structures in Death Stranding decay over time. Players can contribute resources to their own structures, or to the structures of other players, in order to reverse the effects of timefall.
I find Death Stranding’s use of asynchronous multiplayer so gosh-darn unique. I might just a Kojima fan, and yet — it feels poignant. Players work together and help each other out, yet remain in solitude.
Solitude, as a state of being, is a state of being alone, but it isn’t the same as loneliness. Death Stranding is like a collaborative form of solitude, and I think it honestly works as a great allegory towards life on the Internet.
We’re all alone, but collectively. We craft these structures, websites, webpages, for each-other, to help navigate the journey of life. We send each other encouragement, often in the form of likes or ‘hearts.’ We can’t finish the journey for others, but we can provide them with tools to help them traverse their situation.
So, yeah, there’s a few forms of asynchronous multiplayer for you. Asynchronous multiplayer can take many different forms. Games can employ asynchronous techniques to foster environments of kindness and trust, or foster environments of struggle, distrust, and uncertainty.
In other cases, games may employ asynchronous gameplay in a more elaborate manner, a more allegorical manner, if you will. Furthermore, asynchronous multiplayer sheds light on the way time and space connect us, and also disconnect us, as players, and as human beings.
As Death Stranding might put it, there are asynchronous ‘strands’ between each other as living beings, but there are also strands holding life and death, together, holding past, present, and future together. Our history is a recording of these connections, in the form of messages and communication.
But we can go further, and look at the recording of our interactions through the physical realm. Every structure you see contains a history, and a connection to those who crafted it, who invented it, who paid for it. The collective toil of creation results in a physical form of accountability. We’re all connected, even when we’re (dis)connected.
