I think there is a fundamental difference between MMOGs and TikTok-style social media. I suspect the human brain has a relatively healthy reaction to creatively connecting with other humans via virtual worlds but a comparatively poor reaction to algorithmic feeds.
People were active participants in MMORPGs. You get the dopamine from achieving goals inside the game, and make connections with other people as you collaborate to reach these goals. Your relationship with other players is that of coworkers (or cohabitants). On social media, most people are just spectators, getting entertained by a small group of creators whose relation with the rest of the community is that of salesmen. Both systems are not designed in the same way.
Not everyone who plays MMOs are active participants. Majority of people in a guild are not active participants. A lot of them won't even get on a shared voice call anymore to listen to instructions during large group events.
A lot of MMOs also make active collaboration a complete pain, whether it's introducing a messed up matchmaking system, not dealing with bots, or adding new content that rewards you for going at it alone. A lot of content now is quite literally zero communication, not even a message in chat, just queue for group, do content and leave.
And people will spend 5+ hours a day doing that. Farming mindlessly as if it's a second job.
MMOs have always been like that though. The forced group content is a later addition that not every game follows (eg OSRS). But that doesn't really mean anything. You're still sharing a virtual world. You see people pass you by, meet random people etc. They are still active participants, they just don't have to wait around for other people constantly (because that's what forced group content always turns into).
All of those have always been the case though, it only wasn't if it wasn't. It's not like nearly everyone was inclined to jump on Vent and raid, that's always been relatively few. Only more recently have there been some systems that make lower tier content less requiring of vocal comms, but for anything demanding it's still pretty typical.
Tik-Tok (and Social Media) exists around content. It's fundamentally social but has no inherent "meat" which is why it go bad so easily, just like high school gossip and cliques. It's hollow by itself, focused on reaction and judgment.
MMOs are that "meat". It's someplace you go for it's own sake, and (hopefully) you meet people around that shared space as a consequence rather than an intention. There will be debates, trolls and conflicts of course, but I feel that the focus on content is a shared axis that can keep things healthier on the long term.
Well MMOs are dying, and a growing number of zoomers would rather passively watch than actively play games, so I guess gamers aren't immune to social media either, but I think in the future we will return to this for answers that our present can't answer.
Even if MMOs are dying, fun collaborative gaming experiences with friends (Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, ...) continue to be very popular. It's often done with an external voice chat program (Discord), meaning groups of friends can wander from game to game having many different experiences than MMO grinding.
I think MMOs are dying because the casual players play mobile games instead, so MMOs end up catering more and more to the hardcore crowd. This further turns casual players away.
The fact that you may not have experienced it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist :) There is actually a lot of socializing on TikTok, for example in the "BookTok" community. The format is a little different than on a message board, or IG, but it is there.
Perhaps at risk of reading too far into it, but it seems the implication is that while Tiktok is called "social media", it seems to be the exception that socialising occurs. World of Warcraft, and many similar games of that era would often be canned as anti-social, but fundamentally facilitated the pursuit of common goals and deep bonds for those otherwise isolated or barred from such engagement in other avenues.
Yep. WoW was problematic because the mainstream had already decided that the participants were problematic, not because of any careful analysis of the game's merits. TikTok is okay because the mainstream participates, not because of a careful analysis of the platform's merits.
Either way, you're doing socializing wrong. the only acceptable way of socializing is how our parents did it. In person, with lots of alcohol, and the only qualifier was physical proximity.
i was meeting with my MUD playing friends almost weekly for dinner and drinks, and the wizards met to plan work on the game. every holiday weekend we travelled to other cities to meet player friends there. i didn't drink any alcohol though. i fondly remember when a guy fell asleep during such a meeting someone attached a note to his back saying "idle", like inactive players were marked in the game.
Netflix is curated and not user created, so I’d say TikTok is more like YouTube. Then of course everyone copied the format including YouTube, IG, X, and even LinkedIn (saw this one just today). But even with that slight naming difference, I couldn’t agree more with you that MMOs are rich cultural hubs compared to endless short videos. It’s a low bar :)
I still remember playing Anarchy Online in the mid 2000s and teaming up for a few hours with a guy who'd broken his back a month or so prior. He talked about how he got so much happiness from the social interaction and a sense of helping people (he was much higher level than me) within the game when he was otherwise bedridden.
I play WoW still. It is very much a fun social group and hobby as much as it is gaming. We nerd out over the lore and shared experience in the game. It can be a very humanistic experience if that is what you want. I have played this game for 15 years now. Been with the same guild for 6 now.
