How the “Playing Alone Together” Phenomenon Keeps You Writing on Medium

Ambient sociability and its magic

I have many reasons why I don’t give up writing on Medium. I wrote a story to highlight ten of them:

But one of my two favorite ones is that I don’t feel lonely ever since starting writing here, even if this start was one-and-a-half months after the COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark started in March of this year.

I wondered what the underlying phenomenon to this feeling of belonging and the lack of loneliness might be, which I did feel at least once in a while before starting my writing adventure on Medium.

And recently, I discovered what that was. The world-renowned game designer and New York Times bestselling author Jane McGonigal refers to it as “ambient sociability.”

To illustrate this social phenomenon, she uses the example of the hugely famous game, World of Warcraft. The scientists, she quotes in chapter five, “Stronger Social Connectivity” of her book Reality is Broken, discovered an interesting phenomenon about this massively multiplayer online game:

“An eight-month study of more than 150,000 World of Warcraft players discovered that players were spending on average 70 percent of their time pursuing individual missions, barely interacting with other players. The researchers, based at Stanford University and Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), found this surprising and counterintuitive. Why bother paying a monthly subscription to participate in a massively multiplayer game world if you are going to ignore the masses?”

— Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken, Random House, Kindle Edition, (Location 1597 of 6999)

The authors of the study called what they observed the “playing alone together” phenomenon.

I recognized this phenomenon very well as soon as I read the words “playing alone together.” Some of the dearest memories of my childhood and my early adulthood are connected to it.

I am the youngest of two children in my family. My sister is eight-and-a-half years my senior. Although we rarely played together, we often enjoyed being with each other, whatever each of us was up to — especially after several years apart in the early 1980s. I eagerly tried to copy her, even if I wouldn’t admit that then. My sister is one of my biggest role models who helped my mother bring me up after my father died in 1983. I was only ten years old when that happened, and Svetlana was less than a month shy of age nineteen.

We often enjoyed each other’s company when we had to do something for our work or studies. I will always treasure our nights together in the mid-1990s when she prepared the material for her students at the university. I did the same for my students of English-for-beginners classes or read something for my Ph.D. studies on semiconductor physics.

We worked side-by-side in the kitchen, pursuing what each of us had to do, occasionally volunteering or challenging the other to make tea and get some bread and butter or other snacks to go with it. We shared many laughs during those nights, telling each other about our work and what we experienced during the day. My sister was the first to teach me the possibility of approaching teaching and assessing the students' engagement gamefully. That was long before the term gamification appeared.

I didn’t know that there was a psychological term for those experiences then. But I will always treasure and tap into the power of doing something “alone together.” We often do it in my family. My husband and children sit at our kitchen counter, each with a computer or a laptop, and play their games. Sometimes together, but also separately their own games, pausing occasionally and talking about what they just did or are about to do.

You probably experienced this in your life many times as well. But you might not have been aware that this very phenomenon might be one of the forces helping you to keep on writing on Medium.

To illustrate how and why, I will quote one for the World of Warcraft players as Jane McGonigal did it in her book Reality is Broken:

“I love being around other real players in the game. I enjoy seeing what they’re doing, what they’ve achieved, fighting with them, fighting against them …, and running across them out in the world ‘doing their thing’ while I’m doing mine. Chuck a heal there, apply a buff here, kill that thing that’s about to kill that player, ask for some quick help or information, gank someone of the opposing faction, scurry and hide before they can gank me, join up for a spontaneous quick group, etc. Thanks, it’s been real and I’m on my way.”

— “That’s Right, I Solo In Your MMOs!” (June 09, 2009), Mystic Worlds

You might not be killing any creatures here on Medium, but the process will sound very familiar to you.

You do your thing, and you can enjoy seeing other writers doing theirs. You come across them in the pieces they authored or their responses to your stories. You can ask them “for some quick help or information.” And you can even fight against them by disagreeing with what they wrote, or you can fight along with them by supporting their point of view.

And you can join others in a spontaneous group by, for example, highlighting the same bits as they did. You signal to them and the author that those bits resonate with you, and you join in experiencing the thought those pearls of wisdom conveyed.

I once wrote that writing is a multi-player game:

And it is even more so here on Medium. In fact, Medium is a massively multiplayer online game, where you can play alone, together, and “alone together.”

I’m thrilled knowing that there are many fellow writers here and in awe of the support we can show each other and help each other strive and win in many writing and publishing games.

Happy writing and playing, dear friends!

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, then in addition to it and those I referred to above, you might also enjoy these:

P.S. To stay in touch and keep updated on the fantastic possibilities of turning life into fun games offers, join my e-mail list, Optimist Writer.