Columbia Business School published research about how third places can open economic opportunities, and Forbes wrote about arts-and-crafts workshops as third places. Vox advised, “If you want to belong, find a third place.” And The Week bemoaned the lost art of hanging out amid a disappearance of third places.That lament is a recurring one, and the pandemic is partly to blame.
Digital habits forged during Covid lockdowns have drastically changed how people gather. Mr. Oldenburg, who died in 2022, co-wrote an essay published in 2023 challenging the notion that virtual spaces can ever replace physical ones and criticizing coffee chains’ new focus on app users.
What I thought was interesting recently, thinking about this topic, is that increasingly the in-world community of characters in Sindome are engaging in activities (like going to the pub for the evening) that its players are increasingly unfamiliar with. We've talked a lot about motivating players to gather in game, something that people are not doing in the real world either. Maybe IC socialization moving towards SIC over time is mirroring the real world trends in addition to whatever gameplay factors there may be.
