Elden Ring's Player Messages Are the Most Fascinating Social Media Platform of 2022

ign.com:

Since Elden Ring’s release, there’s been no shortage of critical praise for its intricately crafted yet expansive open world, its complex combat, and the level of detail found in every corner. But Elden Ring isn't just a superb video game in the many obvious ways to analyze it. It's also an entire social media platform unto itself.

FromSoftware has been including a messaging system akin to a social media platform within its games for years now, as anyone who's been Soulsing since the dawn of Demon’s Souls can tell you. Every game since has included the option for players connected online to leave messages on the ground anywhere in the world. Players can't just write anything they want, though. They compose messages out of pre-existing templates and word sets that are (mostly) related to gameplay, with the option to add a conjunction between two sets of phrases, or a "gesture" - basically a character emote - again out of a preexisting set. Once a message is posted, it will show up in the games of other online players, and they can opt to interact with it by rating it Good or Bad. Rating it either way gives the player who composed it a little in-game health boost, and visibly adds to the message's rating count - though the count doesn't reveal whether ratings given were good or bad.

Elden Ring's version of this isn't significantly different from its predecessors, but it has been magnified considerably by the sheer scale of the game it's placed in and the applications those messages can thus have, not to mention Elden Ring's tremendous popularity. That means thousands (if not millions) more people are participating in it than ever dipped into Dark Souls or its brethren, and the immediate sales success of Elden Ring would