UPDATES Sept 5 2020

Online Town is now Gather Town. They have continued to ship new features and improve their service in the past few months.
There are several apps similar to Gather Town now. My favorite is Topia. It is less stable / performant than Gather Town, but also much prettier and easier to build maps on. Other options include here.fm and cozyroom.xyz, and highfidelity.com. Each have different strengths and weaknesses. I hope to do another article comparing them someday.
I've found Minecraft worked fine as a social activity, but surprisingly didn't hold my interest as a world – ironically every time I went to a shared Minecraft world I just... sortof "played Minecraft" rather than actually hanging out the way I'd envisioned. I have done a few specific "Minecraft hikes" which went well as a one-off thing though.

Related:

The Problem With Zoom™

In the wake of coronavirus, many people have turned to Zoom, Skype, or Jitsi to maintain social ties. But I personally find it a bit awkward to do a video call when I don't have anything in particular to talk about. In real life, lulls in conversation could be filled with eating, or talking a walk and appreciating the scenery. In a videocall, there's either awkward silence, or I start using facebook or something and then get distracted.

Zoom calls also work less well for large parties. If you want the feeling of wandering through a house, listening in on various conversations and joining in, or spontaneously playing a simple game, I've found video calls a poor substitute. Zoom works best for smaller conversations with clear goals, or very structured conversations. (Seder worked well because it was "turn based")

What works much better IMO is some kind of low-key game going on in the background – something just complicated enough to let me fidget with it, without becoming the Main Activity which distracts from actually talking to friends.

There are various low-key games that may work for people. But there's a particular quality of Minecraft, and similar world-sims, that feel less like we're playing a game, and more like we're just hanging out in a world.

What are the best tools for that?

This post began as a response to "What are the Best Online Tools For Meetups and Meetings". It turned out to be pretty ext...

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