Everyone still plays, but nobody signs up for anything any more

Pocket edition. This is a shorter version of a longer article; you can read the full edition when you have more time.

Minecraft has more players than ever and public servers feel empty. Both things are true: people aren't playing less, they're playing in closed groups of three or four friends.

The political scientist Robert Putnam documented exactly this shape in the nineties. He found that in the United States people were still going bowling — even more than before — but had stopped joining leagues in huge numbers. The activity carried on; what disappeared was the association.

His most useful distinction: bonding social capital, the kind within your close circle, and bridging social capital, the kind that connects you with people unlike you. The first gives support; the second gives opportunities, information and tolerance. And bridging is the one that goes first, because it's the one that asks you to put up with strangers.

A private world with your friends is a better place in almost every way, except one: you won't meet anyone there.