Massively single-player

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Massively single-player is a term coined by well-known game designer Will Wright at Game Developers Conference in 2005 to describe the mode of play in the game Spore. It is a variation on the phrase massively multiplayer. However, some people have called The Elder Scrolls games massively single-player, because of their great size.

[edit] Description

A "massively single-player" game is one in which player-created content is asynchronously downloaded from thousands of other users' computers. This is not considered "multiplayer" because the players never interact: once downloaded, the content is controlled only by your computer, no longer by other users. Unlike asynchronous multiplayer games, changing the downloaded content does not affect the content on the computer the content was downloaded from. In asynchronous multiplayer, the actions of one player can affect the game of another player, although not in real time.

This concept is not actually a result of innovation on Wright's side, however. One of the earlier examples for this includes NetHack together with hearse, of which the latter lets the player exchange bones files with others.