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Tech

The Return of 'Plink', a Music MMO for Jamming with Strangers

By eliminating all forms of non-musical interaction, 'Plink' forces users to talk through sound.
Image: Plink

Much of the music played in our world is never turned into official songs, it's created by people breaking out their instruments and noise makers just to unleash some tunes into the air. Plink, a browser-based audio game, attempts to recreate that by throwing complete strangers together to jam out with preset instruments—and giving them no other tools to chat.

After seeing a number of tweets about the game, I finally went to check Plink out. The game has already been out for a few years, but is in the midst of a viral resurgence thanks to Reddit and Imgur, whose users have hyped the game's freeform nature.

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Plink's initial page doesn't let you in on what will really happen once you hit start. The only thing it asks you to do is enter a screen name, the default for which is "Sneaky Plinker."

Then you're dropped in, cold, into a quickly moving space with three complete strangers. They are already making music, strumming their cursor up and down along bars that act as a scale, and changing the type of sound that comes out with a small bar of colours on the right. Plink is a rough, but effective, MMO for electronic music.

"I really have not understood why there aren't more networks included in games," said Johan Belin of Dinahmoe, which developed the game. "I mean, there are first person shooters. But when you come to it, getting the feeling of doing things together really enhances the experience a lot. Since we have a music production background, we were thinking about what would be fun to do together without having to be a musician. We came up with the idea of Plink."

Plink only ends when you leave the page, or leave it idle for too long. Clicking to make a noise and changing colours to change that noise are the only controls you have. I've encountered users who tinker around to see what each colour of the rainbow will do on every pitch. I've seen users attempt to find harmony with each other, find a pattern in where each is trying to go to bundle some semblance of a song. I watched one user named YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEA whiplash across the page.

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Depending on the roommates you're paired up with in Plink, the game can sound like the clacking of toys in the family doctor's waiting room or open mic night for aspiring Oneohtrix Point Nevers.

"We're always trying to look at the usability sides," said Belin. "Most people are not musicians. When you see comments on the game, that's what makes people really happy. They didn't know they were musicians, and suddenly they've been playing for thirty minutes, creating music together with others."

The most fascinating thing I find about Plink is something I've seen before. The PlayStation game Journey is pretty and inspired, but what I liked about it the most of all was the way you were integrated with other players. Until you beat the game, you aren't told who the other players are that you've encountered in the desert, and you aren't able to communicate with them outside of a chime that you control.

They didn't know they were musicians, and suddenly they've been playing for thirty minutes, creating music together with others

The chime can be short and stuttered, and you can hold the button down to make the chime louder and longer. When I played, repeatedly, the stranger and myself would find ways to use this single noise to communicate. To get someone's attention to look out, use the deeper chime, but to alert someone to a secret item they may have missed, the rapid fire. Sometimes it was the opposite.

We'd figure each other out even though we were strangers unable to talk as they normally do, feeling like Picard recanting Darmok when the walls fell. And so it goes in Plink.

"The weird thing is that you really start communicating," said Belin. "Suddenly you find someone who's doing something and you sort of repeat that, mimic that, notice that people do the same thing back. You can feel it very clearly when it happens. These are three strangers, you don't know anything about them, the only thing you know is they are playing music with you."

People have asked Belin and his team if they'll be adding a chat client or a recording mode, but he thinks both suggestions miss the point a little. Belin said the whole idea behind Plink was the moment people are dunked into a room with strangers. Plink creates music to hear and exist in that moment alone, and push its players to find a way to make sense of the noise. Unless it's noise that they want.

"Thing is that you play," he said. "It's a totally different thing when you play or when you listen to it. Doing it gives you some sort of satisfaction, but otherwise you just listen to it. The experience is all about doing it."