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I enjoy this thought experiment.

If nobody logs in to a multiplayer game, does the game world still exist?

Sure there are files sitting on a server somewhere waiting to be read when the first user logs in, there may even be a physics engine polling abstract data structures for updates, but the game world doesn't render without players present with their computers bringing all this data into a coherent structure.

Also, for an extra existential kick, realize that it renders /independently/ in the GPU/CPU/RAM of each player's computer.



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