Lanternfall, one year on
Eleven million lanterns have been left on the mountain by players who will never meet each other. Some notes on what that has been like.
A year ago we shipped a game whose only social mechanic was leaving a light somewhere and walking away. We had no idea whether anyone would bother.
Eleven million lanterns later, we have learned that people leave them in patterns: along the hardest stretches, at the viewpoints, and — most often — right where the path first becomes unclear. Players have been signposting the mountain for each other without ever being asked to.
We have also learned that a small number of people spend hours arranging lights into shapes that only make sense from the summit, for the benefit of players who have not started yet. We did not design for that. We would not have thought to.