Online communities are naturally fragile things. At any moment, platform owners can choose to shut them down or let them wither through censorship or neglect. Users themselves might lose access for any number of reasons, or simply decide to stop participating. And in most cases, the connections formed there are just as ephemeral, demanding a lot of conscious work to remain solid. But none of those things make the bonds formed there any less real, nor the sadness when they fade any less impactful.
Videoverse tells the story of just such a community in its waning days. It’s 2003, and publisher Kinmoku is pushing its Dolphin console, the successor to the popular Shark. But with technological progress comes obsolescence, and the Shark’s Videoverse, a combination of message board and video chat service, is being shut down in favor of a paid option on the Dolphin. Videoverse follows a 15-year-old boy named Emmet, a Videoverse devotee, fan of the Feudal Fantasy RPG, and burgeoning artist, as he faces the heartbreak of his online world collapsing. And after launching on PC in 2023, Videoverse is now available on consoles.
