Draft:Multiplayer Piano


Multiplayer Piano
Screenshot of Multiplayer Piano in 2020
Created byBrandon Lockaby
URLmultiplayerpiano.com
LaunchedFebruary 18, 2012; 12 years ago (2012-02-18)
Current statusActive
Content license
GNU General Public License[1]
Written inJavaScript[2]

Multiplayer Piano is a website that allows users to play a virtual piano with other users through the internet. It was published by Brandon Lockaby as a Google Chrome Experiment[2] in 2012. Users can communicate through text-based chat, use physical MIDI devices to play music, and record their performances with a built-in MP3 recording interface.

History

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Creation

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Multiplayer Piano in 2012

Multiplayer Piano was created and published by Brandon Lockaby in 2012 and offered a piano which could be played and heard by other users. Later on in development, numerous features were added including a text-based chat box, a synthesizer, a sound selector, the ability to record in MP3 format, and the ability to browse and create new rooms.

The website initially used socket.io to power its multiplayer component before switching to WebSockets[2] for more flexibility.

Sale of Multiplayer Piano

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On October 24, 2020, Brandon Lockaby sold Multiplayer Piano for $6,500 USD.[3] In early 2021, the site degraded in performance due to a lack of maintenance and payments for the server software. This caused the site's reputation to plummet among its users, many of whom had migrated to a community-driven site then known as MPPClone (later MultiplayerPiano.net). The new owner of Multiplayer Piano threatened to take legal action against the owners of MPPClone[4], while the original site began mirroring MPPClone using an iframe element overlayed with ads and a custom stylesheet.

The site mirror persisted until October 2023, when the original server was brought online with drastic changes to the chat features, which now censors messages that include the terms "multiplayer piano", "mppclone", "clone", and "mpp". These measures dropped their reputation with the community even further.

Structure

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Upon visiting the site, the user is placed in a lobby. Lobbies are limited to 20 players. Once the limit is reached, a new lobby (lobbyN, where N represents the lobby number) is created. This process repeats as more users join. Outside of lobbies, users can browse a list of public rooms that have no player limit.[5] Users can also create and privately share rooms hidden from the room list, otherwise leaving a one in a trillion chance that someone will join that same room id.[6]

Community

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Multiplayer Piano is home to a sizable community, notably attracting computer programmers and various web enthusiasts.

In January 2013, Vsauce3 uploaded a video to YouTube showcasing Multiplayer Piano in its infancy, which caused a mass influx of users to join the site.

In 2017, Multiplayer Piano was featured alongside other Google Chrome Experiments in a YouTube video published by popular French video creator Squeezie, resulting in an influx of French users on the website.

At its peak in 2020, the site had over 1500 frequent visitors over the course of a few days showing on its now-unreachable Google Analytics dashboard.

References

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  1. ^ "mpp-frontend-v1/LICENSE at master · multiplayerpiano/mpp-frontend-v1". GitHub. February 25, 2022. Archived from the original on August 8, 2024. Retrieved August 8, 2024.
  2. ^ a b c "Multiplayer Piano by Brandon Lockaby". Google Chrome Experiments. February 2012. Archived from the original on January 10, 2024. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
  3. ^ "Multiplayer Piano - Website sold on Flippa". Flippa. October 2020. Archived from the original on December 20, 2022. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
  4. ^ "The Recent MPP Switcharoo Situation". Multiplayer Piano Community Forum. 2023-10-24. Retrieved 2024-08-08.
  5. ^ "'Multiplayer Piano' lets you make music with strangers over the web". The Verge. 26 March 2012. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
  6. ^ ""Multiplayer Piano, script.js (JavaScript)". Multiplayer Piano. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
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