As I begin this article, my second monitor shows a black stick figure named “sugarman” jumping through a tan-ish room littered with red spikes. Sugarman dies several times, falling into pits of spikes while a one-minute timer ticks down on the top of the screen. When the clock hits 0, the name above the stick figure changes: “waget0812” is up; they die five times in under a minute and are replaced with “janosaurus2,” who is the same stick figure wearing a hat. And so it goes, with a queue of stick figures, some in hats, lined up at the bottom of the screen waiting to play. I am 101st in line.

This is Jono , one of the strangest platforming experiences I’ve come across, yet simultaneously very familiar to anyone who’s looked at people playing games on Twitch for more than a minute or two. Jono is a game which only one person, one person in the entire world, can play at a time. When you open it up, you’re presented with a view of their game, and the option to join the queue to play.…