Multiplayer web game/Product/2026
Paint City
Vandalism With a Business Model.
Overview
Paint City is a shared isometric city where anyone can paint graffiti on anything. Think MS Paint turned into an MMO. I wanted a place I could log into every day just to see what people had made since I last looked. It scratches the same itch as Lost Post, that old-internet feeling of logging on and finding something strange that strangers made.
The obvious problem with letting the whole internet paint on a wall is, well, the whole internet. Most products answer that with a moderation team. I didn't want to build one (I'm one person), so I designed the game itself to do the moderating.
Design thinking
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Scarcity keeps it sane.
Everyone gets a couple of free paint cans a day. That's enough to make something, and not nearly enough to bury the city.
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Put a price on the paint.
Extra cans and colors cost money. It turns out people are a lot less likely to paint something hateful when it costs them something, and those same purchases keep the game running.
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Good tags live longer.
Players can like or report what they see. Liked tags, tags painted with paid cans and tags painted up high (you need a jetpack to get there) all stick around longer. Effort and quality float to the top without anyone policing it.
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A reason to come back tomorrow.
Free and paid colors rotate daily from separate pools, and the biggest pack comes with a cosmetic that changes every day.
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Three teams, not two.
Every week the teams race to cover a special building for a cosmetic reward. With two teams, one side just sweeps. With three, any two can gang up to flip the result, so the swings are bigger but it stays balanced. And it gives people a real reason to invite friends and make plans.
Impact
Paint City is live at paintcity.stream. It's early, so I don't have numbers worth sharing yet. What I can say is that it's my favorite test of an idea I keep coming back to, which is that you can shape how people behave with the system itself, instead of chasing them around with a ban hammer.
Go paint something. I'll be checking.