I’m lucky to have a friend group who all get together semi-frequently on Discord to try out any new games we’ve found and enjoy. We all have pretty similar tastes in games, sometimes a few of us will be playing something others might not enjoy and vice versa, but in those instances we’ll still hang out and chat but just play our separate games instead.
I would agree that one roadblock is that we all have less time now as adults with careers (and other responsibilities) than we did when we were students, but we do our best to make time all the same.
In terms of public multiplayer with randoms - not for me, tbh.
I’ve always merged. Rebase simplifies the history graph, but realistically I can’t think of a time where that has been important to me, or any of the teams I’ve worked with.
Maybe on some projects with a huge number of concurrent branches it becomes more important, probably less so for smaller teams.
I recently quit my old job which was desperately trying to claw employees back into the office (first 1 day a week, then 2, then 3) for a fully remote role. It’s been a breath of fresh air. My new team is spread all over the country and yet everything runs so much more efficiently compared to my old employer.
They do have a small office available in case anyone prefers that environment (or perhaps their home isn’t suitable for remote work) but there is no expectation or requirement to come in, other than a suggestion that each team meets face to face maybe a handful of times per year, if only to get lunch/drinks together or have a social day.
It’s working out great for them as it lets them scale the number of employees they have significantly while not spending any more on commercial real estate.