The larger you are, the bigger the attack surface and the more your defenses are spread out.
Plus, you attract more attention when larger; the 1G logo northwest of Canada was originally a good deal bigger, but a rival streamer told his followers to wipe it out and it was completely dissolved within about ten minutes; very scary.
Personally I was against expansion but I underestimated our community's size, I think, because we grew to be fairly large and prominent.
What's interesting is how quickly the game theory of r/place was learned, and how most sizes represented the size of the community.
Even in dedicated attacks, like the nuking of the American flag, the size of the community directly correlated to the amount of real-estate. The black blob showed how over-extension could collapse the whole structure.
The other thing I found interesting was how quickly the quality of discernible images/logos evolved. Monochromatic communities dominated to begin with, as users experimented with cooperation. Those same users were drawn to more detailed and interesting designs, relegating the collapse of monochromatic communities as background color for more interesting designs.
Honestly, this is a goldmine for anyone studying group dynamics or social sciences. There's a lot of dynamics going on in a very short amount of time. I'd love to see more detailed research going into the development of r/place
The larger you are, the bigger the attack surface and the more your defenses are spread out.
Plus, you attract more attention when larger; the 1G logo northwest of Canada was originally a good deal bigger, but a rival streamer told his followers to wipe it out and it was completely dissolved within about ten minutes; very scary.
Personally I was against expansion but I underestimated our community's size, I think, because we grew to be fairly large and prominent.