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Hotseat or hot seat is a multiplayer mode provided by some turn-based video games, which allows two or more players to play on the same device by taking turns playing the game. The name hotseat started as a reference to playing a pc game and trading seats with the other player.

Hotseat play allows players to play a multiplayer game with only one copy of the game or only one device. Since hotseat play is usually defined as turn-based by nature, the duration of a game may extend beyond that of a real-time networked multiplayer game. Some games allow hotseat and networked players to compete with each other in the same game, while maintaining turn-based play.

Some do not limit the definition of hotseat multiplayer only to turn-based games, but differentiate between two categories of hotseat games: simultaneous hotseat and turn-based hotseat. In simultaneous hotseat games, two or more people play a game at the same time on the same computer. In turn-based hotseat games players take turns.

By this broader definition, hotseat multiplayer gaming means simply multiple players playing on one machine. This multiplayer mode is also often referred to as offline multiplayer, local multiplayer or same-console multiplayer, though the term same-console multiplayer is generally limited to non-computer consoles. An example of this is two people switching who gets to play every time one player dies.

[edit] See also

• Play-by-mail game
• Split screen gaming

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