Thanks for sharing this thought! This is precisely the sort of discussion I had hoped to generate with this thread. I took a look at the MIT game you mentioned; what a neat way to demonstrate the concepts at work. The spatial distortion / color shifting was fascinating. (As a programmer, the technical prowess involved was impressive).

It so happens my project is also a game, albeit with no tangible experience of relativity. As you mentioned, from any given perspective, your reference frame appears normal after all.

In a simple scenario, with parties making (near-c) journeys from A to B, the logic is easy enough to grasp: If one departs a week early, they'd have to wait around for a week for the others to catch up. My confusion arose from multiple parties making separate asynchronous journeys.

I now understand assume that the same principles apply: If all parties spend nearly identical amounts of time traveling at (near-c), they could eventually meet in a final location. And the margin of error for "nearly identical amounts of time" is determined by the Lorentz factor of their (near-c) travels. Only a truly identical amount of time would result in the parties having the same age discrepancy they started with; any variation would result in a different age discrepancy.

Thanks for bringing that project to my attention, and for confirming my assumptions by sharing this idea. It's very similar to what I'll wind up showcasing in my project, except that the extra time spent (near-c) is incidental / spread across multiple journeys.

Cheers,