It's also deeply fascinating how the different gimmicks or context for each season sets the tone and culture of the server during it.
Third Life was a uniquely "serious" season when it comes to the depth of the emotional weight put on things, I'd argue. It was the first season, and presumably the last. It wasn't a looping endless death game at the time, it was their only life (well, only three lives) and everyone built real roots. Kingdoms and marriages, things they wanted to genuinely protect, things they wanted to last. There was this thought that if they were to die, that would be the end. There was this thought that if they- and their allies- were to live, they could be happy together. There was this idea that they could live, that there was a world where they keep what they've earned in this place. Which isn't to say emotional stakes don't exist in later series, but Third Life is the one time where permanence and ending were both real tangible concepts to be sought after or feared, unlike now, where there's always last time and next time hovering over the players.
Last Life, on the other hand, was a season of remarkable instability. I've credited this in the past to two core mechanics within the season: the Boogeyman Curse, and the new rule that red names have to leave their teams. These two rules made teams practically impossible to keep. There was the constant fear of betrayal from the Boogeyman, and the constant knowledge that friend could turn into enemy within a second, that the only constant for you to rely on is yourself. Teams were flimsy this season, most people were fundamentally lonely, and distrust permeated most relationships. Beyond the mechanic changes, though, there's also the grief to be talked about. This was the second season, the first time they came back. And with that, came the full reality of impermanence. All their walls and castles and forts and tunnels, even the graves they dug for fallen friends, were gone now, as if they never existed. Nothing in this world is theirs to hold onto, no matter what they do. All they truly have forever is themselves. Last Life is the first time they grapple with this.
Double Life is a server I've talked about a lot because of the sheer cultural isolation promoted by its gimmick. Each player was assigned one other person who was linked to them, who they were forced to rely on for their survival, and, very quickly, an attitude formed that posed soulmate bonds as the most important- no, in some ways the only important- relationship one can have. There was an obligation to be with your soulmate and stay with them and want them and noone else. Alliances outside of soulmate pairs were flimsy, if they existed at all, as the server fell into an isolationist mindset, each soulmate pair an island. People who didn't conform to the soulmate system, people who wanted to choose their own soulmates, or who were alone, or weren't interested in soulmates, were often looked at strangely. With pity or judgment or sometimes aggression. Double Life was just deeply isolating because there was very little community. It was you and your soulmate, and everyone else is the enemy, or at least an outsider.
Limited Life, surprisingly, felt like a series with a lot of freedom. You would expect the constraint of twenty four hours to live to feel like a cage, a limitation, it's literally called Limited Life. But in practice I think you actually got the opposite feeling a lot, because lives were in hours, which meant instead of dying 3-6 times, you could hypothetically die 20+ times. Because of this, I feel like you got a lot more playing around and taking risks and petty rivalries and side storylines in this season, people being less cautious because there was less to lose with an individual death. The fact that you can gain time for killing in this series helped as well, making time feel like a renewable resource, something that's running out in theory, but that you can really just replenish, if you have the competence for it. This made people possibly even more aggressive than in past seasons too, I'd argue, because there was very real incentive to kill, because you will always gain something for it (as long as the kill is legal). This is how we ended up with winding sky paths and tnt falling from the sky every five seconds. Because people were simultaneously more aggressive and less afraid than usual.
Secret Life's another interesting one. I feel like the secret tasks had the capacity to be isolating- and in some cases they were- but I kind of feel like Secret Life had a pretty good sense of community overall, not in spite of, but in many cases because of the secret tasks. Most tasks were funny, tasks were conversation starters in a way (obviously you couldn't talk about them outright, but people would follow someone around to tease them while they're doing their task plenty), tasks typically forced people out of their bases and into going around the server where they'd inevitably talk to people, many tasks even outright involved mandatory interaction with people (often people outside your alliances). And sure, everyone had secrets they couldn't tell, but the non-red tasks (usually) weren't anything harmful, and everyone could have some kind of solidarity in the fact that they all had tasks of their own. And sure, the yellow names being able to guess tasks added some 'tension', but that gave yellow names solidarity with each other and a reason to talk amongst themselves and to the greens. I just feel like Secret Life was an especially social season because of the tasks themselves and how a lot of them mandated communication outside your own alliance.
And then there's Wild Life. This..is another season I think was pretty social, for very similar reasons to Secret Life. The Wild Cards were fun, they gave people something to bond over (because they all have to deal with the wild cards), and they'd often offer an excuse to leave your base and go around the server instead of spending whole episodes working at your own base with your preexisting alliance. People still tried to kill each other of course (particularly when there were dark greens alive to get lives from), but there was also often more focus on the wild cards than on the battle royale aspect of the game. I mean, it took shockingly long for people to even start really killing each other in the finale, I remember sitting through practically half the session and wondering how they were going to wrap it up this session because noone was killing each other for a good chunk of it. This season also had the zombies (both in the super power episode and in the finale), which I think gave some more levity, because even if you die, you're not even gone from the series, you get to pop back up and be silly for a little bit, which I think also lightened the pressure to play too intensely.
I just feel like every season had a very unique culture caused by the gimmicks and context surrounding them and that's fascinating to me.