[MUD-Dev] NEWS: Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies -No, Really! (By R. Bartle)

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

"Matt Mihaly" <matt at ironrealms.com> writes:

> Just like the physical world, virtual worlds are not easily broken
> down into simplistic "black or white." They're about shades of
> grey.

I totally agree, but in the physical world I can set my own goals,
choose my actions and go to different places. Not all the time, but
most of the time. I view those as key defining qualities. If those
don't hold then just call it a MOG or an online entertainment. If
the world aspect isn't important to the system, why insist on
labelling it as a virtual world? Two systems can share qualities
without being essentially the same thing. So, a system can both be a
multi-user game and a virtual world, and a multi-user game may be on
the borderline of being a virtual world.

It is rather pointless to refer to all multi-user systems as virtual
worlds, although most multi-user systems can be viewed as virtual
worlds. At the end of the day everyone will use their own definition
based on what their own interests are, of course. I just don't think
the definitions people come up with are particularly good for
general use. IMO, they tend to arbitrarily exclude things the
authors devalue and include somewhat peripheral things that authors
value.

Note: I am not claiming that defintions are useful in their own
right, or that terms and their definitons are "scientific", but I
also don't like that they move to far away from their origin. We
should be able to discuss the virtual world qualities of a system,
the game qualities of a system as well as the social qualities of a
system.

--
Ola - http://folk.uio.no/olag/
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