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

[Eric Random]

I would not have guessed the discussion of the effect of newbies
would migrate into a debate on definitive minutiae and use of the
term "virtual world." Without a more formal taxonomy and phylogeny
of "virtual worlds" within a stronger committee-based context (ie.
authorative society), the discussion can wander far, far away.

Why am I content with Bartle's usage of the term "virtual world"?
For one, he uses clear examples of what he considers virtual worlds,
then uses a generic term to classify them. I consider his usage of
the term more as a proper pronoun, if you will; a formed generic
reference to a proper noun, a named classification, that may not
quite exist, but understood, nonetheless, given the examples. In
short, he needed to use a word more descriptive than "them", "they",
"those", and "that type".

The examples in his article were NWN (original AOL 1991-1997 game)
and Meridian59. Given the attributes of these games (in terms of
elements of gameplay, as well as social and interactive
environments) and understanding potential historic and future
extrapolated phylogenies of those attributes, one can obtain an
adequately broad understanding of the classification he is referring
to without the use of a rigidly defined term.

Is someone debating that the term "virtual world" has a strong,
rigid definition that is being applied inappropriately? Such a term
is always vulnerable to criticism, and given examples, I hope others
would move beyond leisurely challenging it. I would love to discuss
such topics as well, but this is an moderated, broad topic email
list and such discussion, I fear, can generate a lot of noise.

Great title for a convention paper, though - "Towards a Formal
Taxonomy of Common Virtual Environments".
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