[MUD-Dev2] [Design] Personal virtual worlds

[Lachek Butalek]

Web sites that have grown large due to user content production,
including YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia etc, have become such by
not making a clear distinction between consumer and producer. In the
MMO space, the same is true of Second Life, which arguably feature the
most user-created content ever. NWVault, IGN's repository for
user-created content for Neverwinter Nights, currently host 5000+
fan-made modules made for the original NWN game.
Is the majority of it content produced through all the above venues
pure junk? With few exceptions, absolutely. That does not prevent
people from participating, both in the consumption and production of
the content. People browse the content not by flicking through TV
channels, sequentially turning the pages in a book, or arbitrarily
selecting a retail box at Gamestop - instead, they do it by
user-driven ranking systems and intelligently designed site traversal
techniques, such as Flickr's tagging, YouTube's related-links,
MySpace's friends lists, and even the server-hopping 3rd-party bolt-on
available for NWN. It doesn't matter much that most of the content is
of poor quality, because the producers had a fun time producing it,
it's entertaining themselves and their friends, and people who would
not care for it are not often subjected to it.
Yes, much like Second Life, vast expanses of PVWs will be largely
uninhabited, aspeople tend to band together - yet, the worlds will be
frequently visited by their creators, and likely be continually
improved upon as the creator experiences the creations of others and
learns from other designers. In the early days, we will see a lot of
Geocities-type worlds, in garish colours and every animation available
in the toolkit included for good measure - just like the MySpace pages
of today, or the first fan-made NWN modules. As time goes on, we will
start to learn - as a community, perhaps as a population - how to
create stylish, rich, exciting PVWs that engages more people than just
ourselves and our friends.
To address the issue of toolkit complexity, I believe the toolkit
should follow along the same lines as community maturity - begin by
publishing a simplistic toolkit, where individuals can pick
pre-defined templates, quickly whip together a product and fill it
with content, much like the first graphical webpage editors. Slowly
add features, depth, and complexity, while still allowing people the
initial simplistic experience if they so prefer.
Consider webpages - the initial supported technology, HTML, was so
easy to learn most anyone could make a half-decent page in an
afternoon without any prior knowledge. Most pages looked the same, but
they differed in their content. The pages that became popular were the
ones that featured the best functionality and most up-to-date
information. Many still write web pages in pure HTML, and many sites
are popular because their content is better than many technologically
and aesthetically superior pages'. For a textbook example, see
http://www.drudgereport.com - clearly a "Web 1.0" type of page, yet
with an enormous daily page hit count.
As time went on, many wanted to see technologies that were more
customized, or offered a better user interface, or were plain prettier
- enter DHTML, CSS, XML, Flash, Java, AJAX, etc. These technologies
offer an incredible amount of flexibility for the professional web
designer, but none of them remove the ability for the dedicated
reporter or fan-fiction writer to publish their own works in straight
HTML. The most popular web sites will naturally be those run by folk
who can employ both professional web designers and excellent content
creators, but that does not mean individual amateurs have nothing to
bring to the table, or does not enjoy running their own sites.
Finally, I believe your definition of PVW goes against my own - when I
hear the term used, I tend not to assume any game-like qualities
inherent in the product, and thus I would not judge its future based
on the quality of its game features. Game design is a complex art, at
least as difficult as art design and programming design - and what you
seem to be proposing would require a good mix of all three skills.
Instead, I would presume there to be little to no game aspects to be
present in your average PVW, and instead consider it to be a mix
between a sort of "home base" and an outlet for personal expression,
much like a blog. WordPress, for example, is a rather simple yet
ubiquitous blog engine, with a very limited number of default
templates (and most people use one of them), yet there is a huge
difference between one WP-based blog and another.
Having said that, if there is an editor, the game aspects will come
sooner or later - much like in the non-game Second Life, where
residents use scripting to create all manner of fun little games to
play, despite there not being a well-defined "game creation toolkit"
in the game, not to speak of the meta-game of "the one with the most
L$ wins".