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Designing Virtual Worlds
It never occurred to me that my review would be read by a wider public, most of whom had never heard of me or even Dr. Bartle, and would see only the hostility, and not understand the narrowness of the focus. When the column was picked up by Slashdot I was stunned, when I realized it was also linked by Clay Shirky in Many to Many and by Joystick101 among other places, I felt slightly ill. Without intending to, I may have damaged the reputation of Dr. Bartle and of his book, and I feel an obligation to set the record straight with an actual review of his book. I'm not sure why it has not already received such a review, except that only a few dozen people in the world currently make their living at virtual world design and would really be qualified to write it.
What is in the book? The "Introduction to Virtual Worlds" of the first chapter does a very good job of laying out what a virtual world is, and defending that definition as a category that includes but is not limited to the online games that are the most common examples of the type. The history lesson included a lot of information even I, after six years in the industry and a serious attempt at studying it, was not aware of. The second chapter gives a very good overview of the process by which the world is created both in business terms and in structural arrangements. The third includes a reprise and updating of Dr. Bartle's now-classic Players that Suit MUD's, the touchstone for every theory of player motivation in online games, and continues into a description of the properties and dynamics of the communities that form in and around the worlds.
Where most of the first three chapters are a primer -- containing the base knowledge needed to understand the whole field in functional terms -- the 4th and 5th chapters focus much more on the worlds as games. The mechanics of game systems, the structure of "advancement" systems and the psychology that makes them run, all of the myriad elements that make a virtual world a game.
Chapters 6 and 7 take a more academic overview of the field, discussing the "why's" of the worlds, what they are, what they may become, and what other fields of human endeavour they are most similar to and therefore may have lessons to offer. Chapter 7's effort to establish the academic and artistic "legitimacy" of virtual worlds was the main source of my disagreement with the book: I think that virtual worlds are entirely capable of standing on their own merits and do not need to be considered credible by the academic arts to be worthy. But this is the "almost theological" issue, and although significant to myself and a handful of others in the field, it's not something that should be counted against the work as a whole.
Chapter 8 focuses on the fact that as virtual as the worlds may be, the people in them (and therefore the relationships) are real, and therefore certain ethical factors normally not considered an issue in game design become much more important. Added to this are questions of "ownership"; if there is no game without the players, but the operator has a finger on the power button, who is in control? Who should be? The book doesn't solve many of these problems (every solution is likely to be unique to a particular setting), but does lay out where most of the fracture lines occur.
What I liked: The book establishes good points and brings the reader up to date on the known principles of the field, with copious references to other writings on the subject provided in the footnotes. The general focus on the "players eye" view is a very important attribute: too often, discussions of virtual worlds have the "God's Eye" designer's view from orbit, and forget that in the end it's the ground-level "fun or not-fun" experience of the players that makes or breaks a design.
What I didn't like: Dr. Bartle is much more broadly educated than I am (they don't give out any titles for an Associates degree in electronics), and tries very hard to make a case to the academic community that virtual worlds are worthy of consideration as serious works of Capital-A "Art." Since I am not concerned about credibility with the dilettantes and dabblers who make up most of academia in the Arts, the repeated references to the Hero's Journey and the effort to define a dramatic theory of online games in Chapter 7 distracted and occasionally annoyed me. But those interested in such things will probably find his efforts there as workmanlike as the rest of the volume.
Summary: This book is a must-read for anyone who works in the field of online games, and highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand the theory and structure of the systems that make them run, or to effectively discuss them with the teams that work on them.
You can purchase Designing Virtual Worlds from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Just a small plug for one of the incarnations of his game MUD2 www.mudii.co.uk .Having also met Richard at a few mudmeets (where the players and wizzes all meet up in a pub and get very drunk :-)) not only is he clever with the text based games, he is also a funny chap.
Huff
There is a lot more there worth reading.
Also, Richard Bartle is also doing a column at Skotos called Notes from the Dawn of Time.
-- Herder of Cats
motivator for more than half of our very large clan as well. It can be seen by the number of people just chatting, I also see a corelation between age, the younger are generally more driven and competitive, while the older are generally more relaxed and there for the social aspect. This does not always hold true of course but I've been playing online games for a long time in many formats and that's what I've seen.
Also I reallt think in games like EQ, people underestimate the number of women playing and just NOT telling anyone they are female. After a long term association with several guild members I was able to pick out numerous closet women playing male characters and actively trying to hide there sex.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Exactly.
Look at EverQuest's socials sometime. Spend a few minutes going through them. Then look in interp.c from the Merc codebase.
See anything amusing?
I also like the 'new' features that all these graphical games are introducing as being innovative. Housing? Had it two decades ago. Horses? Been there, done that. Player vs. player? Please.
The only real advantage of this generation of muds are a) graphics, and b) the fact that not just any 12 year old kid can download a codebase, slap on ANSI color and call it 'fully customized'.
Thus, there's a much lower signal-to-noise ratio when one attempts to find something to play. And thankfully, the commercial enterprises seem to be going for diversity - Everquest is vastly different than Dark Age of Camelot, and they're both quite different from, say, Anarchy Online.
PLATO is mentioned in the book.