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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.
you can bet that Dr. James will back him up...
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
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.
Having played on and assisted in development of a host of muds for over 10 years (ranging from old diku and lp based all the way through EQ, Planetscape, etc...) I would agree 100%. There is no substitute for 'Fun Factor' in a mud. In fact the more reasonable and sensable (our world like) a mud becomes, the less interesting I find it.
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Jedimom.com, now with twice the pudding!
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
I think a lot of these problems can be solved simply by observation of the real world, and then deciding to either subset it or superset it. It is easy to think of current existence as a black box with certain properties, that one would either want to take a subset of those properties, or extend them in some way. I don't think it takes a special book -- if you're looking for a book on life, try all the millions of great novels out there. Those writers (i.e. Steinbeck) present a lot of information about the design of a world in the way that they create their "virtual worlds".
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Start breathing a little more rapidly after discovering that their article (or worse website) has been posted up on a major site such as slashdot. Pending bandwidth disasters aside, many things are meant to be shared with the general "world-at-large," but not with a large portion of the world. More scary is when they only focus on part of a story or opinion, leading to the appearing of bias on the part of the writer.
/. was good enough to post it up.
It's nice to see that not only did Mr Rickey put in a "full-opinion" follow-up, but that
Personally, I have a lot of stories, postings, etc that I really have no problem sharing with a random interested netter... but having several thousand people poring over and commenting on it would make me a bit green.
A lot of slashdotters write that "if you don't want it read, don't post it"... but really there's a difference between putting something up so that global interested parties can check it out, and having it swarmed on by the masses. Makes me wonder if I should append a "property of owner XYZ, please do not copy or link this article without permission"... at least to cover my ass in some form if such an article got in the wild.
Calling the environments created in the glut of recent MMORPG "virtual worlds" is a disservice to the term. Most of these so-called worlds are woefully small in scope and the inhabitants reduced to a very small subset of brainless activities.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Dr. Bartle is much more broadly educated than I am
I like books written by people more educated than myself, that way I learn things. If you want to feel intellectually superior, check out the local thrift/used book shop for some old "choose your own adventure"s
Or read anything by Grisham or Clancy.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It's all so inane to me. They are crappy games, that's all. I wish people would stop trying to find some mystical and spiritual meaning in them.
Don't be fooled by the MMO description, EQ, UO and their ilk are still MUDs. Adding pretty pictures to a concept does not change what it is.
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