The Past Affects the Future on Designing Virtual Worlds

Missed Opportunities

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

OSI, which wrote Ultima Online, was part of Electronics Arts (EA). Given the positive effect of the Ultima name on sales, other brands from the EA stable were considered contenders for implementation as virtual worlds. Thus began the Privateer Online project. Raph Koster was installed as lead designer, with Rich Vogel as producer. Work was well advanced when the project was suddenly, bizarrely cancelled. Raph, Rich, and others were immediately snapped up by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) to work on the Star Wars license they had recently acquired. SOE was the new name of Verant, a company spun off from 989 Studios to develop EverQuest. In other words, EA presented some of its best virtual world experts to one of its two major competitors. EA would shortly give most of its remaining experts to its other major competitor.

Theory and Practice

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

It should be clear by now that virtual worlds have a long and varied history—much longer and more varied than many of the people who play and design them realize. But so what?

It’s not entirely the case that only by understanding the past can people understand the future. Virtual worlds have been “invented” at least seven times (MUD1, Sceptre of Goth, Avatar, Island of Kesmai, Aradath, Monster, and Gemstone were all developed autonomously), and the designers of these games had no sense of any “past” in what they were doing. Originality is entirely possible without rehashing other people’s ideas.

Whither Innovation?

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The design of virtual worlds proceeds by a process of evolution rather than revolution. New virtual worlds usually draw heavily from one or more “parent” worlds, even to the extent that it’s possible to map out an entire family tree for all the various codebases ¹. This being so, it is becoming increasingly important that designers of new virtual worlds become aware of innovations arising in other branches of the tree. Not only does this ensure that the best ideas spread, but there is less danger of standards problems arising from the same concept being implemented differently in different virtual worlds.