Influences on Virtual Worlds on Designing Virtual Worlds

Printed Works

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The single most important influence on virtual worlds from fiction is J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings ¹ trilogy. Although it would be of huge significance merely for having established the genre of High Fantasy, its ultimate worth lies in its depiction of an imagined world. It’s not the particular world it describes that is momentous (although Middle Earth is indeed classic source material for people writing new text-based games); rather, it’s that creating a fully realized, make-believe world was shown to be actually possible. Prior to The Lord of the Rings, worlds of such depth were practically unknown.

Film and Television

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Most original fictional ideas appear in magazine, comic, or book form first, because these are far less expensive to produce than movies or TV series (or even stage plays). Many of the top-grossing movies, year after year, are based on stories or characters that first appeared in print.

Unsurprisingly, the influence of film and television on virtual worlds falls into the same categories as does that of books and comics:

Role-Playing Games

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Role-playing games (RPGs) have always had an important influence on virtual worlds.

Role-playing is basically acting, and therefore has its roots in ancient history. It has many uses beyond theatrical expression (for example in psychology, education, and training), but it wasn’t until the 1973 arrival of E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) ¹ that the concept of role-playing games finally crystallized. Dungeons & Dragons was a fusion of traditional tabletop wargames and interactive storytelling, in which one player (the referee, later to be known as the Dungeon Master/Mistress (DM) or Games Master/Mistress (GM)) designed an imaginary world into which a number of players would go. The referee would describe what the players could see, hear, feel, and so on, and the players would explain what they (or, more correctly, their characters) would do. The referee would then roll a few dice to determine the consequences of these actions in the context of the imaginary world, which would in turn cause the players to try new actions, and so on. Virtual worlds are very close to tabletop RPGs except they have computerized referees.

Other Influences

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

The design of virtual worlds is influenced by printed works, film, television, and role-playing games. Individual worlds may draw from other fields, too; for example, there are text MUDs set in console game worlds like that of Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Final Fantasy series, and there are scripting languages based on those used for military simulations. Anything requiring imagination can potentially be of value: These genuinely are “imaginary” worlds.

However, external factors are not the only ones at work here.