Development
Design is just one part of creating a virtual world. Designers like to think it’s the most important part, but is it?
Designers have wild, airy-fairy imaginings.
Programmers do the actual work of building the virtual world.
Artists are the magicians who imbue it with form.
Sound engineers determine the moods and emotions.
Operations staff are the engineers who keep it running.
Producers provide the resources.
Anyone can have wild imaginings. Only people with specialist skills can program, or draw, or compose, or run networks, or manage a project. Why are designers so important?
Because, if a designer screws up, the consequences for the virtual world can be devastating.
A piece of code that doesn’t work may be hard to track down, but once discovered it’s usually easy to correct. An odd-looking yet crucial texture may need to be painstakingly redrawn, but it’s still only a single bitmap. However, if a designer makes a seemingly minor misjudgment, the effects could be so pervasive that they might paralyze a world for weeks.
If you find that hard to believe, consider a virtual world in which non-player shopkeepers sell goods at fixed prices. What happens if there is inflation in this virtual economy? Pretty soon, you can have whatever you want for peanuts. What happens if there’s deflation? Even trivial items cost so much that only the very rich can afford them. What factors affect inflation/deflation? Oh, just about all of them—in hideously intertwined ways as determined by the actions of the designer.
Broken economies are not pretty. At one point, Asheron’s Call’s currency became so worthless that players had to barter if they wanted to acquire goods from one another. This went on for months before it was finally brought under control; the debacle cost AC dearly.
So, that’s why design is the most important thing about creating virtual worlds—it has the highest price of failure.