Modes

When you start up your web browser, what page does it point at? Surprisingly, for most people the answer is “whatever my ISP set it to when I installed its software.” Their first view of the World Wide Web every morning is what their ISP shows them.

Virtual worlds have many ways to let players customize their experiences. In a textual world, for example, some people want full room descriptions the whole time, and some want short ones the whole time. There are commands that let players choose for themselves which of these to go with. However, one option will be the default, and that’s the one that newbies will use. In MUD1, the first time you entered a room you saw its full description, and on later visits you saw the short version. This helped stop newbies from getting lost. Later, they would use exclusively verbose descriptions when making accurate maps and exclusively brief descriptions at all other times, but later is later. When they started, they got the default, and the default said, “Explore!”

Defaults set the tone of virtual worlds, because all newbies play under them. As they become more experienced, they’ll inevitably customize some of the settings; most options, however, will stay at the default. Thus, the designer’s choice of defaults can have long-term influences on how a virtual world is perceived. Defaults are more important than they look.

To illustrate this, let’s take a look at modes, because in a sense they establish what the world is “about.”

All virtual worlds assume a hardware device for entering freeform data; it’s usually a keyboard. The player types some text, hits return, and—what? It depends on the current mode. In a textual world, the line is usually interpreted as a command.

open door
north
get book

This would be command mode.

In a graphical world, the line is usually interpreted as speech.

Follow me!
What happened? You were supposed to be
following!
Hey! That’s mine!

This would be conversation mode. Chat rooms usually default to conversation mode, too.

So where’s the hidden depth here? It’s not like you can’t act in conversation mode or speak in command mode.

When a newbie enters a world for which the default is command mode, the message that the world is sending them is that this is a place where you can do things: It emphasizes freedom to act on the world. If the default is conversation mode, the message is this is a place where you can communicate: It emphasizes freedom to interact with other players. You might expect, therefore, that players of textual worlds do more and players of graphical worlds say more.

Actually, for graphical virtual worlds the default is to use the less-than-freeform mouse most of the time, forcing a greater distinction between limited doing and unlimited saying. If you want to talk or attempt anything complicated, you have to stop playing to do so. This is sound advice for crowd control, but somewhat dissatisfying for the individuals in the crowd so controlled.

The designer sets the default mode. The default mode shapes the style of play. The designer can therefore encourage or discourage a style of play by changing the default mode. Thus, a simple, almost throwaway design decision can have a long-term influence on a virtual world’s ethos.

Note that although the main choice is between command mode and conversation mode, there are other modes used in virtual worlds. The convention has evolved that the first character in a line is used to switch modes for the remainder of that line. There will often be an option to turn a mode on/off until further notice, but no standard syntax for this has yet emerged.

Table 2.1 shows the most common modes in use, along with the (sometimes conflicting) options for leading characters used to switch them on.

Table 2.1 Common Modes