Physics

The foundations of a virtual world are its geography and its population; they’re like a board and its pieces. Whenever designers begin work on a new virtual world, among the first things they consider are the geography and the ecology/economy.

With MUD1, Roy Trubshaw began with the physics.

Designers today inherit so much from what has gone before that often they don’t give thought to why things are the way they are. If they don’t give thought, they don’t have understanding; if they don’t have understanding, they can’t innovate. There are so many features of a virtual world that rely on its physics—geography and population included—that it’s staggering how much is taken for granted.

Physics concerns the fundamental systems of change; it’s the machinery of a virtual world. It’s no accident that it was the first statement in the definition of virtual worlds I gave in Chapter 1. It implicitly defines all a virtual world’s tangible possibilities; if the physics doesn’t allow it, you can’t have it.

Designers really should know everything about the physics of their virtual world. They should know what conventions have been adopted, they should know why they were adopted, and they should know their implications. Armed with this, they should consider ways and means to improve on them for the benefit of their virtual world and its players. If you do go with the flow, it ought only to be because the flow is going where you want to go.