Points of View

Virtual worlds began as games. However, right from the beginning—MUD1—it was clear there was more to them than being mere games. Trying to convince people to take what they considered to be a “game” seriously was problematical, though. In academic circles, the only intellectually acceptable games were traditional ones, such as chess and checkers. A new game was not a worthwhile object of study. Playing games was a waste of computer resources.

Thus, virtual worlds became “simulations”—and far more respectable!

When commercial virtual worlds made an appearance, they became “games” again. People will pay to play games, but not simulations. However, what computer games developers understand by “game” is some distance from what virtual world designers do. In particular, many games portals didn’t recognize that these were products you had to remain involved with indefinitely—seeds to be nurtured rather than cut flowers to be left in a vase and forgotten. MUDs are not Quake. Industry experts (led by Jessica Mulligan), horrified at seeing so many people making the same mistakes again and again, rebranded virtual worlds as “services.” The sooner developers realized that their business primarily concerned providing a service for players, the better.

Thankfully, the message got through. The portals (and, later, independent developers) who maintained their virtual worlds adequately succeeded where their predecessors had struggled.

Virtual worlds became games again—“massively multiplayer online role-playing games.” They attracted players in increasingly large numbers. EverQuest’s population exceeded 10% of Norway’s population. The people were coming, but virtual world design stumbled: So-so bandwagon products were announced that were little more than riffs on an ossified EverQuest theme. Senior designers, with Raph Koster at the forefront, contested this decline: Virtual worlds were a medium through which many services (games included) might be delivered. Like any medium, they could—and should—be used creatively. Virtual world design was promoted as an art form, and the ripping-off of old designs instead of pursuing innovation was decried as a travesty. This ought to be the most exciting period in all virtual world design history, yet the best that people can come up with are feeble clones? Augh!

All these definitions of what virtual worlds were created for different purposes to make different points. Knowledgeable players may quote them in response to the don’t-get-it ridicule of the “it’s just a game” crowd, but they’re not accurately describing what virtual worlds really are.

Virtual worlds are places. Remember that, and many design issues cease to be issues at all. People go to places, do things there, and then they go home.

Virtual worlds are not simulations, because they don’t simulate anything. They approximate aspects of reality—enough for the purposes of immersion—but that’s all.

Virtual worlds are not services. Yes, providing access to them is a service of critical importance—they can’t exist otherwise. However, that doesn’t mean the virtual worlds themselves are services. Restaurants provide a service, but the food they serve isn’t a service ¹.

Virtual worlds are not a medium. Well, let’s put it this way: If they are, so is the real world. A medium is a channel open for communication with a (large) number of individuals. Although most virtual worlds do have such channels within them, they are not intrinsically channels themselves. You can play in a virtual world without communicating with any of the other players ².

Most certainly of all, virtual worlds are not games. Even the ones written to be games aren’t games. People can play games in them, sure, and they can be set up to that end, but this merely makes them venues. The Pasadena Rose Bowl is a stadium, not a game.

Virtual worlds are places. They may simulate abstractions of reality; they may be operated as a service; creating them may be an art; people may visit them to play games. Ultimately, though, they’re just a set of locations: places.

So, why say this now, at the beginning of Chapter 6? Wouldn’t it have been better in Chapter 1?

Actually, I did sneak it into Chapter 1, “Introduction to Virtual Worlds,” right at the beginning ³. The reason I’ve restated it now is only as a consequence of showing the other ways virtual worlds can at times profitably be visualized (that is, simulation, service, medium, goal—there are others, these are just the best-known). I wanted to demonstrate there are different, yet gainful, ways to look at virtual worlds from within the field itself; yet there are many more from without it.

Part of my original aim in writing this book was to stake out the study (as opposed to the playing) of virtual worlds as a worthwhile human endeavor for its own sake. Most academic work on the subject has been undertaken by researchers from other disciplines, who (naturally enough) have tended to concentrate on only those particular features of virtual worlds important to them. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of work here, and the question must be asked: Is there anything about virtual worlds that makes them sufficiently different from other objects of study that they merit examination from within? Or is the whole subject catered for well enough already from without ⁴?

Even assuming there is a niche for virtual worlds, that doesn’t mean research in the area is necessarily worthwhile. A measure of the value of a discipline is its relationship to other disciplines; it’s an indirect form of peer review. Homeopathy, for example, has nothing to articulate about conventional science except that it’s missing something very important, and of mainstream scientists only psychologists have an academic interest in homeopathy (and that’s for reasons that won’t please homeopaths). At the very least, this makes university courses on homeopathy and grants to homeopaths from government agencies rather thin on the ground. Do other disciplines view virtual worlds as credible entities? Or are they laughing stocks, of only passing interest to anyone except those who study laughing stocks?

Let’s find out.