Computer Science

I re-read the previous paragraph immediately after having written four pages about computer science and virtual world design. I bit the bullet and cut them.

Many virtual world designers ¹ have a soft spot for computer science because their own backgrounds are in this area. However, the fact is that computer scientists in general are not tremendously interested in virtual worlds except when they’re working on them ², in which case they have a direct relationship with the designers anyway. Designers who are former programmers can call on their own experience, of course: Program design methodologies can certainly help in the process of virtual-world design, and systems analysis techniques are invaluable, too. The greatest benefit of computer science training to designers, however, is perhaps the understanding it gives of what can be programmed (and how long it will—or might—take).

When it comes to using virtual worlds as a research application, though, computer science’s interest is very limited. There are some programming languages that have been designed to support virtual worlds (most notably LogiMOO ³), but other than that, virtual worlds are used either to show off some object-modeling system’s capabilities or to explore distributed processing/programming ideas. Both of these are likely to have an eventual impact on virtual world design, but only through the additional weaponry they provide for the programmers who implement virtual worlds.

So, although there are many computer science papers I’d like to tell you about here, I have to concede that basically I only want to do so because that’s my background, not because there’s anything hugely relevant to virtual world design there.