My Take on All This

Ideally, designers should create their world in such a way that they never need to add new content. In practice, this can never be. Nevertheless, new content should only be added to rectify problems in the way that the world works—that is, bug-fixing, balancing, and functional enhancing. Designers should not look to add or change content—even for artistic reasons—if it is not necessary ¹. All other content should be emergent from player activities. This means you need a virtual world with enough depth and breadth that players can, through the effects of their own actions, create content for themselves, and for others. The real world does it, so why can’t we? Players should have no access to out-of-context content creation tools. Whether they

have access to nontrivial in-context tools is open. This kind of “hands off” world is what I was trying to create right at the beginning with MUD1. Hopefully, some day someone will get close to achieving it.

Narrative: You can only tell a story when it has ended. Designers can create the obstacles, but the players themselves must overcome them. Players may come across self-contained, narratively driven sequences of events, but story arcs are out of the question.

In the end, all that designers can do is load, take aim, and fire. What happens after they pull the trigger depends on how good a shot they are. They provide an environment, they seed a starting culture (or multiple cultures), and then they yield control to the players. Of course the virtual world needs managing thereafter, because the nature does need nurture. Artistic expression by the designer stops with the launch, though.

This is my world. I created it. It’s my gift to you. Take it. Live in it. Make of it what you will. It’s your world now.

The central theme of Arthurian myth is whether the king is for the kingdom or whether the kingdom is for the king ². This has a hugely important spiritual dimension, as Arthur is a metaphor for the human soul. Merlin teaches Arthur with a view to his becoming a king for the kingdom, but Mordred exploits the relationship between Guinevere and Lancelot to cause Arthur to use his kingdom for his own ends.

Are designers for their virtual worlds, or are virtual worlds for their designers?

The answer is both. The king is for the kingdom; the kingdom is for the king. They’re the same.

Locate, learn, apply, internalize: As characters reflect players, so virtual worlds reflect their designers; as players learn from their characters, so designers learn from their worlds. The more of yourself that you, as a designer, put into a virtual world, the more you become it and it becomes you. Your experiences will develop the world’s, and its will develop yours.

The virtual world is your (the designer’s) exploration of yourself. It’s your hero’s journey. The king is the kingdom. How could it be otherwise?