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Designing Virtual Worlds 113

Posted by timothy from the placing-trees-and-tribbles dept.
Mahrin Skel (Dave Rickey) writes "When I wrote up my Engines of Creation column for August 12th with a focus on Dr. Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds , I had no idea it was the closest thing to an independent review the book had yet received. I hadn't intended my column as a review, but simply as nit-picking over an almost theological point of disagreement between my philosophy of game design and that of Dr. Bartle. My intended audience was the normal readers of my column, mostly other people already working in the Online Games industry." Rickey provides a review of Bartle's book for a more general audience below, and explains his reasoning for doing so.
Designing Virtual Worlds
author Richard A. Bartle
pages 768
publisher New Riders
rating Very Good
reviewer Dave Rickey
ISBN 0131018167
summary An overview of Virtual World Design by one of the field's founders

It never occurred to me that my review would be read by a wider public, most of whom had never heard of me or even Dr. Bartle, and would see only the hostility, and not understand the narrowness of the focus. When the column was picked up by Slashdot I was stunned, when I realized it was also linked by Clay Shirky in Many to Many and by Joystick101 among other places, I felt slightly ill. Without intending to, I may have damaged the reputation of Dr. Bartle and of his book, and I feel an obligation to set the record straight with an actual review of his book. I'm not sure why it has not already received such a review, except that only a few dozen people in the world currently make their living at virtual world design and would really be qualified to write it.

What is in the book?

The "Introduction to Virtual Worlds" of the first chapter does a very good job of laying out what a virtual world is, and defending that definition as a category that includes but is not limited to the online games that are the most common examples of the type. The history lesson included a lot of information even I, after six years in the industry and a serious attempt at studying it, was not aware of. The second chapter gives a very good overview of the process by which the world is created both in business terms and in structural arrangements. The third includes a reprise and updating of Dr. Bartle's now-classic Players that Suit MUD's, the touchstone for every theory of player motivation in online games, and continues into a description of the properties and dynamics of the communities that form in and around the worlds.

Where most of the first three chapters are a primer -- containing the base knowledge needed to understand the whole field in functional terms -- the 4th and 5th chapters focus much more on the worlds as games. The mechanics of game systems, the structure of "advancement" systems and the psychology that makes them run, all of the myriad elements that make a virtual world a game.

Chapters 6 and 7 take a more academic overview of the field, discussing the "why's" of the worlds, what they are, what they may become, and what other fields of human endeavour they are most similar to and therefore may have lessons to offer. Chapter 7's effort to establish the academic and artistic "legitimacy" of virtual worlds was the main source of my disagreement with the book: I think that virtual worlds are entirely capable of standing on their own merits and do not need to be considered credible by the academic arts to be worthy. But this is the "almost theological" issue, and although significant to myself and a handful of others in the field, it's not something that should be counted against the work as a whole.

Chapter 8 focuses on the fact that as virtual as the worlds may be, the people in them (and therefore the relationships) are real, and therefore certain ethical factors normally not considered an issue in game design become much more important. Added to this are questions of "ownership"; if there is no game without the players, but the operator has a finger on the power button, who is in control? Who should be? The book doesn't solve many of these problems (every solution is likely to be unique to a particular setting), but does lay out where most of the fracture lines occur.

What I liked:

The book establishes good points and brings the reader up to date on the known principles of the field, with copious references to other writings on the subject provided in the footnotes. The general focus on the "players eye" view is a very important attribute: too often, discussions of virtual worlds have the "God's Eye" designer's view from orbit, and forget that in the end it's the ground-level "fun or not-fun" experience of the players that makes or breaks a design.

What I didn't like:

Dr. Bartle is much more broadly educated than I am (they don't give out any titles for an Associates degree in electronics), and tries very hard to make a case to the academic community that virtual worlds are worthy of consideration as serious works of Capital-A "Art." Since I am not concerned about credibility with the dilettantes and dabblers who make up most of academia in the Arts, the repeated references to the Hero's Journey and the effort to define a dramatic theory of online games in Chapter 7 distracted and occasionally annoyed me. But those interested in such things will probably find his efforts there as workmanlike as the rest of the volume.

Summary:

This book is a must-read for anyone who works in the field of online games, and highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand the theory and structure of the systems that make them run, or to effectively discuss them with the teams that work on them.

You can purchase Designing Virtual Worlds from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Designing Virtual Worlds

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  • Don't be upset that slashdotters may have taken your article out of context. That is just what we do.

  • More info on the author... (Score:5, Informative)

    by camilita ( 694206 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:06PM (#6756137)
    Since the topic is interesting to me I did a quick search on his name. This is part of the information of the author that can be found in the detail of the book [amazon.com]:
    Richard Allan Bartle, Ph.D., co-wrote the first virtual world, MUD ("Multi-User Dungeon"), in 1978, thus being at the forefront of the online gaming industry from its very inception. A former university lecturer in Artificial Intelligence, he is an influential writer on all aspects of virtual world design and development. As an independent consultant, he has worked with almost every major online gaming company in the U.K. and the U.S. over the past 20 years. Richard lives with his...

    • A little history (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kmahan ( 80459 )
      The University of Illinois PLATO system had "Multi-User Dungeon" type games before 1978. Just a reminder that lots of innovative things happened on PLATO that then got "reinvented" years later. Having a 512x512 plasma(AC) screen based terminal hooked up to a mainframe and being able to write interterminal games easily was a lot more fun than trying to use the "graphics" on a trs-80 or apple.

    • a pvp question (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I am curious about Dave Rickey's comment in his old article (Engines of Creation #6) where he mentions the connection between increased territory directly corresponding to increased pvp population. His proof lies in the introduction of a new expansion to EQ that increased the territory on the Zek server (pvp server).
      The pvp server population increased after the expansion was released, so he assumes that the two are directly related to each other. My qualm is that it is has been my experience that expan
    • Dr. Bartle was a trend setter for a genre that is still in it's growth stage. Much like how Gordon Moore was able to set words to a trend that was formulating before him, Bartle attempted to attach theories to a microcosm of online societies.

      Without intending to, I may have damaged the reputation of Dr. Bartle and of his book, and I feel an obligation to set the record straight with an actual review of his book.

      Nice to know that Dave attempts to offset his first treatise with an almost narcissistic com

  • If Dr. Bartle says one thing (Score:4, Funny)

    by DrWhizBang ( 5333 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:08PM (#6756170) Homepage Journal
    you can bet that Dr. James will back him up...

  • Realism vs Fun (Score:5, Insightful)

    by angst7 ( 62954 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:10PM (#6756188) Homepage
    I think that virtual worlds are entirely capable of standing on their own merits and do not need to be considered credible by the academic arts to be worthy.

    Having played on and assisted in development of a host of muds for over 10 years (ranging from old diku and lp based all the way through EQ, Planetscape, etc...) I would agree 100%. There is no substitute for 'Fun Factor' in a mud. In fact the more reasonable and sensable (our world like) a mud becomes, the less interesting I find it.

    ---
    Jedimom.com [jedimom.com], now with twice the pudding!

    • Re:Realism vs Fun (Score:3, Interesting)

      by farrellj ( 563 ) *
      Having worked in a Virtual Reality Gaming Cafe, I can tell you that the more "artificial" a world is, the less "transition sickness", or the disorientation that players get from spending long times in VR is greatly reduced. For example, Decent in full 3D on a good VR headset will generate more transition sickness than say, DOOM would, as Decent has a more "real" environment to the brain.

      ttyl
      Farrell
    • I had high hopes for Planetscape, but after just finishing off-and-on play through three 7-day trials(*), the effect of the grand scale of the game wore off, the dozen-or-so vehicles lost the wow-factor, and the "battle rank" advancement to get more implants and skill certifications wasn't even that rewarding (i.e. addictive).

      I admit that some of the combat was massively intense (as in 5 frames-per-second intense on a fast rig), but the periods of inaction and travel time between hotspots got boring; the

    • As an artist and software designer currently involved with designing on-line games, I am very interested in the artistic potential of the media. I have done a lot of thinking over the last several months on this. Here are some of theroms I am working with, and a conclusion.

      Art can be thought of as a system to abstract and highlight a point of view in some media as a mechinism to communicate.

      Every artistic media has a natural vocabulary that is suitible for the range of that media.

      Artist working in a medi

  • I think a lot of these problems can be solved simply by observation of the real world, and then deciding to either subset it or superset it. It is easy to think of current existence as a black box with certain properties, that one would either want to take a subset of those properties, or extend them in some way. I don't think it takes a special book -- if you're looking for a book on life, try all the millions of great novels out there. Those writers (i.e. Steinbeck) present a lot of information about the design of a world in the way that they create their "virtual worlds".

    • Re:Aren't a lot of these problems solved by life? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Those writers (i.e. Steinbeck) present a lot of information about the design of a world in the way that they create their "virtual worlds".

      I both agree and disagree.

      From a pure "model a world" point of view, both fiction and the real world are necessary inputs.

      However, when one is designing a virtual world (or multiple virtual worlds) for gameplay, there are more considerations. Fiction is not a particularly good input, since the bulk of fiction is a linear experience of one form or another. A virtual wo

    • In a shared game world, you have the ability to give players the ability to do almost anything they can imagine. There are only two problems with this: you have to give them a hook that makes them feel it's meaningful to do something, and (worse) they have to live in a world in which _everyone else_ can do anything you let them do.

      Regarding the first problem - in the real world, why aren't you out living adventures? What makes it an exciting notion to think that someone would have adventures? It's the r
    • Getting out in the real world instead of playing with manipulative mechanics? Are you new here?

  • How many others (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:11PM (#6756198) Journal
    Start breathing a little more rapidly after discovering that their article (or worse website) has been posted up on a major site such as slashdot. Pending bandwidth disasters aside, many things are meant to be shared with the general "world-at-large," but not with a large portion of the world. More scary is when they only focus on part of a story or opinion, leading to the appearing of bias on the part of the writer.

    It's nice to see that not only did Mr Rickey put in a "full-opinion" follow-up, but that /. was good enough to post it up.

    Personally, I have a lot of stories, postings, etc that I really have no problem sharing with a random interested netter... but having several thousand people poring over and commenting on it would make me a bit green.

    A lot of slashdotters write that "if you don't want it read, don't post it"... but really there's a difference between putting something up so that global interested parties can check it out, and having it swarmed on by the masses. Makes me wonder if I should append a "property of owner XYZ, please do not copy or link this article without permission"... at least to cover my ass in some form if such an article got in the wild.

    • Re:How many others (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 )
      You think slashdot is bad?

      Pray you aren't linked to by a truly massive portal site like msn.com or yahoo, or a large news site like cnn.com or msnbc.

      CNN stuck a link to the small company I work for in an article about a year back. A slashdotting might last an hour or two, we were pummelled for weeks.

    • Re:How many others (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MegaFur ( 79453 )

      A lot of slashdotters write that "if you don't want it read, don't post it"... but really there's a difference between putting something up so that global interested parties can check it out, and having it swarmed on by the masses. Makes me wonder if I should append a "property of owner XYZ, please do not copy or link this article without permission"... at least to cover my ass in some form if such an article got in the wild.

      I agree with you that there's a difference between something you want only a fe

      • I might even post some links to it out of spite.

        Then your an asshole. Now, if you had a huge portal or site like slashdot, and I had said article crouched in legaleze, and you still posted the damn link, you might even be liable for the huge f**ing bandwidth charges that are likely incurred if you flagrantly ignored such a notice.

        Hopefully, slashdot editors would not be so ignorant as to disregard such a warning.

        Website owners should be able to have some exectation that if they put up reasonable warn

        • Re:How many others (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Then you're an asshole. Now, if you had a huge portal or site like slashdot, and I had said article crouched in legaleze, and you still posted the damn link, you might even be liable for the huge f**ing bandwidth charges that are likely incurred if you flagrantly ignored such a notice.... Website owners should be able to have some expectation that if they put up reasonable warnings then they don't have to put passwords or logins etc etc on every bloody page just to avoid the slashdot flood.

          You keep using
        • if you had a huge portal or site like slashdot, and I had said article crouched in legaleze, and you still posted the damn link, you might even be liable for the huge f**ing bandwidth charges that are likely incurred if you flagrantly ignored such a notice.

          Sure, and I might be able to fart a dialtone, but it's highly unlikely.

          In terms of who can read what when and how, posting something anywhere on the web without security (warnings and disclaimers are not security) is no different from writing it d
          • I think it's naive (and wrong) to expect webvisitors to adhere to your warnings or disclaimers about linking

            But I suppose you think SPAM is wrong. But then... you have an email that is globally accessible too, for many even guessable. So I guess you should be securing that better too and tough luck if you get spammed with 100 goatse's in a day?

            It's called a "reasonable expection from a reasonable human being." Unfortunately, with the attitude of people today, reasonable expectation is that you will mee
            • But I suppose you think SPAM is wrong.

              Annoying sometimes, yes. Wrong? Well, it's not illegal, most of it is not immoral (IMHO). I don't like it, but I'm not sure it's wrong.

              So I guess you should be securing that better too and tough luck if you get spammed with 100 goatse's in a day?

              Well, the mildly-obfuscated email of mine here on /. is a spam account I rarely pay much attention to (unless /. is mentioned in the subject line), so it's not a problem. I take responsible steps to make sure my m

        • *sigh* You [slashdot.org] are [slashdot.org] obviously [slashdot.org] new [slashdot.org] here [slashdot.org]. This [slashdot.org] has [slashdot.org] already [slashdot.org] been [slashdot.org] debated [slashdot.org]. (a lot!)

          Of course most of these refer to "deep linking" which is an extra "evil" version of linking. But since you're against any large entity linking to your page you are probably against them "deep linking" to your page as well. This page [dontlink.com] (note this link comes from the "has" article) lists a number of sites that don't want anyone to link to them or have linking policies that heavily restrict how they can be linked to. At least in th

          • No, I don't really have anything against linking to my site. I don't yet have anything on there that should be of interest to a major site. However, if I did, I'd probably label it as "please email me before linking", so that I could at least make sure my countermeasures were happily in place and install some type of apache throttling/etc. Right now I prefer not to throttle, and don't have a need for it: just hoping for the courtesy of being informed before such a need emerges (in other words, link away, bu

    • Makes me wonder if I should append a "property of owner XYZ, please do not copy or link this article without permission"... at least to cover my ass in some form if such an article got in the wild.

      If your site is on someone else's hostserver, you're pretty much SOL for doing anything about it, but if you are running on your own webserver, you should be able to go into the server configuration and configure your site so that articles are restricted by the HTTP-REFERER header field (admittedly, it can be s

      • This would be done by CGI (not a big deal anyhow), but is there an actual apache setting for this. I've often considered setting up something that would simply temporarily down the webserver in the event that it consumes a large amount of bandwidth of a specified small amount of time (say, a gig in under an hour) - or to as you said ignore a referer, if there is a lot of bandwidth hits coming from said referer (e.g. 100 hits and 200kb coming from slashdot starts to ignore slashdot).
    • A lot of slashdotters write that "if you don't want it read, don't post it"... but really there's a difference between putting something up so that global interested parties can check it out, and having it swarmed on by the masses. Makes me wonder if I should append a "property of owner XYZ, please do not copy or link this article without permission"... at least to cover my ass in some form if such an article got in the wild.

      I have a friend whose site was hammered by a major media outlet -- other than Sla

  • Misnomer... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kneecarrot ( 646291 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:11PM (#6756205)
    Calling the environments created in the glut of recent MMORPG "virtual worlds" is a disservice to the term. Most of these so-called worlds are woefully small in scope and the inhabitants reduced to a very small subset of brainless activities.
    • Well, is it *all* of them or *most* of them? If its *most* of them then there must be some that are worthy of the term "virtual world" and thus something to write about. If its none of them, then why not say so...

      In any case a virtual world (The Matrix if you will) is hardly going to spring into being fully formed. There have to be steps to get there. Hopefully this book is about what steps have been tried.

      What MMOGs have you tried, and what would you do differently?

    • Re:Misnomer... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Most of these so-called worlds are woefully small in scope and the inhabitants reduced to a very small subset of brainless activities.

      Sounds like the real world to me.

  • Whats not to like? (Score:5, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:14PM (#6756229) Journal
    Dr. Bartle is much more broadly educated than I am

    I like books written by people more educated than myself, that way I learn things. If you want to feel intellectually superior, check out the local thrift/used book shop for some old "choose your own adventure"s

    Or read anything by Grisham or Clancy.

    • Re:Whats not to like? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Or read anything by Grisham or Clancy.

      Obviously you are feeling rather intellectually superior.

      • It's just that its brainless pulp fiction. No thought required. Just a story about a submarine or dinosaurs or something. Not that it's all that terrible if that's what you feel like reading.

        To be somewhat closer to topic, it's like video games. Sometimes I like a more thought-inducing RPG or adventure, with obscure puzzles and whatnot to figure out (I miss the infocom days - puzzles today seem to be "find 4 red magic blocks"), sometimes I like to just blow shit up or punch guys out.
  • Ha, but I'm guessing you were just following the rules of Verant. Must be great to be out there doing something instead of banning people for "kill stealing".

  • They are just games (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:22PM (#6756308) Journal
    People like to go on profound, philosophical meanderings about MMOGs and MUDs all of the time. I have played a lot of them. You know what? They ain't nothing but games. The difference between "virtual worlds" and your average role playing game is that companies that run MMOGs can get away with making sub-par games and provide crappy customer service. This is because the target audience for MMOGs have proven that they will actually keep paying for this type of customer service and buggy products.

    It's all so inane to me. They are crappy games, that's all. I wish people would stop trying to find some mystical and spiritual meaning in them.

    • People like to go on profound, philosophical meanderings about MMOGs and MUDs all of the time.

      Obviously you've never played everquest. I mean.. you can DRINK BEER. The screen gets all crazy! It's like, actually drinking beer... but not.

      You've got to try it man.
    • I pretty much agree with you, so imagine my surprise to find, a few links deep into the posted article, a reference to a case of what someone seriously called a rape in a MUD [neu.edu]. This has to be read to be believed.

    • Re:They are just games (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kwil ( 53679 )
      I see in venerable Slashdot tradition you actually haven't read anything below the opening blurb on the front page. Kudos!

      Had you gone further, you would have seen that these articles have nothing to do with mystical or spiritual meaning, but rather with an attempt to better classify the types of games and/or players, thus leading to a more complete and sound theory of what makes them interesting and to who. By doing this, the hope is that less of the sub-par crap you moan about will be released because pe
    • You miss the point.
      The game is the background for social interactions between real people. Without that there would be nothing much to wax philosophical about.
      the book is about making these kinds of games more fun/successful. In single-player games the experience is entirely about the one person playing it. Some of the same principles still apply, but it is the added dimension of social interaction which distinguishes MMOGs from regular games.

      And guess what - when you get a bunch of people together you hav
    • > The difference between "virtual worlds" and your average role playing game is that companies that run MMOGs can get away with making sub-par games and provide crappy customer service. This is because the target audience for MMOGs have proven that they will actually keep paying for this type of customer service and buggy products.

      Wait... so TSR didn't realease a lot of sub-par games (boot hill? gangbusters?) and provide crappy customer service? Sure they did!

      Their customers may have been bitter, cal

  • I think one of the most interesting things to me in the games, esp. set in virtual worlds is the relationship of cause and effect.

    In real life, we get to "learn" some cause-effects, and use them in making future decisions. But, I personally believe, that there are no hard and fast cause-effects that do not alter when the frame of the system in question is either reduced or enlarged.

    I play the games so that I can understand the cause-effect equation. I can sometimes try something in the virtual world and see a real world physical or psychological effect. At other times I can try something in the real-world and see its effect in the virtual world.

    The round trip i.e. real-virtual-real is very much possible and observable by me. But the other round trip i.e. virtual-real-virtual is not possible for me, and the only way that I can imagine that is to consider it to be loosely a "mirror" form of the real-virtual-real string.

    These cause and effect in the real-virtual-real and virtual-real-virtual strings, and how they in some way help me make sense of my body-mind duality is why the virtual worlds are very real for me .... That is why I am drawn to these "virtual" worlds that very "real" for me ...

  • I was pleasantly surprised when I went to slashdot this morning and found this article. I just spent the morning teaching some people how to use OpenInventor to visualize some Martian datasets for the upcoming MER missions.

    I've been writing some lecture notes [schwehr.org] for a class on designing virtual worlds that illustrate the real world (usually under water here) and have not discussed with those in the class the how, why, and philosophy of designing virtual worlds.

    thanks for the review!

  • His Games (Score:2, Informative)

    by Huff ( 314296 )
    Just a small plug for one of the incarnations of his game MUD2 www.mudii.co.uk .Having also met Richard at a few mudmeets (where the players and wizzes all meet up in a pub and get very drunk :-)) not only is he clever with the text based games, he is also a funny chap.

    Huff

  • A Few Dozen Virtual World Designers? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nova Express ( 100383 ) <lawrenceperson.gmail@com> on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:35PM (#6756449) Homepage Journal
    I think the reviewer needs to define just what the book's scope is, and just what "virtual worlds" consist of. The phrase "a few dozen people in the world currently make their living at virtual world design," makes me believe that he's only considering the chief designers at high-profile commercial MMORPGs, leaving out everyone who might design non-online gaming worlds, sub-designers, etc. Not to mention all those people creating things off in Hollywood. Not to mention pen-and-paper game designers. And not to mention my science fiction writing breathern, of which there are, at a minimum, some 200 or so making their living from designing "virtual worlds" consisting of words on a page...

  • Online gaming: Practical and useful observations. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rahga ( 13479 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:38PM (#6756467) Journal
    From where I stand, I see two very distinct type of "gamers" these days.... Rather than get to the point, I'll regail you with a story.

    I've been playing video games of all sorts for plenty of years now, and I have no problem admitting that I am not hooked on Counter-Strike. I'm involved with a gaming center [dmerz.com] that hosts one of those servers, and it is regularly active. I don't love CS, but I don't consider myself a bad player either.... Most of the maps in rotation are simple deathmatch type maps, none of the maps from version 1.5.... Typically, I rank in the top 3 or 4 out of 20 players when I hop on once or twice a month, a stat that surprises me even now. However, being the "old school" gamer, I often switch to maps that aren't so usual... With the CS 1.5 maps or classic maps (vegas, 747, as_ maps), I completely blow everyone else out of the water. I wouldn't say that it's the "lag" of newer maps, nor the fact that most of these guys don't know the maps... Heck, I hardly know some of these maps, so much of this is just a raw skill competition.

    I honestly believe that well over 80%, maybe up to 90% of "regular" online gamers are in it primarily for the social contact and environment. I'm sure there's plenty of people (like me) who would rather play for other primary reasons, such as the andrenaline rush or competitive nature, and those factors influence the social gamers greatly, but nontheless.... The vast majority of gamers seem to enjoy or are addicted to the social aspects more than anything else, and learn how to "go through the motions" and base their gameplay on mastery of these motions, and complain when things are altered in the slightest, even to the benefit of gameplay.

    I would have been much more interested to hear from the author about his own firsthand experiences with the dynamics of balancing social and gameplay components.... How *DO* you improve a game that people are addicted to, when addicts tend to fight change of any sort? As for that entire article, it seemed too pseudo-intellectual, and I see no benefit of questioning where the lines are drawn between art, social matters, and gaming... After all, I could classify the results of a masterful promoter attracting masses to an art exhibition as art itself.

  • Rebuttals to Column at Skotos (Score:5, Informative)

    by herderofcats ( 409703 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:42PM (#6756507)
    There are also some interesting rebuttals/conversaion by Richard Bartle responding to Dave Rickey's Engines of Creation [skotos.net] column at Skotos [skotos.net] in the Skotos Forums [skotos.net]. In that, Richard says:
    The crux of Dave's objection (as I see it) is that I'm developing a "theory" of virtual worlds that is neither provable nor disprovable, therefore it's not a theory. Well strictly speaking, from a Science standpoint, all theories are not only provable but are actually proven; anything else is merely a falsehood or an hypothesis. Dave is therefore correct: it isn't a formal theory.

    However, I wasn't speaking from a Science standpoint, I was speaking from an Art standpoint. I was using the word "theory" in the same way that it's used in "Film Theory" or "Theory of Art". These aren't theories in the scientific sense, but they are in the Comparative Studies sense. The idea is that an individual wishing to understand a work of art subscribes to one or more individual theories (which may or may not be consistent with other theories - or indeed one another) and applies these to "read" the work of art. You choose the theory you subscribe to based on criteria such as its relevance to your interests, the compellingness of its derivation, the degree to which you are convinced by its conclusions, the similarity of its judgments to your own aesthetic sensibilities etc..

    There is a lot more there worth reading.

    Also, Richard Bartle is also doing a column at Skotos called Notes from the Dawn of Time [skotos.net].

    -- Herder of Cats

    • Dr. Bartle is confused on the meaning of the word "theory".. He seems to be talking about a "theorem" which can be proven or demonstrated. A theory is merely tested numerous times and seems to hold. I had this argument before with an Earth Sciences friend about theory v. theorem. They're always used to talking about theories as if they really are true and proven. It's sort of embarrassing that Dr. Bartle is confused on this point in my opinion.

      Strangely, even though Bartle confuses theory in his rebuttal..
      • The crux of Dave's objection (as I see it) is that I'm developing a "theory" of virtual worlds that is neither provable nor disprovable, therefore it's not a theory. Well strictly speaking, from a Science standpoint, all theories are not only provable but are actually proven; anything else is merely a falsehood or an hypothesis. Dave is therefore correct: it isn't a formal theory.

      This is a classic debate (look up "Kuhn vs. Popper"), but he's not making a good case for either side.

      Real theories are f

      • My opinion is just one that comes from someone with an enthusiastic appreciation of art in all its forms but with no talent whatsoever of my own. I first really developed that appreciation for art when I took a two semester course in the history of art while filling the liberal arts portion of an EE degree. I found it by far the most fascinating part of my coursework. No wonder I never finished the degree, eh? The lack of a degree really hasn't held up my career, though. I've progressed from network de
  • I don't have cable TV and I don't have air conditioning. Since the Midwest has been hit by a massive heat wave the past few days, I've been spending a lot of time at a friends' house who does. She watches a lot of reality tv shows, which disturb me greatly. However, she has told me the difference of watching these and getting pulled into the drama they spawn, and watching these and laughing is how seriously the participants take themselves.

    Take Big Brother 4 for example, the participants acknowledge

  • "Pause & Effect" by Mark Meadows. he was a pioneer in virtual worlds (remember VRML?) and went on to write a book on interactive narrative. a virtual world is just an empty stage if there's no story behind it...

    lots of good art history and how it relates to immersive worlds:

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735 711712/ [amazon.com]

    • Not necessarily. More accurate to say that it's a stage without actors. You could still have a setting, or even multiple settings, props, etc.

      And in fact, that's how you want it -- because ideally your players are your actors, and the stories are those that they make up themselves.

      The ideal experience for a game company is to set up a stage so compelling that actors flock to it to tell their own stories, thus lessening the work on you.

  • blah (Score:1)

    by tonyt ( 115436 )
    When I wrote up my Engines of Creation column for August 12th with a focus on Dr. Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds, I had no idea it was the closest thing to an independent review the book had yet received and that i would be able to use slashdot to get people to read it.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I picked up this book at the local chain bookstore, and I guess I was expecting a book from a programmer's viewpoint, you know, "define an area where your players dwell with this virtual class that overrides...". The contents seemed a bit "soft" to me, but now that I know that the author comes from the liberal-arts side of academia, I guess that's understandable.

    I think I'll go back and give it another peek (if it's still on the shelf when I get there - the last time there was a reviewed book on /., the
  • I went to Amazon to 'Look inside' the book and I am definitely buying. I was working on a game that could be characterized in that 'virtual worlds' field for some 5 years and this book covers many of the problems I have been thinking about for last few years.

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