Designing Virtual Worlds

Between June 2002 to April 2003, I wrote a book.

OK, so I did other things too, but during working hours I wrote a book. The book concerns the design of virtual worlds; indeed, I wanted to call it The Design of Virtual Worlds, but my publisher assured me that no reference book with “The” as the first word of its title ever sells. I guess I can’t use that as an excuse if it bombs, then ...

I’m not normally one to promote my own work; I find it stomach-churningly embarrassing. However, FODDY has asked me to write an introduction for Muddled Times, with the veiled threat that if I didn’t do it now then he would when it came out, so here I am.

First, then, I suppose I ought to explain what I mean by the term "virtual world". Basically, I mean any and all flavours of MUDs – what people variously refer to as text MUDs, graphical MUDs, social MUDs, adventure MUDs, MU*s, MOOs, MUCKs, MUSHes, MUGs, MUAs, MOGs, MMOGs, MMORPGs and Persistent Worlds. Although the formal name for all of these is MUDs, I couldn’t use that: because of the various name wars that have taken place over the past two decades, if I said that I was writing about MUDs then some people would think I only meant combat MUDs, or adventure MUDs, or text MUDs; they’d probably have said the D stood for "dimension" or "domain", too. Therefore, I called them Virtual Worlds, in the hope that this will be the end of it (which, of course, it won’t be).

The book is aimed at virtual world designers. Given that there aren’t enough virtual world designers in the world to fill a scout hut, on the face of it this isn’t all that clever a move on my part. However, although it’s aimed at designers, it’s of interest to many more people. In particular, players and academics will (hopefully) find it worth reading.

My basic strategy was to start with the concrete and gradually work my way through to the abstract. Thus, Chapter 1 begins with a history of virtual worlds and explains why I get to write the book instead of anyone else. Actually, virtual worlds have been invented at least 7 times; it’s just that Roy Trubshaw and I were the ones who got there first. If we hadn’t, people would be playing SOGs now (from Sceptre of Goth) rather than MUDs, in terms of nomenclature, that maybe wouldn’t have been so bad a thing ...

After giving a history of virtual worlds and explaining the main differences between them ("these have text, these have graphics", that kind of thing), I go on in Chapter 2 to describe how to make one. This is incredibly dry and incredibly boring – exactly the kind of thing designers hate. However, it’s also a test of their resolve: if you want to be a designer so much that you actually take the time to understand this stuff, well, that shows how passionate to become a designer you really are.

Fortunately, Chapter 2 is not very long.

Things start to pick up big time in Chapter 3. Here, I introduce my old player types model and point out its shortcomings. In particular, although it describes the various player types and how they interact with one another, it doesn’t explain how people change player type over time. From the very early days of MUD1, we noticed how when people were introduced to the game they all tended to follow the same pattern of behaviour: they would start off killing one another, then explore, then start racking up points trying to "win", then sit around chatting with their friends. Individuals may be one player type for a long period, but they usually do change over time. What drives that change?

To describe what happens, I improved on my player types model by adding a new dimension. Actually, it’s an old dimension: I created it at the same time I did the work for the "classic" player types, except then I applied it only to wizzes. This time, I apply it to mortals, too, and thus we get a 3D player types graph instead of a 2D one.

Using this 3D graph, I derive four main paths that players seem to follow from newbie to oldbie. I stick these all together and get what I call player development tracks. These show which (of two) more advanced types a player could go to next (assuming they do develop; some don’t). Player development tracks are closely linked to the concept of immersion, i.e. the sense of being in a virtual world (see my earlier Muddled Times article on the subject). My grand theory is almost complete at this point, as it explains fairly well how players develop over time. It’s still missing a final piece, though: an explanation of why they develop. That comes in Chapter 5.

However, before then we get Chapter 4.

Chapter 3 was about the players; Chapter 4 is about the world. It describes the many things that designers must consider when they are creating a living, breathing environment: geography, physics and economy. Well, and a bunch of other stuff too. This is the chapter that explorer-type players will like the most. In terms of design, I wouldn’t really have to write any of it at all if virtual world designers knew their stuff. Sadly, far too many actual and wannabe designers think it’s easier than it is and don’t find out they’re wrong until the players rip through their finished world like a chainsaw through butter.

Chapter 5 moves on to discussing characters (as opposed to players). It covers things like character creation, advancement and organisation, along with combat, crafting and what to do in the "elder game" when the players have experienced all the content. Much of this is stating what to many designers is the obvious but to most readers won’t be. The bit where it gets suddenly original is the final tying-up of the loose ends of Chapter 3’s theory. Here, I pull in the well-known "Hero’s journey" model, which was derived by anthropologist Joseph Campbell as a template to fit the ancient myths of an astonishing array of different cultures. It has since been famously applied to create such works as Star Wars, but crops up time and time again elsewhere whether the author knew about it or not (The Matrix, the Harry Potter series). It has been used in virtual worlds before, too, except not how I use it here ...

Briefly, the hero’s journey consists of 3 stages:

• In the departure stage, the hero leaves his (sorry, hers, but since "hero" is a sexist term…) own world and enters a new one.
• In the initiation stage (which is the main one), the hero undergoes many trials and temptations, until eventually facing whatever entity is the supreme power in his life. Thereupon, he gains an understanding of himself that he didn’t have before.
• In the return stage, he goes back to his own world, using the knowledge he acquired on his quest to achieve a spiritual balance and the freedom to live.

In the past, virtual worlds that have implemented the hero’s journey have done so faithfully at the character level. All the various steps associated with each stage are reproduced, so (in the person of your character) you will initially be called to adventure, given the opportunity to refuse, acquire a supernatural guide when you accept, make a conscious decision to cross a threshold, then be symbolically reborn in some womb-like setting such as a cave or the belly of a whale. That’s the departure stage; the other two stages are choreographed similarly.

This isn’t how it should be, though. Players undertake a hero’s journey, not characters. For players, the virtual world is where they go for adventure; the departure stage takes place in reality, and the return stage concerns the return to reality. The player development tracks I constructed in Chapter 3 fit the middle, initiation stage. Players play virtual worlds to develop as people, and the hero’s journey is the algorithm that helps them do it.

Yes, sorry: you’ll just have to read the book if you want any of that to make any sense ...

Chapter 6 is an academic section that took me the longest two write – several months. My goal here is to show that virtual worlds are valid objects of study, and therefore I look at what people who have studied virtual worlds from the perspective of other disciplines have to say about them. At times, this was something of an ordeal: feminist theory, for example, was not written with me in mind… Still, I think I succeed in showing that:

• There are academic fields of study that find virtual worlds interesting in a way that they wouldn’t find, say, homeopathic medicine interesting. Virtual worlds fit into existing science and social science paradigms.
• None of those fields that study virtual worlds completely subsume it. Poetry is a sub-field of literature, but the study of virtual worlds isn’t a sub-field of anything: it’s a new field unto itself.

Academics will enjoy this chapter, if only because of the ease with which they’ll be able to shred my scholarship. Still, I think it makes its overall point.

Chapter 7 develops a critical aesthetic for virtual worlds. Say what?

A critical aesthetic is basically a way of making sense of the symbols that an artist puts into their art. The consumers of the art recognise the symbols and, because of the critical aesthetic, divine their meaning.

Here’s an example. In a movie, a little girl gets on her bicycle while her vest-wearing father reads a newspaper on the porch. "Be careful, honey", he says, glancing up then returning to his newspaper. What’s going to happen?

In real life, the little girl notes that her father doesn’t want to go with her, so she goes for a ride and comes back safe and sound. In the movie, she is flattened by booze-fuelled rednecks driving a stolen pick-up truck the moment she turns a corner. How did you just know something awful was going to happen to her? Because the director told you. The safety of the porch, the complacent father, the dialogue, the fact it was a little girl and not a little boy – it all presaged some ghastly accident. If she had smiling 15 minutes later, you’d have felt cheated.

You understand the symbols in movies. You also understand the symbols in virtual worlds. You didn’t think virtual worlds had them? OK, look at MUD2: have you noticed how the older something is, the more dangerous it is? The cottage is vaguely 1930s, and is quite safe. The inn is perhaps a little older, but you’re not going to get killed there. The tin mine is maybe from the 1800s, and it leads to the dwarfs. The idol is far older, and leads to the goblins and ultimately the giants. The most dangerous part of The Land is the island, where we’re back into druidical times. MUD2 deliberately uses time as a metaphor for danger, and players pick up on it subconsciously if not consciously.

Similarly, if I want to imply action or get players moving, I make room descriptions not very long; if I want to slow down the pace or to let players know they’re safe, I use more words. In this way, I, as a designer, can send messages to the players that they can pick up on. A system of such messages is a critical aesthetic. The existence of a critical aesthetic demonstrates that an activity is an art.

Showing that virtual world design is an art is what I really hoped to do with Chapter 7.

I could have stopped at Chapter 7, too. Its final conclusions are quite powerful (well, I think so, anyway) and would easily support the entire book. However, I wanted one more chapter, concerning the ethics of virtual world design. This is Chapter 8, and it’s almost all questions with no answers. It’s hugely important, but I suspect only in a "this is hugely important" way. I don’t expect any of it will make any actual difference: designers will read it and decide they ought to reflect on the ethical implications of their work, then carry on just as they did before. Still, if it helps set the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, it may have some influence in the long term (I’m sure litigation lawyers will like it!).

And that’s what I wrote: 792 pages of it, according to amazon.com. I ought to mention that the publication date they give is 14th July, but according to amazon.co.uk it won’t hit these shores until November 30th.

So, plenty of time to save up your pennies!