Virtually a World

Posted on June 15, 2007 by Scott Jennings| 75 Comments

Amongst the seemingly never-ending navel gazing prompted by any public mention of SWG (and especially the NGE), Steve “Moorgard” Danuser brings up a point that’s been rubbing me the wrong way for a while now:

Online games and virtual worlds are not the same thing. If you’re building an MMO, you better be sure which one you intend to make.

Funny. I thought virtual worlds WERE online games. I know, I know, the endless navel-gazing discussion of “game vs. world” that preoccupied myself and many of others for pretty much the first four years of UO’s conception, but that’s more political posturing than anything else (PvP! PK switch! Trammel noob!). What’s rubbing me the wrong way specifically, though, is that I think the waters are becoming very muddy as to what exactly makes “a virtual world”.

A lot of this, I think, is due to the current media fascination with Second Life. SL certainly isn’t a new type of game, but the media, eager for anything to hand their Winchell hat on for some good copy, consistently brings up SL as the next coming of the Holy Metaverse, a posture that is encouraged by its makers. (And why not? If you sell a game to just the subscribers of Wired magazine, you’re probably doing OK. Plus, you probably will only need servers on the West Coast!)  And the one thing constantly hammered home by SL’s analysts and avatars: it’s not a game. It’s a virtual world. Even the largest corporations are starting to get in on the act. And thanks to the constant drumbeat of this, I’ve seen more and more industry analysis that describes the differences between SL and its competitors and traditional MMOs as such:

The attention surrounding MMOs (massively multiplayer online worlds) has never been greater. But it’s not just role playing games along for the ride; non-game, avatar-driven virtual communities are just as popular, if not by more, and we’re not just talking Second Life here.

By that, GigaOM’s list (which is seriously flawed, by the way: Webkinz is listed and Neopets isn’t? Ooookay then.) is defining games such as Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin as SL-style virtual worlds. What does Habbo Hotel have in common with SWG? Anything at all?

Clearly, games like Second Life and Habbo Hotel and the like are social games. They exist primarily as chatrooms; some, like Club Penguin have game play, some, like Second Life, only have what the users bring with them. Are they virtual worlds, then?

What is a virtual world? Let’s roll back a bit and look at what comes to mind when people think of VWs like SWG and UO.

Open character development. Basically, you can make whatever character you can dream up.

Complex economy. Ideally players make, buy, and sell everything.

Few amusement parks. By that, I mean the guided gameplay familiar to MMO players. Amusingly, the few areas in SWG that tried to bring that kind of gameplay to the table were called “theme parks”. Ride the Sarlacc!

Players can harvest, make, and build. Crafting, in other words, and intimately tied to the complex economy. Most involve players building entire cities of their own design, as their online “home”.

Open player vs. player. Always a contentious topic, but advocates of Ultima Online especially point to its wild west atmosphere as a catalyst for community building.

And… that’s it? Did I leave anything out? We’ll come back to the list in a second, but most people would pick something from the above when describing why they like VW-style MMOs.

So, let’s look at a few games out today. Start with Eve Online. Open character development? Check. Complex economy? Oh lord, yes.  Players can harvest/make/build? Yep. Open PVP? The game’s main selling point. Most people agree that Eve is a VW-style MMO.

Next: Everquest (the first one.) Few amusement parks? Uh… the whole game’s an amusement park. Open PVP? Nope.

But it starts to get fuzzy after that. Players can harvest/make/build? Well… kind of, yes. Not the quickest path to the cheese, but you certainly can.  Complex economy? There’s a whole zone full of player-run shopkeeper bots. Open character development? At first glance, no. You’re a 20th level paladin. But at second glance? There’s a lot of post-max character development that’s been bolted on over the years. It might be an arguable point.

Let’s get even more heretical. World of Warcraft? Pretty much the same arguments I made for EQ, since it’s a direct descendant. The economy’s fairly shallow, but it’s certainly active. Player crafting is the most simplified ever seen in an MMO to date — yet that simplification encourages everyone to dabble in it. There’s no open PvP UO/Eve style, but factional and arena PvP certainly exists. Character development’s fairly closed… but try asking people about their talent builds sometime. Would someone actually argue the case that World of Warcraft was a virtual world?

So what the hell is a virtual world? Has the term been bandied about so much as a political punching bag that it’s now devoid of all meaning?

I’d argue that one primary feature of a virtual world is context. Simply put, everything has a reason for being there. Monsters aren’t in an area simply because it’s the level 20 to 30 zone, they’re present because something *pushed* them there. Players, or migratory fluxes, or whatever – some context has been added.  The game (and yes, they are still games, at least the type that we’re discussing) spends an inordinate time of not explaining how, but also why. And ideally, the players themselves start explaining the why.

And that brings us to the other primary feature of a virtual world: player ownership.  The players are the territory, to bastardize Marshall McLuhan. The collective creative mind of the player base can bring forth more compelling interaction than any non-VW MMO can ever hope to match. VWs have been – many times rightfully so – dinged for taking the carefree philosophy of “build it and they will come – and they’ll build it, so don’t build that much”. But it’s true. The best VW experiences haven’t been scripted gameplay, but gameplay frameworks. Toolkits for players to drive their own experiences, which often wildly diverge from what the game designer even conceived of.

Anyway, I’m sure almost everyone reading this disagrees. The passion that drives VW discussions tends to do that to you.

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  • Wolfe

    Virtual World is what you say you make to attempt at tricking people to think you can find a market without competition from WoW. Another way to say the same thing:

    - “its like WoW but different.”

    I think the real problem comes from the evolution of the term mmorpg. Most people these days do believe mmorpg is:

    - An online game with many players who start out with gimped stats, kill foozles to get better stats so they can kill bigger foozles until you reach a point where you have all the stats and have to do some social engineering to get better stats from equipment which is only available to organised players.

    Hence the world has abandoned Raphs most excellent definition of mmorpg for this stupid “genre hunch” and the door you go through to leave the levels and the foozles behind is the Virtual World door. Where it really should be done by saying something like “not Diku design mmorpg”.

  • http://forge.ironrealms.com Matt Mihaly

    I agree with most of what you’re saying Scott, but the open character development bit is off I think. Eve, for instance, has VERY limited character development. Can I bet a chambermaid? A knight? A spy working for the CIA? A Roman senator? An 18th century Native American freedom fighter battling against the evil invaders?

    The character possibility space completely dwarfs anything that isn’t set up like a MOO (ie Second life, etc), but setting it up like a MOO removes most of the context, making the experience less immersive.

    –matt

  • Gwaendar

    Yeah, because when you’re roleplaying a knight in a medieval setting, a spy working for the CIA popping in won’t break the immersiveness of your experience.

  • http://www.everquest2.com Scott Hartsman

    “So what the hell is a virtual world? Has the term been bandied about so much as a political punching bag that it’s now devoid of all meaning?”

    My 0.02:

    Not entirely, but it’s definitely at the point where lots of different people use it to mean lots of different things. Those meanings have changed over time as well, confusing matters even further.

    Much of the time these conversations came up in the context of EQ and EQ2, it was traditionally more of a way to frame what the overriding decision points were in cases where two goals didn’t always see eye to eye.

    * “Is this better for gameplay/usability” vs
    * “Is this better for communicating a place that more accurately reflects what people would recognize as consistent with what they think the word “world” means in the time period of this genre.”

    In EQ’s case, the word “world” would frequently refer to “an experience set in a non technological time period, consistent with this world’s fiction, ideally recognizable with some real world analogue[*].”

    Example: The EverQuest Bazaar.

    A) Originally, there was no plan for an ability to search. Vendors were to stand in stalls and hawk their wares. Customers would browse, listen to the loud people, and walk up to them looking to shop. For the purposes of comparison, this was the more “worldy” option since it had a world-like analogue.

    B) Later, when the predictable usability nightmare set in, the decision was made to go more “gamey” and allow for searching. However, the system still had legacy issues due to the original design calling for the sheer volume of people needing to be onlne in the same location to sell.

    If making “a recognizable world” using the definition of “a world like a middle eastern market” was the overriding decision, you’d keep “A.” If you wanted to sacrifice that ‘reality’ for usability, you’d obviously adopt “B”.

    The point is that you need to know which goal is more important to you from the get go, then aim for that goal right off the bat, since it’s considerably smarter to not leave legacy issues like this around in the first place.

    [Wild assed guess disclaimer] The (less dramatic) WoW analogue to this example would be city-linking Auction Houses after the fact. I have to imagine that they went through a similar reality check. “Hmm. Maybe this whole location-based selling isn’t going to work. Time to toss some realism out the window and give our users the convenience they want.”

    To me, the argument is more about knowing the goal you’re aiming for ahead of time, then executing correctly to reach that goal, taking player reality into account.

    These days, players are definitely a lot less interested in maintaining world fiction if it means an inconvenience. I don’t say that to judge one way or the other – It it what it is. As developers, we just need to be aware of it and willing to work with the taste of our particular audience.

    - Scott

    [*] These days, especially as users get more sophisticated, people are just as likely to think of a VW as not having many analogues to “The Real World,” and instead aiming purely for *internal* consistency, rendering many of today’s decision points to be considerably different.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Anarchy is not PvP… Open PvP is anarchy.

  • Please

    And Lum the Mad becomes Scott Jennings: Game Designer.

  • Victor Pellen

    The main acronym for online games is an elaborate six-letter boondoggle. I don’t trust this industry to have clear and concise definitions. That said..

    If I had to define “Virtual World”, I’d probably say “Sandbox”. But then you have to define Sandbox. Fortunately, that’s probably easier than defining “Virtual World”.

    I always pictured Gamey Worlds as being collections of things to do, whereas Worldy Games are more so just places.

    Honestly, I think everybody’s just kind of bitchy because they can’t play anything that isn’t a Diku these days. I mean obviously there are a few non-Dikus out there (Eve is the most obvious example), but for the most part it’s nothing but treadmills and foozles from here to California.

  • http://thesongoftheday.com chabuhi

    Is it kind of a “all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares” discussion? All world-based MMO’s are virtual worlds, but not all virtual worlds are world-based MMO’s? (Not to muddy the waters any further.)

    All I know is that I get weird satisfaction from the belief that Second Life will never be more than it is right now. I don’t think they’ll break out of the rut they’re in. They’ll lose their community in the course of courting big business, and then why would big business stick around with no community to sell to?

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com Heartless_

    I have a question then. Where does a game such as Neverwinter Nights fit in?

    To me the games that are classed generally as MMORPGs are easily broken down. Games are where everyone can be the hero. WoW is a great example, everyone can climb to the highest peak if they so choose and Blizzard is constantly changing things to make it happen. Virtual worlds have citizens, where not everyone gets to be a hero. EVE, perfect example. The average player will never achieve the heights of EVE Online, and only a small minority of the hardcore will even get close.

    I think the problem with this whole discussion is the attempt to find the differences, when the similarities are just assumed and really just guesses. Lum, you started in with the similarities, but you really didn’t flesh them out. It’s a sort of “6 degrees from Kevin Bacon”… I am curious to how people would connect a game like EVE to a game like WoW.

  • Skelanth

    Lum… lead us to the promised mmog!

  • http://uopowergamers.com blachawk

    An ideal virtual MMORPG game world is not feasible, IMHO, because it would take such an enormous capital investment to make both an intricate virtual world as well as an egaging game with mass appeal.

    SWG had the world albeait buggy as hell, but the actual game part of the design was amateurish at best. How could any serious designer have thought SWG’s combat systems were anything other than complete dog crap? I’m not a designer, and I didn’t have to make those tough decisions; however, I also don’t think I’m being a monday morning quarterback when I say combat that consists of is absolutely terrible design.

    WoW did a really good job. They took their capital and turned it into a surprisingly detailed world. They’ve got the engaging game with mass appeal. Almost every area, NPC, and spawn of mobs has a purpose of some sort. What it could have used was the interactive world bit of SWG.

    DAoC had the strongest game community I have ever seen in a MMOG. Despite a really, really bad PvE experience getting to RvR, the realm versus realm bit really got the communities going. Leaders arose and fell, factions were created and destroyed, and for the first couple years everyone had a really, really great time out there.

    Give me 500 million bucks and I can make the perfect game. I’ll assemble the dream team. I think every game company needs a guy like me. Ever seen the movie Big? Let me play around with your MMO for a bit and I’ll tell you straight up what’s good and what’s dogshit.

  • TPRJones

    “Eve, for instance, has VERY limited character development.”

    Are you nuts? Anything that uses a skill-tree system is by it’s very nature a complex form of character development. Outside the newbie areas I would bet that there are no two characters in all of Eve that are alike in their skills.

    Add to that that the ships are in a manner of speaking a sort of interchangeable temporary character development system, and the complexity goes through the roof. Once you consider ship builds as a part of the character (which they are, since your character is required to always be in a ship) then Eve has THE highest level of complexity ever conceived of in an MMO that I’m aware of. Between the skill-tree and ship builds there are easily a quadrillion different combinations possible.

  • http://www.moorgard.com Moorgard

    Honestly, I hate even using the phrase “virtual worlds” because to me it smacks of academic elitism. The phrase has been coopted as the intellectual’s way of talking about MMOs in an attempt to make them feel more special than just a run-of-the-mill game. (Of course, that could just as well be my personal bias talking.)

    I understand the roleplayer’s desire to feel immersed in a consistent, fully conceived game world. I get that some people want to run around opening every door, staring at every book shelf and dinner table, feeling like every inch of the world they’re running around in is present and makes sense.

    But I clearly fall on the “setting needs to serve the gameplay” side of the aisle. The vast landscapes of Vanguard were cool to see once, but they don’t serve the fun. Maybe they were meant to and just didn’t, or maybe they were put in to present some vision of a world that was huge for the sake of being huge; I really don’t know.

    This might all come down to semantics, I dunno. But in my mind there *is* a distinction between games and virtual worlds, if nothing else in the intent of those designing them. This design, of course, takes place along a continuum, and tends to fall somewhere along the spectrum rather than being at one extreme or the other.

    I’m not trying to say you must choose one approach at the exclusion of the other. In the conclusion to my post, I was trying to say that all the virtual world stuff is great to have when combined with a kickass game. But for all the care and detail I love to put into the stuff I build, I still think of myself as a *game* designer, not a virtual world builder.

    “We Create Worlds” is a great slogan. “We Make Fun Games” is, in my opinion, an even better one.

  • Engels

    To my mind, Tad Williams’ vision of VW is probably where we’re headed. A SL ‘metaverse’ with MMORPGs enclosed within it, the SL being a portal-style foyer.

    I say this because of my experiences back in the day with text-based VMs. We all started on MUDs, but soon that developed into MUSHes, which in turn gave rise to increasingly popular MOOs, MUCKs, etcs. Within those SL-like social habitats, ‘developers’ created simplified versions of MUDs, or mini games.

    I don’t think this will happen overnight; our bandwidth and CPU/GPU power isn’t sufficient yet, but more importantly, real market forces haven’t been brought to bear on the issue. Sure, MS will throw 30 million at Sigil for a period, but in general, confidence in the medium is low.

  • Axecleaver

    “All world-based MMO’s are virtual worlds, but not all virtual worlds are world-based MMO’s? ”

    I don’t think so. Guild Wars and D&D online are MMO’s that allow (relatively) open character development, tradeskills, and an economy (sort of) but nobody would say they qualify as a virtual world, because they’re not persistent.

    A virtual world must be persistent.
    A virtual world must have a non-transitive community.

    In DAOC, you had persistence in the form of keeps and relics that could be taken. That persistence helps to build community, which reinforces the concept of the VW. I don’t want you to take my relics, so I get some of my guild together to defend our keeps.

    Ultimately, the community defines what is and is not a virtual world. Is a cloned DAOC server with no user accounts a virtual world? I would argue that it is not.

    I propose a litmus test for VWs’: if part of the VW were shut down, would anyone grieve? A test server under someone’s desk with no user accounts doesn’t pass the grief test. But if you dropped one of the production servers permanently (oops, we forgot to back up Lancelot… our bad) imagine the grief that would be felt in the community.

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  • mcj

    To me it’s about where the goals come from. Games have clearly defined end states that the player has in mind all along. Nobody questions what it is the game wants them to do, and it’s always possible to evaluate where you stand. A world — the real one especially — just provides the mechanics and lets people decide for themselves what they’re supposed to be doing. But people aren’t all that good at doing that in general, which probably has a lot to do with why we’re playing games in the first place. We need some kind of feedback about our actions, whether it’s from the game itself or the other players, to tell us when we’re doing something right. I think this can be done without carrots on sticks, but it’s not easy.

    Someone above mentioned DAoC’s community and how different it was. In that game, at least early on, it seemed players were focused more on the success of their realm than anything else. And since you don’t choose your realm-mates, it became a much more inclusive community where it was easy to find where you fit and what your contribution was. And even if it wasn’t much, it always felt like you were doing something that was at least a little bit useful to someone. For a lot of people that led to continuous positive reinforcement from other players (often who knew them only by reputation), which is a lot stronger and more sustainable as a goal than, for instance, the perpetual pursuit of better loot. Of course, there are downsides to putting your gameplay experience in the hands of strangers, but the relatively small sizes of realms in DAoC meant that there weren’t really very many of those.

  • RichVR
  • xaldin

    The virtual world vs game is a lot like judging porn. You individually know it when you see it but are really hard pressed to define it. There’s a few social norms to frame the judgement but they’re all covered with conditionals.

  • http://www.errantdreams.com/thoughts/ Heather

    IMO, the comparison of SL to a chat room eloquently illustrates why I just couldn’t get into it: that’s all it felt like to me, one big fancy chatroom. A chatroom is not a world, no matter how many bells and whistles you put on it. If messing with prims comes easily to you I can see how it would feel like more than that, but if it doesn’t, there just isn’t that much there. I prefer “worlds” (or games, or whatever) where I feel invested in the content.

  • Mist

    DAoC’s community was so good because the success of the individual relied on the success of the team, and vice versa, but only to an extent. And that extent hit some magical sweet spot, at least in the original incarnation of the game, which was probably due more to luck than design on the Mythic’s part.

  • Jessica Mulligan

    Yes, but I think we can at least try to define them. My attempt to do so below:

    NOTE: I do not consider these to be perfect (far from it!) or the end-all/be-all, but merely discussion starters. Have at it!

    —

    Virtual World: An electronic representation of a real world or fictional space that allows interaction between two or more individuals connected via the Internet or other telecommunications means and that features the ongoing persistence of:

    • the geographic terrain in which the interaction takes place;
    • the skills, abilities, offices, titles or other characteristics of the avatar or other representation of the user in the world;
    • personal or group ownership of items, territory, dwellings and/or some other form of virtual possessions;

    or some combination of at least two of the above bullet points.

    Social Virtual World: Any virtual world in which the prime purpose of the interaction between users is not restricted to the context and rules of an interactive game. Examples: There, Second Life, Active Worlds, Habbo Hotel.

    Game Virtual World: Any virtual world in which the prime purpose of the interaction between users is set within the context and under the restriction of the rules of an interactive game. Examples: Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, Runescape, Puzzle Pirates, Fantasy Westward Journey, EVE Online, Ogame, Seafight.

  • http://dreams.daestroke.com/ Otis

    I’d say the original quote is correct, depending on how you read it. All (online) virtual worlds are online games (some less goal driven than others) but not all online games are virtual worlds. I’d have difficulty saying a game of TF or CS, for instance, constitutes a virtual world.

  • Calandryll

    I think the issue here is people are trying to create a word that encompasses all types of online worlds when they are more different than we may want to admit. I like Jessica’s definitions overall, although I still don’t like using the words “virtual world” to mean all types.

    I’ve worked on both Game and Social worlds now and the difference between the two (especially the communities) is staggering. I was very surprised actually. I didn’t expect the difference to be as big as it is.

    I think it’s a mistake to try and pigeonhole WoW and Second Life into the same category, except at a very, very high level. In a lot of ways, I see the difference as being similar to a motorcycle vs. an SUV. Sure they’re both vehicles, but the two are very different. People don’t generally equate the two in any meaningful way and I think virtual worlds and mmorpgs are similar in that way.

    Personally, I’ve always preferred to call games like WoW simply mmorpgs and stuff like Second Life (and Kaneva :P ) virtual worlds. It’s fairly simple, it equates to how most players see them, and it still allows for some global word if we still feel like we need it. I think calling WoW a virtual world (even a “game virtual world”) doesn’t differentiate them as much as they really need to be. That said, there are online services that very much blur between virtual world and mmorpg and those tend to be harder to classify. And none of this is to say that the two types can learn and take features from one-another (again, motorcycles and SUVs do share some features). But at their cores, I think the differentiation is both accurate and important.

  • Amaranthar

    I think you have to judge these things in a scale. Any of these products can be called a “virtual world”, and while all are certainly virtual, some are more “worldly” than others.

    Scott J., I think you need to add a couple of other things to your definitive list.

    Social interaction Most of the games we all call level grinds (as opposed to virtual worlds) have a social structure that breaks down due to this game play. They still have some structure in guilds, but it’s at the low end of the scale when looking at the game in total. It’s certainly not like UO, where in the direct opposite direction guilds tried to recruit new players, compared to EQ/WoW’s level search.

    Realistic simulation vs. gamey Immersion busting. Gamey features break immersion in the worldly sense. “Realsitic” features enhance immersion in this sense. A game can certainly be immersive with gamey features, but that doesn’t make it immersive in a worldly way. Dungeons that respawn the same named Boss MOB are gamey and lose that immersive worldly quality, yet they are still immersive to play. WoW has this kind of immersion of play. Looking at a scale, UO’s dungeons spawned the same MOBs over and over, but without a named Boss they go up on the scale of “worldly” a bit. If a game had roaming MOBs that moved into dungeons, that would send that game farther up the scale. Or, if a game had a “realistic” approach to the respawns it would feel farther along that scale of “worldly” also. A dungeon of undead that respawned with the undead arrising from tombs, as an example.

  • brent

    My personal extremely simplified definition is this: a “virtual world” doesn’t keep score, or at the very least is generalized enough in systems and playpaths where you can’t comparatively rank everybody by a common metric (with the exception of perhaps in-game money).

    Crudely put, this is why UO was more of a virtual world than WOW: at the end of the day, WOW is there for you to max out your level in. Once you get to the level cap, you’re pretty much done save for raids and such. UO, you just had a zillion things you /could/ do and it was up to you to figure out what you felt like doing. If you succeeded in becoming a GM ninja fisherman weaver or whatever your target was, then you were only ‘done’ until you ran out of new things to go for.

  • http://www.kaneva.com Rich Weil

    To a great degree, games (MMO’s) provide a directed experience. There are goals and objectives. Maybe a lot of them, but they are there. Virtual Worlds tend to be more open with no real defined goals other than “make friends” or “create”. Much more broad. As Cal notes, the communities are vastly, wildly different as well.

    So yeah.. Virtual Worlds and MMO’s are not the same thing.

  • http://www.raphkoster.com Raph

    “Virtual world” is properly used as the term for WoW AND SL. (Sorry, Calandryll.) It has been used as such for decades. (And yah, they feel different as an experience, and so on, but — hell, even most of the codebases in the two cases do exactly the same thing. Like, to a 90% degree).

    The whole “worldy games getting called virtual worlds” thing is just muddying the waters.

    PS, NeoPets doesn’t have a real-time spatial simulation. Not a virtual world. neither does MySpace.

    PPS, Jessica, you can have a virtual world without any sort of ownership. And ‘offices, items, etc” is best described as ” persist avatar profile.” All of those thigns are just values in the character record, after all.

  • Calandryll

    Raph,

    Except the vast majority of consumers don’t use the term virtual world to mean WoW. At all. Sometimes (more often than not actually) the market dictates terms and definitions. And as far as the codebases being 90% the same, that was exactly my point with the motorcycle/SUV anaology. Most of the internal workings of the two vehicles are based on the same exact principles, but the end result is very different…and the end result is all consumers care about. That’s the key – looking at how consumers see these as opposed to how we, as developers see them.

    We can use the term as developers, and that’s fine, but if you make a WoW-like game and call it a “virtual world” as opposed to an mmog, you’re going to confuse a lot of people. And the reverse is even more true. Make a viritual world and call it an mmog and get ready for lots of “this game has no content!” remarks/reviews.

  • Slyfeind

    It also depends on who’s using these terms, and to whom they’re speaking. If I talk to my dad about Second Life or World of Warcraft, they’re “another one of those online games.” If my dad talks to me about World of Warcraft or Second Life, they’re “another one of those fantasy worlds.”

    If I talk to members of my World of Warcraft guild about Second Life, it’s “Second Life.” If I talk to members of my Second Life community about World of Warcraft, it’s “World of Warcraft.”

    Really, it seems the definition of these terms is more for people on the outside. We know what we’re talking about.

  • Jessica Mulligan

    Raph: Yeah, I dig what you are saying and agree. The question then becomes: is it valid to say that you can have a virtual world with the other items in the list, persistent terrain and persistent avatar/user representation in the world? Is the requirement to have at least 2 of the 3 valid? Are there more than three elements that should be listed? I’m not trying for a perfect definition here, just one that most of us mostly agree on. That then becomes a good starting point.

    Calandryll: At some point, if onloy for our own convenience, we have to make definitions and distinctions that can also be understand outside the relatively limited number of hobbyists that develop and play the sub-category of MMOs. Those games aren’t *just* games, they are also virtual worlds. That’s one reason we keep having all these issues with the press, struggling with an unformed taxonomy and lexicography. I swear, the next journalist that refers to SL as a “game” needs to be tarred and feathered, :D .

  • Calandryll

    Totally agree Slyfeind. There is no doubt that different circles use different terms and it’s important to know what terms they are using when speaking them. I suppose my real point is that consumers don’t see the two as “the same thing” and in many ways, they don’t even see them as all that similar, beyond the fact that they are both online and have lots of players. WoW players see Second Life as a totally different animal, they don’t see it is “kinda like WoW, but more social”. We, as developers, can’t just say, no no no, they’re all the same thing. Even if we think that, the consumers don’t, and at the end of the day, they will win that battle either with their blogs or their dollars.

    Jessica, if I wasn’t clear, that’s exactly what I am trying to say. I’m also arguing *for* subcategories, I just think those subcategories need to be stronger and more differentiated. The issue with using virtual world to mean all kinds, is I think we’re trying to force a definition on consumers that they aren’t using. In the same way you don’t want people calling SL a “game” (I agree btw) I cringe when I read an article that calls WoW a “virtual world” in the same context as SL. I think our only disagreement is what term to use. I never said WoW is “just a game”, but I don’t agree that it’s the same thing as SL, and WoW is absolutely *more* of a game. Under the hood they may be very similar, but the sum of their parts create an experience that is *very* different. And to consumers, the experience is infinitely more important than the code behind it.

    I think it’s important for developers to strongly differentiate the two, because it’s important to be able to focus on exactly what you are building and avoid putting in features that don’t fit or that will confuse players. Again, going back to the motorcycle/suv example (yea I know it’s getting thin :P ), if you put those two vehicles in the same category and didn’t allow for a strong term to differentiate the two, you could easily wind up making a motorcycle that has all-wheel drive and hauls 2,000lbs of cargo – features that motorcycle riders don’t care about and won’t pay for. Strong definitions help create focus.

  • http://www.raphkoster.com Raph

    Calandryll,

    Except the vast majority of consumers don’t use the term virtual world to mean WoW. At all.

    Actually, the vast majority of GAME consumers do not. They are not the whole market, not even close. Pretty much your whole post depends on seeing solely the gamer market.

  • http://www.kaneva.com Rich Weil

    Do indicators such as persistent terrain and avatars matter? The only thing that really carries over as a defining factor is the experience. And a game, an MMO, has a very directed experience. If I was sitting around Hobbiton in LOTRO as a level 1 character just chatting to people, I’d probably get reported as an annoyance. I’m not playing the game. That’s weird. If I sit around the mall in Kaneva chatting, I’m popular.

    There’s always going to be shades of grey based on how individuals use the product. But the overall design of virtual worlds tend to diverge from the overall design of a game. Thus, they are not the same, and trying to put both MMO’s and Virtual World under the same umbrella only adds to the confusion and misconceptions that we fight all the time.

    However, I will say that most users seem to know which is which.

  • http://thesongoftheday.com chabuhi

    if you put those two vehicles in the same category and didn’t allow for a strong term to differentiate the two, you could easily wind up making a motorcycle that has all-wheel drive and hauls 2,000lbs of cargo

    But is there a term that “strongly differentiates ” motorcycles and SUVs? They’re both vehicles. And I, as a player (driver) do not need to understand much about vehicles to know that they’re different.

    I apologize if I”m not understanding what you’ve written, but it suggests to me that I should not be able to distinguish a plane from a yacht if we call both “vehicles”.

  • Calandryll

    Raph,

    I can agree with that, which is why I thought Slyfiend’s comments were well said and expanded on them.

    Honestly, in the same way my post focused a little too much on the gamer market, I think your argument is focusing too much on the developers’ understanding of this. Consumers don’t care what’s under the hood, they care about the experience…and while the code and skills needed to build these may be similar, the experience is different enough to require a stronger differentiating definition.

  • Calandryll

    Chabhi, yes there is a term. One is called a “motorcycle” and the other is called an “SUV”. They are both vehicles, but they aren’t referred to as a “two wheeled vehicle” and “four wheeled vehicle”. The terms used to differentiate the two are very different because, despite sharing similar traits, the experience of driving one and use of each is wildly different. I feel that the terms to describe WoW vs. Second Life should be equally different.

    I think I have officially killed the analogy now and I am probably splitting hairs. :)

  • http://www.raphkoster.com Raph

    Raph: Yeah, I dig what you are saying and agree. The question then becomes: is it valid to say that you can have a virtual world with the other items in the list, persistent terrain and persistent avatar/user representation in the world? Is the requirement to have at least 2 of the 3 valid? Are there more than three elements that should be listed? I’m not trying for a perfect definition here, just one that most of us mostly agree on. That then becomes a good starting point.

    My (very old) definition is in abbreviated form “spatial simulation, persistence of space, multiple users w/avatars.” All three have to be there.

    Richard has a more extended definition, which I paraphrased here, in a somewhat similar discussion:

    http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/03/31/are-muds-and-mmorpgs-the-same-thing/

    1. Underlying automated rules: a simulation running that defines the world’s physics.
    2. Players represent individuals within the world, at some level, though they may control more than one entity.
    3. Real-time interaction with the world.
    4. The world is shared.
    5. The world is persistent to some degree.

    Arguably, his definition and my definition are rather similar. I suspect that “space” is implicit in his usage of the word “world.” I quibble with “realtime” as that’s a sliding scale.

    And as far as the codebases being 90% the same, that was exactly my point with the motorcycle/SUV anaology. Most of the internal workings of the two vehicles are based on the same exact principles

    I think we’re really talking more like the difference between a minivan and a minivan with built-in DVD player. Honestly, ANY virtual world can have ANY games embedded: big ones, small ones, RPGs, FPS, whatever, all in the SAME WORLD. An MMORPG is just a virtual world with one really big game in it. Webkinz is a virtual world with a ton of really small games in it. And so on.

    Again, going back to the motorcycle/suv example (yea I know it’s getting thin :P ), if you put those two vehicles in the same category and didn’t allow for a strong term to differentiate the two, you could easily wind up making a motorcycle that has all-wheel drive and hauls 2,000lbs of cargo – features that motorcycle riders don’t care about and won’t pay for. Strong definitions help create focus.

    Sure, I agree. But I thin kit behooves us to make that distinction properly. :)

  • Pingback: Raph’s Website » What is a virtual world?

  • Nobody

    It also depends on who’s using these terms, and to whom they’re speaking. If I talk to my dad about Second Life or World of Warcraft, they’re “another one of those online games.” If my dad talks to me about World of Warcraft or Second Life, they’re “another one of those fantasy worlds.”

    If I talk to members of my World of Warcraft guild about Second Life, it’s “Second Life.” If I talk to members of my Second Life community about World of Warcraft, it’s “World of Warcraft.”

    Really, it seems the definition of these terms is more for people on the outside. We know what we’re talking about.

    I scrapped my original idea for a post, because Slyfeind summed up my feelings even before I typed them. Well done!

    We shouldn’t be trying to make “outsiders” try to speak our language. We should be finding the right words in their language.

    Spending time trying to decide on the perfect “industry approved” buzzword for all (or some) of these “online environments” feels like, I dunno, like we’re wasting valuable time one something we don’t have control over. Or, even worse, could result in another confusing-to-the-general-public abbreviation like MMORPG and all its offshoots.

  • http://www.kaneva.com Rich Weil

    The difference between minivans with or without a DVD player is far more synonomous to differing MMO features (like the PVP differences in EQ vs. DAOC) than it is to such different experiences as WoW and SL.

    I’m not sure why taxonomy is being resisted so vigorously. As a concept / dynamic /organism evolves, it becomes more complex and divergent. Taxonomy has to be applied. I don’t think we can continue to keep the evolving experience of online play in one small box and write “Virtual Worlds” on the side of it.

    Resistance is futile! :)

  • http://www.raphkoster.com Raph

    The point would not be to try come up with buzzwords, but indistry terms of art. And honestly, they all mostly exist already. I tossed together a brief list on my blog in the above-linked post.

  • Calandryll

    Rich pretty much said it, but I think the real issue here is too much focus on features and not enough on the overall experience created by those features.

    Adding a DVD player to a minivan doesn’t change how one uses the vehicle overall. Sure the kids might quiet down, but at the end of the day, you’re driving it around town, hauling stuff (or people), and you aren’t racing cars at stop lights or making sharp turns at 50 mph. Like Tisirin said, it’s basically the difference between having PvP or not having PvP.

    I think where we disagree Raph is how different the two experiences are. To me, WoW and SL are vastly different experiences and I think trying to put them in the same category, beyond a very, very high level, is a mistake. It’s fine if that high level is called “virtual world”, but that term becomes meaningless if you’re trying to use a term to explain to a potential user what to expect when they install/download your product without subcategories that clearly mark the different types.

  • http://www.raphkoster.com Raph

    Rich, no one is resisting taxonomy. The question is actually whether the label at the top of the tree is “virtual worlds” or something else.

    You could implement PvP in SL quite easily. You could implement all of WoW in SL. :P A game system IS just a differing feature.

  • Dan “Yakatizma” Enright

    This blog page is a “Virtual World”.

    My user name is my avatar.

    The page itself is the persistent shared space.

    The posting parameters are the rules of the shared space.

    This text is my interaction with other entities in the shared space, in this case other actual people.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    If no one reads your text is it a world?

  • Joe

    “Guild Wars and D&D online are MMO’s that allow (relatively) open character development, tradeskills, and an economy (sort of) but nobody would say they qualify as a virtual world, because they’re not persistent.”

    Most people wouldn’t even call them MMOGs (not MMO damnit! what is a massively multiplayer online?), including the guys who made guild wars. Its not massive if you can only play with 7 other people, and you pick which map you want to play on. That’s as much of a MMOG as counter strike or diablo (although counter strike lets you have way more people).

  • Slyfeind

    Dan, it’s close, and that’s why Gaia Online can be considered a virtual world. :)

  • http://www.raphkoster.com Raph

    Dan, except that this blog page does not have spatial simulation. :)

  • Lightstalker

    Ahh, but this is a spatial simulation. There is an ordering in two dimensions with rules for interaction within those confines. e.g. my comment posted after Raph’s will come further from the top of the page than Raph’s. The comment after Raph’s will have an alternate color. No commentor can post in the frame to the right –>

    There are rules of spatial interaction, though this binding does not leave many degrees of freedom for future action. We are left with: Will Dan or Raph make another comment instead of will that guy try to jump off a (virtual) building?

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