What are Virtual Worlds for? There are Game Worlds and Social Worlds but even this simple categorisation is misleading to those not familiar with the genre - as game words can be just as social as social worlds.
I believe that we need to begin to use a much broader definition of VWs that see them along side the PC or the Internet. One way we should see VWs as a tool that has many uses.
What finally brought me to this conclusion was reading A Lever to Move the Mind by Hamlet Linden / Wagner James Au over on New World Notes; then experiencing The Virtual Hallucinations Building in SL. This is a fascinating project - part research, part experiential learning, part scary.
For me, one of the big futures for VWs is these alternative uses and it is going to be interesting to see where things go - will gaming in virtual worlds end up as minority VW activity?
Ah...one of my favorite topics. I am a big believer in virtual worlds moving "beyond the game." Don't get me wrong, I think gaming worlds are great and believe they serve an important purpose esp. regarding the "right to play", but there are many additional exciting and visionary uses for virtual world technology as well. The main categories as I see them now are:
Gaming VW's (EQ, SWG, Lineage, etc.)
Social VW's (Second Life, There, Habbo, etc.)
Educational VW's (MIT's Revolution, Cornell's SciCntr, etc.)
Military VW's (America's Army, Forterra's training world)
One category that hasn't really solidified yet but has enormous potential is the area of Medical VW's. There was some press recently about Snow World as a virtual haven for burn treatments during treatments, but that hasn't attained "worldness" yet as it's not massive or persistent. The Virtual Hallucinations building in Second Life offers a hint of the possibilities for medical uses of vw's in the future.
Over the past few months I've been leisurely trying to map and categorize all these different types of vw's into a big chart of the "virtual world universe" that indicates each world's place in the historical timeline of world development and its location on the categorical continuum of game-social-educational-governmental-medical. It's turned out to be an extremely difficult task - at least if the goal is to make some kind of coherent sense. ;) So I'm rethinking the whole thing and trying to find a way to map out the virtual worlds universe in a way that actually works. The biggest challenge is that many worlds quite wonderfully cross category boundaries and really muddle any attempt at logical categorization. I love that, but boy does it make any attempt at sorting them all out difficult.
Anyhoo...gaming worlds are the big kahunas right now because they are the ones making money (to put it bluntly). Even social worlds with barely a hint of traditional gaming elements are calling themselves games as a marketing strategy when really they're not as gamey as one might expect. I think we'll see more of this pattern of gaming domination for a long while, but slowly and surely virtual worlds will move beyond the game.
Posted by: Betsy Book | Sep 16, 2004 at 08:01
'this is a game that moves as you play'
Shifting definitions make VW categorisation problematic. I do though agree with Betsy's list, although I would split social VW into two:
Chat/Social VW - IMVU, Instant Messenger Services (yahoo avatars, aim icons etc.)
Creative Socialising VW - There, Second Life, Habbo.
Posted by: Fizik Baskerville | Sep 16, 2004 at 09:05
If the world is a computer then it has just boosted its computatioinal capacity by networking more individuals together through comm technology by allowing them to interact in a similar-to-life manner. Just like ants, humans naturally solve problems simply through wandering/play/technology creation. VW's open up a bottle neck in the networked bio-human-brain computer.
Word.
Posted by: -Vis | Sep 16, 2004 at 13:01
I think we can get a good start by looking at all the uses to which other media are put. Granted, VWs are collaborative in a way that these other media are not, but nonetheless, seems like there would be significant overlap.
A quick run through the categories of the Dewey Decimal System or the array of types of TV show would go a long way. Is "talk show world" different from "social world?" I think so, having done talk-show style things within LegendMUD.
Posted by: Raph | Sep 16, 2004 at 13:33
What are VW's for:
Of course, there's always the "Hero's journey". I'd tend to broaden that concept and propose that a VW should aim to change the real world in some beneficial manner, just like a good novel impacts the world beyond just entertainment.
Schizophrenic VW:
I saw the schizophrenic VR on TV a year or so ago, and since then I've been thinking about including the basic concept as a disease/disadvantage in a VW. After all, there's nothing in a VW that says every player must experience the same version of reality. The different realities don't need to be as dismal as schizophrenia though.
Categorizing VWs:
Where does URU Live (now dead) fit? It's a combo gaming VW and social VW, although the gaming has more to do with puzzles than killing monsters.
Where do role-playing VWs like Castle Marrach fit in? Are they really social, since players are being social with a personality that doesn't really exist.
Posted by: Mike Rozak | Sep 16, 2004 at 22:02
I disagree with the Game/Social split. Social interaction is as much a part of the game world as it is the social world.
A more interesting split, IMO, is the Game/World split. A Game is a world built around a specific purpose, with a clear Heros Journey or what not. This is where EQ fits: With each level, you know what your next level is supposed to be.
A World is designed in the opposite direction. A self-consistent world is created, within which players must find their own goals. This is closer to UO. In UO, there is no clear progression of levels. You're left largely to find your own reason for existing. (Sadly, this means a lot of players become bored and decide that griefing is a good reason to exist)
Thus, I'd say the presense of game-like elements (monsters, hit points, etc) does not make something a game world. What makes it a game world is being oriented entirely around those game like elements.
Unfortunately, for aforementioned marketting reasons, anything which contains any game like elements tends to have them magnified. This then leads to the game-oriented players demanding the world be made more and more game like. (What's the use of baking bread unless we get some stat bonus useful in combat? Why don't GM Carpenters get better stuff to make than Journeyman carpenters?)
I think the only way a World based VW can insulate itself from creeping Gamism is to ensure that there are multiple distinct internal games. Then perhaps the players will see it as a world, rather than seeing it as another map for their Bash the Orc game.
- Brask Mumei
Posted by: Brask Mumei | Sep 16, 2004 at 23:33
Peter Yellowlees and I at the University of California, Davis Medical Center are the creators of the virtual hallucinations project. As mentioned in the article, it's based on Peter's earlier work in Australia using computers to help describe specific hallucinations.
Second Life has worked quite well as an authoring environment. While the simulation doesn't really take advantage of the multi-user capability of the system, being able to easily acquire content from other users has been really helpful. For example, the models of the laptop computers in the nursing station were purchased from another user for pennies.
I hope to have some more project description information available next week at http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/ais/ but there's nothing there right now.
Posted by: James Cook | Sep 16, 2004 at 23:53
One way we should see VWs as a tool that has many uses.
Don't some of us already do this? Categorization will always be a problem, because even those VW's with "specific" purposes in mind can be utilized for "other" purposes.
For example: utilizing existing VW's as a testing ground for VR economy, whether that testing ground be a "game" such as EQ or a "society" such as Habbo.
My point here really isn't about categorization, but the fact that there is always going to be some utility, whether exploratory or other, present in any form of VW out there. There just need to be those that actually work with that utility, whether in some obscure a priori sense of it already being there, or creating it themselves.
I mean, case in point: Said "Virtual Hallucinations Building" existing in the supposed "social" world of Second Life. I guess the next step would be to transfer the entire thing out of Second Life and make it stand-alone, but I digress.
Posted by: Aaron Kurtz | Sep 17, 2004 at 13:21
Well, at this stage of intellectual history we wouldn't say "what is Nevada for?" or "what is Australia for?", would we? We're talking about a space in which there are seemingly unlimited possibilities, even more so than in "unused" real-world land. Uses of VW are going to depend on users' needs, and will probably end up having as many applications as there are categories in the Dewey Decimal System and more. I think the question that remains to us if this is the case is "what do we want VW to be for?" (In my field, education, the questions will also be "What are the best applications of VW for learning, and when would another teaching tool be preferable to VW?)
My more pressing concern lately, as someone who looks at the educational and social aspects of media in general, has to do with Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone. Putnam in part blames television (along with car-related increased mobility, if I recall) for increasing isolation and decreasing numbers of people participating in local organizations like sports teams, the Lions Club, scouting, etc. If television did that much, how much more could (often more engrossing) VWs do to undermine human connections to each other? Or will they instead bring people together in ways that improve their quality of (real-world) life? And what should we do now to help ensure that VW participation helps rather than harms communities?
Posted by: gus andrews | Sep 17, 2004 at 14:15
Gus, my personal take is that VWs work to help SOLVE the problem that Putnam raises. However, they do so in a way that has a major flaw--rather than being communities based on geography, they are communities based solely on interest. I see that as a real issue, because it breeds homogeneity in attitudes and philosophies, and I don't think that is a healthy thing for human societies. It behooves us to design VWs that do not target too narrowly, IMHO.
Posted by: Raph Koster | Sep 18, 2004 at 15:00
However, they do so in a way that has a major flaw--rather than being communities based on geography, they are communities based solely on interest.
Just being contrarian again, but hasn't that frequently been the case since the reformation with people clustering in towns and neighborhoods within cities based on social class and ethnicity? My father was a communial societies scholar and a frequently forgotten aspect of North American history is the large numbers of towns that were founded by religious separatist movements. It really wasn't until the big push for standardized public education at the turn of the century that cacophonic polyglot of American culture converged on English.
Even within communities based on geography, communities based on shared ideology or economics have been important. Until recently, your church and your workplace have been important parts of social networks. Wenger's work suggests that workplace is not just where you clock in 8-10 hours a day, but where you develop a social and political identity as well.
I think that one of the things that tends to counter the "echo chamber" possibility of online social networks is that people can be members of multiple networks reflecting different ideological interests. So for example, my interests in computer science, learning, vegetarianism, and atheism are "scratched" by participation in various online social networks.
And my language here should provide a hint as my answer to the question of what virtual worlds might be for. Virtual worlds are yet another medium through which social networks might be constructed and maintained. I can see a future where virtual worlds might replace teleconferencing for example.
Posted by: KirkJobSluder | Sep 19, 2004 at 15:22
Actually I was also thinking of VWs as one solution to the Putnam problem. Lately I've been thinking of them as a solution to a lot of social ills.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Sep 19, 2004 at 20:45
I agree that within a community one tends towards homogenity of viewpoints. However, I'd continue that to say that it is a homogenity of viewpoints *about* that community.
This is where the multiple-community aspect saves us, IMHO. We are not part of *one* online community, but many. While in my Quilting community I may be exposed to only a certain pro-quilting mindset, when I go to the model train community I will be dealing with people who have a wide range of thoughts on Quilting.
I'd actually see geographical community as a *greater* force for homogenity. Because you can only be in one geographical community, you must pick one specific interest to be paramount. If you go to the Quilting Town, you are only able to deal with the model train builders who are also pro-quilting.
- Brask Mumei
Posted by: Brask Mumei | Sep 20, 2004 at 22:57
The pattern I tend to see is a bit more cliquish than that, to be honest. For one, the diversity of activities within a given online world tends to be relatively low. For another, there's often very little reason to interact with others outside of your known clique. Online worlds are good at strong interdependence right now ("I need someone else to help me accomplish this particular task") but weak at looser ties ("I depend on the overall social structure because that's how many of my basic needs are met"). It's rare to see an online world with more than a level or two to the interdependence network.
Posted by: Raph Koster | Sep 21, 2004 at 00:08
In the same session that I presented at AoIR 5.0 (www.sussex.ac.uk/cce/aoir/) yesterday, Drew Ross (currently at Oxford uni) presented his paper How 'woof woof woof' and 'quack quackity quack' create pseudo-community: online gaming without the fringe benefits. The full abstract can be found here.
In it he refers to Holland et al (Holland, W., Jenkins, H., & Squire, K. (2003). 'Theory by Design.' In M. Wolf & B. Perron (Eds.), The Video Game Theory Reader (pp. 25-46). London: Routledge. P33) who claim that MMO are communities.
He argues that Disney’s Toontown it not a community in this sense and cannot be with the present design. The reason being that Toontown uses a system called SpeedChat which forces individuals to communicate using about 160 pre defined word / phrases (with some redundancy e.g. several simple greetings). This means that it is impossible to communicate personal details or arrange meeting times – good if you want to stop people preying on kids, bad if you want to form a community (as a side bar Drew notes the conflict with Disney’s claims about Toontown as a community).
Drew argues that Toontown is pseudo-community in the sense meant by Beniger (Beniger, J. (1987). 'Personalization of mass media and the growth of pseudo-communities.' Communication Research, 14, pp. 352-371.).
Now I have not read the pieces cited so can’t comment on where MMOs fall but from listening to Drew, it seems that MMO are somewhere between community and pseudo-community.
When I have attended discussions about online communities in the past people have mainly talked about IM and Webforums, and have said that they cannot be communities as they lack certain essential features e.g. lack of sense of place, lack of fixity. I think that MMO do get over these issues that standard definitions bring up.
I take Raph’s point about the cliquey way that MMOs work, but so does school, or work, I wonder if they are communities or not. When I lived in central London I never knew anyone that lived around me, many people in central London don’t, so I always wonder about the strength of geography.
Posted by: ren | Sep 21, 2004 at 11:11
Ren>The reason being that Toontown uses a system called SpeedChat which forces individuals to communicate using about 160 pre defined word / phrases (with some redundancy e.g. several simple greetings)
In my youth, I ran a play-by-mail zine. One of the games I had there (designed by two brothers who subscribed to it) was a caveman-era capture-the-Raquel-Welch affair involving throwing rocks, wielding clubs etc. and was actually quite fun (with 30 players trying to beat each other up).
Games of this period typically had "press releases", which were a way for players to communicate with one another publicly through the pages of the zine. As this particular game was set in caveman times, however, I decided that I'd restrict press releases so that they'd only be accepted if they used words from a set I gave them. I don't remember how many words there were in this set, but it was about 40. Players who sent in entertaining press releases got a bonus for attracting Raquel to run to them if the person dragging her by the hair got beaned.
I have to say, the creativity of the players in this regard was phenomenal. Some of the words I'd provided were used in the most excruciating puns, and others were combined to give meanings they weren't intended to have. The tight format gave people scope to be expressive in ways they wouldn't have been ordinarily (like poetry, but with no THE/A/AN...).
the reason I mention this is that players fairly rapidly managed to send simple messages to each other using an "initial letters of words" technique that several of them hit upon independently. They didn't say much this way (just enough to prove the concept), but nevertheless they could say more than they were supposed to be able to say.
Thus, if you really wanted to convey things like phone numbers or addresses to players of Toontown, you could if you wanted to. Words are tokens, and so long as people agree on their meaning they can be used to say anything.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Sep 21, 2004 at 13:03
[Apologies to those of you have heard this one before.]
Richard wrote:
>As this particular game was set in caveman times, however, I decided that I'd restrict press releases so that they'd only be accepted if they used words from a set I gave them...
>I have to say, the creativity of the players in this regard was phenomenal. Some of the words I'd provided were used in the most excruciating puns, and others were combined to give meanings they weren't intended to have.
This similar to a story during a pitch meeting with Disney three years before SpeedChat showed up with ToonTown:
The project lead at Disney had been a part of KA-Worlds, a very early attempt to provide multiuser 3D worlds for kids (especially for the home- and hospital-bound). Back then, they knew they had the 'chat problem' of harassment, so they worked up a limited vocabulary sentence construction tool.
During early testing, they sat a 14-year old boy in front of the tool and he quickly generated this message:
“I want to stick my long-necked giraffe up your fluffy white bunny.”
Randy
Posted by: F. Randall Farmer | Sep 21, 2004 at 13:32
Richard > Thus, if you really wanted to convey things like phone numbers or addresses to players of Toontown, you could if you wanted to. Words are tokens, and so long as people agree on their meaning they can be used to say anything.
But how would someone agree to this as a code if they can _only_ communicate with the code?
The question that I had and someone asked was: while the Toontown system might not provide enough communication latitude for an Oxbridge researcher, what do the actual players feel about it?
I’m not sure about the target demographic for Toontown but I assume that it is early teen or younger so it might be a sufficiently good system for them to enjoy the gameplay.
Posted by: ren | Sep 21, 2004 at 13:56
Seems we've drifted from asking whether VWs are really communities to asking whether certain types of communities that are constrained (or not constrained) by the code are communities.
Toontown is probably one of the best examples of coded social eugenics, but I don't think it is really representative of the broader MMOG space.
To respectfully disagree with Raph, MMOGs aren't any worse than other net communities in terms of being echo chambers for viewpoints -- at least not in a way that can be fixed. And to some extent, they're better.
MMOGs like SWG do put Star Wars / gaming fans with like-minded Star Wars / gaming fans, but beyond that they're mixing role-players with power gamers, motivated achievers with those who are just hanging out, etc. Particular game dynamics can attract certain sorts (and that "sort" seems to be much too limited currently), but I don't see a real echo chamber problem, more of a business model problem.
The center of most virtual communities (listservs, blogs, chat spaces) is a common interest, hobby, passion. The echo chamber theory asserts that this will end with the like-minded validating the like-minded (query how this blog does or does not do that).
Dan has something published on that topic that's highly skeptical:
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/clr/library/hunter01.html
But even if you take Sunstein's Republic.com as a given, what does it mean in MMOGs? The center of the MMO community is not a particular political viewpoint, but an activity in a game/fiction/world that really has no geographical or political ground except in shared imagination (and fanfaires). You can criticize that whole fantasy dynamic (as people often do), but the blame (if there is a blame) lies in the whole premise of MMOGs, not particular design choices.
To the extent the game/play/world/fiction element is scaled back and the communities are not "players" but become people engaged in chat or socializing (see SL), I think that distinction should be noted because it marks an important shift in how we should approach VWs from a policy perspective.
Posted by: greglas | Sep 21, 2004 at 15:14
ren>But how would someone agree to this as a code if they can _only_ communicate with the code?
Because if you see a nonsense sentence, you try to find some meaning from it. Once you figure out the (simple) rules it uses, you can use those rules to generate sentences of your own.
Let's say I sent you these two messages. What would I be telling you?
1) A AN AND WAKE AWAKE AWAKEN AWAKENS AWAKENED AWAKENING AWAKENINGS
2) AWAKENINGS AWAKENED AWAKENINGS AWAKENINGS A A AWAKENED AWAKE AWAKENINGS AWAKENINGS
I don't suppose most players of Toontown would want to communicate using some kind of supertext system, but those who did could do it.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Sep 22, 2004 at 05:03
I have always been interested in trying to break through ToonTown's language system. One thing to note is that it is not required that one develop an entire supertext. All one must be able to communicate is the password required to activate normal in game chat.
I think the ToonTown example also illustrates a strong bias towards text-as-communication. We tend to think text is the only communication occurring. It isn't.
In Ultima Online, I could often tell something of someone just by the way they chose to dress themselves. I could also recognize people by the way they walked. Walking is a simple binary action, but each person has a signature which can be recognized.
I'd compare it to stories I have heard of telegraphy. Apparently, a skilled operator could recognize the "key" of another operator. This is similar to UO walking - the actual data is very discrete and seems to hold no room for a signature, but subtle issues of timing nonetheless trigger the brain's pattern recognition circuitry.
Thus, even in the absense of a speedtext system, a sufficiently determined pair of people could successfully develop a code & use it to communicate any idea.
- Brask Mumei
Posted by: Brask Mumei | Sep 23, 2004 at 00:35