McGregor's Garden

I'll start with Beatrix Potter and meander to Eve-Online.  Hang on.

Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) is likely most famous for her children's books.  Of those, The Tale of Peter Rabbit is eminent.  My preference is The Tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher.  Perhaps the darkest of her tales.  Yet, even Peter Rabbit tastes a harsh edge.   "...(Y)ou may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden:  your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor." 

Beatrix Potter was also known for her work in botany- fungi notably.  She impressively concluded that lichens were a symbiosis of fungus and alga, for example.  This part of her life's tale is perhaps best sensationalized by Rudolf Schmid ("BAMBOOZLED BY BOTANY, BEATRIX BYPASSES BIGOTED BIOLOGY... [from here, btw a good overview essay of her botanical foray]").  (Spoiler:) Victorian science was unfriendly to women.

Interestingly, Rudolf's essay revives in passing an old symbol: was McGregor's garden the (ill-fortuned) "garden of botany" to Beatrix?   What I recall of McGregor's garden was how Peter lost a shoe among the cabbages and one among the potatoes. 

What details of virtual worlds do you wish for?

From past discussions people easily mention the details of artwork or social scenery as memorable.  Occasionally, one finds an anecdote involving pseudo-heroism.  What else?

I would like to see opportunities to collect details that have no direct benefit to the player but that can, with experimentation and analysis, shed a deeper (and meaningful) understanding about the (virtual) world they inhabit.   Think of these details as fossils, fungi, or electronics.  Think of these players as scientists.   

I can't think of good examples of science in MMOGs to date, in part because anything that one might become scientific about has been streamlined out of the world: the world revolves around the player. 

Ultima Online in its early years experimented with a primitive world simulation model.  There was some attempt to mimic wildlife patterns and some such.  From what I understand, however, this was gutted over time as it became apparent that it was a difficult apparatus to keep tuned in a massively multiplayer environment. 

A while back I ran across a player who posed a startling question in Eve-Online:  " Would you by chance have any corpses you would be willing to give up?"  It turns out (unknown to me at the time) that one can enable the "biomass" filter on the display and then be able to scoop up into their ship the virtual residue of deceased players.  To my knowledge there is absolutely no game/play advantage in doing this.   He said, "I have like 120 at my home station.  Even one of my own! :D"   It seems like he was collecting them for no purpose other than to, well, collect them.  As one might stamps.   Too bad, given all his cadavers, there would be no opportunity for him to discover anatomy as a new next (virtual) Leonardo da Vinci.

Comments

[Trin]

1.

The first thing that comes to mind is the solar system model used by Everquest 2. I remember relatively early on a thread showing up in the forums detailing the cycle of the stars, moons, and sun researched and tracked by players. It was in a thread devoted to the easter eggs found by players, ... here.

[Rich Bryant]

2.

There's A Tale in in the Desert, of course.

[Di Jiensai]

3.

Well, I think you need to differentiate(?) between game mechanics and background here.

If i understand you right, you want to have players discover bits and pieces, which help them in some measureable degree with what they do in the game.

If things to discover are purely story/background related, they wont have a impact on the game mechanic, therefore not yield a measurable change or profit for the player. These activitys are "recreational" (actually funny to use that term on a game, which by definition should be recreational as a whole :) )

If these things are part of the game mechanics, then what you are looking for happens every day, to a varying degree in all MMOs. Usualy the actual Formulas for boni/weapons/manufacture chances/whatever, are not in the "manual" but have to be discovered by the players.

And that can get as scientific as you want. In the case of Eve-online, mathLab is your best friend to find out about some more obscure formulas used.

Point being: As soon as Something has a impact on gameplay, it is part of the game mechanic. and intended.

This is the fundamental diffrence between real life and MMOs, in real life we dont know all rules of the game, and scientists work on discovering these.
As an example, we know a big deal about Physics today, but we still cant say "Hey, we need a new material with these stats, look in the Big Book of Universe Rules, to see what ingredients we need."

So, to conclude, on one hand you allready have what you are looking for, in many MMOs (even if the rules are obvious and very simple, it is still a "scientific effort" to find out about them), but if you want more than that, like to have the Players Discover something truely new, which was not put in the game mechanic/rules, i'm not sure how to acomplish that without using an AI to be the "game master". (and reviewing the player's discovery and changing the rules/mechanic of the game to include it)

[thoreau]

4.

In Entropia Universe, players can purchase a scanner from terminals or one that has been crafted. These scanners can be used to scan animals, mutants, robots, and flora in the future.

The act of scanning increases related skills such as intelligence, zoology, botany, and results in learning information of the target.

Entropia uses the 'black box' approach to information and gameplay and reveals very little to its player base. This scanning mechanism is how many have learned about the universe and this information is gathered in various wikis.

[Michael Chui]

5.

I've long felt that the ultimate simulation would be one where you could derive the laws of motion based completely on actions inside the world.