…and I think to myself, “What’s a virtual world?”
The question of how to define the term “virtual world” seems to come up fairly frequently. Often, sites like NeoPets and WebKinz are included, and at VW2007, even MySpace was offered as an example of a highly successful virtual world. Because it is not exactly clear why there needs to be a precise definition, the discussion then tends to quickly turn to the perhaps more interesting question of “What makes virtual worlds successful?” (See the posts from Grace McDunnough and Hiro Pendragon for some detailed and insightful perspectives, for example.)
Richard Bartle over at Terra Nova has a reason for defining what virtual worlds are, though. Given the minimal set of features needed for a virtual world, he asks, can we come up with applications other than those exemplified by World of Warcraft and Second Life? He states his definition as,
OK, well for a virtual world you need a world (obviously) and players. The players need to be able to do things to or with each other; they also need to be able to do things to the world, which in turn should be able to do things to them.
Even with the additional details provided in the article, this definition seems too vague and inclusive to me. Like Bartle, I’m interested in what innovative application we can develop given virtual world technology, but I’m after criteria that separates things like NeoPets and MySpace from environments like Second Life. To me, the defining feature is whether there is an immersive, fully 3D graphical environment. The key is to provide an environment with which users can interact in a way that is close to how their brains are used to interacting with the world. Everything else, like multiple players, persistance, an economy, enables other types of interaction, but is not necessary to give the user the sense of familiarity that leads to the engagement and enjoyment not found in other types of applications.
Essentially, I want my virtual worlds with fields of green, skies of blue, but not necessarily friends shaking hands, saying “how do you do?” Once you do add the social aspects to virtual worlds, a lot of interesting things happen, but these are the same type of interesting things that happen when you add social aspects to other types of applications.
>To me, the defining feature is whether there is an immersive, fully 3D graphical environment.
OK, two points:
1) By this definition, textual worlds can’t be virtual worlds, because they’re not an immersive fully-3D graphical environment. Well, they are, but the 3D graphics come in the imagination, not on the screen.
2) By this definition, World of Warcraft isn’t a virtual world. Its environment is represented internally in 3D, but only displayed in 2D on the monitor. Shouldn’t 3D have to support stereoscopic vision to warrant the adjective “fully”?
Richard
Richard, I am excluding text based environments from my definition, as well as 2.5D apps like Habbo Hotel and Virtual Magic Kingdom. I want to include WoW and SL, of course, and could probably define what I mean by immersive and fully 3D more precisely. As you point out, the key difference is how much of the 3D graphics and immersion must be provided by your imagination. 3D graphics on your monitor seems to be sufficient to engage my brain in a way that text environments can’t. Maybe my definition is for something other than virtual worlds; 3D virtual environments, perhaps. But the definitions of virtual worlds I’ve seen are broad enough to include NeoPets, MySpace, wikis, and the whole internet itself. The latest Wired magazine describes the Harry Potter books as “massively multireader fictional worlds”… it is starting to look like anything can be a virtual world.
OK, well in that case what you’re describing is a subset of what I was describing to be a “virtual world”.
This is an area fraught with terminology problems. The term “virtual worlds” describes what I mean very well, but as an adjective/noun combination it’s quite broad and can be used for other things too. It was fine when we could call all these things MUDs, but then we got MUGs and MU*s and MMORPGs and MMOGs and MMOs and PWs and a slew of other names. The terminology changes, and is used for different things by different people.
What I was describing was the class of computer software with MUD1 at one end and WoW and SL at the other. I specifically didn’t mention interface in the definition, because otherwise that would cut out things which are manifestly virtual worlds (what’s the point in ruling out Ultima Online and Meridian 59 for not being “fully 3D”?). If you do want to rule those things out, then you’re going for a particular subset of virtual worlds.
I agree that calling MySpace a virtual world is a step rather too far. If the term gets popularly used to include such spaces, then we’ll have to come up with a new one to describe what I was describing (yet again).
Richard
I like the idea that books — even, gasp, Harry Potter — are virtual worlds.
These are stories whose roots go back to our forebears who sat around campfires and regaled their tribes with tales of the hunt, the journey, the search, as well as other peoples and places.
A well-told story immerses you into a virtual world which can seem every bit as real as the three dimensions you live in. Certainly, that is how it lingers in your memory.
3D — at least as experienced in SL — is only virtual 3D. Technology has a way to go before we can truly say that a computer-generated world is “3D.”
How about Simulated Three Dimensional, Electronically Displayed World? (S3DEEW pronounced Es-CubeD-Eew?)