MMO Pioneer Raph Koster: Virtual Reality Developers Must Learn from Virtual World History Or Repeat Its Mistakes

Here's a great recent talk from MMO pioneer Raph Koster who gives a breezy history of virtual worlds, outlines their massive influence on tech culture and the mainstream*, then closes with an ominous warning to the new generation of virtual reality developers: "Heed the lessons of your forebears: From whence you came, so shall you be. The future is still MUD-dy." After watching, I got in touch with Raph, who explained more about that last point of advice:

"VR is just a rendering tool," Raph told me. "It's a window through which we see a virtual space. But virtual spaces, and especially virtual places, and especially the inhabitants and their behaviors, are OLD and well-studied and if you don't go look at that history, you're going to replicate some mistakes on a very large scale."

I'm biased, but I definitely agree. To take just one example, VR developers now are probably underestimating the problem of griefing and harassment, an ongoing challenge with MMOs for decades, which becomes even more problematic in immersive VR. However, most VR developers on the latest platforms seem to assume the key problems are technical, rather than cultural and social -- which only means they're setting themselves up for a rude awakening.

*I don't totally agree with Raph on all the influences of MMOs, by the way. He's right that Bitcoin would almost certainly not have happened without virtual currency/gold farming, but I think it's a stretch to say MMOs inspired Facebook. Early social networks like Orkut definitely did draw from MMOs, but I think BBSes and online forums were more generally influential for the rise of Facebook and the like.

Hat tip for the video: Gwenette Sinclair.

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Comments

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Wow, flashbacks. Spent many hours of dev time on MUDs, hosted many MUDs on Pentium 90's. Hosted the official sites for GreedMUD, NeonMUCK, and so on.

He's right about the roots, the paths of logical progression and lessons past. The only thing new is the interface to the world.

[Amanda Dallin]

Ironic that the NWN post just prior to this one was celebrating griefers. That's the cultural problem. A sizable segment of the virtual community are fine with griefers they find amusing no matter how they disrupt others.

[Wagner J Au]

Watch the Polygon videos, they're not griefer in the abusive, assholic sense the term is usually associated with. That's why I compared them to Conan O'Brien, who does similar smart ass shit with a roving camera and it's all in good-hearted fun.

[sirhc deSantis]

So basically the lessons of applying tech fixes to 'social problems' (for want of a better word that would be printable) will as ever be ignored. Faster ban hammers then please. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

( PS.. I missed the Conan O'Brien ref as didn't realise he was supposed to be funny =^^= )