New World Notes

Richard Bartle's Classic Book Designing Virtual Worlds Now Hosted in the Virtual Worlds Museum Resource Site

Now available in the Virtual Worlds Museum Books & Case Studies section:

A downloadable copy of Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds, a milestone book in the history of the technology; first published in 2003, its influence can be seen in countless MMOs and open-ended virtual worlds, especially around player motivation types, likely beginning with World of Warcraft, and definitely with Second Life. (In 2003 it was on the shelf at Linden Lab alongside Snow Crash.) 

Hosted in the Museum by generous permission of the author, Richard recently shared with me the sections of the book he finds most relevant for virtual worlds in development now, or as an academic historical reference:

"Chapter 3 [Players] holds up best. Most of what's in it still applies. The Community section is its weakest part.

"Chapter 4 [World Design] holds up well, too. Some of the suggestions sound strangely fresh and new, with modern MMOs (as opposed to non-game worlds) having largely similar ways of approaching world design resulting in largely similar results.  

"Chapter 7 [Toward a Critical Aesthetic] holds up well, but isn't of interest to anyone except the budding designer who hasn't had all thoughts that virtual worlds are creative expressions beaten out of them.

"Chapter 8 [Coda: Ethical Considerations] is still relevant, largely for the same reasons it was relevant before: few designers think about this kind of thing, but they ought to."

More notes from Richard below. As a consulting partner for the Virtual Worlds Museum, I'm excited to help expand this resource page with all books / references that have informed my own writing.

Speaking of which, please check out the page, and let me know if there's any books we should definitely add!

Study Suggests Emotion & Player Agency More Important Than High-End Graphics in Virtual Experience

This is a pretty important study from the University of Bath adding some academic weight to what we see in the marketplace: When it comes to virtual experiences, player emotion and agency (i.e. the ability to meaningfully interact in the world) is more important than graphical realism or immersion (field of view):

Field of view and visual realism – achieved through cutting-edge graphics and usually powered by high-end headsets – can be relatively unimportant in creating a believable VR experience. Far more important is the way a user is made to feel (e.g. happy or scared) within the virtual environment, the study found. Dr Crescent Jicol, principal investigator of the study, said: “A lot of money goes into making headsets and screens better and into rendering virtual worlds more realistic, but more effort needs to be centered on improving the user’s emotional experience.”

This specific study was conducted in VR with over 300 volunteers, but the results probably apply to flatscreen 3D experiences just as neatly. And again, we already know that immersive graphical realism per se does not in itself translate to the most popular games/virtual worlds:

Surprising Gamer Study: Avatar Gender Preference Remains Unchanged for Over 20 Years -- And Very Few Female Gamers Choose Male Avatars

Here’s a fascinating new report on avatars and gender from longtime game culture researcher Nick Yee, based on a survey of nearly 3,000 gamers. Nick’s topline takeaway is that 1 in 3 men prefer to play as female avatars, which is more than many might assume.

Two other learnings stand out to me even more:

Avatar gender preferences among players have remained basically the same since Nick started studying questions like this during the peak of Everquest -- over two decades ago! This despite the fact that MMOs have become much more mainstream since then, attracting many millions of players where they once only drew hundreds of thousands.

“This implies that whatever is causing this to happen (for both male and female players) has been consistent for the past 20 years,” Nick tells me, “so it's a function of some stable sociological dynamic and/or how we've been making games/avatars for the past 20 years. 

“Back in EQ days, I think it was easy to imagine that this phenomenon was idiosyncratic to MMOs, because the genre was more niche back then. But perhaps the MMO findings were always pointing at deeper, stable findings given that much of MMO mechanics and the live services model is now everywhere.” (In other words, online games like Overwatch and Fortnite also have heavy MMO features.)

Nick’s other standout finding: Very few females want to play as male avatars. Seriously few:

Richard Bartle Releases His Classic Book Designing Virtual Worlds for Free Online -- Here's His Guide to The Sections Still Most Relevant Today

Update, August 20:  Click here to download Designing Virtual Worlds as a .PDF file.

Designing Virtual Worlds is a milestone book in the history of the genre, relevant to basically anyone working in or thinking about online games/metaverses/MMOs/etc.; written by UK professor Richard Bartle in 2003, much or most of it is still relevant to today's technology. (Perhaps even more relevant now, as each wave of designers and developers insists on repeating mistakes made 10-15 years ago -- just on a much, much larger scale.) And Richard just announced he's offering it as a free download on his site:

It's held up reasonably well in some places but not so well in others. 18 years is a long time in virtual world development (the book predates World of Warcraft), but there may be something there of interest to people who haven't read the physical copy.

Click here to open Designing Virtual Worlds as a .pdf.

Professor Bartle, with characteristically wry self-effacement, just sent me his personal summary of the book chapter by chapter, noting which sections are still most relevant and which, not so much -- a handy cheat sheet for new/returning readers:

Take a Short Survey for PhD Study on Second Life Avatar Identity, Relationships, and How They Relate to IRL

Click here to take a short but intriguing survey about Second Life usage created by Amy Cross (millay Freschi in SL),  an interdisciplinary PhD candidate with the University of Maine whose study focuses on relationship of avatar use in virtual worlds, and offline identities.

"I ask questions about offline and online personalities," as she puts it. "I ask about the importance, the ease and frequency of changing the avatar appearance. I also ask a lot of questions about relationships in SL and the effect on offline relationships. Activities that transfer from SL to offline. How anonymity affects activities in SL. and of course, demographics. There are 48 questions with space in most for additional comments. The comments have been fascinating."

Start here to read the academic ethics disclosures before clicking through to the SurveyMonkey survey. Fortunately for us all, Amy's agreed to share the (anonymous) results and comments with NWN, so stay tuned for those soon(ish)!

"Second Life taught me that I'm constantly putting up an act" - Virtual World as Tool for Studying Social Roles

It's always interesting to hear what people with no prior background in virtual worlds make of their first experiences in one, and this student does just that. It's for a University of Calgary sociology class on "Cyber Deviations", but as you'll hear around 9:30, the student ends up learning about herself offline, too:

"Second Life taught me that I'm constantly putting up an act and playing this role of the person I want people to see me as... maybe I just need to be more of myself."

Which is a pretty profound thing to learn while fiddling about with a 3D avatar. (Though longtime MMOers won't be surprised by this realization in the least.)

Here's part two of the student's recounting of her virtual world experience, where she roleplays with a male avatar:

Fun SL Machinima from MIT Game Lab Parodies Videogame Sexism & Gender Stereotypes Within Second Life

"FREE SPEACH" is a pretty entertaining (if a bit technically rudimentary) Second Life machinima parodying videogame sexism and gender attitudes through Mario, Princess Peach, Laura Croft, and other classic characters:

Anyone who's viewed Anita Sarkeesian's videos, especially this one on the "Damsel in Distress" trope, will get a lot of the jokes. The machinima was produced by Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin, an Associate Professor at Concordia, who tells me it spins off her PhD thesis on the role of parodies in criticizing gender representation, and is connected to a survey on the topic which you can take here.

Professor Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin created the machinima with the MIT Game Lab and six MIT undergraduate students. "Second Life seemed to be the only online world where I could mix all video game characters and buy them on the marketplace. Second Life was a little glitchy," she allows, "and we had many technical problems during the shooting, but it was overall a great experience." (Maybe MIT should ask SL machinima master Lainy Voom to give a tutorial.)

Curiously, the title, "Free Speach", evokes the "Freeze Peach" parody of Gamergate and other online misogynists, but Gabrielle says that wasn't intentional:

If Second Life is a Game, Then Everything is a Game: Virtual Worlds Academic Tom Boellstorff Weighs In

The debate over whether Second Life should be classified as a game continues generating really interesting reader comments, one of the best of which is from my good friend and pioneering virtual worlds academic Tom Boellstorff:

As Richard Bartle, a pioneer in virtual worlds, once said: “virtual worlds are not games. Even the ones written to be games aren’t games. People can play games in them, sure, and they can be set up to that end, but this merely makes them venues. The Pasadena Rose Bowl is a stadium, not a game.”

The problem is that if you say Second Life is a "game" then it's hard to not classify everything humans do as a "game," and a word that refers to everything refers to nothing. When people say that virtual worlds like Second Life are games, they usually mean (1) some people play games in them (which is true); (2) some people engage in some form of role-play in them (which is true); or (3) the things some people do in virtual worlds do not have physical world consequences (which is true). But all of these things are true only some of the time; they are not hard-wired features of virtual worlds, but one way they can be used.

Tom goes on to point out why this debate draws so much passion:

Academic Journal Seeking Papers on VR-Based Education

John "Pathfinder" Lester, longtime innovator and advocate of virtual reality as an education tool, is editing an academic journal on the topic, and he's seeking contributors who work in that area and related realms:

My Stream will focus on innovative online learning environments that immerse students perceptually (3d simulations, VR, AR, etc.) as well as provide opportunities for collaborative learning (leveraging multiuser virtual worlds, social media tools, etc.).

Go here for all the details. And if you are writing something around those subjects, let me know too -- I likely want to blog about them, or at least know what you're up to!

In Survey of Second Life Sexual Activity, Over One-Third of Participants Find Virtual Sex More Fun Than the Real Thing

Canary Beck has a really interesting summary of a survey she conducted of Second Life users, asking them about their SL-based sexual activity. Of the 267 who responded, 172 reported that they were sexually active in Second Life. From that data set, some striking results emerged, including:

• "36% of the respondents find Second Life sex more fun than real life sex."
• "74% wished their real life sexual experiences were like their Second Life sexual experiences."
• "92% of those that find Second Life sex more fun wished their real life sexual experiences were more like their Second Life sexual experiences."

Her data suggests the latter result is attributable to the ability to engage through Second Life the kind of sexual activity that's likely less frequent in real life for many people for various reasons ("kinky sex (87%), and sex with different partners (89%)"). The top item mirrors the results of an academic study from leading virtual world academic Edward Castronova, co-authored with Gert G. Wagner, that people get more happiness from being in Second Life than good news from real life. Indeed, Canary concludes "The data suggests those who like Second Life Sex more are having less real-life sex than those who prefer real-life sex over Second Life sex."

That's not to say everyone's like that -- Canary's survey included an open question which includes answers like this: