Designing Virtual Worlds

To begin with, this book is not a programming book. There is no code, no discussion of VRML, MPEG-4, or X3D. Instead, this book stands back and takes a "big picture" look at the design of a virtual world from the viewpoint of systems engineering, social engineering, philosophy, history, and psychology. Ethical considerations are even tossed in for good measure. The book starts out with chapters on the history of virtual worlds and the cultural influences that affected their characteristics. Next, there is a fly-over view of the "production line" of building a virtual world. Bartle then turns his attention to the players - who they are, what they want, and how a virtual world can meet their needs. World design is examined from the standpoint of virtual geography, virtual world citizens, and finally the physics required to implement your world. Chapter 5 is about the specific sociology and physiology of the virtual world - skill levels, individual characteristics, how virtual inhabitants divide themselves into groups, combat, and even the meaning of death in the virtual world. The final three chapters are very philisophical in nature. Chapter 6 is basically a liberal arts syllabus through the prism of virtual world design. The last chapter, on ethical considerations, talks about censorship, and also looks at the player as a person and how game playing in virtual worlds can hurt more than help some kinds of people, particularly those prone to addiction. Bartle's social commentaries may be a bit long-winded for some people, although I found them interesting. Some readers may also be somewhat frustrated by the fact that the book talks more about what can go wrong in the design of a virtual world - overly complex and static story arcs, characters that players do not get invested in, characters in which players get too invested, etc - than what can go right. I really enjoyed the book, mainly because it moves the focus of the potential virtual world designer from the artistic and technical viewpoint to the player's viewpoint - why they plays games, and why a player would pick your game versus someone else's game.

I've almost finished this book, and I have to say this is one tome that's a critical necessity for designing and implementing MUDs and/or MMORPGs. There isn't any code, but Mr. Bartle covers the entire spectrum of the online Virtual World from start to finish. The style of the book is very philosophical in nature, discussing and detailing a problem, then offering what seems to be all possible solutions... and the problems those solutions are likely to spawn. In the final analysis, you have to make the decision as to which solution you will implement. Some of these decisions are not easy at all. I'm an experienced MUD player and programmer, and I had my own ideas regarding the direction I wanted to go to create the "ultimate" MUD using my own super-duper ideas. This book uncovered numerous flaws in my design that I had not fully considered, and literallly saved me hundreds of hours in time by detailing WHY my ill-considered ideas would certainly cause the MUD to fail. Every aspect of VW's are explored in detail from all angles. Sometimes this exploration process made the journey a bit tedious, because I wanted the best solution to the problem being discussed... now... and be done with it. Unfortunatly, that's not easy to do when you're presented with problems that have no perfect solutions, and the requirement is to make a decision... and live with the consequences. Now or later, you WILL decide how you'll deal with this or that design problem. If you don't sort it out, your MUD will never exist, or it will fail to survive. Mr. Bartle is courteous enough to tell you why. If you're planning a MUD, you MUST consider all the topics he explores in this book, and begin the difficult process of making your design decisions. An incomplete list of topics covered: virtual world history, the codebases and how they determine what style of VW is created, how to orgainize the design team and what their responsibilities are, the server and client architecture, the people who are drawn to these VW's, who they are, what they're looking for, their styles of play, the problems some of them cause, player participation in the design and content process, considerations about skills, levels, caps, long term players, newbies, character appearances, groups and clans, combat, crafting, NPC services, the economy, Player killing, Player vs Player, Permanent Death and Non-Permanent death, sociology, psychology, RPG theory, story theory, quests and adventures, geography, aesthetics, ethical considerations such as censorship, allowing virtual children, etc, wizzes, the live team, content, real life religeous conflicts, and finally... addiction, and mental illnesses of some of the players. Have you considered all angles of all that (and more)? I am totally, and completely, impressed with the breadth and depth of the coverage of all those and many more topics in this book. Before you begin the design process, and certainly before you write one line of code, this book

Over the years, I haven't always fully agreed with Richard Bartle's opinions, but he truly does *THINK* about the issues of world design, and he writes exceptionally well. In this book, he gives an extremely thorough, clear, well-reasoned, entertaining, and succinct analysis of the issues involved, the classes of solutions available for the problems those issues present, and the effects those solutions might have on the resolution of other issues. And he keeps his own ego out of the way: Yes, he tells us what he did, and why, but there's no hint that his way is the only way, or the best way, or the moral way - it's just the way he did it for the reasons he gives, and here are the other possibilities. And it applies as well to a 50-player LPMud or MUSH as it does to a 50,000-player MMORPG - and perhaps more so, since the LP and MUSH players are going to (and should) have higher expectations for their world.

Richard Bartle has an amazing amount of experience in designing and building virtual worlds. This book is a MUST READ for anyone designing a multiplayer on-line game or environment-- everyone from small community MUDs to huge massively-multiplayer systems. I would even suggest it for people writing more traditional multiplayer LAN games.This is NOT a programming book. You will find very very little information on how to program or develop a world system or the back-end infrastructure. What you will find is page after page of design experince on topics such as virtual world "laws", economies, chracter relations, and player communities. Basically all the stuff after "our world is going to be a fantasy world with humans and elfs and monsters." Most of the information he offers can only come from trial and error-- often very costly trial and error. As he points out, you can patch most code, but you can't patch an economy or a character design flaw.The book is written in a very relaxed style. It is not an guide on how to build the perfect world. There no perfect answers to most of these problems-- and besides, virtual worlds are SUPPOSED to be different. Rather, the general theme of the book is that if you are going to make decisions, THINK and make INFORMED decisions. This is done through many many discussions, e.g. "If you put this feature into your world, it will likely cause these side effects (bet you didn't think of that!), which have caused these problems for past designers." Reading this book is like sitting down with a bunch of other smart designers and asking "What if we do this?" "What if we try that?" only he has a general idea of most of the answers. At that point you are only left with picking the best set of answers for the world you are designing.As someone who was professionally involved in building a massively multiplayer game that had a great graphics system and a solid server infrastructure but failed while still in development because of design problems and budgets, I cannot say enough about the value of this book. We would have given thousands for it just a handful of years ago.

This looks like the definitive book on designing virtual worlds, and is likely to stay so for many years. It clearly shows that the author had 25 years of experience--not just as a designer of such worlds, but also as a user--to draw on, while at the same time being sufficiently detached from the industry to be able to offer candid opinions on any subject. It's hard to think of anything on the subject that Bartle does not at least touch on (providing extensive, scholarly quality references to a wealth of further on- and offline materials), from the deepest metaphysical philosophy to the daily squabbles between users and administrators on virtual worlds large and small. Bartle does not in general provide cut-and-dried solutions to the world design issues, but he gives an extensive discussion of approaches attempted and how they succeeded and failed.My only reservation with this otherwise excellent book was that I found some of the discussion a bit overly extensive. I would have preferred a book maybe 200 pages shorter, especially towards the final chapters of the book.If you're planning on designing a virtual world, buying this book is more than just a good idea: Failing to do so would border on criminal negligence.