Product Description

Designing Virtual Worlds is the most comprehensive treatment of virtual world design to-date from one of the true pioneers and most sought-after design consultants. It's a tour de force of VW design, stunning in intellectual scope, spanning the literary, economic, sociological, psychological, physical, technological, and ethical underpinnings of design, while providing the reader with a deep, well-grounded understanding of VW design principles. It covers everything from MUDs to MOOs to MMORPGs, from text-based to graphical VWs.

Designing Virtual Worlds brings a rich, well-developed approach to the design concepts behind virtual worlds. It is grounded in the earliest approaches to such designs, but the examples discussed in the book run the gamut from the earliest MUDs to the present-day MMORPG games mentioned above. It teaches the reader the actual, underlying design principles that many designers do not understand when they borrow or build from previous games. There is no other design book on the market in the area of online games and virtual worlds that provides the rich detail, historical context, and conceptual depth of Designing Virtual Worlds.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #281042 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 768 pages

From the Back Cover

Designing Virtual Worlds is the most comprehensive treatment of virtual world design to-date from one of the true pioneers and most sought-after design consultants. It's a tour de force of VW design, stunning in intellectual scope, spanning the literary, economic, sociological, psychological, physical, technological, and ethical underpinnings of design, while providing the reader with a deep, well-grounded understanding of VW design principles. It covers everything from MUDs to MOOs to MMORPGs, from text-based to graphical VWs.

Designing Virtual Worlds brings a rich, well-developed approach to the design concepts behind virtual worlds. It is grounded in the earliest approaches to such designs, but the examples discussed in the book run the gamut from the earliest MUDs to the present-day MMORPG games mentioned above. It teaches the reader the actual, underlying design principles that many designers do not understand when they borrow or build from previous games. There is no other design book on the market in the area of online games and virtual worlds that provides the rich detail, historical context, and conceptual depth of Designing Virtual Worlds.

About the Author

Richard Allan Bartle, Ph.D., co-wrote the first virtual world, MUD ("Multi-User Dungeon"), in 1978, thus being at the forefront of the online gaming industry from its very inception. A former university lecturer in Artificial Intelligence, he is an influential writer on all aspects of virtual world design and development. As an independent consultant, he has worked with almost every major online gaming company in the U.K. and the U.S. over the past 20 years. Richard lives with his wife, Gail, and their two children, Jennifer and Madeleine, in a village just outside Colchester, England. He works in virtual worlds.

These reviewers contributed their considerable hands-on expertise to the development process for Designing Virtual Worlds. As the book was being written, these dedicated professionals reviewed all the material for technical content, organization, and flow. Their feedback was critical to ensuring that Designing Virtual Worlds fits our readers' need for the highest-quality technical information.

Matt Mihaly is the founding partner, lead designer, and CEO of Achaea LLC. Founded in 1996 in San Francisco, Achaea designs and produces some of the world's most popular and successful commercial text MUDs, including Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands (http://www.achaea.com), Aetolia, the Midnight Age (http://www.aetolia.com), and Imperian (http://www.imperian.com)—all of which run on Achaea's proprietary network engine, Rapture. Matt graduated from Cornell University in 1994 with a degree in Political Science and is a licensed stockbroker. These experiences have informed his game design tendencies and he is an expert on business models, political systems, and community dynamics in virtual worlds. Along with the inevitable interest in games, he spends his free time pursuing Brazilian jujitsu and kickboxing, cooking, travelling, hiking, kayaking, skiing, and scuba diving.

Damion Schubert has been working in online world design professionally for over seven years. He was originally the lead designer of Meridian 59 (and several expansions), as well as the lead designer for the defunct Ultima Online 2. He has also served as a contractor for such projects as The Sims Online and Kalisto's Highlander Online. Currently Damion is serving as a senior designer at Wolfpack, which shipped Shadowbane in March 2003.

Customer Reviews

Great, yet opinionated
This book attempts to cover the growing area of massively multiplayer online gaming from the privileged but sadly often-overlooked position of one who knows that MMORPGs owe much to the text MUDs that came before them. It shows that many of the concepts that are hailed as innovative by MMORPG players today were often showcased in textual online games 10 or 20 years ago, and goes on to show that many other features of text MUDs could - and should - be implemented in the modern graphical games. It also looks critically at why some features do not translate well from text to graphics, and the different considerations a designer must make in each case.

Much of the book is a detailed analysis of each aspect of a virtual world - ways to classify player types, how to model objects and their properties, ethical considerations, skill systems vs. class systems, and so on. Dr Bartle's semi-formal style works well, being neither a lofty pronouncement shouted down from an ivory tower or a populist rant from a jaded and biased player, but a considered middle ground from someone who has 'been there' and hopes to improve the status quo. Most of the observations ring true, and unlike the naive "why don't games just do XYZ?" suggestions that constantly plague online forums, they also carry the weight of practicality. Amusing footnotes make the book a pleasure to read, and also provide many valuable links to external sources for further research.

Where this book falls down however, is where the author lets his personal bias show through. He espouses strong opinions on what virtual worlds actually are and why players enter them, and then continues to use these definitions to refute the opinions of others, as if his assertions were indisputable fact. Another way in which the bias shows is in the amount of detail regarding the various subject areas: fewer than 20 pages are devoted to combat - arguably one of the most important aspects to many world designers - compared to 30 pages on how Gender Studies relates to virtual worlds. In one section, Dr Bartle warns designers of the dangers of 'selective depth', where parts of the game are made to appear too important by the designers having spent too much time adding to detail pertaining to that aspect, neglecting others. It can be argued that he has made this very mistake with this book.

So in summary, if you are looking for a tome that covers all kinds of virtual worlds, and forces you to look at both the deeper and wider issues regarding them, this is the book for you. However, if you are just looking to start up a new MMORPG and wanted some hints on the gameplay detail, this book will still help you, but probably not in the way you had hoped for.

Fantastic book for designers and players alike
This would be an invaluable book for anyone thinking of designing a virtual world. The advice is applicable not only to large-scale MMPORGs but also MUDs (MOOs, MUSHes etc) run by hobbyists.

Even for those who are primarily players, not designers, this is a great read. Bartle's often witty and clearly-written text makes the book accessible to those with little technical expertise, and he manages to be both entertaining and informative.

Anyone studying virtual worlds from an academic -- rather than a commercial -- perspective will find chapter 7 ("Towards a Critical Aesthetic") very helpful; Bartle goes through a number of different disciplines (literary theory, psychology, education) and explains how virtual worlds could fit into them.

I'd recommend this as an essential text for anyone involved in designing commercial MMORPGs -- having a good grasp of underlying design concepts is surely worth many times the price of the book. However, it would also be a really interesting read for many players, particularly those with a view towards designing their own games, or those keen to examine virtual worlds in an academic light.