Virtual Worlds-where do we go from here?

At the moment games and the virtual worlds they create are immersive environments filled with interesting places and characters that players can interact with, millions of players can unite and create lasting impacts on this worlds and create entirely new persona where people can make strong social and bonds that the player can enjoy and react to in a way similar to that of social networking sites. But this worlds have yet to make make the next leap forward in their evolution. No matter how complex or realistic current virtual worlds are or how many ways players have to socialize, they are still to primitive to allow for deep emotional connection between the player and the fictitious world in which they are interacting. All value placed on actions within these environments are still arbitrary and created by the system designers with the players essentially running through an endless serieis of mazess looking for their next reward and acomplishment.

To become true virtual worlds actions must have value beyond the immediate, their must be overall goals and objectives to why someone would chose to exist in these worlds, in short, games must allow for existential thought.

This process is slowly beginning, in development is a virtual world created by a single individual titled LOVE where there is no object other than to aid in the creation of a better online society with others. Your character will age and eventually die and your character will have children that you can choose to play as or allow to exist in the world as AI characters. Higher philosophical thought will come slowly to games, however as it does we as a society we see a great advancement in the way interact with virtual worlds and how we perceive them, and this more than anything else will effect how they will be used in the future.

Love official site

Activism in games

In rare occasions video-games have become the platform social activism and extreme forms of artistic expression. These instances usually involve a group or an indvidivual with a specific message or belief that they wish to be expressed and will use interactive media in order to spread that message to a large population. These games are usually primitive or sub-standard compared to games not based on specific view points, however the quality of the game is usually secondary  to spreading the message.

An example of this is the game Fat World, where the player controls a person and must monitor their diet. the character will die if they are not fed or eat an unhealthy diet. however the only options for food are fast food restaurants, creating a scenario where the player can't win. This game was created by Ian Bogost to express that in life people have no choice but to be obese.

A more recent example of activism effecting games is the controversy around the popular game Super Meat Boy. A small independently made game for the PC and Xbox. In Super Meat Boy, you control Meat Boy as he tries to rescue his girlfriend Bandage girl and avoid various traps in a silly over the top game where you literally control a piece of meat for a main character. PETA declared the game offensive and created their own game Super Tofu Boy where you control Tofu boy and must save Bandage Girl from Meat Boy after a bad breakup. The game promotes vegitarinism and mocks people who choose to eat meat.

The fight between the developers of Super Meat Boy and Peta is ongoing and so far has lead to increased sales of the game. The question is does activism such as this belong in games as such extreme viewpoints negate the more important parts games, game-play and interactivity. Situations like this will most likely increase. It will be Interesting to see how they affect gaming culture as a whole.

Super Meat Boy

Super Tofu Boy

Fatworld








 

Cultural differences in games

While games are made all over the world and are a multi-billion dollar industry. video-games are usually made for specific audiences, and this audience is usually determined by where the game was developed and produced. This leads to many games dealing with similar philosophical and moral questions but from different cultural perspectives.

For example, The Fallout series of games, are developed in the United States and have very clear messages about war, humanity and equality. The main message of the series is that "war never changes" in that no matter what time or level of thechnology is achieved, people will fight about something. This may seem like a universally accepted message, but that is not so.

Another series of games called Metal Gear from Japan that has been around for over 20 years, also has messages about war, humanity and equality. However their main message is in fact "war has change" in that, why a person fights is irrelevant, it is the way we fight that matters and as we have become more advanced war is losing its humanity.

These philosophies are incompatible and are often debated by fans of both series as both series, Metal Gar and Fallout are well respect and beloved by their fans.

Please decide for yourselves

Metal Gear Solid 4 War has changed

Fallout War never changes

The virtual battlefield

If a person were to combine all the fictitious worlds ever created for video games, the image would most likely be a strange battlefield filled with millions of people shooting at each other with small playgrounds filled with shiny toys to keep them entertained for the brief moments when they are bored shooting at each other.
While video games have advanced in many ways to achieve great levels of thought provoking art and new levels of interacting, it is also true that video games are still on the cutting edge of providing a large audience with loud bombastic games focused on combat, teamwork and communication. These games have little narrative value but deep intrinsic game-play that creates deep connections between the player and game, giving every action meaning and enhancing a strong sense of immersion. you are not just playing a game! YOU ARE TRYING TO WIN!!! This excitement and yearning for competing and victory leads these games to viewed as yearly spectacles on the same levels as sports game, but with a harsher and more violent edge witch leads to a deeper allure and more passionate fanbase.
These games are not high art, but they are virtual worlds in that millions of players communicate, organize, share opinions and compete over status in a never ending competition for fame and glory.

Call of Duty commerical

Gears of War 2 Trailer

Red vs Blue (strong languange)

MINECRAFT!!!

When someone imagines a virtual world, many different preconceptions may appear in a persons mind. They may think of a social situation, like Second Life, where the purpose of the world is to interact with others, and the world itself is merely a tool of the communication. Someone else may think of games like EVE online where the playing with others is secondary to your own personal enjoyment and success in a large scale game. However there is a brand new virtual world that is changing many people's thoughts about what a virtual world really is, and its a game all about mining. Minecraft is low tech online game that can be played for free or bought for $10 dollars. their is no objective and there is no goal, there is only you and nearly infinite world(6 times the size of the surface of the earth) and what you want to do with it. The game is set in two time-frames day and night. during the day you are free to explore the land and mine for resources, once you have resources you can then construct buildings. the limit to what you can build is endless. Flying cities have built, as well as castle under the ocean and fully fuctional space ships. At night various monsters will try and attack you, however depending on how well you buildings are made you will be safe.

Minecrafts popularity extends from the retro appearance of the game the seemingly endless variety of buildings and objects that can be constructed using the game. Some players have recreated entire game worlds from other popular game series within Minecraft, gaining praise from traditional game developers.
An online version of Minecraft has recently released by the game makers to let players collaborate on even larger projects.

Minecraft city

Minecraft spaceship

Minecraft Earth

Morality and the illusion of choice in games and virtual worlds

As game as increased in complexity the concept of choice and allowing players to create their own stories and feel the affects and consequences of moral actions has become an integral aspect to many games. This helps create a deeper level of immersion within the game and gives the players actions more weight as they connect to our emotions and real world beliefs and not simply to prescribed goals within the game. However there is a counter argument to this belief and it brings up a unique question in game design. If a game is designed to allow to make choices based on your morality, did you actually make a choice? Or simply follow one of several paths created by the game designer? Can choice ever actually exist in a world where every action and choice must be created by a person programing the ability for you to make those choices, and therefore all those possible choices are simply illusions made by an invisible creator, rendering the player into nothing more a puppet being manipulated by the game creators.

In an attempt to better express the concept of choice in games, The game Bioshock created what is considered by many people in the game community one of the strongest statements on morality in games ever made. Bioshock has at its core a very simple story of a man being trapped in a strange underwater city and he wants to escape. You control the character as he tries various plans to escape. During the game however their is a very infamous twist near the end of the game based around the players ally, a character named Atlas. Atlas is the only ally the player has for the majority of the game, he gives the player information about their situation and advice on what to do and where to go, a common function of AI companions. He is also very polite and always asks "would you kindly" before asking you move on to the next part of the mission objective.
Near the end of the game it is revealed that Atlas is in fact the antagonist of the game and every time he says the words "would you kindly" you have no choice but to follow his orders. This is explained not to the character you are controlling but to YOU the player. You are not in control of the game, the game has lied to you, it has betrayed you. when you thought you were make choices based on your own morality you were in fact nothing more than a puppet on rails.
The only comparison I can give to this moment in another medium would be the novel "The Murder Of Rodger Ackroyd" when it is revealed the narrator did it.

Bioshock the game

An explanation of Would You Kindly

Social commentary in games

Games and virtual worlds are praised for their ability to bring people together in new and unique ways. However a situation that is becoming more relevant in the examination of games is their ability to tell narratives and how these narratives reflect modern society. While social commentary is not new to games with some of the earliest games every made being joke filled text adventures that often made fun of the games very own technical limitations. Newer games have been able to create more complex statements about life and the world around as they have been also capable of creating a world we can reckognize as being similar  to our own.

Sometimes this statement on society happens purely by accident and becomes almost a post-modern art piece.  One of the first virtual worlds Ultima was met with high expectations and a large fan-base. It allowed every player to build homes, raise families and even rule entire kingdoms with other players supporting them. This all sounded wonderful, however overtime players began filling the game world with their homes leaving no place left to adventure, turning the entire game world into an endless city sprawl with small patches of parkland that very powerful players controlled and used as a farm for money and reasources. Many people found the situation Ultima became to immensely ironic of real life in that even during play all anyone wants to do is fight over real-estate.


 Ultima-Information about the online game.

Online evolution

Over the  last 10 years games have been able to take advantage of the increased use of online accessibility to allow what originally may have been closed isolated narratives to evolve into online virtual worlds that adapt the wants and desires of the playerbase. This has lead to several changes in overall game design. The first is that players never view a game as being "complete" anymore, as there is always the possibility that the game makers will add more content to make the game bigger or more complex. A second change is that a bad game can fixed after its released. whether it is a technical problem that needs to be addressed or the players feel more narrative needs to be added for a better experience there is always hope that this can be addressed in the future. 2 examples of this are the games Fallout 3 and Bioshock 2. Fallout 3 had what is known as a hard ending, in that once the narrative is complete the game can no longer be played, however many players found this conclusion rather jarring as it stopped them from exploring the game world after the end of the story. This lead to the creation of a story change where the ending was removed so that players could play to their hearts content.
In Bioshock 2 the issue was more complex in that many players felt the game was not as good as the original game and that its narrative was simply bad. This lead to the creation of a completely new narrative that could be played as an alternative to the original that many players and reviewers felt was stronger than the original . These are both large scale examples of online expansions to a videogame, but they are strong indicators or where games are currently going in the future.

expansions to Fallout 3

bioshock 2

Religion in Virtual Worlds

While video-games as a form of technology and art-form has made many leaps over the last 30 years, there are still areas of our culture that are difficult to express in the medium and are considered very controversial. Religion as concept is used often in games and virtual worlds as device to explain game mechanics and the structure of the virtual space. Almost all virtual worlds have a fictitious back-story to explain why the player should care about their surroundings and some form of fictitious religion is usually part of this narrative and often based somewhat on real world religions. The concept of current religions being used in virtual worlds and games is very rare and usually met with displeasure by the users of the game for various reasons, for example not all members of the game community practice the same religion, or the interpretation of the religion by the creators of the game is considered inaccurate by religious members of the game community.
Some games attempt to make very broad statements about religion that may be offensive to people of faith. A recent example of this is the game Assassins Creed 2 where the antagonist is the Pope. In regards to the specific genre of virtual worlds, more leeway is given in what can and can not be done, as much of the content is created by the players themselves. Several guilds in World of Warcraft are themed around real-world religion's. The religious themed virtual world called The Bible Online is currently in development, and as the concept of morality figures more prominatly into games, the concept of religion will most likely increase as well.

Article abour religion in games

The bible online

more about religion and games

The Power of Creation!!!

While there are many games that allow you to explore virtual worlds either alone or with friends. There is a small genre of games that allow you to create virtual worlds of your very own. In these genre of games, often referred to as "god games", the player has near limitless power to create planets, living entities, even societies that the player can then mold into whatever form of culture they choose. Two specific games stand out as famous examples of this genre, the fire game, Black and White cast the player as a literal deity at the dawn of time. The player had the power to be a benevolent god who protected his people through and miracles or a dark and evil deity who cursed the land and demanded constant sacrifice to feed your ego. There no punishments for either play style, the game simply altered itself to fit how you wished your world to be.
The second game, Spore has the player guide an individual species through evolution, from a single cell organism to a space faring race seeding other planets with life. The innovation of spore is that every other organism  the player interacted with is a creation of a different player from their own version of spore from a central sever. This meant that the more precise and effective your creature was, the more likely it was to thrive in other players worlds and interact their societies, influencing their evolution.
God games continue to be a small genre of the overall game industry but their influence has been felt in the design and development of many of the virtual worlds that have risen to prominence.

God Games-information about god games

A virtual world that belongs just to you

While the concept of the virtual world is normally used for online multilayer games, there are many examples of vibrant offline worlds that are designed for the enjoyment of an individual player. While these games have only person playing the game they are filled with complex AI characters going through routines that mimic real life and this gives the illusion of a world that continues beyond the players immediate location. In many times this illusion, is real and the AI is in fact having fights and conflict all on its own without the player being involved.

A good example of this style of game is Red Dead Redemption. A western game designed to encapsulate the feelings and emotional up-heaving of the old west during the turn of the last century. The game creates a fantastic atmosphere around the situation and allowed the player to live a life in the old west and truly immerse themselves into the period situation.

Another game that is a good example of a strong single player virtual world is the game Bioshock where the player explores an undersea city that was designed to be a great utopia but had failed to lived up to it's creators designs and had fallen in disrepair. This game allows the player to explore a realized fictional world at their own pace and leisure and understand how they fit into this fantastic situation.

bioshock - link to website about bioshock

red dead redemption - link to website about red dead redemption

Real World Economics in Virtual Worlds

While it may seem on the surface that a Virtual World is simply a system of socialization or entertainment, there is much more beneath the surface. One of the key factors that drive many virtual worlds are real world economic factors, to the point that the virtual money in many of these games have a monetary exchange rate. The most infamous example of this is gold farming in World Warcraft, where people play the game as much as possible to make as much virtual gold as they can so they can then sell this virtual money to players who do not have time to play the game as much for hard currency. This is frowned upon most players as cheating and deflates the value of the virtual money, but it is done despite protests.

This belief is not universal among all game companies. Everquest, one of the first virtual worlds has an acution house within the game where players can use real money to bid on ingame items, as well as directly buy games from shops and other players.

The most extreme example of the real and virtual economies colliding is the game Entropia Universe. where every item made by a player or bought by a player is worth exactly 1/3 of a dollar. Players can deposit money into their game accounts to buy more virtual goods and in a strange twist, sell virtual goods off to other players and the game itself for market value to attempt to make a profit

With so much money floating around these virtual worlds, the blurring between real and virtual property will probably continue until there is no distinction.

Gold Farming- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming

Everquest auctions- http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-823260.html

Most valuable piece of online property ever!!-Expensive Island

Life in a virtual world

When thinking of the concept of the virtual world. images of simple 3d worlds such as Second Life usually pop into a persons mind, however the reason for this stems more from Second Life being embraced as part of pop culture and less from it being a successful virtual world.

In fact, Second Life has several flaws that stop it from being a true virtual world, the two primary flaws being that the game does not have a unified player-base and game-world. Second life is divided into two large servers, one for players 17 and under and the other for 18 and above, while this partition does serve to protect younger players from some of the more "adult" sections of Second Life, a virtual world can not be divided, it must be unified. Furthermore, Second life does not have a unified game-world, rather the game is comprised of thousands of islands, many constructed by individual players for private use. This sense of having your own private world is a key point of Second Life, however it does not contribute to a unified virtual world.

I feel a better example a of unified virtual world is the game EVE Online. EVE allows players to explore a large fictitious galaxy that is ever expanding, and all players who play EVE play in the same galaxy. As everyone must play in the same game-space, players must compete for resources and authority and form player-made corporations to better control entire regions of the galaxy. From this situation a player is able to achieve several goals in EVE that they could not in Second Life. One such goal is fame, as all players are interconnected in one large world then a large success can reverberate throughout the player community, this can even lead to authority, as one player can lead others to control economic goals and military goals that can have significant impact on how others play EVE.

For more information on EVE and Second life please follow the links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Online

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

http://pc.ign.com/articles/100/1002527p1.html  -Article about the banking crisis within EVE during 09

Vitural Worlds: What are they?

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts-William Shakespeare

A virtual at its core is a simulated reality where people can interact with each other through player made representations(sometimes referred to as Avatars). within these realities people can interact, form social groups and bond and create communities just as if they were communicating in everyday life. This worlds can range from simplistic socializing programs such as Second Life, to worlds of intense complexity and competition as with the online RPG genre. All these worlds are linked however by a common theme of player interaction and communication, which is a a central element of the virtual world.

In Future posts we will look at

-Popular virtual worlds and their appear.
-Virtual world economics and their affects on player interaction.
-Entertainment vs Education, what types of virtual worlds provide educational value.
-Offline virtual worlds, can AI interaction make up for lack of player interaction?

www.eecs.harvard.edu/~nesson/e4/ed-vw-1.0.pdf-follow link for more information

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