Hey, I just wrote an essay for my English class at college. I thought I'd get your input on it, and also read your thoughts after looking this over. UPDATE: Revision #1 --------------------------------------------------- Virtual Worlds: Game or Place? I remember when Super Mario was released for the Nintendo game console. My brothers would crowd around the TV screen and play the game for hours, and sometimes argue that they don’t want to go to school because they were so far in the game. Then there was this duck shooting game that came with a Nintendo gun that was used like a joystick. You would point it at the TV screen and shoot at whatever comes into view. A month later, an exercise program came out that allowed the player to run on a mat, and the character on the screen would start running. When the player stopped, the character stopped. Since then, ten years have gone by, and traditional linear game-worlds are gradually being expanded to include non-linear qualities. This essay will focus solely on role-playing games, as that genre best encompasses this change. In 1992, a Dungeons & Dragons inspired game, titled The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, was released. The game allowed me to role-play any character I want within this huge, medieval-fantasy world. The world map is twice the size of Great Britain, and walking from one side to the other took literally two weeks in real life. Although I don’t need to travel that far, I can visit cities around me, find monsters and artifacts hidden inside bloodstained dungeons. Besides this, the world also showed a huge amount of realism. This realism involves villagers sleeping at night; I can break into people’s houses and steal their goods. I can also embark on thousands of side quests that are spread all over the continent. Although the graphics are old, several people switched from The Elder Scrolls III to The Elder Scrolls II for the better realism and gameplay. A few years later, EverQuest, a MMORPG (Multi-User Online Role-Play Game) was released. I played the game for hours and I couldn’t get away from it. Like Daggerfall, the world was huge with over five continents. People around the world would play daily at several hours a time. I remember getting lost within the forest, and nothing was around me but trees. It probably took me five hours to find my way back to my home city. Besides questing all the time, I can go fishing, get drunk, build weapons, armor, and sell them to other players around the world. The downfall of this game was the rating that knocked down the realism Daggerfall provided. I call these worlds “kid-friendly” because kids can play without seeing guts flying everywhere, nudity, gambling, and much more. Still, this game remains the best MMORPG today. Big Blue Box is releasing their first XBox console game titled Fable. The player can start as a child in the world, and he grows into an adult who can be either feared or cheered for his heroic services. Besides quests and exploring, he has the ability to fall in love and have a family. If the player fights often, his muscles get stronger. If he is out in the sun too much, he gets a tan. If he prefers casting spells, his hair eventually turns long and white. Whatever the player decides to do, the world will react to his actions. Even though the game is six months before release, the XBox magazines are already calling this a huge revolution for the role-playing genre. These worlds with expanding non-linear possibilities clearly illustrate that they are not traditional linear games. Because there’re so detailed, it had to be considered a science of designing these virtual worlds, involving geography, cultures, history, economy, religion, weather systems, and much more. Surely, the older games did not have a reason to include these. Overall, due to the freedom the player has, the non-linear path is much more advanced than being stuck in a linear, one-way path. [edited by - philvaira on February 18, 2004 12:08:19 AM]

Don''t hold your breath man. Fable''s feature list has been taking some harsh cuts. It sounds like a neat game, but its nothing like it was originally planned if I recall correctly.

i was beginning to wonder if fable had been cancelled, since i haven''t heard anything about it for a while now.

I updated the essay. Much better now

I''ve been talking with the dev''s of Fable in the official chatroom. Nothing changed but reducing the landmass so everything is more packed together, and ther''s no more child killing and nudity. That''s the big things so I don''t care about the little things. It''s about 4.9 gigs last time I asked.

http://phil.webula.net
AIM: wuZZup189

Paragraph by paragraph nitpicks:

The opening paragraph could be a little clearer, perhaps citing more specific examples of early linear RPGs, rather than examples from other genres (of course, depending on your English prof/TA, you might get marked down for having a dry opening paragraph; many people with degrees in English seem to prefer useless human interest content rather than introductory topics that prime the reader''s mind with information necessary to comprehending the rest of the work).
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Daggerfall/Morrowind are by no means the only examples of living worlds; many older games (Ultima 5-7 come to mind) achieve this to a similar extent. The last sentence of this paragraph "Although the graphics are old..." is off topic (if you must include the idea, make it a segway somewhere earlier in the paragraph, perhaps as an ancedote to the longevity of Daggerfall).
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Everquest came out before Morrowind; 3D online games existed before the release of Daggerfall (Meridian59, and the 2D Ultima Online). Before that, there were text-based online RPGs (MUDs, Dikus, MOOs, and Mushes). Many pre-public internet BBS systems including America Online and Compuserve carried these in the 1980s; the first of these predate all but the earliest home computer games, many having been played over the net in the late seventies and early eighties. Exclusion of gameplay elements like PvP, gambling, pc/npc nudity is a game design decision, not just a legal or content issue, and is up to the game designers/producers to decide whether or not to include it. (an d again, personal stories about gameplay experiences might be facinating to some nutball English dept like the one at my uni, but unless this is supposed to be a paper dedicated to non-gamers/game industry professionals/academics studying the field, skip it).
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(As I write this) Fable is vaporware (until its in the store in the console world, its vaporware). It is also not the first to embrace these game design concepts... from the aspect of a player avatar changing physically due to gameplay choices, take a look at the Princess Maker series of games. I believe the first one came out about 14 years ago for Amiga and PC. Imho appealing to the "XBox magazines" is probably appealation to innapropriate authority. You might try searching the anals of different game journals for games already published that support your thesis, as well as for the expert opinions.
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This closing paragraph introduces a new idea (the fact that a non-linear game world must include whole cultures, weather systems, etc.). This is generally not done; it does, however, belong in the opening paragraph in introducing the definition of the terms for the lay-reader. "Surely older games did not have a reason to include these" - I disagree; they have every reason to include these ideas that new games do today. Check out Elite; it had a seemless galaxy for the player to explore. Older ganes simply most often did not feature virtual worlds, as their creators lacked the skill to eke out of the hardware that immersive quality that such a world has.

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Overall:

The title asks a big question. Specifically, it requires you to first define and describe a virtual world to the lay-reader (I''m presuming an English dept audience), and then to stumble over defining what a game is (or gloss it over and rely on many people''s often innaccurate perceptions). After you''re done with that, you must stumble over the metaphysics of all manner of philosophical questions/definitions of reality. Not a short paper to write (though likely a highly worthwhile one!).

A title more appropriate for the content might be something indicating a study of the statistical increase in the number of non-linear games (or games with non-linear or virtual world elements). A likely conclusion is to decide that it is because of increasing player expectations and better hardware. A nice introduction might describe pen and paper virtual worlds (Dungeons and Dragons and the like), as well as many of the early non-linear efforts (Elite, Ultima, MUDs, etc.). Stay away from defining the game-specific genre "RPG" if this is for the lay-person, and use more immeadiately identifiable terms (fantasy/sci-fi) and couple that genre with the word "game" or phrase "virtual world".

You might want to start each paragraph with a sentence that immeadiately lets the reader know how that paragraph is going to help answer the question or claim that the thesis statement puts forward.