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Bartle’s 5 most important folks in virtual worlds

July 19th, 2007 (Visited 3197 times) Tags:

And I guess I need to feel quite flattered.

And no, knowing him, he wouldn’t say this just because he’s on our advisory board.

The other four:

Ted Castronova
Jessica Mulligan
Jake Song
Roy Trubshaw

I think I might have to shoot myself if asked to come up with a similar list. He himself mentions Philip Rosedale and Rob Pardo…

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HeadCase Humanufacturing wrote on November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am:

But the larger the number of avatars in a group, the more valuable that group can become. Anybody who seriously designs avatars or virtual worlds knows who Richard Bartle is Richard has one. . Raph Koster has one. Nick Yeehas one. Raph, in his blog about Richard’s article about the most important people in the virtual world refers to these .. avatars? Something that seems like Richard makes an appearance, at least. And, after all, The Original Avatar was 2d

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Richard Bartle said on July 20th, 2007 at 1:01 am:
No need to feel flattered, it’s only me saying this!
The question I was asked, by the way, was: “Apart from yourself, who do you think have been, say, the five most important people in virtual environment/mmo history? Why?”. I therefore answered it taking an historical perspective. The names I gave weren’t the ones I would have given had the question been the one that the Guardian blog says it asked me (I wouldn’t have included Roy, for example, and Philip and Rob would both have had to be in there somehow). Also, the “Apart from yourself” bit was unnecessary, as I wouldn’t have included myself in the list anyway.
You’re correct, though, I didn’t put you on the list because I’m on Areae’s advisory board. I’m on other advisory boards and didn’t suck up to people from those. I put you on the list because I think you’re one of the five most important people in virtual world history (to date).
It took me maybe an hour to answer the question. At first, I thought I’d have to cut it down somehow, perhaps by restricting myself only to designers. That would have meant leaving out Jess Mulligan, though, and she deserves to be on any such list twice. So how about if I ignored designers, and focused on producers and non-industry figures? Oh, but that would mean omitting Jake Song, which, given the seismic changes he brought about to Korean society (changes that are still being felt elsewhere in the Far East), would be unconscionable.
My next tactic was to present a pre-list list of every person I missed out but really, really wished I hadn’t. That didn’t work either, because I realised that every name I added meant I had to add others, too – it rippled out unceasingly. Virtual worlds are what they are today because of so many people that it’s impossible to draw the line. Should I have put in Pavel Curtis, whose LambdaMOO brought virtual worlds to academic attention in the 1990s and laid the foundations of the study of virtual worlds in so many disciplines? But people only heard about LambdaMOO because of Julian Dibbell’s “A Rape in Cyberspace” article, so Julian should be in the list. Only, does that mean I should also include MrBungle, the virtual rapist?
There are some names I feel particularly bad about omitting, because I don’t feel they get the recognition they deserve for what they did. Without Alan Cox, for example, MUDs would not have got to the USA when they did. It was a critical point in virtual world history, but Alan rarely gets a mention for his contribution. So should I have perhaps restricted myself to relatively unsung individuals? In the end, I decided against it: nobody wants to be on a list for reasons that look like pity, even if it’s not meant that way.
So in the end, I decided to bite the bullet and just list who I thought were indeed the five most important people in virtual world history. Having spent so long thinking about it, I already knew I wanted Roy and Jess, and Jake Song, and you, and Ted.
Oh. List full!
So that’s what I answered.
Richard
BadMisterFrosty said on July 20th, 2007 at 2:57 am:
It looks like that the broader audience noted some other folks rather than those on the list based on Wikipedia articles. It looks like that Jessica Mulligan does not even has an article, right now (well, the german has, now)…but I wrote yours Mr. Koster and Mr. Bartle as well (german articles)
Interesting, that it seems to be perceived differently in the overall public (not to overrate wikipedia, though).
Michael Chui said on July 20th, 2007 at 5:14 am:
I did not know who Jake Song was until I read that blurb; I’m quite impressed, and somewhat wish I knew more about the Far Eastern landscape. =/
This kind of thing deserves wikification. I never got around to developing my Project VyV, and at this point, I don’t think I ever will. But let it raise it up here and some bored web programmer can consider building and hosting it.
We need something better than the blogosphere. Blogs are great for randomly spouting wonderfully written articles that spin off into vapor a month later, unless they get linked up. That’s useless, in the long run. We need for Richard to have a place to write up an entire history, more complete than Raph’s timeline or the other few timelines floating around.
A wiki would go a long way to achieving this, but it needs a message board, with real message board functionality (not the half-baked Discussion pages of Wikipedia) that’s nevertheless tightly linked to the wiki itself. Automatically linking articles in posts, for instance, and trackbacking posts from the articles.
I’ve been struggling with this concept for the past three years, and have unfortunately been unable to actually produce anything. However, if anyone wants to give it a shot, feel free to contact me and we can bounce the particulars of design until something crisp comes out.
csven said on July 20th, 2007 at 5:22 am:
some eight million people (as I write this) have tried Second Life at least once
*exasperated sigh*
Morgan Ramsay said on July 20th, 2007 at 2:39 pm:
If Richard was Time Magazine, the number one most important person in virtual worlds is “you”, the players.
Richard Bartle said on July 21st, 2007 at 2:43 am:
Morgan Ramsay>If Richard was Time Magazine, the number one most important person in virtual worlds is “you”, the players.
I dedicated my book “to the players” and see no reason to change that. So yes, you’re right.
(Oh, and for the record, if I were Time Magazine I wouldn’t close it down).
Richard
Michael Chui said on July 22nd, 2007 at 4:49 am:
What if you were the American government? =P
Richard Bartle said on July 23rd, 2007 at 7:57 am:
Michael Chui>What if you were the American government?
The American government is already closing itself down, it doesn’t need my help.
Richard
War said on July 23rd, 2007 at 5:57 pm:
No Allen Adham? :/
He helped shape the Diablo series in to what it was. And, no offense to Rob Pardo, actually created World of Warcraft. Rob just ran it.
Morgan Ramsay said on July 24th, 2007 at 1:48 am:
Well, Diablo I and II are not virtual worlds. They’re both online RPGs with limited persistence and a maximum of, what, 16 players per instance? Online first-person shooters have similar multiplayer features and we don’t call them virtual worlds…
I would probably credit Allen Adham with establishing Blizzard, a company whose innovations are not too obvious to the casual observer and yet have far-reaching implications for all video games and not just virtual worlds. Blizzard should probably be best known for its corporate brand and franchise authenticity—two areas where most developers still need a lot of work.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on July 24th, 2007 at 2:00 am:
Why isn’t 16 players enough? Or why does the number of players matter at all? There are plenty of virtual worlds with zero players.
Morgan Ramsay said on July 24th, 2007 at 3:19 am:
Why isn’t 16 players enough? Or why does the number of players matter at all?
I think Diablo II actually only has a maximum of 8 players per instance.
And why are you asking me!? Raph and Richard are the experts. ;p
But I’ll give you my answer anyway.
The number of players matters to what is a virtual world for the same reason that the number of people matters to the urban hierarchy. We don’t call domiciles “worlds” just as we don’t call villages “metropolises.” We might liken our homes to unique worlds but that doesn’t mean they are worlds. They’re not “worlds within worlds.” They are part of a world already and they’re called “homes.”
Similarly, we might liken an automated computer simulation of an ant farm to a “virtual world” to attribute some properties of virtual worlds that we see the simulation shares with virtual worlds (e.g., an organic and structured society.) But the simulation is still just a simulation and not a virtual world. When we talk about virtual worlds, we talk about virtual worlds and not the things we liken to them.
Morgan Ramsay said on July 24th, 2007 at 3:34 am:
And just so Mr. Bartle doesn’t have to type what he’s already written… From his Gamelab 2007 presentation:
“Today, I’m going to be talking about virtual worlds–where they started, where they went, where they are now, and where they’re going. Ok, so what do I mean by “virtual world”? It’s an umbrella term that covers a wide range of seemingly disparate online places; although, it’s slowly coming to mean more Second Life than World of Warcraft. This still doesn’t explain what they are though. Actually, the definition is quite tricky.”
“These are the characteristics of a virtual world: it operates using an underlying automated rule set — its physics; a player represents an individual ‘in’ the virtual world — their character; interaction with the world takes place in real time; the world is shared; the world is persistent — it’s stil there when you’re not; [and] if it fails on any of these, it’s not a virtual world.”
He recently put up his presentations archive. Now, it’s 4:27 AM. Why am I reading Richard’s slides?
Morgan Ramsay said on July 24th, 2007 at 3:36 am:
Typos are mine, by the way.
Morgan Ramsay said on July 24th, 2007 at 3:44 am:
I wrote:
And just so Mr. Bartle doesn’t have to type what he’s already written…
Not that he doesn’t enjoy writing… and certainly not that you can’t read his slides… I’m not saying that at all!
Oh boy… I’m never drinking Full Throttle again. ;p I want to sleep…
Raph: Just delete these last three posts of mine. My god, I’m spamming.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on July 24th, 2007 at 4:59 am:
Well, I and others used the term “Virtual World” when Richard called them “MUDs”, but that doesn’t mean that the terms should be limited to MUDs. Though anyone gets to define the term for his own purposes, and probably should. The fact is, neither persistence or number of players are very good for determining whether something is a virtual world or not. Is a WOW server without players or only one player not a virtual world? Or more realistically a text MUD in the making? And has MUD1 stopped being a virtual world now that players have deserted it? Is a MUD with frequent resets not a world? Etc. Historically you might say that a virtual world is a world-like virtual reality application, but that is too limiting, although it might have been useful at some point in time. What features dominating “virtual worlds” change over time, hence a very limited definition won’t be future proof.
The only definition that seems to work is that X is a virtual world if X is a world and iff that world is virtual. That should be enough. Or the more lenghty definition.
In the real world you’ll have to define the specifics you want to cover whenever you use it in a new context as the term is interpreted very differently by different people and in different fields.
So, is Diablo II a world that is virtual with multiple users? Yes, but there are probably more worldishly works out there. *shrugs*
Morgan Ramsay said on July 24th, 2007 at 6:15 am:
Is a WOW server without players or only one player not a virtual world? Or more realistically a text MUD in the making? And has MUD1 stopped being a virtual world now that players have deserted it? Is a MUD with frequent resets not a world?
You’re talking about the technology that supports a virtual world, not virtual worlds.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on July 24th, 2007 at 7:21 am:
Don’t be silly.
War said on July 24th, 2007 at 9:29 am:
Right, but the question was: “…the five most important people in the development of virtual worlds and MMOs.”
Guild Wars now considers itself an MMO. How is the Guild Wars world any different than Diablo on Battle.net?
And if memory serves, the first Diablo preceeded Ultima Online. And I would be willing to bet there are still more concurrent users on Battle.net than there ever were on UO. (Not taking anything away from Raph or UO, I loved it played for 4+ years)
Morgan Ramsay said on July 24th, 2007 at 12:26 pm:
Don’t be silly.
I’m not. A virtual world, as opposed to a virtual environment, always has a human presence. No people, no world.
Servers store and serve data, not virtual worlds. For MUDs, text was the interface to virtual worlds; we don’t call the ability to see and touch “worlds.” If MUD1 is no longer populated with people, it’s not a virtual world; however, MUD1 would still remain a virtual-world application just as the physics of the known universe would still remain this known universe’s physics. I don’t think whether there are resets in a MUD is relevant; people have seizures, species go extinct, and blinking consistently refreshes our perception of the world. Life goes on and the world persists.
Guild Wars now considers itself an MMO. How is the Guild Wars world any different than Diablo on Battle.net?
Guild Wars provides a persistent and shared virtual world. Within that world (a word which in this context now means “environment”) are closed destinations or places where the human presence can be segregated and yet continue as part of the virtual world. It’s the equivalent of a theme park. There’s the park and then there are rides.
Battle.net is a chat client that provides access to various games. Kahn is a chat client that does the exact same thing, only with IPX, but nobody who used or currently using Kahn ever thought of Kahn as a virtual world just as nobody ever thought of the automobile as a world. They’re both vehicles for moving to destinations.
And if memory serves, the first Diablo preceeded Ultima Online.
Who cares? Nobody ever considered Diablo a virtual world just because of Battle.net. Would it matter if Diablo were a virtual world? No. MPlayer predates Battle.net. Kahn predates MPlayer. Kali predates Kahn. Westwood Online probably predates Kali. And you’d probably have to expand the definition of “virtual world” to include AOL Instant Messenger and Xfire, and Internet Relay Chat, which goes back to 1988.
Software clients that provide access to games or virtual worlds are not virtual worlds; they’re clients. Certain things are called certain things because that’s what they are. Most, if not all, people don’t need proof that 1=1. That’s just the nature of things.
Of course, despite all this arguing, IRC/MPlayer/Kali/Kahn/Battle.net/Westwood Online/Xfire/AIM all satisfy Richard’s criteria. The real problem with defining “virtual world” is that a world is what you make of it. All I’m saying is that when people talk about virtual worlds, they’re usually specifically talking about a virtual environment populated by a massive number of people where their experiences in that environment define how they perceive and thus interact with the environment. Population is key here just as it’s key to urban hierarchy. A village is not a metropolis just as an outhouse isn’t a city. I don’t think that’s a revelation. That’s just how it is.
War said on July 25th, 2007 at 4:45 pm:
But these virtual worlds had to start somewhere. Battle.net evolved from Kali and MPlayer. UO Evolved from Battle.net. EQ evolved from UO, etc… No not literally, but in function.
And yes Battle.net was not first, but it was by far the most popular, and it is still going strong. How many of those other multiplayer services are still in business, let alone have more users connected to them at any given time than 90% of the MMOs out there today?
Blizzard never inovated anything in the games they have made. But every game they made was the most fun game of its genre.
Anyway, back to my point. Allen Adham isn’t mentioned on the list :/
Raph said on July 25th, 2007 at 5:26 pm:
But these virtual worlds had to start somewhere. Battle.net evolved from Kali and MPlayer. UO Evolved from Battle.net. EQ evolved from UO, etc… No not literally, but in function.
UO did not evolve from Battle.net. Battle.net didn’t exist until well after UO was well along. Pretty sure UO pre-alpha test happened before Diablo even released.
EQ got some stuff from UO, but mostly it evolved from Sojourn MUD.
Morgan Ramsay said on July 25th, 2007 at 11:29 pm:
Battle.net evolved from Kali and MPlayer.
I don’t think so. Kali and MPlayer were matchmaking services and early social networking systems. Battle.net was Blizzard’s proprietary multiplayer server network. It wasn’t a virtual world. It was one part networking tool and one part marketing device.
And yes Battle.net was not first, but it was by far the most popular, and it is still going strong.
As for statistics… who knows about Kali, but here’s Battle.net and MPlayer.com (from Wikipedia):
- Kali was launched sometime in 1995 (or earlier.)
- MPlayer.com was launched in late 1996.
- Battle.net was launched in January 1997.
- Battle.net, November 1997: 1.25m users
- MPlayer.com, late 1998: 2m users
- Battle.net, April 1999: 2.3m users
- MPlayer.com, March 1999: 3m users
- MPlayer.com, 2000 GameSpy buyout: ~10m users
- Battle.net, September 2002: ~11m users
- Battle.net, September 2004: ~12m users
Had MPlayer.com actually been profitable and never bought out, it’d probably be the largest network still today. But bear in mind that these are two totally different applications. MPlayer.com was a matchmaking service for a ton of different games, much like GameSpy 3D/Arcade, but far superior in every way. Battle.net is Blizzard’s private, proprietary network for Blizzard games much like Westwood Online was.
But every game they made was the most fun game of its genre.
Says fans. In my opinion, Ultima Online destroyed World of Warcraft (and still does) in terms of fun. I played World of Warcraft during closed beta and was bored out of my mind. I played the gold release later and was still bored out of my mind. I must have been the only player actually criticizing the game before and after it launched.
I had a lot more fun with C&C and C&C: Red Alert than I ever did with Warcraft and Warcraft II. Same deal with Starcraft. Diablo was okay and Diablo II lasted for a few years, but as action RPGs they both can’t measure up to Fallout and Fallout 2. MPlayer.com was always more fun as a community than Battle.net has ever been. My fondest memories of games were of games that had nothing to do with Blizzard. I’m sorry to say, but fanaticism isn’t factual.
Anyway, back to my point. Allen Adham isn’t mentioned on the list :/
If he belonged on this list, I’m sure Richard would have included him. After all, it is Richard’s list. Enough said.

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