Richard Bartle Releases His Classic Book Designing Virtual Worlds for Free Onlin...

Designing Virtual Worlds is a milestone book in the history of the genre, relevant to basically anyone working in or thinking about online games/metaverses/MMOs/etc.; written by UK professor Richard Bartle in 2003, much or most of it is still relevant to today's technology. (Perhaps even more relevant now, as each wave of designers and developers insists on repeating mistakes made 10-15 years ago -- just on a much, much larger scale.) And Richard just announced he's offering it as a free download on his site:

It's held up reasonably well in some places but not so well in others. 18 years is a long time in virtual world development (the book predates World of Warcraft), but there may be something there of interest to people who haven't read the physical copy.

Click here to download Designing Virtual Worlds as a .pdf.

Professor Bartle, with characteristically wry self-effacement, just sent me his personal summary of the book chapter by chapter, noting which sections are still most relevant and which, not so much -- a handy cheat sheet for new/returning readers:

Chapter 1 [Introduction to Virtual Worlds] is OK but we've been in the 6th age of virtual worlds since 2012. Some of the historical stuff (on codebases, for example) is now only of historical interest. The material on influences is superseded, because these days most virtual world design is influences by the design of those worlds that preceded them.

Chapter 2 [How to Make Virtual Worlds] is OK; boring, but OK. There are new architectures available now, and the old ones are still viable but rather old hat today. VR is still just around the corner, though.

Chapter 3 [Players] holds up best. Most of what's in it still applies. The Community section is its weakest part.

Chapter 4 [World Design] holds up well, too. Some of the suggestions sound strangely fresh and new, with modern MMOs (as opposed to non-game worlds) having largely similar ways of approaching world design resulting in largely similar results. That said, there are new ideas around, so it's still somewhat out of

Chapter 5 [Life in the Virtual World] is fair, but modern ideas of identity politics make some of the points rather edgier than they were back in the day. The section on permadeath remains true, but it's not even something modern players could get their heads around, so it's really a bust in today's context.

Chapter 6 [It’s Not a Game, It’s a...] is state of the art for 2003. Thousands of academic papers about virtual worlds have since been written, so it's the most dated part of the book. Some of the points made by early researchers still hold true, but there are more points and more nuanced takes on the old points in many cases. It's unlikely to be a useful chapter for today's reader.

Chapter 7 [Toward a Critical Aesthetic] holds up well, but isn't of interest to anyone except the budding designer who hasn't had all thoughts that virtual worlds are creative expressions beaten out of them.

Chapter 8 [Coda: Ethical Considerations] is still relevant, largely for the same reasons it was relevant before: few designers think about this kind of thing, but they ought to.

Once again, get the .pdf here. It's been awhile since I delved into it myself, so I'm planning to follow Richard's guide too.