All about "Gold-Farming"

You can find everything currently known about "Gold-Farming" in Richard Heeks' woking paper.

Overview: Virtual World Comparison

This is the start page with links all summaries and charts that to that give you a quick and comparative overview of current virtual worlds.

• About Framing Virtual Worlds

• Virtual World Comparison Chart
  

About framing Virtual Worlds

When framing virtual worlds it must be considered that they are complex, ambiguous structures so that there is not simple method of absolutely pinning down their characteristics. What is instead possible is to juxtapose worlds with characteristic behavioural, structural and thematic attributes that act as representations for families of games. Nevertheless it must be considered that the game experience for each game is unique so that it cannot be generally assumed that games within the same family provide a equal or even similar game experience.

Generally speaking, game experience has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, meaning that all extrapolations of other games are potentially insecure. Since interaction is the core of virtual worlds, it can further not be assumed that games with similar representations (same setting, similar style, similar audio) also provide a similar quality of interaction (no matter what trailers and "gameplay videos" will tell you). Interaction can only be experienced through actively participating in an activity and not only by simply watching. Even when a virtual world is online, the quality is still changing. Developers are permanently improving and expanding a virtual world so that its quality level (and play experience) is under constant transformation. A virtual world that was 10 months before only average could now have been developed to a balanced and entertaining place. Sadly, the same counts also for the opposite direction.

Analyses and comparisons should therefore be understood rather as temporal screenshots of probing effort of a virtual world than as absolute, never-changing inspection results.

Slides Collection

We have finished reviewing the first bunch of slides and support you with this virtual world slideshow collection. Also pay attention to the preview of the latest slides in the sidebar. Don't wonder if the preview doesn't work at the beginning; it takes a little while until the sildes data is fetched.

Show me the slides that you have arranged for me!

Virtual World Library

We are happy to present you a collection of selected books about virtual worlds in our virtual worlds library. Each of these books is enlightening and inspiring in some way and should be seen as a supplement to the links that can already be found in the sidebar.

Bring me to the virtual world library!

More heroes for the world!

Today Sony presented the first trailer of their DC Universe. In contrast to Cryptic Studios' City of Heroes, the Sony super heroes and villains include well-known characters like batman, joker, superman, wonderwoman or the flash. So players have the first time the chance to let batman beat up superman.

Update: Cryptic Studios recently released a gameplay trailer of their upcoming super Champions Online world. It seems that DC and Marvel get serious competition. Take a look at both trailers and judge for yourself which one you find more promising.

Blizzard vs WoWGlider

Blizzard has won its summary judgment motion against MDY. It's good to see that just because virtual worlds are open for all players, they do not include a license for legal spoiling of other players' fun. On the other side, it is very worrying to see how Blizzard twisted IP law to forbid that exploit.

Here is the opinion of the court.

Also check out other opinions: Terra Nova, Virtually Blind.

A lively world

Google has recently launched its social world Lively where players can design rooms and characters, add sounds and videos and hang out with their friends. Sounds similar to second life, but is more user-friendly and accessible than the later. Also you don't have to use a client program to play it, since you can access rooms directly from any website.


Obove you see a screenshot of our room and below you can directly access this room. Enjoy!

Broad Virtual World Comparison

The following comparison of the most important virtual worlds has been done by Jürgen Musil. He tried to be fair and make an objective comparison. Some data is not available and we do hope to get this comparison better and better over time. If you find facts that are not correct, please let us know!

All in all you can say the worlds differ mainly in the amount of "influence into the game" (the freedom of creativity) the target group, and the gamy-ness of the world.

In Second Life users are very free in what they can do, but it is complicated to use the creativity tools. In Papermint this is much more easy, the creativity is more a game to explore than something players have to learn.

Best regards,
Lev Ledit

The Virtual World Comparison Chart