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.