This is Not a Software Industry - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 13

of virtual worlds, like Minecraft , the world is already populated with con-
tent and things for the player to interact with (Mojang 2009). There are
games to be played and experiences to be had. The player may choose to
create things, but they are also free to enjoy that which is already provided
for them or by others.
Minecraft is a particularly compelling example, because the game pro-
vides a sandbox world for players to experiment and create within, quite
similar to the ability of a “player” of Second Life to create their own worlds.
However, Minecraft massively simplifi es the process of content creation for
users and all content creation occurs within the game itself, which includes
gameplay elements that structures a player's experience. Put another way,
there is a game to be played in addition to the ability for players to create
their own worlds.
This is a particularly important distinction to make, because the contin-
ual addressing of Second Life , a virtual world, as something akin to WoW
I fi nd often confuses the analytic frame more than it helps. WoW provides
signifi cant game mechanics that separate it from its distant cousin. Massive
numbers of game developers work at producing new content for WoW that
is then distributed to paying customers as expansions (Blizzard 2004). Mis-
sions, raiding and all of the play that emerges in these texts occurs within
structures dictated by game designers. Every component demonstrates how
distant WoW is from Second Life (Linden Research 2003). Yet, time and
again Second Life is a primary referent, where other virtual world games
make more analytic sense.
Games that combine virtual worlds with game mechanics, artistic con-
tent and story lines fi t this model much more accurately, and examples
abound. One of the fi rst persistent massively multiplayer games, EverQuest ,
was released in 1999 and serves as a much more accurate early analytic par-
allel to WoW (Sony Online Entertainment). Other modern examples also
of er a more accurate representation of the kind of content and expansive
worlds available. Eve Online , a space-based trading, exploration and com-
bat-based, massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is
a closer sibling to WoW (CCP Games 2003).
It is possible that what makes Second Life a popular referent, though,
is that cultural analysts have spent more time in this space. Yet, in that
case, the worlds of multi-user dungeons (MU Ds) and MU D, object oriented
(MOOs) have enjoyed extensive research on the part of cultural analysts
(Turkle 1997). MUDs, like their more modern counterparts, MMORPGs,
are virtual worlds that contain a signifi cant amount of content, such as
quests, missions and underlying game mechanics. All they lack are the
graphical representation. MUDs were text-based virtual worlds, but exhibit
more similarity to modern MMORPGs than basic virtual worlds.
As can also be seen in the development of Second Life , the software
developers understood what they were making as something quite dif erent
from video game development, although overlaps abound (Malaby 2009).