Notes: Designing virtual worlds

Bartle, Richard A.. Designing virtual worlds. Indianapolis, Ind.: New Riders Pub., 2004. Print.

Perhaps because of the large sums of money involved in their creation and the guaranteed huge monthly incomes they can generate- computer games remain at the cutting edge of "virtual world" development. Bartle, Chapter1, p.2

For a critical aesthetic to be useful, it has to aim for universality. Everyone should understand the signs and their denotation in the same way.......

The coming of graphics to virtual worlds is like the coming of sound to movies. the same old rules apply, but the emphasis is different, there are also some new rules. Bartle, Chapter7, p. 635

When you watch a TV drama, you don't think you are actually a character participating in it, yet when you play a virtual world you do. why? Is it merely because you control a character?

No; it's because you accept that the character you control is a token, that represent you. Accept it enough, and it becomes you (and you become it).

Immersion in accepting the signifier as the signified. those pixels on the screen are just pixels, you associate meaning with them.  Bartle, Chapter7, p. 635