“Virtual World” Definition
A simulated environment where many (one or more) agents can virtually interact with each other, act and react to things, phenomena and the environment; agents can be zero (exactly zero) or many human(s), each represented by many (a virtual self is not required to be unique herein) entities called a “virtual self” (an avatar), or many software agents; all action/reaction/interaction must happen in a real-time shared spatiotemporal nonpausable virtual environment; the environment may consist of many data spaces, but the collection of data spaces should constitute a shared data space, one (one and only one) persistent shard.
Introduction
There is no generally accepted definition for a virtual world, with Schroeder (2008) highlighting the need for a definition. There is controversy on the meaning of the term “virtual world” in various communities...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Aarseth, E.: Cybertext yearbook 2000. In: Allegories of Space. The Question of Spatiality in Computer Games, pp. 152–171. University of Jyväskylä (2001). http://cybertext.hum.jyu.fi/index.php?browsebook=4
Bartle, R.: Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis (2003). ISBN 0131018167
Bartle, R.A.: From MUDs to MMORPGs: the history of virtual worlds. In: International Handbook of Internet Research, pp. 23–39. Springer, London (2010). doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-9789-8_2
Bell, M.W.: Toward a definition of “Virtual worlds”. J. Virtual Worlds Res. 1(1) (2008). https://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/283
Bell, M.W., Robbins-Bell, S.: Digital media: audiovisual, games, and music. In: Towards an Expanded Definition of “Virtual Worlds”, pp. 125–134. Fábio Villares (org.), Rio de Janeiro (2008). ISBN 9788576501817
Benford, S., et al.: Understanding and constructing shared spaces with mixed-reality boundaries. ACM Trans. Comput. Human Interact. 5(3), 185–223 (1998). doi:10.1145/292834.292836
Blizzard Entertainment: Diablo (1996)
Blizzard Entertainment: World of Warcraft (2004)
Brennan, S.: Redefining MMOs: Pesky Persistence. http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/14/redefining-mmos-pesky-persistence/ (2009)
CCP Games: EVE Online (2003)
Combs, N., et al.: A virtual world by any other name? http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/06/a_virtual_world.html (2004)
Dictionary.com: Dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com (2015)
Dionisio, J.D.N., Burns III, W.G., Richard, G.: 3D virtual worlds and the metaverse: current status and future possibilities. ACM Comput. Surv. 45(3), 1–38 (2013). doi:10.1145/2480741.2480751
Drain, B.: EVE Evolved: EVE Online’s server model. http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/28/eve-evolved-eve-onlines-server-model/ (2008)
Facebook: Facebook (2004)
Girvan, C.: What Is a Virtual World? Definition and Classification (TCD-CS-2013-10). Technical report. School of Computer Science and Statistics (SCSS) at Trinity College Dublin, Dublin (2013). https://www.scss.tcd.ie/publications/tech-reports/reports.13/TCD-CS-2013-10.pdf
Google: Goodle Docs (2007)
Gregory, J.: In: Lander, J., Whiting, M. (eds.) Game Engine Architecture. A K Peters, Wellesley (2009). ISBN 978–1568814131
Keegan, M.: A classification of MUDs. J. Virt. Environ. 2(2) (1997). https://web.archive.org/web/20070405181035/ http://www.brandeis.edu/pubs/jove/index.html
Lankoski, P., et al.: A case study in pervasive game design: the songs of north. In: Proceedings of the Third Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. NordiCHI ’04, pp. 413–416. ACM, New York (2004). doi:10.1145/1028014.1028083
Liu, H., Bowman, M., Chang, F.: Survey of state melding in virtual worlds. ACM Comput. Surv. 44(4), 21 (2012). doi:10.1145/2333112.2333116
Milgram, P., Colquhoun, H.: Chapter: A taxonomy of real and virtual world display integration. In: Ohta, Y., Tamura, H. (eds.) Mixed Reality: Merging Real and Virtual Worlds, pp. 5–30. Ohmsha, Ltd (1999). ISBN 978-3-642-87512-0
Nevelsteen, K.J.L.: Applying GIS concepts to a pervasive game: spatiotemporal modeling and analysis using the triad representational framework. Int. J. Comput. Sci. Issues 11(5), 9 (2014)
Nevelsteen, K.J.L.: A Survey of Characteristic Engine Features for Technology-Sustained Pervasive Games. Springer Briefs in Computer Science. Springer, Cham (2015). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-17632-1
Qvortrup, L. (ed.): Virtual Interaction: Interaction in Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds. Springer, London (2001). doi:10.1007/978-1-4471-3698-9
Riot Games: League of legends (2009)
Russell, S.J., Norvig, P.: Artificial Intelligence, a Modern Approach, 3rd edn. Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River (2010). ISBN 978-0-13-604259-4
Schroeder, R.: Defining virtual worlds and virtual environments. J. Virt. Worlds Res. 1(1) (2008). https://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/294
Shoham, Y.: Chapter: An overview of agent-oriented programming. In: Bradshaw, J.M. (ed.) Software Agents, pp. 271–290. AAAI Press/The MIT Press, Menlo Park (1997). ISBN 0-262-52234-9
Singhal, S., Zyda, M.: Networked Virtual Environments: Design and Implementation. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, Reading (1999). ISBN 0-201-32557-8
Söderlund, T.: Chapter: Proximity gaming: new forms of wireless networking gaming. In: Digital Cityscapes, pp. 217–250. Peter Lang (2009). ISBN 978–1433105326
Spence, J.: Demographics of virtual worlds. J. Virt. Worlds Res. 1(2) (2008). https://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/360
Supnik, R., Blasius, V., Kinder, D.: Dungeon V3.2B (Zork). Video Game (2003)
Van de Velde, W.: Cognitive architectures – from knowledge level to structural coupling. In: The Biology and Technology of Intelligent Autonomous Agents, pp. 197–221. Springer, Berlin (1995). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-79629-6_8
Waggoner, Z.: My Avatar, My Self: Identity in Video Role-Playing Games. Jefferson, McFarland (2009). ISBN 978-0786441099
Wikipedia: Persistent world. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Persistent_world&oldid=640888078 (2015a)
Wikipedia: Turns, rounds and time-keeping systems in games. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Turns,_rounds_and_time-keeping_systems_in_games&oldid=641565159 (2015b)
WowWiki.com: Multiboxing. http://www.wowwiki.com/Multiboxing?oldid=2757490 (2015)
Zagal, J.P., Mateas, M.: Temporal frames: a unifying framework for the analysis of game temporality. In: Situated Play: Proceedings of the 2007 Digital Games Research Association Conference, pp. 516–523. DiGRA, Tokyo (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this entry
Cite this entry
Nevelsteen, K.J.L. (2015). Virtual World, a Definition Incorporating Distributed Computing and Instances. In: Lee, N. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_44-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_44-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-08234-9
eBook Packages: Living Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering