the terminology of it all…

Some terminology must be discussed in this ongoing conversation.

• Persistent: A world that continues to operate even when users are not logged in.
• Immersive: A synthetic world that makes the user feel a part of it by a number of means, including realistic video graphics, collaborative tasks, and liminal time.
• Sociable: The ability to meet people, make friendships, collaborate, create.
• MMO: A massively multiplayer online game, usually 3D immersive synthetic world and persistent.
• MMORPG: A Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
• MUD: Multiplayer dungeon, usually text-based and persistent
• Dungeon or Instance: A specific quest inside a synthetic world that might have contained better awards, armor, or treasure.
• Video game: A game that is played using technology and video.
• Console game: A video game played on various popular TV console. Popular consoles include the Sony playstation, Nintinedo DS, Wii, etc.
• PC game: A video game that is played on a computer. Sometimes these games are ported to consoles sometimes not.
• Network console game: A game that is played across the internet with other gamers.
• WOW: World of Warcraft – one of the most populated synthetic game worlds.
• Liminal time: the time it takes for users to traverse the real world to the synthetic world. this time/space is the demarcation between worlds and continues to remind the users of the difference between the worlds – Baudrillard 1981
• Simulation: A reflection or a mimic of the real world in some salient ways.
• Synthetic world: Any world that is a simulation of the real world the creates an immersive, persistent user experience.
• Infinite games: a synthetic world that creates its own space and time (vs a finite world that occurs within a world that has specific games). Carse 1987.
• Simulation type: Natural, productive, and purely simulated (Baudrillard 2000). The real world is a natural world.

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This entry was posted on June 2, 2009 at June 2, 2009 and is filed under Posts, mmo games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.