If not “virtual world” then what’s the right term?

I’ve been an extra on the upcoming Bourne Ultimatum movie, so the long hours and early mornings discourage certain blogging activities.  But that’s beside the point.

This issue has been simmering for a few days now, and I feel I’ve made only some progress on wrapping my mind around how to communicate what I’m thinking when I say “virtual world” and how that relates to the “what should we be making” discussion.  Here’s where I’m at:

I think MMORPGs need to be designed such that they encourage significant amounts of emergent gameplay.  And, when presented with the question, “How will players compete for resources,” ideally the designers’ answer should be,” I’m not sure.  But I am sure that whatever does happen there will naturally emerge a reasonable equilibrium, and at that point everyone will be happy.  Everyone will have their sense of justice satisfied.”  If system designs incorporate interrelated feedback loop balancing mechanisms, then the developers don’t have to spend as much time balancing and tuning.  The players and environment will take care of that on its own.

As designers we don’t explicitly design the way player cities are used.  We just design how this mechanism called a “city” works, and we design it so that it can be used in all kinds of ways.