Textual Virtual Reality
Text VR primarily refers to a multi user environment driven by text and design to portray a sense of space and activity with others. This has existed for many years in many different forms. Perhaps the most popular is MUD (Multi User Dungeons). A Mud is a a virtual environment in which the player is a character in a medievil fantasy work. Regardless of the setting, MUDs introduced several universal norms that users have come to expect from multiplayer text games:
- Battling with weapons or magic
- Worlds and Dungeons to explore
- Monsters and NPCs
- Class systems, currency and stats
These norms are rich features that help establish game play,
Where Text VRs (MUDS) fall short:
These mechanics are almost all the same across MUDS oft times in place of theme or multiplayer interaction. Meaning if the game has no real descriptive content or if there aren't many other players to play with it will minimally engaging because of the play mechanic. 80% of MUDs currently online are more mechanic than content. If you took their themes away and experienced it alone, it would be the same game over and over year after year. This is an opinion but something we feel is a valid point. The most successful MUDS are what they are because of other people and the dynamism the provide.
Interactive Fiction
Interactive Fiction is software that simulates environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of interactive narratives or interactive narrations. These works can also be understood as a form of video game but for most intents and purposes ARE a story. Their hall marks are:
- Rich Story Telling
- Divergent choices during the telling of events
- Multiple Endings
- Canonization of events and characters
Where Interactive Fiction falls short:
IF Programs while immersive and entertaining are generally very description rich, catering to the story over the game play experience. Despite every effort being made to give the reader a sense of time and place the immersion can be broken should the reader become a player and try to do unexpected things. It's like trying to interact with a scene in a theater assuming it is real but finding out that everything is a prop and only telling a story. A story that unless it has multiple endings or easter eggs it is not re-playable and put on a shelf never to be played again. Most IF authors are resolute with the thought their fiction may only be read once with many few exceptions existing that were designed to be enjoyed again in a different way.
The Fusion
CyberDreams is an experiment in using both of the strengths of these mediums to compliment the weaknesses of the other. CD is in execution based on a MOO code base. This is a distant cousin of MUD that has an emphasis on expression and programming. There can be things such as battling and statistics, it is however not the mechanic the experience is based around. This when stacked against a MUD has no real game play mechanic unless programmed in. It's strengths are communication and multi-user storytelling. It's ability to facilitate multi-user engagement in a textual delivery has been unrivaled for a long time.
MOO also has a strong suit for being compartmentalized so as to have many programs running within at once. This is helpful because IF games can be stored within the world and played out by players solo or together (if designed for it) in a way that gives IF a replay-ability it's never had before.
With the construct of the Textua-VR system, players are presented with a detailed text world that also has it's own Virtual Reality. Being able to interact and play with other players in an open ended sandbox is part of the experience. The other piece is being able to use the Textua to select books from the library, the markets or just found in the world and be transported to a VR constructed from the details of the book. This is a way of building diversity in story and not sacrificing the continuity of the overall theme.
