May 10, 2022
Someday people may be gods – all powerful entities able to control the physics of virtual worlds and the functionalities of NPCs. We might even give NPCs free will, a soul, or immortality – who knows what else? In this episode we have fun thinking about some of the moral choices that would come with being a video game god.
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Our guest, Dr Richard A. Bartle, is Honorary Professor of Computer Game Design at the University of Essex, UK. He is best known for having co-written in 1978 the first virtual world, MUD, the progenitor of the $30bn Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game industry. His 1996 Player Types model has seen widespread adoption by MMO developers and the games industry in general. His 2003 book, Designing Virtual Worlds, is the standard text on the subject, and he’s an influential writer on all aspects of MMO design and development. In 2010, he was the first recipient of the prestigious Game Developers' Conference Online Game Legend award.
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Hosted by Shlomo Sher, Ph.D. and Andy Ashcraft
Production by Carmen Elena Mitchell
Music and graphics by Daniel Sher