Thinking I'm going to push the envelope of virtual-worldliness has motivated me to work on Planetbreakers more than my GSDC'10. Given such a precise focus, I've been thinking about what makes one tick.

Have you experienced any games that seem worldly to you? Any idea what specific features most contributed to this?

My previous experiences have this general idea of simply having a space where people meet people. It used to be that's all you really needed: a step up from a chat room with some unified activity (such as an RPG), a sense of space (such as a world map), perhaps a minor threat (monsters trying to kill your character). However, if you ask me, that's just not enough anymore - I'm looking to raise the bar.

Along these lines, EVE Online is a fairly cutting edge example in that the entire economy was player-driven, and this has lead to fans regarding the events in the EVE Online universe as holding a certain gravity of significance. However, I don't think what EVE Online does is enough: an economy that exists in a void is pointless; the players have to invent their own reasons why they bother, and they're usually not up to the task.

Between episodes of shows from my recent monthly subscription on Anime Network, I put a lot of thought towards this today, and I came up with two good ideas as to how I could properly bring about a virtual worldly focus:

• Things happen spontaneously - Life isn't predictable, and neither can a virtual world be. The more the players can be surprised by what happens, the more lifelike the world will seem. Although, there's a certain range of realism to consider, and that gets into the second point...
• Attention to lifelike details - For example, one of the more worldly things Dwarf Fortress does is allow you to get a textual description of things. In terms of gameplay mechanics, this description is useless; pure fluff. However, I think this little touch was essential for engaging the players' imaginations.

To a great extent, it seems that bringing about a good feeling virtual world is the same as promoting immersion. A good way to think of it is in terms of telling a story: does the story engage the reader well?

As I return to work on Planetbreakers, I'm hoping to introduce some of these aspects and make the world seem truly worldly. It's sort of tricky, since the player's perspective is somewhat detached - I wanted to give them control of more than one unit at a time. That the player doesn't have such a direct "first person" perspective of the action doesn't necessarily kill immersion: after all, Dwarf Fortress pulls it off just fine.