Introduction

This chapter concerns what it means to ‘preserve’ a virtual world. Virtual worlds are shared online environments exemplified by World of Warcraft(Pardo et al., 2004), which is a game world, and Second Life(Rosedale et al., 2003), which is a social world. All virtual worlds bring together a particular collection of six features to create a radically different experience for the player than would be the case if any single one of these features were omitted. These are the features (Bartle, 2003):

• 1 An automated rule set (the physics) enables players to effect changes to the virtual world.

• 2 Players represent individuals ‘in’ the virtual world through which they act (their character or avatar).

• 3 Interaction with the world takes place in real time.

• 4 The world is shared, so other players can be encountered in it and the changes made by any one player affect all players.

• 5 The world is relatively persistent: if you stop playing, the world continues.

• 6 It is not the real world (i.e. reality)!

Most virtual worlds are game worlds, and as such are often referred to as massively multiple-player online role-playing games(MMORPGs, or MMOs for short). Although what I discuss here applies to all virtual worlds, players of game worlds so outnumber players of social worlds that virtual worlds as a genre are usually sold as a form of computer game. This suggests that if we were to preserve them, the techniques used to preserve other types of computer game can readily be applied. As we shall see, however, virtual worlds differ from computer games in some important ways that impact on their preservational demands.

Preservation

There is much to virtual worlds. Before delving into what we should preserve of them and how we should preserve it, we should first consider why we would want to preserve anything at all.

The initial response to the non-expert's question ‘Why do we want to preserve X ?’ is ‘So that future generations can learn from X’. Learn what, though? There are three basic responses as to what the people of the future can learn from what we present to them through preservation:

• 1 They can learn about us.

• 2 They can learn about themselves.

• 3 They can learn why important things are important. Put another way: history, literature and art.