Master MMO designer and Ultima Online graduate, Raph Koster points out the emergent artificial life simulation created by a Second Life user in the non-game.

While the thing itself is very interesting (our very own Wagner James Au has a terrrific write-up over on his site), what I find even more fascinating is Koster's reaction to it.

He calls this sort of self-sufficient world, where bee's beget plants and clouds beget rain, the future of dynamic world enviroments.

Natural resources and natural shifts in them offer plausible reasons for AIs to behave differently over time. Add in users affecting abundance or scarcity, and you get systems with changing dynamics. If it doesn't spin out of control, that is. But you can curb that with balancing mechanisms.

Going to a simulation level also allows players to interact with the world and actually affect it.

In other words, developers may begin to program ecosphere's as opposed to static graphics and AI-embedded characters. Better still, Koster says based on what he's done and seen, this way would be way cheaper. Brian Crecente

Way Cool [Raph Koster]

Send an email to the author of this post at .