With credits to Kevin Zhang, the Dark Forest team, and guiltygyoza.
First, defining what I mean by a virtual world. A virtual world is an alternative world to the physical one we live in, one with possibly different physical and emergent laws, in which a human can develop interesting experiences.
Why They Are Interesting ¶
The Matrix is one of the most loved and provocative movie series of all time. In the movies, one scene I remember particularly well: When Neo is first taken into The Matrix by Morpheus, the two of them have a martial fight in a Kung Fu arena. Step by step, Morpheus guided Neo to let go of the physical laws, including gravity, which were so familiar to him. This lack of physical laws allowed mindbogging things to happen, such as Agent Smith infinitely cloning himself, yet ultimately also allowed Neo to combat Smith with actions unimaginable in real life. In fact, if we simply remove the machine-dominating-human part of the plot for a moment, The Matrix the movie is not a horror show about brain computer interfaces, but more so a thought experiment on how a theoretical “universe” is run.
We don’t have to believe in our own simulation to appreciate the beauty of such a world, one with alternative physical laws. Why are they so interesting? One possible reason is that alternative emergent properties will exist due to perhaps a tiny difference in physical laws. For example, evidence shows that our physical universe exists only because the electron is a tiny bit protruded than the positron (the antiparticle to the electron) even though they are “supposed” to be perfectly symmetric; this allowed more electrons to be left over after antiparticle annihilation, and to form the foundation of the mattered universe we know today. If physics is even slightly different in a world, then one can expect vast differences in chemical rules and even more so in biological and sociological ones. In other words, the core attraction lies in “what if”.
Where We Are, and What’s Next ¶
Think of people’s fascination with fictions, a classic form of narrative and another type of virtual world. A fiction’s essence is the carefully-crafted world by its author. There are a few particular constraints on fictions as creative worlds. First, it is almost always created by a single individual. Second, it is usually consumed passively by its readers. Third, it most likely stay unchanged after finished by the author(s), and generally do not evolve.
Currently, games as virtual worlds have similar constraints. Most games made in the past 50 years, as simple as Super Mario or as spectacular as WoW or Dota, are made by a small group of individuals, often in the form of a game studio. Players do often actively explore the worlds created, but regarding the experience itself, they are mostly passively consuming the content just like for fiction. Because players do not participate in content creation, most games rely heavily on developers for evolution, which happens very slowly or not at all.
Today, such power imbalance and passivity are no longer systemic constraints but problems to be solved. Minecraft and Roblox already emblemize the shift from professional-generated content to user-generated content, blurring the line between players and developers. Underneath Unreal and RCT lies AI-generated content adding novelty and autonomy to game systems in both language and graphics. Trailblazed by Dark Forest, games for the first time keep their source of truth on-chain, allowing radical openness in the collective pursuit toward the metaverse(s). Games and their virtual worlds, already with aspects of visual and multiplayer experiences compared with fiction, have so much potential to be unleashed.
James P. Carse, a religious scholar, once said in his renowned “Finite and Infinite Games”, “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” I hope that AI-generated content and interoperable blockchain mechanism will protect that world from boredom or malice.