Virtual Worlds - Video Games - World Building - what the heck do we call this!

[Melooon]

I'm gonna break this discussion out from a moderation topic raised by @Corrupted Unicorn - mainly the issue of vague names and the fact that there does not seem to be any good name for what this board is about 

I was wondering about the recent virtual worlds boards...

From what I see, the boards and their functions are the following:

❤︎ ∙ World Building  - for discussing the ins and outs of worldbuilding, in general.
⚽︎ ∙ Video Game Projects - for sharing worlds 
☑︎ ∙ World & Game Materials - for sharing resources that can help build worlds.

I know your definition of a virtual world is more specific than mine, but my question is: is a world necessarily a game? What if my "world" is a collection of web pages arranged like an encyclopedia, with info on how the world works and characters live? Should I post it on Video Game Projects (because it is, after all, a world), or on Art Projects? Do you need a finished game to put it on Video Game Projects?

Sooo, my definition is closer to your definition ~ and Im using Video Game's and Virtual Worlds semi-interchangeably here. Mainly because its been really hard to draw a line here ~ we don't actually have a functional word to describe the fusion of webpages-games-simulatedworlds-storyworlds etc

A virtual worlds can be any world that exists in an imagined space, it can be on a piece of paper imo. However a virtual world is also a formal definition of an online multiplayer space. A video game can be a vague aimless web page with limited interaction; but for many people it's a complex mechanic based program with goals and an end.

The forum itself is quite small, so we cant have boards splitting all these things apart (and I don't really think they should be split apart) - but the words to define them dont seem to exists.

It seems to me like we do need a new term here; in the same way that the "web revival" was a term invented to describe the neocities-melonland-yesterweb universe of sites on the web. Names are important, names are ideas and descriptions and identities.

What we are trying to describe here is the odd fusion of tools-and-ideas and how they combine into an alternative world. Its more than a game, and more than a tool or a literary process - its a misty merge space of all those things thats greater than its whole, both abstract but also well understood by most people here! It should be fun, but also serious, yet easy to grasp.

I've been trying to find words that have been historically used for this sort of thing and its made me relaise how overused most of these words are: meta, hyper, bubble, pond, game, palace, electric, web, ether, plant, city, land, sim, cloud, digital, cache, eden, world, multi, net, video, reality etc

I suppose one idea is to just mix them up until you pick and unused one "landweb" "multibubble" - but maybe its time to get away from these words and find something new?

So these are some words I could dig up from skimming books that I don't associate with technology and that also don't fall into the trap of indie-web people calling everything a garden ; bog, mazy, ripple, dust, colour, shadow, pandemonium, winch, broken, noon, shore, bulb, condensation, dance, folk, barrel, powder, patience, mildew, earth, century - mainly themes around time, fragility, trash and messiness are all things avoided in tech - and I feel like maybe thats what we need to lean into here; those are themes that are central to the web revival and will prob be central to a lot of the world people try and make here.

Then there's the question of what words would I personally use to describe many of my projects: space, game, world, zone, playground, themepark, dream, memory, land, artwork, junk, collection, archive, hub.

Im still drawing a blank when I try and put it all together though 

• Dust Palace
• Virtual Earth Junk
• Game Trash
• Folk Realitys
• World Bulbs
• Hyper Looms
• Clueless Wonders

  GIVE ME YOUR THOUGHTS 

[loren]

I LOVE THIS QUESTION & I HAVE THOUGHTS

first of all, i agree!! there have been times recently when i've felt awkward, in both web and games spaces(!), because i wasn't sure how to articulate the type of thing that i'm really interested in creating. having an easier way to refer to "webpages-games-simulatedworlds-storyworlds" would be empowering, and hopefully encourage others to get interested in it too. when i think of terms that resonate with me, i think of the web revival (like you mentioned), and also the terms digital folklore and vernacular web from olia lialina's work. i'm not sure i know of any terms like that from the games side of things... maybe glorious trainwrecks?

~ anyway here are some quick ideas of variable quality ~

terms from video games (still tech, but less web): level, stage, map, zone, dungeon, mission, course

-ware as a suffix like abandonware and shareware

post- as a prefix like music genres/scenes influenced by those that came before, or like postcard, or like POST

HTMLands and WWWorlds popped into my head but i don't think i like them! maybe they sound more like brands than movements/communities

there are so many games referred to as [something]-likes. a term that would be funny to me is worldlikes

dream address from animal crossing is pretty evocative, but it already exists so we can't use it

biology-flavored terms for spaces: ecosystem, biome, biosphere, habitat, vivarium/aquarium/terrarium

~ response to your lists ~

• digital is overused, but is "digi-"?
• feels kind of old school
• maybe could feel fresh combined with something unexpected
• i LOVE zone, of course (but i'm biased bc i have a .zone TLD)
• simplifying/combining playground and themepark to just park?
• a place you can go to play or to relax
• "Folk Realities" is really fun to say, but i'm not sure it clearly communicates the vision of webgamestoryworlds

i'm also struggling to put it all together, but i'm confident that we can come up with something we're excited about!

edit, added june 19:

i'm back with ~ more ideas ~

• Poem Dimensions
• Idea Parks
• Scrap Museums
• Home-cooked Universes
• Leaf Litterware (mulchware?) (litterzones?)
• New Net Worlds, like New Net Art

P.S.

that also don't fall into the trap of indie-web people calling everything a garden

this made me laugh (out loud)