Physical, Virtual, and Game World Persistence

Abstract

Bartle, in 2003, stated that a persistent virtual world "continues to exist and develop internally even when there are no people interacting with it" (Bartle 2003). Bartle's criterion that the world "continues to exist" can be referred to as "world persistence" (Nevelsteen 2015), with the element of time, as a minimum, continually "developing internally" within the world, i.e., "a [persistent] virtual world cannot be paused" (Bell and Robbins-Bell 2008).

Virtual world, defined from a technological perspective and applied to video games, mixed reality, and the Metaverse

“…The word "temporarily" in the definition can be justified by the fact that it is nearly impossible to create a truly persistent world. 17 This article shall concentrate on the lattermost meaning of a virtual world, being a world simulated by computers, ruling out the imaginary. Note the distinction between an (imaginary) world created in the minds of users while using a computer system (e.g., perhaps while using a telephone) and a virtual environment that is simulated by a system, which then is perceived by users to be a world.…”

“…Bartle's criterion that the world must "continue to exist" can be referred to as "world persistence" (wP), 17 that is, the world continues to exist and is available to the players when they want to access it. To ensure world data is not lost in the event of system failure, the system must support "data persistence" (dP) 17,26 for all data spaces that hold nonephemeral data.…”

“…Bartle's criterion that the world must "continue to exist" can be referred to as "world persistence" (wP), 17 that is, the world continues to exist and is available to the players when they want to access it. To ensure world data is not lost in the event of system failure, the system must support "data persistence" (dP) 17,26 for all data spaces that hold nonephemeral data. It is precisely VT that allows for a loaded state to be persisted to storage and reloaded without side effects; without the abstraction of time, that world's time would freeze during storage, suddenly rewind on a rollback or fast forward to the current real-world time on load.…”

“…26 The simulation of P can be generalized as pseudo-persistence. 17 Taking pseudo persistence into account, Bartle's original definition of P is superior to that of 2010, because a world can be kept in existence through player interaction, simulating wP. 17 To simulate dP, world data can be loaded and made available at specific times when players, relevant to that data, are playing.…”

“…14 Distributed peer-to-peer, cloud-based, and MANet networking are taken into account so that they do not invalidate the definition. And the concept of pseudo persistence 17,18 is used to categorize technologies, which only mimic persistence.…”