Understanding Online (Game)worlds

With gameworlds as the prime example, this article discusses online worlds as new forms of cultural entertainment systems and presents a framework with which to analyse them. The framework takes its point of departure in a discussion of what online gameworlds are, which genres of worlds exist and how they can be understood as a new form of engaging experience similar to the type of experience we have when we are captivated by the fictional universes of novels, films and tabletop roleplaying games. The proposed framework is grounded in an aesthetic, communicative and sociological approach to online worlds as digital phenomena, with the primary objective of describing how online gameworlds are systems that create meaning through the production of the experience of “worldness”.

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