thoughts on world builders / sandboxes / spatial apps

for this type of app to work at ""scale"" you really need to understand the difference between design time and play time, and incorporate both

design time is when someone is creating or modifying elements in the space through sculpting, scripting, etc

play time is when someone is playing in the space. not just traversing the space, but actually *playing* in it

too many attempts focus solely on design time. but a map builder plus a scripting layer — no matter how robust — probably isn't going to work on its own

minecraft isn't just building a base. players build a base for protection (design), to venture out further (play), to build out more of their base (design), to venture out again (play)

animal crossing has a similar loop, and roblox abandons the loop altogether and says design time is for 1% and play time is for the other 99% (also important to remember that roblox evolved from "build your space" to "build a game")

a space that exists solely to be explored or met inside is eventually dead space. thousands of plots in older spatial apps like second life show us that

so when building this kind of app, an important question to ask is "how will people play in it?"