To quote Richard Bartles, whose Designing Virtual Worlds devotes a whole chapter to the subject:
"A critical aesthetic is a system of ascribing meaning to individual examples of an art form. When formalized, it amounts to a theory for that art."
He actually makes an interesting argument for developing a more formalized approach to allow for more comparative discussions of virtual worlds (things beyond just, for example, "I think permadeath is the only realistic option for RPI muds").
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