New riders designing virtual worlds

This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks Designing Virtual Worlds By Richard A Bartle Publisher: New Riders Publishing Pub Date: July 14, 2003 ISBN: 0-1310-1816-7 Copyright Acknowledgments About the Author About the Technical Reviewers Tell Us What You Think Preface Introduction Who Should Read This Book? Overview Chapter Introduction to Virtual Worlds Some Definitions What They Are and Whence They Came The Past Affects the Future The Basics Influences on Virtual Worlds The Designer Chapter How to Make Virtual Worlds Development On Architecture Theory and Practice Chapter Players Who Are These People and What Do They Want? Player Types Other Categorizations The Celebration of Identity Anonymity Role-Playing Masquerading Community Influence Through Design Chapter World Design Scope Major Decisions Geography Population Physics Reset Strategy Chapter Life in the Virtual World Advancement This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks Character Generation The Virtual Body Groups Combat Crafting The Elder Game The Whole Picture Chapter It's Not a Game, It's a Points of View Making Sense of Virtual Worlds Virtual Worlds as Subfields Virtual Worlds as Tools Virtual Worlds as.Virtual Worlds Conclusion Chapter Towards a Critical Aesthetic A Theory of Virtual Worlds The Story of Story The Critical Aesthetic in Use Chapter Coda: Ethical Considerations Censorship Players as People Groups of Players as Groups of People Yourself Top This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks Copyright Copyright © 2004 by New Riders Publishing All rights reserved No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003106801 Printed in the United States of America First printing: July, 2003 08 07 06 05 04 03 Interpretation of the printing code: The rightmost double-digit number is the year of the book's printing; the rightmost single-digit number is the number of the book's printing For example, the printing code 03-1 shows that the first printing of the book occurred in 2003 Trademarks All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized New Riders Publishing cannot attest to the accuracy of this information Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark Warning and Disclaimer Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible, but no warranty of fitness is implied The information is provided on an as-is This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks basis The authors and New Riders Publishing shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book or from the use of the CD or programs that may accompany it Credits Publisher Stephanie Wall Production Manager Gina Kanouse Acquisitions/Development Editor Chris Zahn Project Editor Michael Thurston Copy Editor Linda Seifert Indexer Julie Bess Proofreader Debbie Williams Composition Gloria Schurick Manufacturing Coordinator This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to registe Dan Uhrig Interior Designer Kim Scott Cover Designer Aren Howell Marketing Scott Cowlin Tammy Detrich Hannah Onstad Latham Publicity Susan Nixon Dedication To the players Top This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to registe Acknowledgments This book would not have been written were it not for: John Neidhart at Pearson Education, who was willing to indulge my desire to write about virtual world design despite the fact that he was actually looking for a book about AI Stephanie Wall and Chris Zahn at New Riders, who gave me an enthusiastic welcome when I appeared on their doorstep at short notice as a result of a Pearson reorganization They gave me the time and freedom I needed to finish the job properly My wife, Gail Bartle From June 2002 until April 2003, I turned down all consultant and design work I was offered so I could write this book Without her quiet but unfailing support, you wouldn't be reading this now I'd also like to thank Damion Schubert and Matt Mihaly for the many insightful comments they made in their reviews (sometimes several to a page) This book would still have been written without them, it just wouldn't have been as worth reading Top This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to registe About the Author Richard Allan Bartle, Ph.D., co-wrote the first virtual world, MUD ("Multi-User Dungeon"), in 1978, thus being at the forefront of the online gaming industry from its very inception A former university lecturer in Artificial Intelligence, he is an influential writer on all aspects of virtual world design and development As an independent consultant, he has worked with almost every major online gaming company in the U.K and the U.S over the past 20 years Richard lives with his wife, Gail, and their two children, Jennifer and Madeleine, in a village just outside Colchester, England He works in virtual worlds Top This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks About the Technical Reviewers These reviewers contributed their considerable hands-on expertise to the development process for Designing Virtual Worlds As the book was being written, these dedicated professionals reviewed all the material for technical content, organization, and flow Their feedback was critical to ensuring that Designing Virtual Worlds fits our readers' need for the highest-quality technical information Matt Mihaly is the founding partner, lead designer, and CEO of Achaea LLC Founded in 1996 in San Francisco, Achaea designs and produces some of the world's most popular and successful commercial text MUDs, including Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands (http://www.achaea.com), Aetolia, the Midnight Age (http://www.aetolia.com), and Imperian (http://www.imperian.com)—all of which run on Achaea's proprietary network engine, Rapture Matt graduated from Cornell University in 1994 with a degree in Political Science and is a licensed stockbroker These experiences have informed his game design tendencies and he is an expert on business models, political systems, and community dynamics in virtual worlds Along with the inevitable interest in games, he spends his free time pursuing Brazilian jujitsu and kickboxing, cooking, travelling, hiking, kayaking, skiing, and scuba diving Damion Schubert has been working in online world design professionally for over seven years He was originally the lead designer of Meridian 59 (and several expansions), as well as the lead designer for the defunct Ultima Online He has also served as a contractor for such This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to registe projects as The Sims Online and Kalisto's Highlander Online Currently Damion is serving as a senior designer at Wolfpack, which shipped Shadowbane in March 2003 Top This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to registe Tell Us What You Think As the reader of this book, you are the most important critic and commentator We value your opinion and want to know what we're doing right, what we could better, what areas you'd like to see us publish in, and any other words of wisdom you're willing to pass our way As the Publisher for New Riders Publishing, I welcome your comments You can fax, email, or write me directly to let me know what you did or didn't like about this book—as well as what we can to make our books stronger When you write, please be sure to include this book's title, ISBN, and author, as well as your name and phone or fax number I will carefully review your comments and share them with the author and editors who worked on the book Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic of this book, and that due to the high volume of email I receive, I might not be able to reply to every message Fax: 317-581-4663 Email: stephanie.wall@newriders.com Mail: Stephanie Wall Publisher New Riders Publishing rd 201 West 103 Street Indianapolis, IN 46290 USA Top This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks Icons Many virtual worlds draw on iconic or mythical images to sustain their immersive depth If a player comes across a "little old man" NPC, it's a source of great disappointment if it turns out he really is just a little old man and isn't veiling some immense power or wisdom If they came across a unicorn, they would feel cheated if it wasn't white (and if they came across a herd of them—say what?!) Although these iconic figures are stereotypical, therein lies their strength; they represent an idealized "knowledge" of a reality that when correctly applied to a virtual world can deliver immersion So tokenized have these metaphors become that it can forcefully be argued they aren't stereotypes at all, they're shorthand for a parcel of meanings The same argument can be used to explain why so many Fantasy virtual worlds have elves and dwarfs (or rebrandings of the same) as character races Dwarfs are solid, materialist, quick to anger, but dependable; elves are spiritual, aloof, beautiful, yet insular Players immediately have identifiable stereotypes that they can use to help decide what kind of character they wish to play Real-life dwarfs might complain about this depiction, but "no, these are dwarves not dwarfs." Real-life elves rarely comment An ethical point that seems to have been missed by most of the designers who employ character races [23] is that it promotes the notion that races are tangibly different If it's fine to regard all elves as being arrogant, fair-haired aesthetes, that validates the idea of stereotypical races Why couldn't a dwarf be a dreamer, a poet, a fun-loving bard? Why couldn't an elf be a greedy, bad-tempered, never-satisfied lover of ale? Because they're "not like that"? Or maybe "a few are like that, but most aren't'? So what are "all Japanese" or "all Jewish" or "all Mexican" people like? [23] Actually—and this is the root of the problem—humanoid sub-species that the designers call "races." Having races as stereotypes in virtual worlds endorses having races as stereotypes in the real world It's up to designers themselves to decide whether or not this is fine by them, but they should at least make that decision consciously At the moment, most of them simply follow the flow without thinking about it They should This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks As I mentioned in Chapter 6, most virtual worlds are fine with giving tangible properties to Fantasy races, but they avoid doing this for real races Players may decide at character-creation time or through their personal descriptive text to reflect a real-life race other than the default (there's always a default), but it's purely cosmetic There is an argument that this homogenizes characters, making them all basically the same; this is indeed the case, but that's unsurprising given that it's the goal Sure, ethnic groups that have a culture tied to their physical appearance won't thrive in a world where anyone can steal that appearance, but then you have to ask the question as to whether this might not be a good thing Racial supremacists have lost the war when people can be whatever race they choose to be There is a separate issue related to people for whom their race is a fundamental part of their identity In virtual worlds without their race, or even with their race but with Fantasy ones alongside it, this could prompt a serious crisis Should designers try to accommodate such individuals? Or is it simply a fact of life that race doesn't transfer to virtual worlds (even though attitudes to race can)? Other stereotypes exist in virtual worlds, of course, which are less emotive but nevertheless raise similar issues Character classes, for example, impose conformity If you're a designer who believes in conformity, have character classes; if you're one who doesn't, don't If you haven't given the issue the slightest thought, you'd better some thinking—you may be promoting social values with which you disagree Finally, a word on anthropomorphic animal characters As I mentioned in Chapter 6, anthropomorphic characters are all to with symbols Different animal species have different characteristics that (because animals aren't as free-thinking as humans) they follow strongly Yes, some can have personalities that are different from those of others, but they're ruled by their instincts far more than are humans Because of this, people have come to associate certain behaviors with certain animals—the cunning fox, the timid rabbit, the inquisitive mouse—and they use the animals as symbols for the behaviors In some cases, the link is only metaphorical: A man who prowls around looking for innocent women to prey on might be likened to a wolf that prowls around looking for innocent smaller creatures to prey on, but there's nothing sexual about the wolf's activity Nevertheless, the image of the wolf as a predator is strong enough that if you referred to a man as acting like a wolf people wouldn't think you meant he attacked sheep This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks For some designers, this degree of stereotyping could also be too much If it's okay to stereotype animals, pretty soon it's okay to stereotype humans, and then where are we? For others, it's merely an example of the general way that languages work using metaphor, and the moment foxes and rabbits complain is the moment their plight deserves to be taken seriously You can make up your own mind Virtual worlds where players take on the role of anthropomorphic characters implicitly accept that this stereotyping is fine; furthermore, they have a well-developed system of codes that associate different animal forms with different kinds of behavior This leads to a system of self-fulfilling stereotypes: If people think that bears betoken having a macho exterior but a sensitive caring inside, then people who want that image will play as bears People who want to play as a shy character will not choose to be a bear, even though in a virtual world where all the animals are anthropomorphic anyway there's nothing to stop someone from being a shy bear What about non-anthropomorphic animal worlds? What if your character is, say, a dog? If it looks like a dog and can only things that dogs can do, is that okay? Well if people want to be a dog, then presumably it's up to them, but there are some awkward problems about identity drift here It could be psychologically damaging for someone who didn't know exactly what they were doing to play for extended periods in virtual worlds in the role of a dog or any other non-sentient creature Playing a character of a gender, race or age not your own is different because they can all think just as well as each other; playing as a dog, though? You can change, but can the dog? Although this may seem rather a far-fetched idea, there are already virtual worlds [24] moving toward it Knowing what you know about immersion, would it be ethical or unethical to go the whole way? [24] Example: The Jungle telnet://thejungle.dhs.org:4000 Changing yourself is easier than changing a stereotype You decide on you; everyone else decides on a stereotype Social Engineering This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks Are virtual worlds a force for good or for evil? As I have already said, I strongly believe in the former However, mere faith in my own (clearly biased) judgment is hardly justification Computer games (along with television, film, and music) are routinely implicated when some disturbed teenager gets hold of a weapon and goes on a killing spree; virtual worlds are also starting to [25] suffer from their perceived negative effects Do virtual worlds incite, reinforce, or train? [25] EverQuest has been blamed for at least one suicide, and Lineage is habitually held responsible for a wide range of crimes I won't make the case for virtual worlds here, because I hope to have done that already in this book However, I will examine some of the case against Without any formal studies to call on, all I can is provide anecdotal evidence; nevertheless, it's evidence based on years of observation, and therefore not quite as speculative as it may seem My argument that virtual worlds are a force for good is based largely on the fact that players can learn to be better people as a result of playing them That means I intrinsically accept that virtual worlds can bring about change Given this, why must that change necessarily be for the good? Well, it isn't always, of course; in a well-designed virtual world it will be most of the time, but some people will indeed replay old issues repeatedly, consolidating points of view that would be better disbanded The reverse is also true: Some individuals in real life become better people after committing horrific acts that leave others traumatized, but on the whole anyone taking up this kind of activity is on the road to personal destruction So, why is it that individuals take "good" things from virtual worlds, rather than "bad" things? I believe that it is due to the similarities between virtual worlds and the real one The majority of people who learn anything at all from virtual worlds will pick up things such as Information specific to the virtual world (stats, goals, geography) Skills specific to the interface (dodging, aiming, feature recognition) This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks Skills specific to the virtual world (tactics, strategy) More general skills (social, behavioral, educational) Wider cultural values (as exhibited by the other players) The difference between the real and the virtual These are all either innocuous or of benefit to the individual player (the further down [26] the list, the more likely it is to be of use [26] ) Educational virtual worlds can put in facts they want players to learn, but they'll have to make sure that players know these are true in the real world, otherwise they will not assume it There are occasional interface skills that are useful too: Many people have learned to type by playing textual worlds, for example People who play virtual worlds will not pick up things such as these: Desensitization (to evil, to other people's emotions) The belief that people are just like NPCs, and rules that apply to NPCs apply to people The idea that everything virtual transfers to the real If any of these were true, that would indeed be worrying In general, though, I don't think they are Let's take a closer look… The desensitization argument is that people come across something in the virtual world so often that they become used to it, so when the same issue arises in the real world they no respond appropriately This is a valid point about virtual worlds (as it is about things like TV news, too); where it becomes invalid, however, is in the suggestion that impressionable players will be unable to distinguish between virtual-world concepts and the real-world concepts that they're based on Take "evil," for example The notion that most players of the big commercial virtual worlds have about evil actually translates as "cool." In practice, the people on the "evil" side exhibit the same kind of behavior that they would were they on the "good" This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks side, except they think they're cooler because they have all the nasty-sounding spells and skills What evil really means is rule by fear You what your boss tells you to because if you didn't you would be tortured, maimed, and (if you were lucky) killed as an example to others who might think of stepping out of line An evil person is as likely to kill someone on their own side as they are the "enemy." In real life, people fight for evil because They're evil They think they're evil They're afraid of what will happen to them or to people they care for if they don't fight They have no way of escaping They don't realize they're fighting for evil They're threatened by what they perceive as an even greater evil Now translate this into a Fantasy world Let's give evil commanding officers the power to take 10% of a player's levels off them for "torture." Who would fight on their side? Well evil people would, because they get the same powers over their subordinates and they agree with the overall aims of the evil empire Non-evil people would scream like crazy at customer service the moment such a sanction was imposed on them Those who felt particularly annoyed would quit and join the good side If a greater evil was on the way, they'd quit and play another game In short, "evil" as a concept doesn't work as a major force in virtual worlds What we have instead is some kind of sanitized version that gives people a cloak to hide behind if they want to something they think is a little naughty It's no more evil than the "good" side is good (when self-sacrifice is cheap, even evil people will it) "Evil" in virtual worlds is just an artificial construct that misapplies labels to promote a meaningless conflict Is it without consequences, though? If players come to see "evil" as just a label, does that indeed desensitize them to the very concept of it? Will they This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks be more likely to side with something labeled as evil in the real world? At a very superficial level—that of the label—perhaps If they are told that some dictator is "evil," some individuals may not fully appreciate what this means; this could be true irrespective of whether they have played virtual worlds or not, though Whatever, contact with the reality of evil will swiftly disabuse them of this naivety Nevertheless, the wicked will always prey on the gullible; if desensitizing people to the label means that those to whom it applies can draw innocents closer to them, it can't be a good thing Whether it's unacceptably bad or merely one poor chord in the great [27] song of popular culture is another matter [27] The word "wicked" has already acquired dual meaning in popular culture, at least temporarily At the moment, people can refer to a new dance, magazine, candy bar, or whatever as "wicked" and understand it's not the same kind of "wicked" as a "wicked witch." Whether that will always be the case remains to be seen Besides, the traffic is not one-way: Real-world ideas can affect virtual world concepts In the great scheme of things, permanent death for characters is not actually as bad as people make out However, because death in the real world is bad, this has caused people to redefine what "death" means in virtual worlds They say their character "died" even when all that happened was it was teleported out of a battle Are they becoming less sensitized to the notion of death in the real world because of this? Or does their use of "death" in this way arise precisely because they aren't insensitive to it? The remaining two primary concerns about the way that virtual worlds can be a negative influence are related to each other They say that people who spend long periods in virtual worlds will transfer inappropriate emotional and intellectual understandings to the real world because they cannot subconsciously separate the real from the virtual If you spend all day beating the guts out of NPCs, and NPCs look just like people, then in the real world you'll start to objectify people too Similarly, if you find that being lying and deceitful in the virtual world works, you'll change in the real world so that you adopt this strategy too The objectification argument is a non-starter People are acutely aware of whether opponents are computer-controlled or player-controlled It makes a big difference to This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks [28] them If anything, they are more likely to subjectify NPCs than to objectify players [28] Advanced AI systems may be able to present as real players and remain undetected This brings in major philosophical issues concerning sentience, though Basically, if players can't tell an AI from another player using free-form communication, then the AI is another player—it just happens to run on different hardware to human players Virtual-to-real transfer does occur The core of the attack against it is that it happens without critical reflection; in other words, it becomes part of your behavior through rote, rather than because you thought about it Although I agree that it is possible to learn information and simple skills this way, I not believe that behavioral changes can also be acquired except under very artificial circumstances If you find that being lying and deceitful works, you'll notice it consciously; you won't just fall into it with zombie-like mindlessness This is why, when other players start shunning you because of your behavior change, you may explicitly consider what it is you are doing wrong (that is, lying) and resolve your ways The way I see this is like the difference between episodic and semantic memory Episodic memory is your memory of events ("yesterday I watched a movie"); semantic memory is your memory of procedures and processes ("when you watch a movie, you have to buy a ticket") People who suffer from amnesia will forget their name, let alone what movies they have seen, but they'll still remember that they have to buy a ticket [29] Semantic memory is an abstraction of episodic memory ; from individual events, you build up a general picture that describes them, such that you can forget the individual events but retain what you have learned I don't remember how I found out I needed to buy a ticket to see a movie, but then I don't need to; I only need to remember that I need to buy a ticket [29] It's wider than I've made out here You can regard episodic memory as handling facts and semantic memory as handling knowledge Acquired skills (such as the ability to drive a car) can be considered as compiled actions, and therefore are contenders for being part of semantic memory; it's usually more appropriate to look on them as forming a separate memory of their own, however, which may or may not be part of semantic memory This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks With virtual worlds, the actions that you undertake lead to individual episodes Although you remember the episodes immediately when they're over, with time they will fade Yes, some will be particularly memorable and will remain with you always, but most won't What does remain are the lessons you learned from the episodes, and these are quite different from the mere facts of the episodes themselves As a designer, I therefore don't care whether people get a rush from finding a secret passage, from being a leader, from designing their own house, or from laying waste to a nest of vampires What I care about is whether, in doing so, they develop as people So, when someone says that virtual worlds encourage sex or violence, no, they don't Even if a designer went all out to try to encourage it, they wouldn't It may be that they encourage play of a sexual or violent nature, but play is play, and it's virtual The lessons that people learn are the lessons that they can take with them into the real world They find out about people; they find out about themselves I believe that designing virtual worlds is a morally defensible occupation I believe that designers are on the side of the virtuous Mind you, I also believe that one day we'll see more people getting married because of virtual worlds than we'll see getting divorced because of them Don't let my idealism your thinking for you Consider the issues; reflect on them yourself; draw your own conclusions Confounding Expectations There's a gray area to this talk of what people learn from virtual worlds Immersion is driven by a virtual world's similarity to Reality It is founded on players' implicit expectations Some of those expectations concern virtual worlds themselves Should these expectations be confirmed or frustrated? Do you, as a designer, give the players what they expect (for example, races) or what they don't (for example, everyone's human)? The issue is not the effect on immersion (it's not all that great); rather, it's the effects that confounding these expectations have on individuals If you give someone something that they are not expecting, but which is consistent This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks with the way the virtual world operates, then they will either accept it or reject it Either way, they'll have to think about it; this is why challenging expectations is good Obviously, if too many are challenged at the same time it could impact on immersion, but in general this isn't going to happen Challenging expectations causes people to think about those expectations Through such analyses, players can change as people As I have explained, this is how things should be; the lessons that people learn come from abstractions of events, not from the events themselves You don't learn that killing is good, you learn how to trust your friends; you don't learn that Zeus is all-powerful, you learn that being all-powerful means being all-responsible This is how it should be Yet immersion subverts this mechanism You accept the virtual world because of its similarity to the real one Your implicit view of how the real world works informs your view of how the virtual world should work Is it not possible that the reverse could at times be true? What you implicitly accept without thinking in the virtual world could transfer to what you implicitly accept in the real world? As I said earlier, obviously anything complicated would require conscious thought—I'm not suggesting that players are likely to be brainwashed like this—but nevertheless there are smaller things that could have real-world consequences Example: In a virtual world, acceleration is instantaneous You go from a standing start to running full speed without an intermediate period of speeding up If someone who has been playing in a graphical virtual world for 10 hours gets into their car and drives off, could that be dangerous? This kind of low-level skill acquisition is easy to pick up— people who access text-based virtual worlds from a command-line interface will routinely find themselves typing the short forms of "look" or "inventory" at the command prompt When designers challenge player expectations at this kind of level (rather than at a more cerebral level), the players have to accept it or reject it Rejection means stopping playing, so challenges aren't ever going to be major; they exist, though For example, in a graphical world if you want to walk between characters who are physically blocking your way, the world may let you it—even though in the real world you couldn't The reason this is so is because otherwise players could barricade an area with their own bodies; nevertheless, it challenges players' notions of their own physicality in the virtual world If they don't like it, they're not going to become immersed and will eventually leave; if they like it, it becomes part of their implicit This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks knowledge of the way the virtual world works With deepening immersion, there is the risk that this world view could be taken back to Reality It may not last there for long, but it could still be enough to cause an accident Whose fault is it when such lapses occur? The player, for putting themselves into such a situation in the first place, or the designer for challenging their expectations? Above the level of immersion, there is still cause for concern Designers can cause players to re-examine their attitudes, but what happens if the players conclude that they should behave in a way that is bad either for themselves or for society? I argued earlier that players don't learn from the facts of what they but from abstractions of those facts, but what if what they learn is inappropriate for their real-world culture? For example, a virtual world may have lax attitudes to sexuality A player may, after many experimental encounters of virtual sex, decide that they are not attracted to members of the same sex and are therefore heterosexual This is fair enough, but if as a result of their not enjoying their homosexual encounters they drew all kinds of false conclusions about homosexuals in general, this would not necessarily be regarded as a universally positive view to transfer into the real world Is the virtual world's designer in any way responsible for this unfortunate result? After all, if they had not promoted lax attitudes to sexuality, the player would not have experimented and would therefore not have drawn any conclusions at all (false or otherwise) Here's another example Virtual world designers create an environment in which people can explore their own identity They can find out who they "really are." It could transpire that they "really are" someone deeply unpleasant, who has previously been subduing their urges behind some faỗade that they now feel comfortable about dropping Are virtual worlds best left alone if they regularly produce individuals like this? Designers can influence the ways in which people change in virtual worlds When they so, does this give them a responsibility for the outcome? Or are they merely providing trials that will allow players to find what was already there deep inside them anyway? If I challenge a player's expectations, am I equipping them with the means by which to determine their own solution? Or am I guiding them in a direction that may be inappropriate I'd like to believe the former I can lead a horse to water, but I can't make it drink Yet I This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to registe can make it consider drinking Is it my responsibility if it does drink? Or is it the horse's? Top This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks Yourself When all's said and done, the ethics of a virtual world reflect those of its designer If you don't think about how to behave, about what's right and wrong, about responsibility, about rights, then why should your players? If you think ethics are other people's responsibility, so will your players Your beliefs, your attitudes, your personality—they're all reflected in your virtual world You have to take responsibility, because (at least initially) you are the world Here's a final ethical problem for you Back in Chapter 3, I outlined A Story About a Tree This concerned the death in real life of Karyn, a Norwegian beauty queen who played in LegendMUD I used this anecdote to pose questions concerning what is "real" in a virtual world At the time, I said I didn't know whether or not Karyn was a real person Actually, I know whether or not Karyn was a real person: She wasn't She was a complete invention In February 2002, film producer Tracy Spaight got in touch with me about a documentary he was making, Real People, Virtual Worlds He wanted to know if it would be possible to interview me, and sent along a preview tape of some interviews he'd done already The centerpiece was a powerful monologue by Raph Koster in which he described and commented on A Story About a Tree Although I had long harbored reservations about Karyn, I'd kept them pretty much to myself When it came to a movie that was likely to be seen on television by millions of people, though, well, it would have been somewhat embarrassing for Tracy and Raph if Karyn turned out to be fake I suggested to Tracy that he check out the story, just to be sure Someone at LegendMUD would probably have met or spoken to Karyn in real life when she was alive, so it shouldn't take long; it was just to put my mind at rest Except, no one at LegendMUD had actually met her I hadn't reckoned with Tracy's documentary-maker's instincts He methodically investigated every shred of evidence that remained concerning Karyn's life It took a great deal of time and patience, but the facts he unearthed were undeniable Here are some of the highlights: There are only three people in the whole of Norway called Karyn It's a highly unusual name there The total number of deaths in road traffic accidents in Norway in 1995 was 352 Road death is relatively uncommon in that country This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks Only one person died in the crash that supposedly killed Karyn The report reproduced on Karyn's web site said three people; it had been altered in translation The University of Oslo, which Karyn said she attended, had no record of a former beauty queen (or anyone else) having died in a road accident in January 1998 The Frøken Norge (Miss Norway) beauty pageant had no entries named Karyn in 1995 (when Karyn was supposedly a finalist) Karyn's picture on her web site was of a bona fide Frøken Norge contestant She had never heard of LegendMUD until Tracy tracked her down There was more—lots more Police accident reports, depositions from Geocities, newspaper archives, and so on So Tracy and I knew that Karyn didn't exist, and could prove so categorically We sensed that the news would elevate Tracy's documentary to mainstream levels of interest Real people can have real relationships with imaginary people? That's a great hook! I could imagine reading a syndicated version of the story in UK Sunday newspapers a few years down the line, as happened with Julian Dibbell's A Rape in Cyberspace But just a moment… Real relationships? Involving real people, who have suffered real grief? Couldn't it be potentially devastating for them to discover the depths of Karyn's betrayal It might not be right for us to go public with the story The world might be a better place if we just sat on it That wasn't all we had to consider A Story About a Tree is very well known; it's almost iconic It has been cited many times as a counter to the argument that "it's just a game." Yet for Karyn, it was "just a game," at least at some level Would it be better for the long-term development of virtual worlds for A Story About a Tree to keep its integrity? Or could more useful lessons be learned from a reappraisal of it in this new light? So we had a problem: What should we do? I won't tell you what we did do, although obviously it resulted in our revealing the truth about Karyn (or you wouldn't be reading this [30] ) All I'll say is that both Tracy and I felt our actions were right [30] Nor Tracy's account: Tracy Spaight, Who Killed Miss Norway? Salon, 14 April 2003 http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/04/14/who_killed_miss_norway/index.html This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it Thanks Instead, I'd like to pose the question: What would you have done in our position? Now, ask what your answer says about you What does that say about your virtual world? What in turn does this say about your players? It's your design; it's your morality From Essex to ethics in one book… Top ... The Virtual Body Groups Combat Crafting The Elder Game The Whole Picture Chapter It's Not a Game, It's a Points of View Making Sense of Virtual Worlds Virtual Worlds as Subfields Virtual Worlds. .. Virtual Worlds as Subfields Virtual Worlds as Tools Virtual Worlds as .Virtual Worlds Conclusion Chapter Towards a Critical Aesthetic A Theory of Virtual Worlds The Story of Story The Critical Aesthetic... receive, I might not be able to reply to every message Fax: 31 7-5 8 1-4 663 Email: stephanie.wall@newriders.com Mail: Stephanie Wall Publisher New Riders Publishing rd 201 West 103 Street Indianapolis,