A Theory of Virtual Worlds

It’s all very well for me to make these pompous assertions that serve to glorify my own position. Unfortunately for me, it takes

more than slapping a pretentious label on something to make it Art ¹. Art may be expression, but it’s worthless unless it can be recognized as such. People don’t have to know what a piece of art “means,” but they do need to know how its meaning is conveyed. This requires the development of a critical aesthetic ².

Motivation

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.

The “aesthetic” here isn’t in the general sense: It’s not a branch of philosophy concerned with matters such as “beauty” and “taste.” Rather, it’s to do with the rules and principles that underlie an art (in this case, virtual world creation). A virtual world may look beautiful and have a great visual aesthetic, yet suck as a world. The art director controls the look, but the designer controls the world. Designers who want a particular look hire art directors whose work exhibits that look. The look is part of the overall aesthetic. Introducing the notion of criticism allows for rationalization of the communicative aspects of this aesthetic.

A legitimate question to ask is whether virtual worlds need such a theory. The number of professional practitioners of virtual world design is low, and they don’t have trouble interpreting each other’s work. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until the field has developed more before attempting to nail it down? It probably would, yes. I have three reasons for going ahead and trying to do it anyway:

• The virtual world community has a sense of inferiority in comparison to more established art forms. My Sunday newspaper is happy to spend two full pages discussing the merits of avant-garde glassware lamp stands, but what non-geek takes virtual worlds seriously? A critical aesthetic would demonstrate that there is more to virtual worlds than killing virtual monsters and learning written French.

• I want to get straight in my own mind how I judge a virtual world.

• If I don’t write all this down, someone else is only going to do it anyway.

The first of these mirrors the main reason that film theory was developed in the 1970s, but the other two are purely selfish. Fortunately, the first reason is good enough that I can indulge the other two.

The pro-art position is actually worse than I’ve made out in that there is some debate within the virtual world development community over whether treating virtual world design as art is counter-productive. In 2001, as major virtual world designers (particularly Raph Koster) made increasing pronouncements that took for granted the artistic nature of what they did, players began to express concern. Jessica Mulligan, the most long-standing and forthright proponent of players’ rights, voiced these opinions in her well-read Skotos column, Biting the Hand ¹. Her remarks caused a firestorm.

Jess’s argument was that players were becoming incidental to virtual world design. They signed up to play a game ², but they

were being misled; the grandiose ideas of designers were making players unwilling participants in experimental performance art. By treating players as mere objects to be controlled through the brilliance of their creativity, designers were showing staggering arrogance and contempt. This elitist attitude could ultimately be sourced in designers’ belief that they were creating art. It would be better if they were disabused of this belief.

Jess did accept that art was involved in the design of virtual worlds, because it’s fundamentally a creative exercise. What she objected to was the view that players were a part of the work. Players want to be entertained; if, while playing, some art form were to entertain them, fine, no problem. When they’re considered a component of the art form, or to be paying in order to experience the art form, that’s not so good. Designers shouldn’t try to impose their vision on players at the expense of what players actually want.

Skotos published two responses to this article.

The first, by Travis Casey ³, defended the pro-art point of view by considering whom virtual world designers ought to try to entertain. He concluded that of all the possibilities, the only one that guaranteed anyone at all would find the world entertaining was if designers designed to entertain themselves. Travis sees this as essentially an artistic stand: If you don’t like what’s being produced, you’re not one of the people for whom it was being produced. I’m ambivalent about this; most design teams do design for themselves, but a top-notch designer doesn’t get any

enduring pleasure from playing a virtual world, just from creating it.

The second response was by Raph Koster, in Jess’s own column at her invitation ⁴. Raph agreed that it was the first duty of a virtual world to be fun ⁵, but argued that art subsumes entertainment. Art can do many things, of which “entertain” is but one. Just because you do art, doesn’t mean you can’t do entertainment. Raph further argued that art brings an emphasis on craft, perfectionism, and ethics—things that the virtual world design community desperately needs. At a time when virtual worlds are struggling for legitimacy, attacking articulations of artistic purpose is not helpful.

Raph didn’t directly address Jess’s point that the objectifying of players leads to bad art, but from the passion of his argument it’s fairly clear that he doesn’t feel he himself is guilty of it. I personally don’t believe it is necessarily always a bad thing: Different problems can need different paradigms, and sometimes you do need sociology rather than psychology. It becomes inexcusable when it’s used inappropriately. Players are players first, components of an elaborate, orchestrated simulation only occasionally; however, “occasionally” is not “never.”

Designers that are the caliber of Raph Koster shouldn’t have to defend what they do. Players should be thinking, “this is a Raph

Koster game—I really want to play it!”; they shouldn’t be looking to prick what appears to be (but isn’t) a bubble of pomposity. Their concerns arise because although they have been immersed in virtual worlds, they have not been involved in the design process; the more they were to know about virtual world design, the more they would be able to appreciate the special qualities that individual designers bring to their creations. A critical aesthetic would help qualify what they should look for, if not dictate what they think when they see it.

There is a danger in having a critical aesthetic for an art in that it can take the edge off it, making it self-conscious. As a corollary, the more an art form is deconstructed, the less it means as a whole. As I noted in Chapter 2, “How to Make Virtual Worlds,” designers can’t play virtual worlds for fun (at least in the same sense that players do) because they can see too much of the machinery. They may be impressed by the way the virtual world is put together, by the nice touches and subtle nuances they perceive, but they aren’t going to get excited by mounting an expedition to rescue a villager from a bunch of hobgobbledygooks. They don’t get caught up in their world’s fiction. This is not a situation that it would be wise to imbue in players; it’s good if they can appreciate aspects of a design when they reflect on them, but bad if they’re into the aesthetic so deeply that they can’t appreciate the whole point of playing—that is, to have fun.

So if self-consciousness, leading to pretentiousness and humorlessness, is the disadvantage of having a critical aesthetic, what are the disadvantages of not having one?

Well, designers will make the same mistakes that other designers have made before; they’ll do things without knowing why, advance in directions that are doomed to disappoint—all the failings that I have been ranting on about throughout this

book ⁶. Designers like to think of themselves as creative people, who instinctively know what’s right and don’t need any “rules.” Without rules, though, how can you be a rule-breaker?

Virtual worlds need a critical aesthetic. Indeed, they may need more than one: I’m considering them as an art form in their entirety, but, as I pointed out, there is plenty of scope for creativity in their component parts. A player who designs their own area to fit into the greater design may work to some more specific aesthetic peculiar to that task. What is right for designers doesn’t have to be right for everyone else. It does, however, have to be right for designers.

This book is about the design of virtual worlds, and therefore the critical aesthetic I shall attempt to develop is for virtual worlds as a whole.

Some Questions

In developing a critical aesthetic for virtual worlds, we need to answer some difficult questions. I won’t pretend I answer any of them, but here they are anyway:

• How is the “value” of the virtual world experience determined?

• What do you need to understand when you have fun, and how do people with different understandings interact?

• What rules apply to all virtual worlds, and what are their limitations?

• What symbolism exists within the virtual world itself and within the way it is presented?

Earlier in this book, I advanced the theory that the value of the virtual world experience is that individuals come to understand more about themselves through the virtual world. This is only one interpretation, though: Players will rarely cite identity issues as the reason they play a virtual world. Then again, when players are asked what they do find fun, they come up with the same answers that gave rise to my player types model in the first place. When developers and publishers are asked to determine the value of the virtual world experience, they point to the length of time people keep active accounts; although this may be a metric, it’s not a value. I don’t want to know what people are prepared to lose in terms of time or money; I want to know what they gain.

The player development model I presented in Chapter 3, “Players,” describes what players need to understand when they have fun. It also showed the way that players at different stages of development interact with one another ¹. The result is as much of a formal Theory of Virtual Worlds that we have at the moment—that is, about half of a framework.

The third question has a facetious answer: The rules that apply to virtual worlds are those imposed by reality. Reality always wins. Although this is true, when it comes to playing virtual worlds, a number of “rules” are nevertheless in place. Designers don’t have to create a virtual world with a physics that looks kind of like real-life physics, but they do. They do it because these are part of the paradigm. I discussed the way virtual worlds hang together and the rationale behind it in Chapter 4, “World Design” and Chapter 5, “Life in the Virtual World;” this

isn’t to say that new paradigms won’t arise, but for the moment we’re still exploring what we have.

So that’s three questions out of the way.

I shall attempt to address the final question in the remainder of this chapter. Because it involves practice that has evolved over time in the design of virtual worlds, it doesn’t link directly into the rest of the theory, although it does touch on it. Nevertheless, its subject matter is as much a part of the theory as words are of language.

That doesn’t mean finding an answer is going to be easy, though.

Template Theories

It’s easier to create something new by beginning with something old than it is to start from nothing. In developing a critical aesthetic for virtual worlds, it makes sense to look at existing theories for related art forms and see what light they can shed. It’s unlikely that they’ll fit very closely, but nevertheless they could provide a framework on which to build. Perhaps the symbolism used in virtual worlds is gifted to us already through that of its nearest relatives?

I assert that the two closest art forms to virtual worlds are computer games and film ¹. Computer games don’t yet have a theoretical underpinning. Everything is still too transient because technology is always ahead. The reason your mobile phone has more computational power than the 1970s mainframe on which MUD1 was written is entirely due to

computer games. Business users didn’t push for faster CPUs, better sound, better graphics, higher-capacity portable media; computer gamers did. I bought my first CD-ROM drive after installing a game that came on nine floppies; because enough people like me did the same thing, the price of CD-ROM drives fell and new PCs started appearing with them fitted as standard. I didn’t buy a 19-inch monitor so I could keep more spreadsheet windows open at once; I bought it because it allowed me to see more of the Civilization II map. Early adopters—who will pay a premium for the latest technology if it means they can play the latest games—play games. Unfortunately, this implies the level of innovation is currently too high for a critical aesthetic to be viable.

The alternative view is that innovation is actually low because publishers too often play it safe, and a critical aesthetic doesn’t exist because no self-respecting academic would sacrifice their career to develop one.

Computer games do have critics, in the form of reviewers who describe the latest games in professional magazines. In comparing the various merits of games, clearly some aesthetic is in action (even if it’s moderated by the fact that many magazines are heavily reliant on income from advertising taken out by the publishers of the very games reviewed). Reviewers will in general comment on a game’s genre, its graphics and sound quality, its gameplay, any special features, any technical issues, and its relationship to similar games; mainly, though, they’re interested in whether it is fun to play. If it doesn’t engage them, they will criticize it; if it does, they’ll give it a high rating. Some magazines attempt to break down ratings into their contributing parts (graphics, sound, gameplay, and so on), but that’s as far as it goes.

Given that the form of reviews has now stabilized (you could take a review from five years ago, bring its references up to

date, and it would read like a review from today), there may well be the makings of a Theory of Computer Games here. Unfortunately, we don’t have one yet. Thus, although I can draw parallels between virtual worlds and computer games, clearly I can’t use any Theory of Computer Games as a foundation for looking at virtual worlds because there isn’t one.

For film, on the other hand, there does exist a mature critical aesthetic ². Because of this, movies can entertain and have meaning beyond entertainment. Although there’s nothing to stop computer games from having meaning beyond entertainment, their lack of a critical aesthetic makes this a rare occurrence; this is why when something entertaining does arrive that gives players cause to introspect, it’s regarded as something special ³.

I shall therefore base my analysis of virtual world aesthetics primarily on that of film theory. Those readers about to panic in fear that I’m justifying subjecting them to yet another dose of reference-heavy academic prose will doubtless be pleased to learn that no knowledge of film studies is assumed. You may need to know where I’m coming from, but you don’t need to know what I’m coming from….

Signs and Symbols

So, let’s start with symbols.

When movies were first made, directors had to develop a language and their audience had to learn it: Real life doesn’t have jump cuts. When something happens in the way information is presented on a movie screen, which runs counter

to the way that human senses accept information in the real world, this signals an interrupt that the mind needs to interpret consciously. By codifying the interrupts so they are always used under the same circumstances, the brain can learn what they “mean.” This done, subsequent occurrences of the interrupt don’t register unless they subvert the code in some way.

I recall as a child seeing a film on TV where the action started going on in several small mini-screens at once. I figured this meant the story had branched and I had a choice about which mini-screen to watch. Not knowing which story was going to turn out best, I asked my father for his advice. He explained that it was all part of the same story, and the activities shown were meant to be going on simultaneously; therefore I should try to pay attention to all of them at once. Nowadays when I see a split-screen effect, it doesn’t even record in my consciousness, I just “know” it means that several things are happening at once. It’s a symbol for which I have a reliable meaning. However, if early directors had gone a different way, a split-screen could have signified something entirely different.

The field of semiotics is concerned with the associating of meaning to signs. When the signs are structured according to a grammar, the result is a language; when they are merely systematized, the result is a vocabulary. For movies—and, as we shall see, virtual worlds—they aren’t organized even to that degree. Nevertheless, the codes do exist, and they do have meanings that have been implicitly agreed on by those who create and experience them.

Determining the meaning of the signs (that arise because of the difference between virtual world technology and the way reality works) is therefore important. You didn’t think virtual worlds had signs? When you watch a TV drama, you don’t think you’re actually a character participating in it, yet when you play a virtual world you do. Why? Is it merely because you control a

character? No: It’s because you accept that the character you control is a token that represents you. Accept it enough, and it becomes you (and you become it). Immersion is accepting the signifier as the signified. Those pixels on the screen are just pixels; you associate meaning with them.

For a critical aesthetic to be useful, it has to aim for universality. Everyone should understand the signs and their denotations in the same way. If I visit a textual world for the first time, I expect new conversational messages to appear below those I have already read ¹; I could play some other world that puts them above, but it would feel (to me) seriously weird. For textual worlds, there are reasons (ultimately to do with the way people read books) which explain why “above” connotes “before” and “below” connotes “after.” For graphical worlds, though, conversational messages don’t have to appear in a single window at all—they can (and do) appear in multiple embedded windows—for example, as speech bubbles ². These are still signs, though: Even though I can see words above some character’s head, I don’t assume I can pick them up like I could fruit hanging from a tree.

The coming of graphics to virtual worlds is like the coming of sound to movies. The same old rules apply, but the emphasis is different; there are also some new rules. These are rules, however, that are learned very early in a player’s career, if indeed they didn’t already know them from other art forms. It is possible (albeit tedious) to list them all, but doing so would only be of academic interest—a chart showing every color and its emotional impact doesn’t make everyone a landscape artist. Where signs are important to designers is in their use, and I shall therefore refer to them in this context rather than

enumerating the major ones here and continually referring back to the resulting table.

Symbols in virtual worlds have two roles. One is to make statements valid in the real world, and the other is to make statements valid in the virtual world. A virtual world that imposes a character class regime is “about” order and conformity; one that doesn’t is “about” choice and independence. Both of these are political statements, irrespective of designers’ bleatings to the contrary; they’re statements that the virtual world makes in the real world through its design. A room complex that has increasingly lower light levels, on the other hand, is a statement within the context of the virtual world itself: It says that these rooms are successively more dangerous, because darkness is a metaphor for danger.

I’ll address the external symbolism first, then move on to the internal symbolism.

Dimensions

External symbolism in virtual worlds can be explicit. You can create a virtual world where everyone is a dolphin trying to save the ocean from the evil oil companies that pollute the water ¹. This is not the kind of symbolism that I mean here, however. Rather, I’m concerned with the implicit kind, which are manifestations of the different views that designers hold regarding what is important about virtual worlds.

Debate—both verbally and through the action of design—takes place along several dimensions at once. Formally, these are

known as dialectics—opposing viewpoints, the eventual resolution of which leads (hopefully) to the development of new viewpoints and, consequently, new dialectics. Movements may spring up that oppose the consensus or propose new ways of looking at things; sometimes, these extend across several art forms (as did impressionism, for example).

So what are the dialectics for virtual worlds? Let’s look at our antecedents. In film theory, the main historical dialectics ² are/were

• Life versus drama. Should film be used to record life or to create fiction?

• Realism versus expressionism. Can more be said by showing the real or the artificial?

• Genre versus auteur. How is the demand for predefined, stylized story forms reconciled with the artistic feelings of film makers?

• Reality versus fantasy. What is the role and power of authenticity?

• Entertainment versus communication. Is it the purpose of film to entertain the audience or to change it?

• Innovation versus derivation. Should audiences be given what we think they want or what they think they want?

Computer games don’t have a formal theory, but two obvious themes that probably qualify as dialectics are

• Hard core versus mass market. Are games for games-players or for everybody?

• Graphics versus gameplay. How much substance should be sacrificed to form?

Scanning through these lists, some dialectics seem more appropriate to virtual worlds than others. Taking them in turn:

• Life versus drama. This is either a non-issue or an all-embracing meta-issue that highlights what makes virtual worlds different from all other art forms. From the point of view of the player, virtual worlds are clearly not real—they’re virtual!—therefore it’s a non-argument. Designers, while in the main also subscribe to this view, bear a responsibility for the consequences of their designs that players don’t. This means they must accept that virtual worlds and their players are part of reality, and that the fiction is part of the fact: What happens in the virtual can affect the real. It’s ridiculous to suggest that virtual worlds should record reality, yet in some sense reality can record the consequences of virtual worlds. That said, although this may be an important point, it’s not a dialectic. Designers are able to apply both paradigms as the context dictates.

• Realism versus expressionism. This is perhaps a dialectic-to-be. Currently, designers regard realism as a tool for immersion, and any attempt to express emotion through artificial devices would break this immersion. It may be that as virtual worlds develop, the bond between realism and immersion can be made more supple, in which case an expressionistic approach could be attempted. We shall have to wait and see.

• Genre versus auteur. This is an emerging dialectic. Most designers are happy to work within a predefined genre, or even a particular licensed franchise. What makes them less happy is when bumbling, opinionated, know-nothing manager types demand changes without appreciating the effects it would have on gameplay, let alone the implications

for the work as a whole ³. As designers gain reputations for their work, their power will increase. At that point, this dialectic will become an issue. When they’re strong enough to form their own development companies, it will cease to be one. You will have noted that this chapter comes down firmly on the side of auteur; whatever virtual world development companies may wish, ultimately the designers are going to win this argument.

• Reality versus fantasy. The main question here is that of authenticity. It concerns the degree to which the situations and issues depicted in the art form reflect those of reality. It doesn’t mean the same thing as life versus drama; it doesn’t present a record of reality, but it does say things about reality. For example, a virtual world in which players take on the role of members of a contemporary oppressed people struggling under a dictatorship might have powerful resonance with whatever real-life situation it is based on, giving players a deeper insight into the plight of the individuals who have to suffer that fate from day to day. Although there is a place for such virtual worlds, they are clearly unlikely to have any great artistic effect on the majority; they’re just too bleak to keep players in them for extended periods. Thus, any dialectic that does arise from looking at virtual worlds as social or political commentary is probably going to be of only minor importance.

• Entertainment versus communication. This is an ongoing dialectic in virtual worlds ⁴, as the exchanges between Jessica Mulligan and Raph Koster demonstrate. The crux of the matter is that what the players want syntactically (a virtual world that looks good, plays well, and is fun) is not what they want semantically (a virtual world that helps them define who they are). In fact, it’s probably a lot worse than this in that many players will reject outright the suggestion that they could be playing for any reason other than to have fun ⁵. Players and designers alike agree that it is axiomatic that virtual worlds should be entertaining. However, although designers might understand that there is no communication without entertainment, many players and publishers don’t accept that there is no entertainment without communication.

• Innovation versus derivation. The most spectacularly successful virtual worlds have been those significantly different from their predecessors. The same applies to the most spectacularly unsuccessful ones. Those who lack the time, money, or creativity to innovate prefer derivation, but players who prefer the comfort of the old to the uncertainty of the new also drive it. Codebases and middleware solutions can help deliver a virtual world that wouldn’t have existed otherwise, but if it means designers are forced to work within a moribund paradigm, then ultimately it’s a bad thing. This is one debate that is never, ever, going to be resolved.

• Hard core versus mass market. In the early days of online services, 10% of users provided 90% of revenues ⁶. Computer

games manufacturers noticed the same thing: A small number of dedicated, hard-core players bought far more games than did casual gamers. When games-only online services went for the hard core, they almost always failed; when computer games publishers went for the mass market, they almost always failed. Where does this leave virtual worlds? Should they target a well-served existing hard core of players, or spread their net further to tap the possibly ambivalent mass market? As with entertainment versus communication, this is an ongoing dialectic with an end that is not in doubt: Virtual worlds must become more mass-market, because luring players away from other virtual worlds is simply too hard ⁷. However, in so doing they will develop their own hard core of players, which cannot then be ignored.

• Graphics versus gameplay. How much of the available investment in a virtual world should be spent on making it look good as opposed to making it play well? In the computer games industry, graphics rule: Unless a product looks bang up to date, reviewers won’t review it and players won’t buy it. The same applies to virtual worlds that compete in the same marketplace, but with a sting: Regular computer games are fire-and-forget, in that once you (as a developer) have sold them you don’t care how great the long-term gameplay is—you already have the customer’s money. Virtual worlds, however, make their profits from subscriptions, which depend on good long-term gameplay for their success. So, do you go for graphics or gameplay? Or

do you spend double and go for both? The text/ graphics split of virtual worlds makes this apposite, but it’s not really a dialectic as such. Players want both looks and gameplay; the only question is whether the look is on the computer screen or in the player’s mind. Textual worlds may have the stronger intellectual claim on a construction versus reconstruction basis, but graphical ones have the players. So for this dialectic, graphical worlds win; end of argument.

Besides these dimensions of debate, virtual worlds have some of their own. The ones that attract the most tension are

• Direction versus non-direction. Should the designers and/or live team guide player activity explicitly?

• Responsibility versus liability. What do players agree to when they sign up to play a virtual world?

• Story versus history. To what extent are players part of the work or part of the production?

• Individual versus community. Is this a world for individuals or for groups of individuals?

Again, taking these one at a time:

• Direction versus non-direction. There is always some directedness in virtual worlds—even the most open-ended of them—because designers cannot create them neutrally even if they want to. Reality is neutral; anything else is mere interpretation. The degree of direction is in question, however. Players often find their choice of character type restricted, or their goals, or even their narrative. How much should designers hold players’ hands and how much should players be left to roam free ⁸?

• Responsibility versus liability. This is this issue of players’ perceived rights to do stuff, opposed by their rights not to have stuff done to them. It’s the dialectic that underlies PvP and PD. What risks to their characters and to themselves do players accept when they join a virtual world, and what happens when those risks bite? Are such risks necessary? Or are the consequences of not having them ultimately worse?

• Story versus history. Although this is sometimes linked with direction versus non-direction, the two are different. The question is whether virtual worlds are works of art that are handed over to players to do with as they will, or whether the players are themselves part of the work. Does the designer ever let go? Or is the virtual world designed so that whatever players do conforms to some greater vision?

• Individual versus community. What’s good for the individual is not necessarily good for the community, and vice versa. For example, selling characters on eBay may be good for the two people involved, but it can hurt the virtual world as a whole. Similarly, players who band together can rip through content quicker than can the same number of individuals playing independently. At the moment, this is a fairly dormant argument, but its issues have not yet been resolved and it could reawaken any time (especially if real-life court cases make enough noise).

So, having looked at all of these various dimensions along which opinion is (or may become) divided, which are the most important? Any answer can only be subjective, but my own opinion is that these are currently the top five:

• Genre versus auteur

• Entertainment versus communication

• Direction versus non-direction

• Responsibility versus liability

• Hard core versus mass market

This book advances an opinion on every one of these; you might want to bear that in mind when reading the rest of this chapter, because it is in the context of these dialectics that the discussion takes place.

I should also point out that even if people do agree on a position, their interpretation of it can differ radically. Asheron’s Call 2, for example, aims for the mainstream (good), but does so by imposing a cosseted blandness on everything. People don’t like it when their arrows run out during combat? Here, have an infinite supply! Is running to the shop to sell your loot too onerous? You can convert it to cash in your backpack! Turbine may believe that dumbing down is the way to make its world more appealing to a mass market, but it’s not apparent why it should be. Why do people play virtual worlds? No, really, why? What’s the fundamental reason? Clue: It’s not “to have fun,” and even if it were, removing any challenge by wrapping characters in virtual cotton wool wouldn’t deliver it.

Virtual world designers can have contrasting views on what virtual worlds are about, and contrasting views on how best to address those issues. They express their opinions in designs; the differences in philosophy lead to differences in design. By reading the differences in design, the differences in philosophy can be divined. If, when you look at a virtual world, you can associate a feature to a particular dialectic, you have the crucial insight you need to have a critical aesthetic. If not, you need to think about it until you do.

I could at this point produce a list of things to look out for (symbols) and link them to particular viewpoints (dialectics), thereby creating a system for interpreting what virtual world designers are saying with their worlds. Tempting though this is, I shall nevertheless refrain. This is a book for the designers of virtual worlds, not for their players. If designers were to create

virtual worlds deliberately to convey a particular message, it would make sense to explain the symbols through which this communication takes place. However, designers don’t do this. The message arises from their internal artistic conflicts along the various dialectic dimensions, and is merely revealed through their designs. Designers don’t think what to say and then figure a way to say it; they say it, and leave it to others to figure out what it means.

This isn’t to say that such an analysis isn’t worth undertaking; it would be a powerful aid to people looking at virtual worlds seriously for the first time and struggling to understand the competing philosophies. It’s just that this book is not the place to embark on such an exercise.

Whence the Symbols Come

An analysis of internal symbolism is justifiable here. Virtual world designers have many options available to them about what they put into a virtual world, what they leave out, how they put it in, and so on. In selecting between all the possibilities available to them, designers are employing their artistic faculties; furthermore, they are doing so deliberately. They want (for design/artistic reasons) to achieve an effect, therefore they arrange the virtual world to create it.

So what weapons do designers have in their armory? And how do they employ these to tell players things?

Well, first let’s look at what they don’t have in their armory. They don’t have the ability to cut, fade, or do anything else that shatters the basic “you are here” conceit. They have no pausing, saving, replaying, scene breaks, or acts. These limitations make them different from both film and computer games in fundamental ways.

Players get to pan, track, and zoom; players get to decide where they point the camera; players decide whether they see themselves in first, second, or third person. Designers give them this control, and don’t get it back. Although players can in theory record and edit their own content for public consumption, this facility is not available to designers; the nearest they get to it is the patch cycle, which is something of a blunt instrument (but nevertheless usable, as we shall see shortly).

So although film directors are concerned with what to shoot and how to shoot it ¹, virtual world designers are not because the players make those decisions. Instead, designers are concerned with what to cause to exist and how to cause it to exist ². Composition is of static objects and the starting locations of non-static objects (or restarting locations, for static spawns) ³.

It is important to distinguish between the art that the designer creates within the virtual world and the art created by others in the same context. If a designer lays out boulders in a certain way to imbue a location with a particular feel, that’s not the same as if a player takes those boulders and builds a statue out of them. They’re both works of art, but they’re not works of the same art; the former enables the latter. It’s not like sampling or collage, which reuses art in different ways; it’s art-within-art. Chapter 6, “It’s Not a Game, It’s a …,” mentioned virtual theater companies whose players ⁴ perform on the stage that virtual

worlds provide. Again, this is art in its own right, but again it differs from the art of the world’s designer. Why? Because the symbolism is different. The same objects mean different things to the different artistic traditions. There’s also the issue of ownership.

Developers can and do claim legal ownership of the entire database that defines their virtual world and all images generated from it. To reproduce so much as a screenshot, you need their permission. This has implications on art-within-art, in that an artist can’t claim ownership of their work even if it’s of higher quality than the art it is within. If Leonardo Da Vinci had painted The Last Supper on the sidewalk, he couldn’t have dug it up and taken it home. Why? Because it wasn’t his sidewalk. Similarly, any art created in virtual worlds is fundamentally transient, with the sole exception of that intrinsic to the virtual world itself. Sea level stays where it is until the designer says otherwise.

As a bit of an aside, although ownership of the bytes is not (or should not be) in dispute, ownership of the photons they generate is perhaps less defensible. Virtual worlds are places. If I visited New York and took a photograph of a street scene, I would not be violating anyone’s copyright. Sure, if I were doing something disruptive such as a movie shoot, then I’d need permission from the authorities first. For a snapshot, though, forget it! Furthermore, any artistic statement made by this would be all mine. The cult 1960s TV show The Prisoner was made in the Welsh village of Portmeirion and owed much of its other-worldliness to this location’s singular appearance. Its architect, Clough Williams-Ellis, did not “own” The Prisoner artistically, though; he made his statement through his architecture, and left its interpretation to individuals. Designers of virtual worlds need to let go; if they don’t they’re not creating virtual worlds, they’re creating something else.

Virtual world designers provide the tools and the toys. They covenant with the players that, within the virtual world, these:

• Have value

• Have meaning

• Make sense

When the sense they make is two-fold (text and subtext), that’s symbolism.

A Chemistry for Virtual Worlds

In screenplays, every action and every piece of dialogue must have a purpose. Movies are so expensive to make that anything that doesn’t advance the plot or round out a character must be ruthlessly cut. This even applies to comedies: You may laugh at the joke, but if the joke weren’t there, then at a purely structural level there would be a minor plot hole.

Virtual worlds don’t have quite the same financial or narrative constraints. It’s not the case that everything must have a purpose, but everything ¹ ought to have a potential purpose ². The players may determine a different purpose entirely to the one intended, deliberately or otherwise, but so long as they find some purpose they’re happy. It’s very frustrating to look for an object’s use when it doesn’t actually have one, and even worse if your complaints bring only hoots of laughter from the live team.

In screenplays, the dialogue, action, characters, and locations are the “atoms” that are built up into the “molecules” of scenes. Each atom has a purpose; using a different atom will change the chemistry of the resulting molecule, making it react differently with the other molecules that make up the screenplay as a whole. Sometimes an atom can work at multiple levels, as in the example of a one-liner in a comedy: It might make you smile, it might move the plot forward a notch, it may say something about the character who utters it (or the character who is its butt), it could influence the pacing, it might even make a point out of context for the screenplay itself altogether. And this applies to every line out of 110 pages of lines? Therein lies the art of the screenwriter.

Virtual world design documents have similar atoms: objects, commands, characters, and locations. What molecules are these atoms built into? Quests?

At a tangible level, yes. Players want things to do, and by arranging design atoms such that in combination they enable the solving of quests (whether generated by the world itself of by its players), the whole can behave differently from its parts. Quests are valid design molecules, but they’re not the ones I’m going to talk about here. This discussion concerns the symbols used in virtual worlds, and symbols need both a tangible and an intangible meaning ³. Quests do have intangible meaning, but it’s to the individual player at a hero’s journey level ⁴.

Designers use tangible objects to construct intangible meaning by combining them to influence breadth, depth, and atmosphere.

Breadth means player choice. The size of the world, the number of objects within it, the variety of commands: Breadth is form. Depth means understanding. The effects of commands, the complexity of the physics, the ability to use things in unintended ways: Depth is function. Where breadth reflects the range of opportunities that players have to change to the world, depth reflects the extent of change that each individual opportunity can effect.

When a newbie joins a virtual world, it’s the breadth that interests them. They want to know that there is depth but they don’t want to be exposed to it (otherwise it will seem too daunting ⁵). Depth is for more experienced players, for whom breadth is unsatisfying. The further along their development track a player is, the more they will favor depth over breadth.

In terms of symbolism, depth is easier to deal with than breadth. Breadth is by definition global to the virtual world, therefore any differences in breadth that might be picked up by players as symbolic have to be in global systems. If, for example, there were 50 different ways to combine fruit to make desserts but only five legal weapon/armor configurations, that would tell players that combat was not as important as cookery in this virtual world, or at least that cookery was more important than they might ordinarily think.

Depth effects can be more local. If the kobolds in one part of a virtual world have no names and are of indeterminate age and gender, yet the ones elsewhere have first names, surnames, families, and children, this says that the ones here are not as important as the ones elsewhere. If players notice this, they will act on the information (although whether they choose to emancipate or slay the unnamed kobolds is another matter, of course).

Unfortunately, too few players are attuned to virtual world design enough to realize that differences in breadth and depth may be deliberate. They’ll see them as careless inconsistencies or bugs. Actually, they may well be right a lot of the time and they are bugs; this merely compounds the problem of using breadth or depth to say anything beyond the basics of what players are able to do and how doing these things affects the virtual world. Breadth and depth, while something that designers do build from the design atoms available to them, don’t yet have the fidelity necessary to be used symbolically.

With atmosphere, at last, we have a way of using virtual world mechanisms and objects as symbols that players actually interpret as symbols.

Atmosphere is the means by which designers influence players’ moods. It can be active (for example, it tells the players they are in danger), passive (for example, it puts players at ease), or interactive (conducive to exploitation by players). Atmosphere is used to

• Signal the start or end of an action sequence.

• Signal a breathing space during an action sequence.

• Throw players off their guard, ready for a big surprise.

• Warn or encourage players.

• Reward or punish players.

• Hint at what is to come.

• Facilitate various social activities.

• Make a philosophical or ethical point. (This may or may not be in combination with any of the above.)

Some obvious ways to suggest atmosphere are

• Open versus closed form. Cramped areas restrict choice, wide areas open it up; dungeons are more oppressive than wilderness. When players enter a very narrow passage or descend underground stairs, they know their options are being limited; if they continue, it symbolizes their readiness to accept the danger. When players enter a vast plain, they know their options are maximized; if they continue, it symbolizes their readiness to accept responsibility.

• Lightness versus darkness. The less you know, the more easily you’re spooked. The same applies to other sensory information that the virtual world supplies: Sudden silence is also spooky. When players find that the light levels are falling, they can interpret this as a warning. If they keep on going, they are accepting the challenge of whatever awaits them. If they see light at the end of the tunnel, it tells them their ordeals are nearing their end.

• Vistas versus corners. Corners hide information. You know the information is there, but you don’t know what it is. The less you’re told, the more you want to learn—but the more you fear you won’t like what you discover. A passageway that has a number of short, sharp turns increases the sense of urgency; a long, straight passageway reduces it ⁶. On the other hand, a vista can

symbolize the distance of goals: You emerge from the trees to see a vast tract of open country, on the far horizon of which you can just make out the spires of the City of Bronze. The designer is showing you what you’ll have to go through to get there: By proceeding, you’re reaffirming your goal.

• Familiarity versus alienness. A sudden change of terrain or architecture can induce either relief or a sense of unease. The more sudden the change, the greater the impact. This may look like a regular Middle Eastern bazaar, but when it gives way to a snowfield there’s a jarring of expectations. This is not a normal bazaar. Do you investigate, or do you get out before anything dreadful happens? More gradual changes can serve to label areas: The more spiky the architecture, the more spiky the inhabitants ⁷. The same technique can be used on a smaller scale. Your blacksmith’s hammer breaks, you get a new one, it happens all the time; this time, though, the replacement hammer changes its appearance the first time you use it, and makes a noise different to that of regular hammers. It tokenizes the unknown: Do you explore it, or shy away?

• Ease versus difficulty. In the big city, you’re asked to deliver bread; in the frontier town, you’re asked to kill bandits. Can you stand the heat, or do you get out of the kitchen? By giving players harder quests in rougher areas, designers inform them that these are tougher areas. If some NPC asks you to wipe out a nest of vampires and you refuse, you’ve nevertheless been told that this is the kind of place where there are nests of

vampires. If you go wandering off on your own, you can’t say you weren’t warned. The quests act as notices that players should heed.

• Large versus small. Big monsters are strong monsters; tall NPCs are authoritative NPCs. Smaller monsters can be dominated; smaller NPCs are servile. Tiny monsters may be fast, poisonous, or otherwise awkward; tiny NPCs have some hidden power. An impression of size can send potent, primal messages to players. It’s why real-world animals such as cats will try to make themselves look bigger when facing off an opponent.

• Beauty versus ugliness. Breathtaking panoramas and glorious palaces can generate feelings of awe and wonder. Misshapen creatures and ruined buildings can make an otherwise normal situation seem unpleasant. Beauty represents success, ugliness failure; beauty goodness, ugliness evil. It operates at different levels (the superficially beautiful can be ugly deep down, and vice versa), but the symbolism remains the same. This is one area where the players call the shots: They’ll assume beauty to be indicative of goodness, safety, aspiration, and so on even if the designer just wants to make their world look better than competing virtual worlds.

There are many others, too. Intense colors mean warmth, vibrancy, and action, whereas washed-out colors mean coldness, placidity, and melancholy; changes over time can question the permanence of your knowledge and your willingness to adapt. Individual designers have their own styles of controlling the atmosphere of locations and situations; all are subtly different.

Symbols can be combined and contrasted to create new symbols: The alien can be beautiful; a corner can turn into the light; warmth and softness can make a cramped space seem secure. The priests of Gheen wear sumptuous gowns but disfigure their faces with hideous scars.

Designers place the symbols in context; players interpret them and divine the context. Thus, we have a basic chemistry for our critical aesthetic.