Censorship

The first topic I shall look at is that of censorship: The deliberate exclusion of material that would warrant inclusion on purely informative, artistic, or gameplay grounds. The libertarian viewpoint is that all censorship is bad; everyone has a right to free speech, whatever they want to say and to whomever they want to say it. The common-sense interpretation of this is that there are certain conditions where what is said can be profoundly damaging (thus the libel laws) or dangerous (shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater ¹), and in these situations

free speech takes second place to some greater right. Otherwise, people can say what they want ².

There are still exceptions, though. Elizabeth Reid argues in a paper ³ about the ethics she employed when undertaking her research into virtual worlds that she should perhaps have self-censored some of the details that were given to her, even though they were provided willingly by people in the knowledge and expectation that they would be published. Her reasons for this are that her discussion of JennyMUSH provoked such interest among social scientists that they descended on it en masse to study the community; needless to say, this put it under such pressure that it almost fell apart. Legally—and ethically, as far as the players were concerned—Reid had every right to publish the details she did. Nevertheless, in retrospect she wished she had MADE every quotation anonymous (even if that meant being unable to use some of them) because then people wouldn’t have been able to find JennyMUSH so easily and their sheer number wouldn’t therefore have impacted it.

Currently, censorship in virtual worlds is performed almost entirely by the designers. The marketing group may insist on some changes, and licensed worlds have to remain true to the franchise, but beyond that there is only the law of the land (whatever “land” that may be). In the U.S., virtual worlds have been able to pitch themselves as examples of free speech in action, so they have been relatively free of legal interference. It may be just a matter of time before a major test case comes to

court over violations of anti-hatred, libel/slander, or property laws, but for the moment this has not occurred. This is in part due to two factors:

• It’s fairly clear that virtual world operators are no more responsible for what players say within them than telephone companies are for what people say on phones. They relay communication; they don’t publish it ⁴.

• Virtual world designers self-censor their virtual worlds so that contentious or provocative content does not appear.

So, let’s look at the kind of thing that might, at a glance, seem legitimate material for virtual worlds but that never seems to make it into them.

Unpleasantness

Some things are found unpleasant by enough of the population that even though they accurately reflect reality it would cause dissent were they to be included. Slavery, for example, was a fact of human existence for millennia; even now, some countries allow bonded labor that is slavery in practice if not in law.

So, you’re designing a virtual world set in the swashbuckling Age of Piracy. Players take on the role of a buccaneer, sailing the Caribbean in search of treasure, glory, and infamy. Within a week of beginning your research, you (the designer) have come to the conclusion that slavery was such an important part of Caribbean trade and industry that were you to omit, it your economic model would be missing a third of its goods. Do you put it in, or leave it out?

If your virtual world was for educational purposes, you’d probably leave it in. If it was primarily for entertainment, though…? The game Europa 1400: The Guild ¹ lets women become Catholic archbishops, even though this somewhat undermines its historical accuracy ². Virtual world designers tend to do this kind of thing too.

Unpleasant history is one example where self-censorship comes in. Another is unpleasant present. In the 19 th century, it was the general consensus in the western world that men were stronger and more clever than women. Now, it’s the general consensus that men and women are of equal intelligence. What about their comparative physical strength? Studies have shown that past academic examinations and intelligence tests were invariably biased in favor of men. Er, strength? Women and men may emphasize different aspects of their intelligence, but neither one gender nor the other is fundamentally the more intelligent. So will you answer the question about strength? Women excel at linguistic tasks, whereas men are good at spatial, and so on.

Most virtual worlds give men and women equal physical strength, even though in reality women are palpably not as strong ³. Some women are beefy enough to haul a truck, sure, but not ones that look like the female avatars in EverQuest. Those virtual worlds that don’t give female characters the same strength as male characters will usually try to compensate by making female characters shine at something else instead. It’s all for show, though. Real-life, non-cosmetic differences in gender and race are so charged with potential for problems that

virtual world designers simply edit them out of their worlds rather than suffer the political problems that come with including them.

A third example of unpleasantness is that which is fine now but which may not be in the future. Movies in the 1950s were full of people smoking cigarettes, but today’s certainly aren’t. Virtual worlds can have very long lives; what should designers omit that might cause future offense?

It may seem foolish to speculate on these possibilities: how can you know that something in your virtual world that is currently acceptable will cease to be so in a few years’ time? In general, of course, you can’t, but in some areas you can, particularly terminology. For example, in this book I have referred to people having same-sex orientation as “gay” and “homosexual.” It is practically guaranteed that in 50 years’ time even the phrase “same-sex orientation” will not meet with approval. The situation is yet worse for describing different races: Whatever currently prescribed term I use to describe a race or ethnic grouping, the historical evidence is that in 50 years’ time I’m going to appear a racist ⁴. It’s very tempting therefore for virtual world designers to counter this by omitting anything that has a track record of being controversial. This, of course, has other consequences (that we shall come to later).

As a final remark on the subject of unpleasantness in virtual worlds, it should be noted that the definition of “unpleasantness” varies between real-world cultures. For example, computer games that concern the hunting of wild animals are big-sellers in the United States but aren’t even released in the United Kingdom—there’d be a public outcry if they were. Many examples of such “localization issues” exist;

designers must choose either to ignore them (and lose sales), to make their presence switchable (which is expensive), or not to put in any offending content in the first place (hey, there’s an idea).

) The Real as the Virtual (and Vice Versa

Virtual worlds have their own communities and their own laws. Some things that are depicted in virtual worlds are legal in the context of that world, but would not be legal when practiced in the real world. For example, a virtual world set in the time of the British Raj may implement the Hindu custom of suttee, whereby widows threw themselves onto the funeral pyres of their recently deceased husbands. This would be allowed in the virtual world, but it’s been all but stamped out in the real world ¹.

Other examples abound. Virtual worlds routinely allow murder and the libeling of one character by another; some permit cruelty to animals, some promote the use of narcotics. It’s one thing to portray real-world crime as a virtual crime, as would be the case in a virtual world set in prohibition-era Chicago. It’s another thing, though, to make real-world crimes legal in their virtual-world implementation. Nevertheless, this is quite possible; in combat-oriented worlds, it’s even quite probable.

On the one hand, this distinctness from reality can be seen as a freedom from oppressive real-world laws: You may need to have your identity papers with you at all times in the real world, but you don’t in a virtual one. On the other hand, it could be seen as

the dangerous encouragement of antisocial behavior: Whom does it harm when an adult PC has virtual sex with a child NPC?

Although virtual worlds are generally more freedom-oriented than the real world, there are a few occasions where the situation is reversed. This is mainly because of restrictions that the real world places on the virtual world. For example, what two adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom is generally no one’s business but theirs, yet the graphical depiction of this behavior in a virtual world could well qualify as hard-core pornography. Virtual worlds that show things that would be illegal to broadcast to any television can rationally expect to be closed down. Nevertheless, people doing those things in real life are not breaking any laws ².

Another issue is the manner in which real-life objects are shown. Basically, you have more freedom to mess about with a name-branded object in the real world than you do in a virtual one. It used to be that if you wanted to show a brand in a computer game, you had to pay the brand-owner; nowadays, it’s more likely to be the other way around. These are mostly legal issues, of course, and therefore not of direct relevance here. Ethics become involved when things that can be recognized in real life make an appearance in a virtual world against the wishes of the people who own them.

For example, chase/combat game The Getaway incorporates a 3D model of central London built up from tens of thousands of photographs. People who own the properties shown have no right to object to this, under the same laws that apply to movie shoots in streets. A virtual world could use similar real-world data to produce an accurate visual model of some identifiable portion of the real world. Property owners can’t complain (well, they can, but the developers don’t have to listen). So what would happen if a player took over a virtual building that in the real world was a fast food franchise, then turned it into a brothel or a drug den? Could the owners object after that? To whom? What if shop-fronts displayed advertising logos for major corporations that players then defaced. Would that be right (because players are making a political statement in a virtual world) or wrong (because logos are free speech even in virtual worlds and defacing them is censorship)? Can designers deface these, as they might if they were creating a post-apocalyptic virtual world?

Supposing brands do appear with permission, players may still use them immorally. If you buy enough cups of virtual cola, you can lay them out in a pattern to look like any part of the human anatomy you like. You can write words with them. You can put them in demeaning contexts, such as public lavatories. Is it ethical to do so? It’s ethical enough in the real world, as long as you send the cans for recycling after you’ve made your point. In a virtual world, though, you may be paying a smaller subscription than you would be if the cola company hadn’t paid for product placement. Doesn’t accepting the reduction in price impose on you an obligation not to interfere with the message?

Virtual world designers handle these issues by self-censorship. Except in certain key areas where public expectation is on their side (for example, killing monsters), they avoid anything that could raise major ethical issues. It’s understandable why they would do this, of course, but it stifles debate. It’s left to the

designers of small-scale worlds to push the boundaries, but all too often they use off-the-shelf codebases that have already made the decisions for them.

If you’re a virtual world designer looking for an area in which to make your artistic mark, this could therefore be quite a fruitful area.

Passive Censorship

Censorship is generally active: You have a design that includes an element that you want, but you decide to take it out. If you did nothing, there would be no censorship. However, on occasion it can be passive: Information comes to light that is not in the public domain, and by doing nothing you are keeping it there. This amounts to censorship by inaction.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

Many virtual worlds have the concept of “guild ownership” of property. Characters pay money or give objects to a guild, and this can be used to obtain items collectively that individuals could not own themselves; the guild is like a company in real life—a legal entity that can be treated as a person in many respects. Real companies have directors, guilds have leaders. So what happens if the leaders decide to asset-strip the guild, then close it down?

Most virtual worlds don’t account for this kind of activity. On the face of it, why should they? If players sign up for a guild and are ripped off by the leadership, well, that’s just the way of things. Guilds are for groups of like-minded people; choose your friends more wisely next time.

If it were only that guild leaders gave guild property to their other characters, well, okay, a “dog-eat-dog” argument is

perhaps tenable. What happens when they sell the stuff on eBay, though? They could be a team working to a long-term plan, inveigling themselves into other players’ confidences to maneuver themselves into positions of power. Think this sounds improbable? It’s happened; it’s probably happening right now.

So, what does the developer do if they spot players ripping off one another? If they do nothing, this would be a form of censorship. So do they stop it? If it doesn’t break their terms of service, on what grounds could they do that? They would be breaking a trust. One solution would be to make a change to the virtual world design so that there was always an audit trail available and players can see where their stuff came from. That’s somewhat unrealistic, though; it’s not going to please characters who play as thieves in a PvP world, for example.

This is just one example of many. Censorship is the deliberate exclusion of material, but that material does not have to be tangible, and the decision not to act can be as censorious as the decision to act.