Players as People

“It’s just a game.”

When you play a game and you know the rules and something happens within those rules, you just have to accept it. You may not like it that the other team scored the touchdown, but you knew it was a possibility. All you can do is try harder.

This would be a fine analogy if virtual worlds were games. They’re not, though: They’re places. Some activities may be game-like, but not everything is. When players treat non-game

behavior like it was a game, this can have a nasty impact on other people in real life.

In normal computer games, you can do anything that the code allows you to. This is not an attitude that extends to virtual worlds, though. Most of the time it’s a good rule of thumb, but sometimes the virtual world lets you do things that you shouldn’t. As a trivial example, they aren’t coded to prevent your saying things that in real life would constitute verbal abuse.

Persona Issues

When people sign up to virtual worlds, they will have a number of preconceptions as to what they can expect to happen to their characters and what they can expect not to happen to them. This may come from publicity, from what friends have told them, or from a general sense of what “this kind” of product is like. If they know the virtual world is “about” combat, they can expect their character to kill things in it. If they don’t know initially, but in the character creation system discover that there is a wide range of combat options available, then they should read this as a warning that nevertheless there is combat in this world. If they don’t like the idea, they don’t have to play ¹.

If something happens that could not be reasonably expected, that’s of course a different matter. In many cases, it will be a surprise—possibly even a pleasant one—but not an issue. You didn’t know this Victorian Science Fiction game incorporated a race of troglodytes, but hurray, you do now. In other cases, it will be less pleasant but not emotionally damaging (for example, forcing players to make their characters use the lavatory). In some instances, though, it could be hurtful. The classic example of this is rape.

As I explained in Chapter 6, there are occasions when players are immersed to the extent that an assault on their character feels like an assault on them personally. If they knew this was a possibility before it happened, then no matter how bad it feels when it does happen they can blame only themselves. If I sit in the front row at the sea lion pool, I shouldn’t be surprised if I get wet; if I play a virtual world with PD, I shouldn’t be surprised if my persona gets killed. In either case, I should be surprised—and possibly deeply injured—if I were raped. It doesn’t fit the context; it’s not something I signed up for. Even if it did fit the context (plenty of wars in the past involved rape and pillage, so a brutally realistic historical world could perhaps justify including it), an explicit warning would be a good idea: So few worlds implement the concept of rape that it would come as a shock to find that one did even if it made perfect sense in the milieu.

Other real-world effects can also be disturbing. If you were to chop off some character’s leg in combat, a reasonable result might be that they couldn’t walk. Similarly, if you threw boiling water in their eyes, you might blind them. Some people are disabled in real life, and they could well play in your world. Is it right to show their disability in a negative light like this? What if their character suffers the same disability as the player? It’s tiresome being deaf in real life ²; why should anyone have to put up with it in the virtual world, too? It’s not like virtual deafness gives any great insight into the condition, so education is no grounds for inclusion.

What about illnesses and diseases? If your virtual world includes cigarettes, it might seem fun to give characters that over-indulge lung cancer. Hey, it’s responsible, too, encouraging people not to smoke. That’s not going to cut much ice with a player whose grandmother just died of lung cancer, though. Poisons also have to be handled thoughtfully: The sensibilities of people whose relatives went to Nazi death camps must be respected. I should point out that it’s by no means impossible to incorporate these themes into virtual worlds; the difficult part is doing so responsibly.

There are further examples of seemingly innocuous things in virtual worlds that can have real-world effects on people. In MUD2, there is (among other things) a piece of ham that characters can eat to restore lost stamina. Should a real-life vegetarian allow their character to eat the ham? Am I, having put the ham there, hurting the feelings of vegetarians? Should I remove it? Was I wrong ever to create it, knowing that it might offend vegetarians ³?

The problem with looking at the effects on players of virtual events is, of course, that people can be affronted by practically anything. Plenty of people in the real world are frightened of spiders, so should there be no spiders in virtual worlds so as not to alarm them? What about those people in the real world unlucky enough to be afraid of oranges? They do exist: Should their concerns not be given equal weight?

Personally, I take the view that the only morally consistent approach is for designers to be true to their own beliefs. Do what you want to do: If players don’t like it, they can stop playing. General content warnings, like film classifications, can

be used to forewarn people of what range of material they can expect. Beyond that, though, it’s up to players to decide whether they want to visit your world. Developers should not have to take out product liability insurance for content any more than publishers should have to for books. It’s for players to weigh the odds of participation, not for designers to second-guess them.

Morality: Another candidate for inclusion in a critical aesthetic?

Privacy

Anything you do in a virtual world can be logged or snooped. In commercial textual worlds, it probably will be; in graphical worlds, cover is rarely 100% at the moment but will become so eventually.

So, is this an invasion of privacy? No more than is a closed-circuit television system (CCTV) monitoring a shopping mall. Indeed, it’s probably less so, given that log files are only usually looked at when there’s been a complaint whereas CCTV cameras are watched the whole time (in theory, at least).

Well, that’s one point of view.

Here’s another. If I (as a player) issue a string of profanities at someone, impugning their real-life person, will they sue the developer or me? They’ll sue me, because the developer will argue ¹ that they are merely a common carrier with no control over what their players say. That being the case, they should need a wiretap warrant before they can record any of my communications. If they log me otherwise, they’re accepting responsibility for controlling what I say. They can’t claim I consented to be monitored when I signed their terms of service

agreement: That would mean I was consenting to a form of self-incrimination, which is counter to human rights legislation.

Before this drifts too far away from morality toward legality, here’s something else to think about. Suppose in a virtual world you stand around in a reasonably private space chatting to a friend. Both of you are adults, and both of you are okay with using strong language. The moment anyone else appears in the room, you tone down your vocabulary, but when they go you start inserting profanities again. Is this ethical behavior or not? Would it (still) be ethical if you knew that you were being logged, and that an administrator might therefore come across your gynecological language and be profoundly shocked? What if it wasn’t the presence of rude words that was offensive but your unorthodox political views?

Can you ever consider yourself to be in private in a virtual world, or must you always act as if someone is watching?

Addiction

Virtual world designers are creating something that they know is addictive. Addiction is a bad thing, because of its personal and social costs. At a moral level, are designers of virtual worlds little better than drug pushers?

The first person to question me on the ethics of making an intensely addictive experience available to unsuspecting members of the public was computer journalist Guy Kewney in the mid-1980s. His point was that even if I didn’t know MUD1 would be addictive when I started on it, I knew now and should therefore give some thought as to whether I should continue running it. This I did, and I concluded that although players might at times exhibit behaviors that could be considered symptomatic of addiction, it wasn’t that simple. Virtual worlds are places: You can’t be addicted to a virtual world any more

than you can be addicted to Las Vegas. You can be addicted to the things you do in a virtual world, as you can be addicted to the things you do in Las Vegas. Unlike Las Vegas, however, in MUD1 it wasn’t me who made the experience addictive, it was the players themselves through their imaginations and interactions.

No, it didn’t convince me then, either.

I certainly didn’t set out to make MUD1 addictive. I wanted it to be a place where people could be and become themselves. It just happened that for many people this turned out to be a very intense experience that they wanted to repeat again and again. The question I should have been asking was not whether playing in virtual worlds was addictive (if “addictive” is the right word, which in this context it almost certainly isn’t), but whether this addictiveness was a bad thing given the potential rewards. In this respect, I see it morally defensible on three counts:

• People come out of the experience as better individuals than they were when they went in.

• Most players would not develop as much if they did something else instead of playing in the virtual world.

• The process has a definite end. When your hero’s journey finishes, all signs of addiction/dependency/habit are gone.

Players of virtual worlds don’t all have periods of what could be called addiction to the experience, but even those who do will on the whole come out the better for it ¹. Virtual worlds are a force for good.

The problem is, not all virtual worlds satisfy the preceding criteria. Some, for example, use gambling-psychology feedback systems to drive their addictiveness, rather than the sheer freedom to be. The player is addicted but isn’t developing; they play to feed their addiction, not to end it. It’s all the worse when the virtual world is especially designed this way; accidental incompetence is a lesser crime than deliberate incompetence. As I mentioned in Chapters 5 and 6, most game-oriented virtual worlds have a certain inherent amount of addiction-promoting activity as a part of their gameplay; it helps their players have fun. Plenty of regular computer games also have it, however these don’t attract anywhere near the degree of dedication that virtual worlds are able to rely on. It’s the player’s development that is the critical “addiction;” that being the case, virtual worlds that deliberately implement in tandem with this a variable feedback system of rewards have something of an ethical case to answer.

The other common violation is in closure. If players are on some version of a hero’s journey and the virtual world designer, knowing this, interferes with their progress, they will have to play for longer to reach the end (if indeed they ever reach it at all). The virtual world itself may never “end,” but individual journeys must; the never-ending journey is an eternity of frustration. Give people an out and they’ll come back; force them to stay and they’ll go. Virtual worlds that move the winning post as players approach it are dealing out an unnecessary cruelty.

Mental Illness

This is more of a game management thing, but I thought I should mention it here because it does impact on designers.

Some players really are crazy. If you accept that the word “crazy” can be applied to an individual, then statistically some crazy people will play virtual worlds. A user base the size of EverQuest’s will include several bona fide psychopaths. That’s assuming that virtual worlds mirror the general population: It could be, for example, that the nature of these worlds is such that fewer crazy people play them. Alternatively, they could act as magnets. I suspect the latter

I’m aware that the word “crazy” is emotive; I used it here to make a point. Most of the people who suffer from various forms of mental illness are not crazy by any definition of the word. Some, however, are—dangerously so. What does your virtual world say to them? Are you responsible if they take what it says to heart?

The “crazy people” quandary is not unique to virtual worlds. Film, television, and computer games all suffer from the same problem. If you dramatize a killing spree, there is a possibility that it could inspire a seriously disturbed person to go on an actual killing spree. Where virtual worlds are unique is that they blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality until the two become one and the same. For someone who may have difficulty separating reality from fantasy at the best of times, this could prove too much. In such circumstances, can virtual world designers still hide behind the “you can’t legislate for crazy people” argument? If not, how could virtual worlds as an industry ever be viable?

Most mentally ill people who play virtual worlds are not, fortunately, crazy. They may have serious issues, and could even be a danger to themselves ¹, but they will listen to reason.

System administrators accept a duty of care for players while they are in their virtual world, and if it is apparent that someone is behaving worryingly oddly then it could be best for them to be barred entry. Of course, this could well make the individual’s problems worse, so it’s always wise to seek external advice first if possible. I’ve only ever had to do this twice (once with MUD1, once with MUD2), but for large-scale games it’s going to happen more often.

Designers of small-scale virtual worlds who are panicking at having just read this can probably calm down. I can’t comment on the legal issues, but from an ethical point of view you’re on solid ground as long as you act in good faith. If you see that someone needs help, and you give what you (or any reasonable person in your position would) believe to be help, then you can’t be expected to do more. The alternative is to do nothing, which may be the legally sensible position, but it’ll feel worse if something awful does happen.

There is ample anecdotal evidence that virtual worlds can help with certain kinds of psychological problems. Sometimes, they merely make life easier—an agoraphobic may not be cured of their fear by playing a virtual world, but at least they “get out” a little. It’s the same as with many physical disorders: You can play a virtual world with both legs in plaster. More interestingly, though, are situations where people use virtual worlds to work through personality problems and come out “cured.” I know of no formal medical studies of this phenomenon, but I’m convinced it happens. Whether designers can claim any responsibility for effecting such changes is another matter, of course; I suspect it’s more to do with the fundamental nature of virtual worlds, rather than anything value-added by designers. That said, it’s perfectly feasible for designers to remove this therapeutic value by interfering with the way players progress; it’s obvious, for example, that any self-

realization that comes from completing a hero’s journey is not going to happen if the designer never lets anyone finish.

Tempting though it is to feel all warm inside about how virtual worlds can help people with mental illness, there is another side to the coin. If we accept that virtual worlds can have tangible positive effects on the minds of players, then shouldn’t we also accept that they can have tangible negative effects, too? Could they make someone’s condition worse? Or could they give someone a problem who wouldn’t have had it otherwise?

The answer to the first question is yes; we saw this in the Chapter 6 discussion concerning psychology and virtual worlds. People can relive the same issues the same way time and time again, hardening their views rather than changing them. In most cases this is unfortunate, and it means they’re not going to get anything out of the virtual world; for the mentally ill, it could be beyond unfortunate and make their situation worse. If this happens, then it’s time for the player to seek professional help. Normally it would be the player’s friends who raised the alarm, but it could be the live team who has to deal with making the real-life phone calls to find out what the best response is.

On the whole, I believe that many more people benefit from playing virtual worlds than suffer, but then I’m a virtual world designer so it’s not like I’m going to say otherwise.

The second question—whether virtual worlds can cause mental problems—is very disquieting. It is almost certain that the intense experiences that virtual worlds are capable of delivering will push some people over the edge. They may develop anxiety attacks, delusions, fears of persecution—pretty well anything. The virtual world acts as a trigger. The crucial point is whether this is something that would probably have happened anyway, or whether it was induced by the virtual world?

The standard defense, used in many industries, is that some people are predisposed to this kind of thing and you can’t blame the author, composer, artist, director, or news editor whose work tipped the balance. Virtual world designers could argue this too. However, it’s not quite that simple. Virtual worlds have a strong psychological element to their design. Could it be that with their huge capacity to promote introspection they might cause some people to become neurotic or worse when no other everyday experience would? I’m not suggesting that designers would attempt such a thing deliberately, but that’s not to say it couldn’t happen by accident.

If it did, this would be cause for concern. There would be a danger to playing virtual worlds that was not associated with any other leisure-time activity.

It’s impossible to gauge the possible extent of the problem without a formal study. However, given that anecdotally it’s difficult to say whether it happens at all, the incidence is likely to be low. It’s also quite likely that obsessive behavior will be picked up by friends or the live team before things come to a head, and that any potential catastrophe can therefore be averted. Designers of small-scale worlds where everyone knows everyone else can therefore probably rest easy. Designers of large-scale worlds can also probably do so if the mechanisms are in place for detection and prevention.

Virtual worlds with mental healthcare schemes? It could happen.

Religion

As I mentioned in Chapter 6, I’m an atheist. All religion looks like an aspect of anthropology to me. I see where religions come from, I see why they succeed and fail, I see why people follow them, and I see how they propagate. I also see why my making

any observations about religions is likely to be highly contentious no matter how impartial I aim to be, therefore I shall keep this short.

The necessity of my having to make the preceding disclaimer in this book transfers directly to virtual worlds. If you want to know what the phrase “treading on eggshells” means, this is a great way to learn. In real life, it’s almost impossible to mention religion without offending someone; the same is true of religion in virtual worlds. Yet for many people, their religion is the absolute focus of their life. So what does the designer do?

There are basically four options:

• Discreetly ignore religion. Simply never mention anything about it.

• Make up a religion (or use a dead one). Here, the virtual world conveys the sense that religion or spirituality is important, but it doesn’t use anything that anyone actually believes.

• Include references to real-world religions, but only passively. You might have a cathedral, but it has no tangible effects in the virtual world beyond its physical properties.

• Embrace one or more real-world religions. This can be explicit (rituals and ceremonies that have tangible effects) or implicit (the virtual world conveys a system of values and beliefs without directly referencing the source). When implicit, it can be combined with one of the other options mentioned previously.

Discreetly ignoring religion is the safest approach, especially if it makes sense in the context. This is the way most movies do it: If a character in a screenplay is a priest, he’s a priest for a reason. Science Fiction virtual worlds work this way.

When the genre demands a religion, the usual solution is to make up one ¹. Fantasy religions in Fantasy worlds are generally accepted; those who don’t accept them usually don’t accept the basic Fantasy premise either. Interestingly, the “need” for religion in Fantasy worlds stems mainly from the assumption that cleric-class characters must obtain their healing-type spells as gifts of their deity. Although this is a common fiction, it’s not one that is a necessity; despite its religion-influenced creation myths there are no priestly types in Lord of the Rings, for example (and few wizards).

The third option is to put in real-world religious paraphernalia, but not imbue it with any special functionality. Players may choose to conduct weddings in temples or churches or wherever, but to the virtual world engine none of this has any significance. The designer treats a religious building like anything else—a castle, a cave, a boatyard—and religious objects as no different from other expensive or coveted items. This is the safest approach for an historical genre where religion plays a part without being the central theme ². For example, clergymen and churches have a place in Wild West mythology, but they are stylized to the extent that they can be used sensibly without offense. In later settings this also can work, although you’d probably need a reason to use it rather than simply ignore religion altogether ³.

Finally, designers will often work threads of their own philosophy into a virtual world, and this could include their religious beliefs. A deliberately allegorical work would be more difficult to construct, but it’s by no means impossible. Overtly religious virtual worlds that give tangible virtual world effects to implementations of real-world religious practices are making themselves targets for all kinds of troublemakers, whether from their own faith or some other.

Even seemingly innocuous things can be hurtful: Making Santa Claus appear every Christmas and give out presents is “only a bit of fun,” but to a non-Christian it could appear evangelical. Not having Christmas in the virtual world when it’s in full swing in the real world is also saying something, though. Should characters have a “religion” flag that turns on the effects of a religion? Or is it then unfair when Christian characters are given presents (that is, tangible advantages) by Santa Claus but no one else is?

The religious sensibilities of players can cause design issues elsewhere. Earlier, I mentioned that I put ham into MUD2 to challenge vegetarians to look at their beliefs, but it also challenges Jews and Moslems too. Even if it were some other foodstuff, that could still give Moslems a problem during Ramadan. If your virtual self eats virtual food in a virtual world during daylight hours, are you breaking your fast or not? Is it the principle or the actuality that matters? What if the virtual world had its own clock or calendar that was out of step with the real one? Would that make a difference?

Virtual worlds can depict or allow activities that are legal in the real world but that are disapproved of by established religions. Homosexuality, alcohol use, usury, and non-pacifism are all frowned on by one religion or another. Some religions look on the depiction of their symbols, buildings, or teachers as blasphemy, whereas for others it’s good publicity. Some think

that showing “evils” such as black magic or devilry is corrupting, but others think it’s a case of “know thine enemy.”

Of particular difficulty is when there is a schism within a religion. Virtual worlds are very good at giving male and female characters equal opportunities, but some creeds are divided over whether such equality transfers to them. Some versions of Christianity allow female priests, but others don’t. Not only does the designer have to choose which religion to depict, but which sect of that religion.

Another problem with using real-life religions is omission. A cyberpunk world might have references to fundamentalist Christian churches, high-tech Buddhist and Hindu temples, but have nothing about Islam at all. This definitely insults either Islam or the other religions mentioned, but it’s not obvious which!

Then there are the non-standard religions. Some years ago I wrote a series of children’s stories that I put on my web site. One of those stories concerned vampires ⁴. People would look up vampires in search engines and, finding 18 references in my story, would read it. They would then send me emails criticizing me for mocking their religion and publishing blasphemous untruths; about half would include dark threats about what they were going to do to me ⁵. I now have a link on the page explaining the context, which has cut the number of complaints to practically zero; these people may have unconventional views, but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid. The point is that they had beliefs every bit as strong as those held by adherents of conformist religions. A designer hoping to avoid confrontation

with zealots can reduce the possibility of its happening, but can’t eliminate it.

There are really two sets of morals involved here. The first is the system of morality that comes with a religion; there is a practical aspect to this, in that if your virtual world promotes a morality that runs counter to a particular religion’s views, you shouldn’t expect to get many players from that congregation. If you go really overboard, there could be real-world protests or worse.

The second set of morals involved is your own. I’ve assumed throughout this chapter that you will do what you think is “right,” of course, but religion raises the tricky point of how to treat views you think are “wrong” (but that other people think are “right”). I used to know someone who refused to believe Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem; he accepted the proof, just not the theorem. Whatever your own system of morality, someone else’s could well seem as absurd as that. If a player asked you to remove references to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem because it was wrong, would you do it? What if they asked you to remove references to Easter? Or Ramadan? Or the Festival of Lights?

Real-life laws make some boundaries clear, but the others you must set yourself.