Groups of Players as Groups of People

If someone makes a statement with which you disagree, you might want to take issue with them. There are social norms that dictate how far you can go with your riposte—verbal abuse

warrants in the first instance only a verbal defense, for example. Although this can get out of hand, on the whole it works. If an individual says something, then other people can challenge them about it.

What if it’s not the individual who makes the statement but an organization of which the individual is a member? If a political party issues a general pronouncement, then that announcement is on behalf of the party’s members. If you disagreed, you could reasonably expect to bring it up with any members of that party you knew, to take them to task. Sure, they might not agree either, but what to do about it then becomes their problem.

It gets fuzzier for groups that people are members of non-voluntarily. If two countries are at war, should they round up each other’s nationals and intern them? It happened in the 1940s. The innocent suffer, but the argument is that far fewer innocents suffer overall than would if enemy agents were free to wage a campaign of sabotage behind the lines.

Terrorism is another area where this logic can be applied. If you know that all terrorists are members of a particular religious group, can you intern members of that group that haven’t committed any crime but that are acting like they might were they given the chance? Membership of a religion is voluntary—plenty of people convert to other religions—so why not? This happened in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.

I’m sure you can see the slippery slope here. By taking a series of seemingly short but justifiable steps, pretty soon you reach the stage where individuals are frightened to get on a bus because of the color of their skin or the way they dress. In virtual worlds, the effects of stereotyping are not quite so worrying, but nevertheless there are a number of areas where people accept the status quo without perhaps considering what that means.

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 ¹ 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?

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.

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 do 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 do 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.

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 do 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 moving toward it ². Knowing what you know about immersion, would it be ethical or unethical to go the whole way?

Changing yourself is easier than changing a stereotype. You decide on you; everyone else decides on a stereotype.

Social Engineering

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 suffer from their perceived negative effects ¹. Do virtual worlds incite, reinforce, or train?

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 do 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)

• 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 the list, the more likely it is to be of use ²).

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 do not 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” 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 do what your boss tells you to do 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 do 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 do 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 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 song of popular culture is another matter ³.

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 them ⁴. If anything, they are more likely to subjectify NPCs than to objectify 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 do 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. Semantic memory is an abstraction of episodic memory ⁵; 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 do need to buy a ticket.

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 they 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 do 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 has on individuals.

If you give someone something that they are not expecting, but which is consistent 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 do 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 do 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 do like it, it becomes part of their implicit 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 do 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 façade 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 do 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 can make it consider drinking. Is it my responsibility if it does drink? Or is it the horse’s?