# Ethos

LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt)

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What kind of a virtual world do you want?

To a large extent, it depends on the players. Where will they come from? What will their background be? What player types will dominate? Why will people eventually leave?

Players bring aspects of their real-world community—their culture—into the virtual world with them. Part of the point of virtual worlds lies in being able to pick and choose what you leave behind. Culture is that which is passed from generation to generation without being inherited; virtual worlds let you rethink what you’ve been taught at every level.

One player may find this a liberating experience and take a more progressive attitude in real life; another might despair of the superficial values and reaffirm their real-life cultural anchors. It doesn’t really matter which: The point is that players must have the option of stepping out of their culture; whether they stay out or step back is irrelevant.

If players do step out, though, what do they step into? It can’t be a wild maelstrom of anarchy, because otherwise players could only interact transiently with one another and the virtual world would not survive. The virtual world must itself have a culture—one supported by its community in general. Sure, it’s not as deep as a real-life culture, but it’s a culture nonetheless.

How does this culture arise? It emerges consensually from the player community. As noted in Chapter 3, this is something designers can shape but can’t control.

The theory works as follows:

- The designer determines an ethos, and fixes the virtual world to reward activities that exemplify this ethos.

- Players who share the designer’s ethos seed the virtual world.

- The virtual world’s design attracts players hopefully compatible with its ethos.

- Thereafter, it’s mainly self-selecting (newbies either take the ethos on board or don’t like the atmosphere and leave).

- The live team can reinforce or undermine the ethos by example.

In practice, designers are often cheerfully unaware of the extent to which they set the tone of their virtual world. They seed it with people whose shared ethos is to find ways to exploit or otherwise abuse the virtual world. Cynical marketing techniques attract players to an image of the virtual world that doesn’t necessarily match the product. Newbies who don’t like the culture damage it before they leave. The live team spends all its time firefighting and doesn’t have the staff to do anything more cerebral [^1].

That said, the exercise isn’t entirely pointless. There may be obstacles piled at the window, but if a single shaft of light gets through it can be enough to see by. A virtual world drawing players from advertisements on first-person shooter web sites will be different from the same software drawing players from advertisements on chess web sites, but some attitudes may prevail in both.

As to what ethos to adopt, well that’s really up to the designer. Be sure you do have one, though; if players can’t sense how they should behave, the law of the jungle applies, and as with any question of morality, different people have different ideas. However, there are some things that are more conducive to the prosperity of virtual worlds than others. Many of these occur in multiple philosophies [^2] and will usually appear in some form by default anyway. Of those attitudes that don’t, you should probably consider promoting some or all of the following:

- Reality is another place.

- A virtual action with real-world effect is a real action.

- Yours is just one way of many to play.

- There’s no stigma to role-playing.

- Newbies aren’t children.

- Evilness is not a winning strategy.

- It isn’t rude to say hello.


[^1]: Sometimes, the customer support staff develops its own rogue culture independently, which then becomes embedded in that of the virtual world. If the staff has a lax attitude to its responsibilities (for example, fixing bugs), players will develop lax attitudes to theirs (for example, behaving civilly).
[^2]: Hinduism: “Do naught to others which if done to thee, would cause thee pain.” Mahabharata 5:5-7. Zoroastrianism: “Whatever is disagreeable to yourself, do not do unto others.” Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29. Buddhism: “Hurt not others with that which pains yourself.” Udana-Varga 5:18. Confucianism: “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” Analects 15:23.