# Hands On or Hands Off? LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- Intangible content in virtual worlds will arise naturally through the interactions of players. Designers can and should assist these interactions, by providing tangible means of support and encouragement. How far should they go, though? In particular, should they be proactive to the extent that they provide for live team “leader” players to catalyze these interactions? In traditional tabletop role-playing games, the referee not only designs the game world but can lead the players through it. Players perceive a highly detailed world because the referee can resolve everything they do, to whatever depth. Referees don’t have to think up everything in advance; they can create some of it in response to the actions that players take. In a virtual world, the designers have to put everything in to begin with. There’s a bedrock level of detail beyond which players can’t descend. This is most noticeable in the behavior of mobiles, none of which have remotely convincing artificial intelligence [^6]. There is, however, something that can be done about this. People could be allowed to play on the same “side” as the virtual world, as an adjunct to it. There is already a community management team; why not allow specialized members to participate in the virtual world in character? There are several levels at which such characters could operate: - Undercover. Nobody knows they’re part of the live team, but they make life interesting for other players through what they do. They’re like audience plants who “volunteer” to help magicians [^7]. - Entertainer. Everyone knows these people are part of the live team, but by their ready wit and repartee they manage to make the world more fun. - Performer. Players in a Lord of the Rings universe will want to meet Gandalf—he’s part of the package. The live team therefore hires an actor to play the role. - Guide. “So you guys have never visited the caves of Drachen, huh? Stick with me and just maybe you won’t get hurt too bad….” - Referee. These are guides that have out-of-context world editing abilities. If a player on a quest decides to do something inventive that wasn’t planned for, the referee can produce a tangible response. - Unseen referee. The quest is managed behind the scenes. Players don’t know that the reason there’s a key lying in front of them is because they didn’t search the body of the troll and find it earlier. The hands-on approach is used mainly for manufactured quests. It had been applied for other purposes right from the start: MUD1 had organized events called “spectaculars” that involved much hands-on activity by a wiz-level administrator. Only with plotted quests, however, were the virtues of participant management to become fully apparent. Avalon pioneered this idea commercially in the early 1990s, becoming formalized in Achaea circa 1996. Nowadays, some of the products of the innovative textual world company, Skotos, rely so much on the activities of highly experienced referees (which it calls storytellers) that they would be almost dead without them; with them, however, they are profoundly alive. If a hands-on style can deliver this degree of immersion while fostering community, why would a designer not want it? Firstly, it’s expensive. There may be players willing to do it for free, but quality control and time management are difficult to maintain. Also, developers are sensitive to accusations that they are exploiting their player base, and therefore prefer to have people on their payroll [^8]. Secondly, the deeper levels of event management only really work in smaller virtual worlds. If there are 2,000 players milling around and 40 referees running quests, it’s harder for them not to tread on each other’s toes than if there are 100 players and 4 referees (despite the latter’s greater density of referees to players). Thirdly, the players don’t all like it; specifically, the players who don’t get to participate in organized events don’t like it. To an achiever, seeing someone (particularly someone else) go up levels after being “walked” through a quest is galling. Getting help from community management—it’s like cheating! Socializers may view intervention as patronizing. It’s a virtual world, not a theme park. Skotos targets its games at players who do like this degree of personal touch; virtual worlds that don’t may not have the same results. Fourthly, it’s very difficult to test quests and events prior to running them. There may be unwanted effects (such as bugs) or side effects (such as characters getting frequently killed). Occasional events with wide coverage can be very popular, but they tend to have a greater chance of going wrong, too. Finally, no matter what spin you put on it, using real, live people to make your content interesting is like an admission of defeat. It says that a virtual world is neither sufficiently compelling to be interesting in its own right, nor sufficiently rich to enable players to make it interesting themselves. Of course, it could be argued that no virtual world is so compelling, but that’s not how designers see it. Besides, professional mourners can spoil a funeral, rather than enhance it. [^6]: If they did, how could developers hope to control them (both practically and morally)? [^7]: The irony with these is that to succeed, players must not recognize them for what they are. This means that when the live team sets up large-scale events, players don’t credit them with having done so. In Ultima Online, players were found to express disappointment at never having participated in an organized event when at that very moment they actually were participating in one! [^8]: The fact that developers risk being taken to court under minimum wage legislation if they don’t is perhaps another factor.