Population

Let’s take a closer look at the inhabitants of virtual worlds. Basically, there are three sorts:

• Characters. These are run by players.

• Non-player characters. These are run by the virtual world. They look like players’ characters, and would think they were the same if given the AI.

• Monsters. These are run by the virtual world, but neither look like nor think they are players’ characters.

We’ll start with the effect that NPC population has on the fabric of the virtual world because it raises issues important to the other two. Note that there is also a shadowy fourth sort of inhabitant, non-player players, which accounts for people who need to visit the virtual world but not play in it; I’ll consider these separately last.