# Some Questions

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

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In developing a critical aesthetic for virtual worlds, we need to answer some difficult questions. I won’t pretend I answer any of them, but here they are anyway:

- How is the “value” of the virtual world experience determined?

- What do you need to understand when you have fun, and how do people with different understandings interact?

- What rules apply to all virtual worlds, and what are their limitations?

- What symbolism exists within the virtual world itself and within the way it is presented?

Earlier in this book, I advanced the theory that the value of the virtual world experience is that individuals come to understand more about themselves through the virtual world. This is only one interpretation, though: Players will rarely cite identity issues as the reason they play a virtual world. Then again, when players are asked what they do find fun, they come up with the same answers that gave rise to my player types model in the first place. When developers and publishers are asked to determine the value of the virtual world experience, they point to the length of time people keep active accounts; although this may be a metric, it’s not a value. I don’t want to know what people are prepared to lose in terms of time or money; I want to know what they gain.

The player development model I presented in Chapter 3, “Players,” describes what players need to understand when they have fun. It also showed the way that players at different stages of development interact with one another [^13]. The result is as much of a formal Theory of Virtual Worlds that we have at the moment—that is, about half of a framework.

The third question has a facetious answer: The rules that apply to virtual worlds are those imposed by reality. Reality always wins. Although this is true, when it comes to playing virtual worlds, a number of “rules” are nevertheless in place. Designers don’t have to create a virtual world with a physics that looks kind of like real-life physics, but they do. They do it because these are part of the paradigm. I discussed the way virtual worlds hang together and the rationale behind it in Chapter 4, “World Design” and Chapter 5, “Life in the Virtual World;” this

isn’t to say that new paradigms won’t arise, but for the moment we’re still exploring what we have.

So that’s three questions out of the way.

I shall attempt to address the final question in the remainder of this chapter. Because it involves practice that has evolved over time in the design of virtual worlds, it doesn’t link directly into the rest of the theory, although it does touch on it. Nevertheless, its subject matter is as much a part of the theory as words are of language.

That doesn’t mean finding an answer is going to be easy, though.


[^13]: Only for the four “original” types, though; the eight “new” types map onto the original four, but I didn’t do the type/type comparisons for them as there are 36 combinations.