# Whence the Symbols Come LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- An analysis of internal symbolism is justifiable here. Virtual world designers have many options available to them about what they put into a virtual world, what they leave out, how they put it in, and so on. In selecting between all the possibilities available to them, designers are employing their artistic faculties; furthermore, they are doing so deliberately. They want (for design/artistic reasons) to achieve an effect, therefore they arrange the virtual world to create it. So what weapons do designers have in their armory? And how do they employ these to tell players things? Well, first let’s look at what they don’t have in their armory. They don’t have the ability to cut, fade, or do anything else that shatters the basic “you are here” conceit. They have no pausing, saving, replaying, scene breaks, or acts. These limitations make them different from both film and computer games in fundamental ways. Players get to pan, track, and zoom; players get to decide where they point the camera; players decide whether they see themselves in first, second, or third person. Designers give them this control, and don’t get it back. Although players can in theory record and edit their own content for public consumption, this facility is not available to designers; the nearest they get to it is the patch cycle, which is something of a blunt instrument (but nevertheless usable, as we shall see shortly). So although film directors are concerned with what to shoot and how to shoot it [^27], virtual world designers are not because the players make those decisions. Instead, designers are concerned with what to cause to exist and how to cause it to exist [^28]. Composition is of static objects and the starting locations of non-static objects (or restarting locations, for static spawns) [^29]. It is important to distinguish between the art that the designer creates within the virtual world and the art created by others in the same context. If a designer lays out boulders in a certain way to imbue a location with a particular feel, that’s not the same as if a player takes those boulders and builds a statue out of them. They’re both works of art, but they’re not works of the same art; the former enables the latter. It’s not like sampling or collage, which reuses art in different ways; it’s art-within-art. Chapter 6, “It’s Not a Game, It’s a …,” mentioned virtual theater companies whose players [^30] perform on the stage that virtual worlds provide. Again, this is art in its own right, but again it differs from the art of the world’s designer. Why? Because the symbolism is different. The same objects mean different things to the different artistic traditions. There’s also the issue of ownership. Developers can and do claim legal ownership of the entire database that defines their virtual world and all images generated from it. To reproduce so much as a screenshot, you need their permission. This has implications on art-within-art, in that an artist can’t claim ownership of their work even if it’s of higher quality than the art it is within. If Leonardo Da Vinci had painted The Last Supper on the sidewalk, he couldn’t have dug it up and taken it home. Why? Because it wasn’t his sidewalk. Similarly, any art created in virtual worlds is fundamentally transient, with the sole exception of that intrinsic to the virtual world itself. Sea level stays where it is until the designer says otherwise. As a bit of an aside, although ownership of the bytes is not (or should not be) in dispute, ownership of the photons they generate is perhaps less defensible. Virtual worlds are places. If I visited New York and took a photograph of a street scene, I would not be violating anyone’s copyright. Sure, if I were doing something disruptive such as a movie shoot, then I’d need permission from the authorities first. For a snapshot, though, forget it! Furthermore, any artistic statement made by this would be all mine. The cult 1960s TV show The Prisoner was made in the Welsh village of Portmeirion and owed much of its other-worldliness to this location’s singular appearance. Its architect, Clough Williams-Ellis, did not “own” The Prisoner artistically, though; he made his statement through his architecture, and left its interpretation to individuals. Designers of virtual worlds need to let go; if they don’t they’re not creating virtual worlds, they’re creating something else. Virtual world designers provide the tools and the toys. They covenant with the players that, within the virtual world, these: - Have value - Have meaning - Make sense When the sense they make is two-fold (text and subtext), that’s symbolism. [^27]: Students of film call this mise-en-scène, which is French for “setting in scene” or “staging.” [^28]: Not so much mise-en-scène as mise-en-forme. [^29]: It’s easy for designers to underestimate the power of context—that is, the statement they make by the juxtaposition of objects. For an excellent essay on this subject (albeit in the context of single-player worlds), see: Roger Giner-Sorolla, Crimes Against Mimesis. April, 1996. http://bang.dhs.org/if/library/design/mimesis.html. [^30]: In two senses of the word.