A Chemistry for Virtual Worlds

In screenplays, every action and every piece of dialogue must have a purpose. Movies are so expensive to make that anything that doesn’t advance the plot or round out a character must be ruthlessly cut. This even applies to comedies: You may laugh at the joke, but if the joke weren’t there, then at a purely structural level there would be a minor plot hole.

Virtual worlds don’t have quite the same financial or narrative constraints. It’s not the case that everything must have a purpose, but everything ¹ ought to have a potential purpose ². The players may determine a different purpose entirely to the one intended, deliberately or otherwise, but so long as they find some purpose they’re happy. It’s very frustrating to look for an object’s use when it doesn’t actually have one, and even worse if your complaints bring only hoots of laughter from the live team.

In screenplays, the dialogue, action, characters, and locations are the “atoms” that are built up into the “molecules” of scenes. Each atom has a purpose; using a different atom will change the chemistry of the resulting molecule, making it react differently with the other molecules that make up the screenplay as a whole. Sometimes an atom can work at multiple levels, as in the example of a one-liner in a comedy: It might make you smile, it might move the plot forward a notch, it may say something about the character who utters it (or the character who is its butt), it could influence the pacing, it might even make a point out of context for the screenplay itself altogether. And this applies to every line out of 110 pages of lines? Therein lies the art of the screenwriter.

Virtual world design documents have similar atoms: objects, commands, characters, and locations. What molecules are these atoms built into? Quests?

At a tangible level, yes. Players want things to do, and by arranging design atoms such that in combination they enable the solving of quests (whether generated by the world itself of by its players), the whole can behave differently from its parts. Quests are valid design molecules, but they’re not the ones I’m going to talk about here. This discussion concerns the symbols used in virtual worlds, and symbols need both a tangible and an intangible meaning ³. Quests do have intangible meaning, but it’s to the individual player at a hero’s journey level ⁴.

Designers use tangible objects to construct intangible meaning by combining them to influence breadth, depth, and atmosphere.

Breadth means player choice. The size of the world, the number of objects within it, the variety of commands: Breadth is form. Depth means understanding. The effects of commands, the complexity of the physics, the ability to use things in unintended ways: Depth is function. Where breadth reflects the range of opportunities that players have to change to the world, depth reflects the extent of change that each individual opportunity can effect.

When a newbie joins a virtual world, it’s the breadth that interests them. They want to know that there is depth but they don’t want to be exposed to it (otherwise it will seem too daunting ⁵). Depth is for more experienced players, for whom breadth is unsatisfying. The further along their development track a player is, the more they will favor depth over breadth.

In terms of symbolism, depth is easier to deal with than breadth. Breadth is by definition global to the virtual world, therefore any differences in breadth that might be picked up by players as symbolic have to be in global systems. If, for example, there were 50 different ways to combine fruit to make desserts but only five legal weapon/armor configurations, that would tell players that combat was not as important as cookery in this virtual world, or at least that cookery was more important than they might ordinarily think.

Depth effects can be more local. If the kobolds in one part of a virtual world have no names and are of indeterminate age and gender, yet the ones elsewhere have first names, surnames, families, and children, this says that the ones here are not as important as the ones elsewhere. If players notice this, they will act on the information (although whether they choose to emancipate or slay the unnamed kobolds is another matter, of course).

Unfortunately, too few players are attuned to virtual world design enough to realize that differences in breadth and depth may be deliberate. They’ll see them as careless inconsistencies or bugs. Actually, they may well be right a lot of the time and they are bugs; this merely compounds the problem of using breadth or depth to say anything beyond the basics of what players are able to do and how doing these things affects the virtual world. Breadth and depth, while something that designers do build from the design atoms available to them, don’t yet have the fidelity necessary to be used symbolically.

With atmosphere, at last, we have a way of using virtual world mechanisms and objects as symbols that players actually interpret as symbols.

Atmosphere is the means by which designers influence players’ moods. It can be active (for example, it tells the players they are in danger), passive (for example, it puts players at ease), or interactive (conducive to exploitation by players). Atmosphere is used to

• Signal the start or end of an action sequence.

• Signal a breathing space during an action sequence.

• Throw players off their guard, ready for a big surprise.

• Warn or encourage players.

• Reward or punish players.

• Hint at what is to come.

• Facilitate various social activities.

• Make a philosophical or ethical point. (This may or may not be in combination with any of the above.)

Some obvious ways to suggest atmosphere are

• Open versus closed form. Cramped areas restrict choice, wide areas open it up; dungeons are more oppressive than wilderness. When players enter a very narrow passage or descend underground stairs, they know their options are being limited; if they continue, it symbolizes their readiness to accept the danger. When players enter a vast plain, they know their options are maximized; if they continue, it symbolizes their readiness to accept responsibility.

• Lightness versus darkness. The less you know, the more easily you’re spooked. The same applies to other sensory information that the virtual world supplies: Sudden silence is also spooky. When players find that the light levels are falling, they can interpret this as a warning. If they keep on going, they are accepting the challenge of whatever awaits them. If they see light at the end of the tunnel, it tells them their ordeals are nearing their end.

• Vistas versus corners. Corners hide information. You know the information is there, but you don’t know what it is. The less you’re told, the more you want to learn—but the more you fear you won’t like what you discover. A passageway that has a number of short, sharp turns increases the sense of urgency; a long, straight passageway reduces it ⁶. On the other hand, a vista can

symbolize the distance of goals: You emerge from the trees to see a vast tract of open country, on the far horizon of which you can just make out the spires of the City of Bronze. The designer is showing you what you’ll have to go through to get there: By proceeding, you’re reaffirming your goal.

• Familiarity versus alienness. A sudden change of terrain or architecture can induce either relief or a sense of unease. The more sudden the change, the greater the impact. This may look like a regular Middle Eastern bazaar, but when it gives way to a snowfield there’s a jarring of expectations. This is not a normal bazaar. Do you investigate, or do you get out before anything dreadful happens? More gradual changes can serve to label areas: The more spiky the architecture, the more spiky the inhabitants ⁷. The same technique can be used on a smaller scale. Your blacksmith’s hammer breaks, you get a new one, it happens all the time; this time, though, the replacement hammer changes its appearance the first time you use it, and makes a noise different to that of regular hammers. It tokenizes the unknown: Do you explore it, or shy away?

• Ease versus difficulty. In the big city, you’re asked to deliver bread; in the frontier town, you’re asked to kill bandits. Can you stand the heat, or do you get out of the kitchen? By giving players harder quests in rougher areas, designers inform them that these are tougher areas. If some NPC asks you to wipe out a nest of vampires and you refuse, you’ve nevertheless been told that this is the kind of place where there are nests of

vampires. If you go wandering off on your own, you can’t say you weren’t warned. The quests act as notices that players should heed.

• Large versus small. Big monsters are strong monsters; tall NPCs are authoritative NPCs. Smaller monsters can be dominated; smaller NPCs are servile. Tiny monsters may be fast, poisonous, or otherwise awkward; tiny NPCs have some hidden power. An impression of size can send potent, primal messages to players. It’s why real-world animals such as cats will try to make themselves look bigger when facing off an opponent.

• Beauty versus ugliness. Breathtaking panoramas and glorious palaces can generate feelings of awe and wonder. Misshapen creatures and ruined buildings can make an otherwise normal situation seem unpleasant. Beauty represents success, ugliness failure; beauty goodness, ugliness evil. It operates at different levels (the superficially beautiful can be ugly deep down, and vice versa), but the symbolism remains the same. This is one area where the players call the shots: They’ll assume beauty to be indicative of goodness, safety, aspiration, and so on even if the designer just wants to make their world look better than competing virtual worlds.

There are many others, too. Intense colors mean warmth, vibrancy, and action, whereas washed-out colors mean coldness, placidity, and melancholy; changes over time can question the permanence of your knowledge and your willingness to adapt. Individual designers have their own styles of controlling the atmosphere of locations and situations; all are subtly different.

Symbols can be combined and contrasted to create new symbols: The alien can be beautiful; a corner can turn into the light; warmth and softness can make a cramped space seem secure. The priests of Gheen wear sumptuous gowns but disfigure their faces with hideous scars.

Designers place the symbols in context; players interpret them and divine the context. Thus, we have a basic chemistry for our critical aesthetic.