# Content Created by Players LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- Back in Chapter 1, I described the two mechanisms by which players can add content: Within context and without context. In my discussion thus far, I’ve assumed that any content added by regular players within context, as with house building in Ultima Online. What are the implications of allowing them to add it without context, as with arbitrary room construction in LambdaMOO? A first observation is that allowing players to build out of context passes control of the critical aesthetic to those who consume it. This implies accessibility, removing the pretentiousness and snobbishness that comes from artistic elitism (which I’ve undoubtedly been guilty of demonstrating in this chapter). One player’s opinion is just as good as any other player’s opinion. A second observation is that this critical aesthetic is recursive. A player’s creation when considered as a work of art is legitimate purely because it was created, not because it was created in line with some theory. Thus, any theory that tried to explain players’ creations would contradict its own existence. The existence of worlds where players can build has implications for virtual worlds where they can’t (and for which the existence of a Theory of Virtual Worlds is less problematical). It ensures that the theory can’t stray too distant from the player, because otherwise it would be exposed as distant. Players will create according to what they perceive as the critical norms, but if those norms become too esoteric, then they won’t. This gives designers of worlds where players can’t build a ground wire. Naïve art may be naïve, but it’s still art—and it’s art that informs designers’ own art. Virtual world designers may be better at creating their art than the average player, but it’s the average player who judges them. If the average player lacks the critical faculties to appreciate the work, it’s the designer who is asking too much, not the player who has learned too little. On the final day of the 2002 Game Developers Conference, there was a panel discussion about the next generation of virtual worlds. On the panel were Raph Koster, Rich Lawrence, Jessica Mulligan, Jake Song, and Gordon Walton. Raph’s opinion was that the next generation of virtual worlds would see much more player-generated content. A question from the floor asked how designers should deal with this, given that 99% of it would be crap [^51]. Gordon Walton summarized this as meaning that most people have the desire to be creative, but not the skill. Raph Koster turned it around, in a celebrated defense of the ability of players to create: Players don’t care that 99% of everything is crap because they see their own creations as being in the 1% that isn’t. Virtual worlds give the ability to create art to people who never had a platform for it before. People want to express themselves, and in virtual worlds they can. Film directors, writers, poets, and painters should get over themselves, because the rest of the world is coming. This is a rousing sentiment. Raph’s suggested first step to achieving such a goal was to allow in-context creation in virtual worlds, which allows for authorship within authorship; whether in a large-scale virtual world this could ever be extended to designer-level authorship is less clear, however [^52]. Although I applaud the ideals involved here, I’m not convinced they’ll work in practice (at least not as described). Players may like to think their creations are in the 1% that is excellent, but when they are disabused of the notion they will rarely be happy. My elder daughter has a web site with cartoons on it that she has created for her friends [^53]. She likes it, her friends like it, she’s happy. Someone else I know has a web site with cartoons on it that she hopes will attract the interest of animators [^54]. The cartoons are crap. Animators make polite noises, but no way are they ever going to give her any money. She is frustrated, she is unhappy, and every push she makes to convince anyone that her work is good is met with yet more evidence to the contrary. So long as people don’t set their sights too high when they create things in virtual worlds, it’s fine. If they do—and this is perhaps the default—then it turns sour. There is an interesting possibility that virtual worlds can be used as gateways to subworlds. This happens in some textual worlds already, where there is an overarching “context” world onto which players build their own public or private extensions; it’s not yet the case for 3D graphical worlds, but that will surely come [^55]. Consider, for example, allowing players major build powers within their own pocket zones in EverQuest 2: EQ2 would act as a gateway, providing plenty of content for newbies, but players could build their own games within the game. Some would be bad, some would be good, and some would be good enough that people might even consider paying their creators to enter them. In time, the host world need not have any gameplay elements at all; it would merely act as a portal to the worlds it supported. What would result would be a kind of World Wide Web for streamed content, with players creating places rather than pages, hyperspaces [^56] rather than hypertext. Were such a system to evolve, the applicability of this book would fall a level, because it assumes that virtual worlds are self-contained. If they could contain or can connect to other (arbitrary) virtual worlds, or if other worlds could connect uncontrollably to it, the artistic integrity of the world as a whole would be called into question (but not necessarily to its sub-worlds). It’s also interesting to consider the impact on the hero’s journey metaphor of making creation the primary activity in a virtual world. People play virtual worlds to discover themselves. They can do this through a hero’s journey or through the self-expression that comes through art. Which of these does the inherent nature of virtual worlds best support? Can they exist side by side, or will one always dominate the other? Which is the more effective? Which would keep people playing for longer? Which can virtual worlds deliver in ways that other forums for artistic endeavor can’t? [^51]: This is a misquotation of Theodore Sturgeon, who said that 90% of everything is crud. Some sources report that he also added that the remaining 10% is worth dying for. [^52]: There are worlds in development that attempt to address these problems. Pirates of the Burning Sea (http://www.burningsea.com), for example, envisages player-generated content being peer-reviewed for acceptance. I remain skeptical, but am open to persuasion. [^53]: http://www.jennybartle.com [^54]: URL not given, to protect me from her wrath. [^55]: Furcadia already does it for 2D worlds. [^56]: Unfortunately, because this word is used for a well-known Science Fiction trope, I doubt it’s going to catch on here. “Hyperplace” would work, but place is not analogous to text.