Censorship on Designing Virtual Worlds

Unpleasantness

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Some things are found unpleasant by enough of the population that even though they accurately reflect reality it would cause dissent were they to be included. Slavery, for example, was a fact of human existence for millennia; even now, some countries allow bonded labor that is slavery in practice if not in law.

So, you’re designing a virtual world set in the swashbuckling Age of Piracy. Players take on the role of a buccaneer, sailing the Caribbean in search of treasure, glory, and infamy. Within a week of beginning your research, you (the designer) have come to the conclusion that slavery was such an important part of Caribbean trade and industry that were you to omit, it your economic model would be missing a third of its goods. Do you put it in, or leave it out?

) The Real as the Virtual (and Vice Versa

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Virtual worlds have their own communities and their own laws. Some things that are depicted in virtual worlds are legal in the context of that world, but would not be legal when practiced in the real world. For example, a virtual world set in the time of the British Raj may implement the Hindu custom of suttee, whereby widows threw themselves onto the funeral pyres of their recently deceased husbands. This would be allowed in the virtual world, but it’s been all but stamped out in the real world ¹.

Passive Censorship

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Censorship is generally active: You have a design that includes an element that you want, but you decide to take it out. If you did nothing, there would be no censorship. However, on occasion it can be passive: Information comes to light that is not in the public domain, and by doing nothing you are keeping it there. This amounts to censorship by inaction.

Here’s an example of what I mean.