# Icons LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- Many virtual worlds draw on iconic or mythical images to sustain their immersive depth. If a player comes across a “little old man” NPC, it’s a source of great disappointment if it turns out he really is just a little old man and isn’t veiling some immense power or wisdom. If they came across a unicorn, they would feel cheated if it wasn’t white (and if they came across a herd of them—say what?!). Although these iconic figures are stereotypical, therein lies their strength; they represent an idealized “knowledge” of a reality that when correctly applied to a virtual world can deliver immersion. So tokenized have these metaphors become that it can forcefully be argued they aren’t stereotypes at all, they’re shorthand for a parcel of meanings. The same argument can be used to explain why so many Fantasy virtual worlds have elves and dwarfs (or rebrandings of the same) as character races. Dwarfs are solid, materialist, quick to anger but dependable; elves are spiritual, aloof, beautiful, yet insular. Players immediately have identifiable stereotypes that they can use to help decide what kind of character they wish to play. Real-life dwarfs might complain about this depiction, but “no, these are dwarves not dwarfs.” Real-life elves rarely comment. An ethical point that seems to have been missed by most of the designers who employ character races [^23] is that it promotes the notion that races are tangibly different. If it’s fine to regard all elves as being arrogant, fair-haired aesthetes, that validates the idea of stereotypical races. Why couldn’t a dwarf be a dreamer, a poet, a fun-loving bard? Why couldn’t an elf be a greedy, bad- tempered, never-satisfied lover of ale? Because they’re “not like that”? Or maybe “a few are like that, but most aren’t’? So what are “all Japanese” or “all Jewish” or “all Mexican” people like? Having races as stereotypes in virtual worlds endorses having races as stereotypes in the real world. It’s up to designers themselves to decide whether or not this is fine by them, but they should at least make that decision consciously. At the moment, most of them simply follow the flow without thinking about it. They should. As I mentioned in Chapter 6, most virtual worlds are fine with giving tangible properties to Fantasy races, but they avoid doing this for real races. Players may decide at character-creation time or through their personal descriptive text to reflect a real-life race other than the default (there’s always a default), but it’s purely cosmetic. There is an argument that this homogenizes characters, making them all basically the same; this is indeed the case, but that’s unsurprising given that it’s the goal. Sure, ethnic groups that have a culture tied to their physical appearance won’t thrive in a world where anyone can steal that appearance, but then you have to ask the question as to whether this might not be a good thing. Racial supremacists have lost the war when people can be whatever race they choose to be. There is a separate issue related to people for whom their race is a fundamental part of their identity. In virtual worlds without their race, or even with their race but with Fantasy ones alongside it, this could prompt a serious crisis. Should designers try to accommodate such individuals? Or is it simply a fact of life that race doesn’t transfer to virtual worlds (even though attitudes to race can)? Other stereotypes exist in virtual worlds, of course, which are less emotive but nevertheless raise similar issues. Character classes, for example, impose conformity. If you’re a designer who believes in conformity, have character classes; if you’re one who doesn’t, don’t. If you haven’t given the issue the slightest thought, you’d better do some thinking—you may be promoting social values with which you disagree. Finally, a word on anthropomorphic animal characters. As I mentioned in Chapter 6, anthropomorphic characters are all to do with symbols. Different animal species have different characteristics that (because animals aren’t as free-thinking as humans) they follow strongly. Yes, some can have personalities that are different from those of others, but they’re ruled by their instincts far more than are humans. Because of this, people have come to associate certain behaviors with certain animals—the cunning fox, the timid rabbit, the inquisitive mouse—and they use the animals as symbols for the behaviors. In some cases, the link is only metaphorical: A man who prowls around looking for innocent women to prey on might be likened to a wolf that prowls around looking for innocent smaller creatures to prey on, but there’s nothing sexual about the wolf’s activity. Nevertheless, the image of the wolf as a predator is strong enough that if you referred to a man as acting like a wolf people wouldn’t think you meant he attacked sheep. For some designers, this degree of stereotyping could also be too much. If it’s okay to stereotype animals, pretty soon it’s okay to stereotype humans, and then where are we? For others, it’s merely an example of the general way that languages work using metaphor, and the moment foxes and rabbits complain is the moment their plight deserves to be taken seriously. You can make up your own mind. Virtual worlds where players take on the role of anthropomorphic characters implicitly accept that this stereotyping is fine; furthermore, they have a well-developed system of codes that associate different animal forms with different kinds of behavior. This leads to a system of self-fulfilling stereotypes: If people think that bears betoken having a macho exterior but a sensitive caring inside, then people who want that image will play as bears. People who want to play as a shy character will not choose to be a bear, even though in a virtual world where all the animals are anthropomorphic anyway there’s nothing to stop someone from being a shy bear. What about non-anthropomorphic animal worlds? What if your character is, say, a dog? If it looks like a dog and can only do things that dogs can do, is that okay? Well if people want to be a dog, then presumably it’s up to them, but there are some awkward problems about identity drift here. It could be psychologically damaging for someone who didn’t know exactly what they were doing to play for extended periods in virtual worlds in the role of a dog or any other non-sentient creature. Playing a character of a gender, race or age not your own is different because they can all think just as well as each other; playing as a dog, though? You can change, but can the dog? Although this may seem rather a far-fetched idea, there are already virtual worlds moving toward it [^24]. Knowing what you know about immersion, would it be ethical or unethical to go the whole way? Changing yourself is easier than changing a stereotype. You decide on you; everyone else decides on a stereotype. [^23]: Actually—and this is the root of the problem—sub-species that the designers call “races.” [^24]: Example: The Jungle. telnet://thejungle.dhs.org:4000.