Yourself

When all’s said and done, the ethics of a virtual world reflect those of its designer. If you don’t think about how to behave, about what’s right and wrong, about responsibility, about rights, then why should your players? If you think ethics are other people’s responsibility, so will your players. Your beliefs, your attitudes, your personality—they’re all reflected in your virtual world. You have to take responsibility, because (at least initially) you are the world.

Here’s a final ethical problem for you.

Back in Chapter 3, I outlined A Story About a Tree. This concerned the death in real life of Karyn, a Norwegian beauty queen who played in LegendMUD. I used this anecdote to pose questions concerning what is “real” in a virtual world. At the time, I said I didn’t know whether Karyn was a real person. Actually, I do know whether or not Karyn was a real person: She wasn’t. She was a complete invention.

In February 2002, film producer Tracy Spaight got in touch with me about a documentary he was making, Real People, Virtual Worlds. He wanted to know if it would be possible to interview me, and sent along a preview tape of some interviews he’d done already. The centerpiece was a powerful monologue by Raph Koster in which he described and commented on A Story About a Tree. Although I had long harbored reservations about Karyn, I’d kept them pretty much to myself. When it came to a movie that

was likely to be seen on television by millions of people, though, well, it would have been somewhat embarrassing for Tracy and Raph if Karyn turned out to be fake. I suggested to Tracy that he check out the story, just to be sure. Someone at LegendMUD would probably have met or spoken to Karyn in real life when she was alive, so it shouldn’t take long; it was just to put my mind at rest. Except, no one at LegendMUD had actually met her.

I hadn’t reckoned with Tracy’s documentary-maker’s instincts. He methodically investigated every shred of evidence that remained concerning Karyn’s life. It took a great deal of time and patience, but the facts he unearthed were undeniable. Here are some of the highlights:

• There are only three people in the whole of Norway called Karyn. It’s a highly unusual name there.

• The total number of deaths in road traffic accidents in Norway in 1995 was 352. Road death is relatively uncommon in that country.

• Only one person died in the crash that supposedly killed Karyn. The report reproduced on Karyn’s web site said three people; it had been altered in translation.

• The University of Oslo, which Karyn said she attended, had no records of a former beauty queen (or anyone else) having died in a road accident in January 1998.

• The Frøken Norge (Miss Norway) beauty pageant had no entries named Karyn in 1995 (when Karyn was supposedly a finalist).

• Karyn’s picture on her web site was of a bona fide Frøken Norge contestant. She had never heard of LegendMUD until Tracy tracked her down.

There was more—lots more. Police accident reports, depositions from Geocities, newspaper archives, and so on.

So Tracy and I knew that Karyn didn’t exist, and could prove so categorically. We sensed that the news would elevate Tracy’s documentary to mainstream levels of interest. Real people can have real relationships with imaginary people? That’s a great hook! I could imagine reading a syndicated version of the story in UK Sunday newspapers a few years down the line, as happened with Julian Dibbell’s A Rape in Cyberspace.

But just a moment…

Real relationships? Involving real people, who have suffered real grief? Couldn’t it be potentially devastating for them to discover the depths of Karyn’s betrayal. It might not be right for us to go public with the story. The world might be a better place if we just sat on it.

That wasn’t all we had to consider. A Story About a Tree is very well known; it’s almost iconic. It has been cited many times as a counter to the argument that “it’s just a game.” Yet for Karyn, it was “just a game,” at least at some level. Would it be better for the long-term development of virtual worlds for A Story About a Tree to keep its integrity? Or could more useful lessons be learned from a reappraisal of it in this new light?

So we had a problem: What should we do?

I won’t tell you what we did do, although obviously it resulted in our revealing the truth about Karyn (or you wouldn’t be reading this ¹). All I’ll say is that both Tracy and I felt our actions were right.

Instead, I’d like to pose the question: What would you have done in our position?

Now, ask what your answer says about you. What does that say about your virtual world? What in turn does this say about your players?

It’s your design; it’s your morality. From Essex to ethics in one book….