Ethical Behavior Inside the Magic Circle

2007/06/25

I've heard it proposed recently that "ethics" should apply only to the players behind the characters in an online game world, and not to the characters themselves. In other words, characters within a game world should not be penalized if their players fail to operate those characters according to a game world's internal standard of right and wrong.

That strikes me as a remarkably odd position to take. I have a really hard time agreeing that that's how virtual worlds should be designed, because it denies the possibility that sometimes there really is a "right thing" to do. Even if that's not true in our real world, why should virtual world designers not be allowed to explore it as though it were true, and to impose consequences to characters in the game world on that basis?

The difference is between a game world in which no character is capable of appropriately criticizing the behavior of another character, versus one in which some things that are possible are not considered good behavior. I think of these competing constructions as "Shades of Gray" versus "Right and Wrong," respectively.

The big problem I have with asserting that all MMORPGs should be designed according to the Shades of Gray model -- presumably in the belief that this is more interesting because it maximizes the freedom of players -- is that it ignores the concept of the "magic circle." This is the critical notion that everything that happens in an imagined world is real to the characters who inhabit and act in that world -- they exist inside a magic circle. Literary works almost always follow this pattern. The characters in a book don't talk or act as though they "know" they're merely fictional characters; they talk and act as though they're real and so is everyone else in that fictional world. (Comedy sometimes breaks this rule for humorous effect, but it's only funny because it's an exception to the rule.)

Actors in a play or a TV show or a movie create the same illusion of reality for their viewers. That's what being a "good actor" means. Good actors are able to persuade viewers that they (as their characters) believe in the reality of the world they're in.

This pretense of a magic circle in which unreal things are treated as real is what Coleridge called the "willing suspension of disbelief." It enables us to learn from unreal things by pretending that they are real. By agreeing to put ourselves inside the magic circle, we become able to understand what happens there with respect to our real lives. (This is also the power of myth that Joseph Campbell explored so thoroughly.)

Most RPGs are designed to produce the same effect. By building a world of places inhabited by characters with apparent intentionality, RPGs create a magic circle. And when we play that game, we enter the magic circle. Most of us, when we play a character in such an invented world, choose to behave as though we ourselves are in that world. We willingly suspend disbelief; we pretend that what is in this imaginary world is real and manipulate/inhabit our avatar there accordingly.

It's true that unlike reading a book or watching a movie, playing an RPG (tabletop or online) actively involves the real-world person. The experience is no longer passive; it's interactive. This means that the magic circle is defined in part by what I do, and by what you do, and by what everybode else does inside the fiction of the game world. But that doesn't invalidate the magic circle -- it just means that people have to actively cooperate to maintain the illusion of reality. The fact that some people don't care to do so doesn't mean that everybody else should give up and go along with the loss of the imaginary reality. For them, the rules of the virtual world -- including the ethics of that imagined reality -- should be treated as though they have real effect on all the characters within that world.

So yes -- outside the game, real-world ethics apply. But inside the game world, virtual-world ethics are perfectly capable of applying if the world's creators have designed it to work that way. There is absolutely nothing about virtual worlds (including MMORPGs) that requires them to be ethically neutral inside the magic circle. If a world's designers want to impose ethical absolutes that the characters in the magic circle of that world will be subject to, then they not only can do so, they should do so if that's necessary for telling a particular story. If the mythic needs of an imagined world require that some actions are right and some are wrong and there are tangible consequences in that world depending on which actions a character takes, then the developers must implement game functions that "enforce one moral code." If they don't, their created world will fail to tell the desired story.

Whether we don't like that particular story is irrelevant. It's not ours to tell. As consumers we're free to try to persuade game designers to tell our preferred story, whether of Shades of Gray or Right vs. Wrong, but ultimately the power of creation is theirs. All we can do is choose which story we want to experience.

Is it OK for there to be some RPGs whose developers try to allow characters (as controlled by their players) to do whatever they want in the game world? Sure. It's possible to have a Shades of Gray RPG with a magic circle -- within that circle, might makes right, Thomas Hobbes runs the show, and if you can get away with it, it's allowable. EVE Online is close to being that kind of game. Not everyone wants to play such a game, of course.

But not having to play that kind of game means it must also be OK for designers to create Right and Wrong worlds in which value judgements on behavior are possible and even desirable. The magic circle also supports the design of games in which some the designers of that world impose a particular standard of ethical action on characters. Not everyone will want to play this kind of game, either, but again, they shouldn't have to. If such worlds aren't a person's cup of tea, they can play something else. The existence of worlds where good and evil can be clearly identified shouldn't be censored because some people are more comfortable believing that no absolute standard of right and wrong should exist even in an imaginary world, that everything must always and everywhere be some shade of gray.

Game designers, as creators of worlds, have the power to make both kinds of game. And gamers have the freedom to choose which type of magic circle they prefer to step into through the persona of their character. And that's just how it should be.

This power of creation, not incidentally, is why Richard Bartle insists that describing game designers as political rulers is less accurate than describing them as gods.