Springer 2007
Ethics and Information Technology (2007) 9:205–217
DOI 10.1007/s10676-007-9144-4
Sin in cyber-eden: understanding the metaphysics and morals of virtual worlds*
Ashley John Craft
School of Law, New York University, 240 Mercer St. Apt. 1002, New York, NY 10012, USA
E-mail: ashley.craft@nyu.edu
Abstract. This article uses a notorious incident within the computer program EVE Online to exemplify and
facilitate discussion of the metaphysics of virtual worlds and the morality of user behavior. The first section
examines various frameworks used to understand virtual worlds, and emphasizes those which recognize virtual
worlds as legal contracts, as representational worlds, and as media for communication. The second section
draws on these frameworks to analyze issues of virtual theft and virtual betrayal arising in the EVE incident.
The article concludes by arguing that, in the absence of countervailing contractual obligations, users of virtual
worlds have the same de facto duties to each other as they do in mediated and real environments.
Key words: applied ethics, computer games, EVE Online, massively multiplayer online role-playing games,
video games, virtual reality, virtual worlds
What are virtual worlds?
Virtual worlds: a case study
On April 18, 2005 Istvaan Shogaatsu, the leader of a
group of mercenaries called the Guiding Hand Social
Club in EVE Online, announced that his organization
had just completed one of the biggest acts of theft and
betrayal in the history of virtual worlds. Members of
the Guiding Hand spent a year infiltrating a rival
organization before assassinating their leader and
stealing in-game assets valued at 16,500 US dollars,
effectively shattering the trust within the organization’s social network setting its members back
months of playing time.1
Were the members of the Guiding Hand wrong?
While those unfamiliar with virtual worlds may be
tempted to dismiss any moral query on the grounds
that all involved were just playing a game, the ‘‘brutal
and devastating’’ psychological impact that the
* This paper grew out of my senior thesis in philosophy at
Pomona College, entitled Game Theory: The Metaphysics
and Morals of Massively Multiplayer Environments. I am
indebted to Peter Kung and Paul Hurley for their critical
insights and constant encouragement, as well as the
Fulbright program, which afforded me the time and
resources to develop this project.
1
T. Francis. Murder Incorporated. PC Gamer UK,
September 2005, 126–129.
Guiding Hand’s actions had on their victims shows
that their behavior was both unexpected and harmful.2 And, in the course of describing the metaphysical nature of the EVE universe and comparing the
Guiding Hand’s actions to actual theft and betrayal,
we will find several reasons to think that the Guiding
Hand’s behavior was immoral as well.
A brief history of virtual worlds
Virtual worlds are a recent phenomenon, with a history only a quarter-century old. Their technological
predecessors, called Multi-User Dungeons, or
MUDs, were created along with the first computer
networks to help networked users communicate in
real-time. With the mainstreaming of the Internet,
MUDs got a graphical face-lift in the form of chat
rooms like America On-Line and instant-messaging
services like AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). These
multi-user environments became virtual worlds when
graphics cards became good enough to render them
in three dimensions. The most popular of these early
2
J. Rossignol. A Deadly Dollar. The Escapist 19, p. 19,
November 15, 2005. Retrieved October 1, 2007 from http://
www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/19.
Readers unfamiliar with virtual worlds in general or the
Guiding Hand incident in particular will find reading both
Francis’ and Rossignol’s journalistic descriptions helpful in
understanding the subsequent discussion.
206
ASHLEY JOHN CRAFT
virtual worlds, including Ultima Online (1997) and
Everquest (1999), introduced elements of role-playing
computer games, even though a significant number of
users participated for the social aspects of the medium.3 Only recently have programs like Second Life
(2003) departed from the computer game format and
marketed themselves as virtual worlds in their own
right.
Features of virtual worlds
EVE Online is a program that, for a monthly fee of
about $15, allows users to access the computer-generated, science-fiction-themed virtual world of EVE,
and to interact in real-time in this world with thousands of other users through representational characters they have created.4
As with many virtual worlds, EVE exhibits many
characteristics of role-playing computer games.
A user first enters EVE with a weak character who
can pilot only the most basic spaceships, with no
specialized skills, and a paltry sum of virtual credits
to her name. By flying missions and mining virtual
resources, a user can gradually upgrade her character’s virtual spaceship, train her skills, and pad her
bank account. These enhancements, in turn, allow the
character to venture into more dangerous parts of
EVE and take on a greater role in the universe.
The sheer numbers of actual people interacting
simultaneously in a virtual world, however, offer a
social dimension not found in traditional role-playing
computer games. When she has reached a certain
level of experience, a user can join a corporation – an
alliance of other users – which opens up another
range of possibilities within the world. Corporations
can make their own charters, elect or appoint leaders,
run trade routes, wage wars, share resources, corner
the market on virtual items, and generally cooperate
to further their collective power within the EVE
universe. Users spend much of their time working
closely with others in their corporation, and during
space travel or even in combat situations get to know
each other by exchanging text messages through the
EVE user interface. Through these exchanges, users
3
A. Seay, W. Jerome, K. Lee, and R. Kraut. Project
massive: A study of online gaming communities. Human
Computer Interaction Institute, 1421–1424, 2004; N. Yee.
The Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences
of Users of Massively Multi-user Online Graphical Environments. PRESENCE: Tele-operators and Virtual Environments 15: 309–329, 2006.
4
Compare the definitions provided by Book and Bartle
in U.G. Yoon. A Quest for the Legal Identity of
MMORPGs. Journal of Game Industry and Culture 10:
2005. Available at http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=905748.
form friendships, romantic relationships, and even
marriages, which often expand beyond the confines of
the virtual world to chat rooms, instant messengers,
and face-to-face meetings.5
Among existing virtual worlds, EVE Online is
neither the most popular nor the longest-running. Yet
because its administrators have taken a laissez-faire
approach to governing the actions of their users, EVE
has gained notoriety as a site of corporate warfare
and deception, extensive user-versus-user combat,
and unforgiving ship destruction and character
death.6
Virtual worlds in academic discourse
As virtual worlds are a recent phenomenon, the body
of relevant academic literature is still nascent. The
first groundbreaking analyses of virtual worlds were
journalistic: Dibbell’s A Rape in Cyberspace uncovered the circumstances surrounding the cyber-rape
that occurred in an early multi-user environment
called LambdaMOO,7 while Peter Ludlow exposed
cyberprostitution in Electronic Arts’ The Sims Online
and muckraked in Linden Labs’ Second Life.8
Some of the most interesting works concerning
virtual worlds have arisen as academics have begun
to evaluate them from their own disciplinary perspectives. Edward Castronova, for instance, applied
an economic analysis to the virtual economy of
Everquest, and calculated that its GNP per capita
rivaled that of some European countries.9 More
recently, Beth Noveck’s State of Play conferences and
anthology have drawn prominent cyberlaw scholars,
academics, and software developers together to
answer the legal questions arising from the first court
cases involving virtual worlds.10
5
N. Yee. Motivations of Play in Online Games. CyberPsychology and Behavior 9: 772–775, 2007.
6
EVE Online Frequently Asked Questions: Can I be a
Corporate Spy? CCP Games, 2007a. Retrieved October 1,
2007 from http://www.eve-online.com/faq.
7
J. Dibbell. A Rape in Cyberspace. The Village Voice,
September 23, 1993. Retrieved October 1, 2007 from http://
www.loki.stockton.edu/kinsellt/stuff/dibbelrapeincyberspace.html.
8
F. Manjoo. Raking Muck in ‘‘The Sims Online.’’
Salon.com, December 12, 2003. Retrieved April 7, 2007
from http://www.dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2003/12/
12/sims_online_newspaper/index.html.
9
E. Castronova. Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account
of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier, p. 34.
CESifo Working Paper No. 618, 2001.
10
J. Balkin and B. Noveck, editors, The State of Play:
Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds. New York University
Press, New York, 2006.
METAPHYSICS
Like representatives of other disciplines, philosophers are now in a position to give to and gain from
the ongoing study of virtual worlds. The metaphysics
of virtual reality has been with philosophers as long
as Descartes’ demon, and contemporary metaphysicists can now virtual worlds into the fold. Acts of
theft and promise-breaking have long been the
domain of moralists, who can compare these acts to
virtual thefts and mediated deception. In exchange,
virtual worlds provide us with challenging real-world
thought experiments and case studies against which
we can measure our erstwhile speculative thought
experiments and theories.
The metaphysics of virtual worlds
Understanding virtual worlds: a new analogy
For a long time, programs like EVE were labeled
massively multiplayer online role-playing games
(MMORPGs), an unwieldy moniker that essentialized them as trumped-up computer games. Only
recently have theorists begun using the term virtual
worlds, suggesting that there is more to EVE than
meets the eye.
While EVE certainly contains elements of roleplaying computer games and to a large extent
resembles them, users do not simply log on to EVE
and play a game. They are also experiencing a virtual
reality, negotiating sets of explicit and implicit legal
and normative contracts, performing improvisational
role-play, producing a collaborative work of representational fiction, and making use of a communicative medium.11 The virtual world is the
environment in which all of these activities occur. We
should therefore think of virtual worlds not just as
games but, more broadly, as virtual spaces, fantastic
three-dimensional locations in which users can
socialize and role-play as well as entertain themselves.12
Here the analogy to a theme park is useful in
understanding virtual world creation and participation. Like theme parks, virtual worlds are designed
primarily for commercial purposes, and seek to
attract the greatest number of users multiple times to
maximize profit from entrance fees. One way a virtual
world can attract users is by providing a fantastic,
11
A. Craft. Game Theory: The Metaphysics and Morals
of Massively Multiplayer Environments. Senior thesis,
Pomona College, California, 2006.
12
R. Schroeder, A. Huxor, and A. Smith. Activeworlds:
Geography and Social Interaction in Virtual Reality.
Futures 33(7): 569–587, 2001.
AND
MORALS
207
interactive, exciting, and visually stunning world to
explore – the theme of a theme park. Another is by
filling out this world with compelling characters and a
narrative back story – the costumed cartoons and
fairy-tale castles in Disneyland. A third is by offering
games to play against both the environment and
other users – the whack-a-mole and laser tag games
found in the arcade. A final way is to provide spaces
for socialization, away from the competition of
games – the food courts and park benches.
Whereas users log on to virtual worlds for all of
these reasons, the frequency of their visits – an
average of 20 hours a week13 – distinguishes their
participation in virtual worlds from that of the
occasional theme park visitor. While families can
only explore a small corner of Disneyland in an
afternoon, virtual world users can, over many
months, chart the details of entire continents.14 While
theme park visitors are watching poorly-scripted
plays in which oversized cartoon characters rehash
tired movie lines, virtual world users are improvisationally role-playing their characters in order to collaboratively expand upon the fictional back story of
their universe. When arcade goers redeem hardearned tickets for overpriced novelties, users are
continually re-investing the virtual credits they earn
into their characters’ equipment and skills so that
they can access higher-level content within the world.
Whereas park visitors may spend a day with their
friends, virtual world users spend months making
friends, as well as pursuing romances, holding board
meetings, staging protests, and securing venture
capital.
Metaphysical paradigms: an overview
Because of the different kinds of activities in which
virtual world users participate, it should come as no
surprise that they have different understandings of
the nature of virtual worlds. Yet users and researchers alike recurrently invoke several paradigms to
make sense of their own and others’ virtual existences. The remainder of this section establishes a
metaphysical framework in which to understand the
immorality of the Guiding Hand’s actions, first by
identifying and evaluating each of these paradigms in
turn, and then by demonstrating why two of them are
the most appropriate.
Figure 1 outlines the paradigms we should consider in our evaluation of immorality within virtual
worlds. Although they resemble games and may
13
Yee, Demographics, 2006.
See, for instance, the data aggregated on World of
Warcraft at http://www.thottbot.com.
14
ASHLEY JOHN CRAFT
208
Virtual Worlds
are
not just
Games
but, broadly,
Virtual Realities
with access
regulated by Contracts,
existing both as
Representational Worlds
and as
Media for Communication,
containing Simulations
of immoral behavior
spaces in which
Real Wrongs can occur
Figure 1. Analytical frameworks
include several of them, user behavior is not bound
by rules or referees like those that regulate traditional
game players. Virtual worlds more closely resemble
amusement parks, as they are essentially expansive
virtual realities or spaces within which users can
interact. Before they can access these environments,
users must agree to certain terms and provisions,
usually contained within a legal document called the
End User License Agreement (EULA). To the extent
that these provisions specifically allow or prohibit
certain kinds of user behavior, users may have a
moral obligation to abide by be these provisions.
However, when the agreement is vague or silent
concerning these matters, they must look to the nature of the virtual world to determine what behavior is
appropriate. Specifically, we can understand that
users in virtual worlds are simultaneously engaged in
two distinct kinds of activities: They are collaboratively producing fiction through role-playing characters within a representational world, even as they are
communicating with other users through text messages. The specifics of each of these paradigms, as
well as the primacy of the representational and
communicative ones, are detailed below.
EVE is not just a game
EVE and many other virtual worlds are marketed
and described as computer games, and certainly
much of users’ activity resembles this kind of play. In
EVE, users guide their characters through a variety of
objective-based missions, competing individually or
in teams for rewards of virtual credits or items. Users
operate within the framework of several rule-sets,
and derive enjoyment from succeeding within these
limitations.15
Despite these similarities, several technological
aspects of virtual worlds distinguish ‘playing’ in
cyberspace from playing conventional games.16 In
games, rules are clearly formulated, normatively
enforced, and negotiable. When a Monopoly player
gives herself a loan from the bank, other players can
point to the section in the rulebook that prohibits this
behavior, refuse to play until the money is returned,
or decide to allow it just this once. By contrast, in
virtual worlds, rules governing user behavior in the
EULA, if they exist at all, are vaguely or ambiguously
worded, while rules hard-coded into the game
mechanics and are inviolable and non-negotiable. An
EVE user who is scammed out of her hard-earned
virtual credits and looks to the EULA finds only a
vague prohibition against ‘‘abuse or harassment’’ of
other players, enforceable ‘‘at the sole discretion’’ of
the administrators.17 She cannot access the scammer’s
account to take the credits back, because the interface
will not allow it. In terms of the game mechanics, she
is now too poor and powerless to exact her own
revenge, and, though she can stop playing, the ‘game’
of EVE continues, indifferent to her loss.18
Most games end at a certain point, and those that
don’t persist only through the continuing efforts of
the players involved. A basketball game is over after
time has expired and the team who won is the one
that scored the most points in the allotted time period. When the two teams meet again, the scoreboard
is reset to zero. The fictional worlds created in penciland-paper role-playing games may persist from one
night’s adventures to the next, these worlds exist only
through the collective agreement of the players. These
worlds disappear when players lose interest, or are
rewritten through collaborative narration. By contrast, EVE is an existential universe, without a reset
button, win conditions or definitive goals. EVE’s
servers allow the universe to persist independently,
regardless of whether a single user is logged on, and
to track users’ gains and losses through every session,
rendering them permanent.
Unless they have made bets on the outcome or are
playing professionally, game players can separate
their persona from their person – that is, their interests
in the game world from those in the real world. A
16
15
Compare J. Juul. Half-Real, pp. 46–40. MIT Press,
Cambridge, 2005. Juul synthesizes a number of definitions
of a game to determine six key features: (1) Games are rulebased, (2) with variable outcomes, (3) some of which are
better than others, (4) which players put forth effort to
achieve and (5) react emotionally to, and (6) which may be
played for money or invested with other real-world consequences.
These differences distinguish virtual worlds apart from
live-action role-playing (LARP) games as well.
17
Terms of Service. CCP Games, 2007d. Retrieved
September 30, 2007 from http://www.eve-online.com/pnp/
terms.asp.
18
Compare R. Bartle. Virtual Worldliness. In J. Balkin
and B. Noveck, editors, The State of Play: Law, Games, and
Virtual Worlds, pp. 34–35. New York University Press,
New York, 2006.
METAPHYSICS
shrewd Diplomacy player can betray another at an
opportune moment within the game, and still retain
his trustworthiness as a friend. A linebacker can
deliver a brutal hit on a quarterback in a football
game, and yet fans need not worry about their own
safety. In virtual worlds, we will see that the characters and objects found in the game represent users’
personae and their person – and that the death of a
character or the theft of an object sets back a user’s
interests both in the game world and in the real world.
Games are, as Huizinga and others describe, limned
by a ‘‘magic circle,’’ inside which players need not
worry about real-world standards of behavior.19 In
many games this ‘‘magic circle’’ is visibly represented,
as by the four edges of a board, on which players’
tokens, representing their individual interests within
the game world, are shuffled about, or as chalk lines on
a field, in whose bounds two teams try to score. We
may be tempted to outline the boundaries of virtual
worlds in a similar fashion. The nature of the medium
offers a convenient dividing line: Everything that
happens on-screen is part of the game world; everything that happens behind it is part of the real world.
For reasons we will soon see, this line is drawn too
broadly. Virtual worlds certainly have ‘‘magic circles’’
inside which both conventional games and open-ended
role-play take place, but they also include content that
lies beyond the bounds of game-play.
EVE is a virtual reality
As the analogy of the theme park suggests, virtual
worlds are essentially spaces, in which many things,
including conventional games, open-ended role-play,
and real-world socialization, can occur. EVE is an immersive, interactive, persistent three-dimensional environment, viewed from a first-person perspective, and
populated by humans and their representational
counterparts. While contemporary virtual worlds are
far from the multi-sensory total-body simulations
imagined in philosophical thought experiments or science fiction, they nonetheless meet some of the more
practical definitions of virtual reality offered in the
field.20
19
J. Huizinga. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press, Boston,
1950. Quoted in J. Juul. Half-Real, p. 164. MIT Press,
Boston, 2005.
20
P. Brey. The Ethics of Representation and Action in
Virtual Reality. Ethics and Information Technology 1(1):
5–14, 1999; W. Cooper. Virtual Reality and the Metaphysics of Self, Community, and Nature. International
Journal of Applied Philosophy 9(2): 1–14, 1995; P. Ford. A
further analysis of the ethics of representation in virtual
reality: Multi-user environments. Ethics and Information
Technology 3(2): 113–121, 2001.
AND
MORALS
209
Virtual reality is by definition a paradox, something that closely resembles reality, yet is distinct
from it.21 EVE is, on one hand, an elaborate and
imaginative representation of the future of the human
race, a space-aged pioneer village animated by tens of
thousands of users in character. It is, on the other, a
place where real people are at present investing real
time interacting with one another. This metaphysical
tension between representational and actual worlds is
at the heart of the Guiding Hand incident, and one
which we will address shortly.
Participation in EVE is regulated by a legal contract
Users must enter into virtual worlds before they can
begin to perform or communicate. All commercial
virtual worlds have a set of rules which users must
agree to before opening an account. This usually
takes the form of the EULA, a standard legal contract between the program administrators and individual users. To extend the amusement park analogy,
the EULA functions much like the park rules posted
outside the gate: It sets out the terms and conditions
under which users will be granted access, effectively
giving administrators the right to regulate their own
virtual private property.22 Because all users must read
and agree to the terms before entering, the EULA
acts as a universally binding contract governing user
behavior. In describing which behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable, it also gives users an idea of
what kinds of behaviors they should expect within a
given virtual world.
Koster and others have noted that virtual world
EULAs tend to vest nearly absolute power in the
software companies, and afford minimal rights to
users.23 The EVE EULA is no exception, stripping its
users of any claim to ‘‘time spent playing… objects,
currency, or items,’’ intellectual property or anything
else produced within the environment, thereby
indemnifying the administrators against legal
action.24 While such draconian policies have
prompted Koster to ponder declaring the rights of
21
C. Beardon. The Ethics of Virtual Reality. Intelligent
Tutoring Media 3(1): 23–28, 1992.
22
F. G. Lastowka and D. Hunter. The Laws of the
Virtual Worlds. California Law Review, 92(1), 2004.
Available at SSRN: http://www.ssm.com/abstract=
402860. Lastowka and Hunter cite Koster as saying
that virtual world developers need to be able to expel
unruly users from their environment
(80–81).
23
R. Koster. Declaring the Rights of Players. In
J. Balkin and B. Noveck, editors, The State of Play: Law,
Games, and Virtual Worlds, pp. 55–67. New York University Press, New York, 2006.
24
CCP Games, End User License Agreement: Property
Rights, 2007c.
210
ASHLEY JOHN CRAFT
virtual world users, the companies’ response is that,
unlike in the actual world, virtual world users have
other places in which they could exist. The administrator’s terms and conditions are a take it or leave it
policy that users have presumably taken, giving their
rational, unforced, informed consent in exchange for
being granted access to the virtual world.25 Users
have entered into a legal, and also a moral, contract
that underscores the behavior expected within the
environment.
In undertaking an analysis of moral actions within
a given virtual world, we should first and foremost
evaluate the language of and intent behind the universal contract to which all users have agreed.
However, even though its administrators are aware of
the propensity of its users to deceive and scam one
another,26 the EVE EULA is silent on issues of virtual theft and betrayal.27 Although some users have
argued that this deliberate omission implies the
administrators’ tacit approval of the practices, we
should not read beyond the letter of the license
agreement; EVE’s administrators have simply taken a
neutral, laissez-faire stance. Their silence allows us to
analyze why, in the absence of contractual considerations, virtual world users have the same de facto
duties to refrain from theft and deceit as in the actual
world.
EVE is a representational world
Virtual environments are almost unique28 in that they
enable large numbers of adult users to engage in
25
A. Craft. Game Theory: The Metaphysics and Morals
of Massively Multiplayer Environments. Pomona College
senior thesis, 53–55, 2006.
26
See the EVE FAQ entries on corporate spying, griefing, scamming, and player harassment (CCP Games
2007a).
27
Compare with the EULA for Ultima Online, for
example, which reads:
…[P]layer killing and thievery…[are]not considered
harassment…There are game mechanics created
around these play styles…such as…the thieving
skill…Ultima Online is a role-playing game that
encourages various play styles, and players should
seek ways of protecting themselves against these play
styles through game mechanics.
Material quoted from F. G. Lastowka and D. Hunter.
Virtual Crime. In J. Balkin and B. Noveck, editors, The
State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds, pp.
121–136. New York University Press, New York, 2006.
This provision clearly indicates that Ultima Online is an
environment in which virtual items are meant to be stolen,
and so if users fall victim to virtual theft in Ultima, they
have no moral basis of complaint.
28
See also the dedicated few who engage in live-action
role-playing.
role-play and collective fiction. Users role-play when
they imagine, assume and develop characters different than their usual identities, and act in character for
periods of time. When a number of users gather
together in character with a common understanding
of the nature of their fictional world, they engage in
something like improvisational theater, and through
their characters collaboratively produce a work of
fiction, or a representational world.
The practical necessity of role-playing in virtual
worlds is determined by the designers and reinforced
by users in their in-game interactions. Among virtual
worlds, EVE is notable for the depth of role-play and
fan fiction that its users generate. The universe of EVE
has a strong science-fiction theme, and is set against a
back-story of warring, ideologically opposed spaceaged human factions.29 Before they can enter, potential EVE users must create the characters they will use
to interact with this environment. Depending on the
race and faction chosen, a new character is assigned a
particular role to play in the narrative of EVE. These
roles determine the character’s starting location
within the virtual universe, their standing with other
in-game political factions, and their selection of
starting missions.
If the character creation process encourages roleplay, the game mechanics and environmental design
make it a practical necessity. EVE is a virtual world
filled with three-dimensional computer-rendered
representations of asteroids and spaceships, warp
drives and laser beams. Whenever users refer to these
virtual objects as asteroids or warp drives, or refer to
themselves as flying spacecraft or shooting lasers,
they are effectively role-playing their character’s
presence within EVE’s fantastic universe. Moreover,
insofar as others accept these descriptions, users
collectively engage in reproducing the science-fiction
of EVE.
EVE users simulate immoral behavior
Since the works of Plato and Aristotle, philosophers
have questioned how humans respond to representations, or simulations, of immoral behavior. In its
most recent incarnation, the debate has focused on
the violence depicted in cinema and computer screens
and whether those who are exposed to such images
are themselves more likely to commit acts of violence.
The arguments can be extended to include any form
of representational immorality, such as virtual theft
or virtual betrayal.
29
EVE Online Backstory. CCP Games, 2007b.
Retrieved October 1, 2007 from http://www.eve-online.
com/background/.
METAPHYSICS
One side of the debate dates from Plato’s Republic,
and is the same theory as held by contemporary
philosophers Noel Carroll and Peter Lamarque.
Proponents of this theory hold that we react to representations of violence or deceit in the same way as if
we had actually experienced them. Just as our
repeatedly viewing representations of immoral
behavior without consequence desensitizes us to its
actual effects,30 so our experiencing or role-playing
immoral behavior conditions us to act in the same
way in actual circumstances.31 Thought theorists
would find the Guiding Hand’s actions immoral, not
because they had actually stolen from other users, but
because they had made grand theft seem glamorous
and without consequence.
Another perspective on representation originates in
Aristotle and is developed by contemporary philosopher Kendall Walton.32 It gives substance to the
common-sense notion that we understand representations – whether they be novels, movies, or computer
games – to be unreal. According to Walton, there is a
metaphysical barrier separating representational and
actual worlds that prevents our moral character from
being affected by watching a violent movie or roleplaying a villain. Protagonists of this theory would
understand the Guiding Hand as simply acting in an
improvisational play, no different than authoring a
novel or directing a film. We can accuse such artists as
violating standards of aesthetics, but not of morals.
While this is an interesting argument, it is tangential to the present analysis. If the Guiding Hand’s
actions were in themselves immoral, any consideration of the effects they might have on third parties is
secondary to the effects on their victims. As we will
see in the next section, there is reason to believe that
the Guiding Hand members were not simply performing within a representational world, but also
actively deceiving other users.
EVE is a medium for communication
Practically speaking, users cannot participate in
virtual worlds without encountering or interacting
with others. In EVE, users derive social, political, and
economic benefits from cooperating with others,
whether pooling resources for venture capital,
30
M. Elton. Should Vegetarians Play Video Games?
Philosophical Papers 29(1): p. 22, 2000.
31
S. Hurley. Bypassing Conscious Control: Media Violence, Unconscious Imitation, and Freedom of Speech. In
S. Pockett, W. Banks, and S. Gallagher, editors, Does
Consciousness Cause Behavior? An Investigation of the
Nature of Volition. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2006.
32
K. Walton. Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of Representational Arts. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, 1990.
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MORALS
211
cornering the market on virtual goods, or forging
military alliances. These relationships are built on
trust, gained when users spend time getting to know
others in the world.
For many users, these relationships are not merely
role-played through characters but also exist between
the people sitting behind the computer screens.33
Users frequently communicate out of character
(OOC), using EVE as a three-dimensional chat room
to talk about events in their offline lives.
Because the anonymity of internet communication
makes deception much easier than face-to-face communication,34 users often bolster this trust by getting
to know each other through other media channels,
such as message boards, Instant Messaging or IR
chat programs, telephone calls, and face-to-face
meetings.35 In forming friendships and gaining trust,
users corroborate the identity and sincerity of others.
Representational versus actual worlds
When Guiding Hand operatives violated the trust of
their victims, the victims expressed betrayal not just
as characters by other characters in a representational
environment, but as users by other users in an actual
communicative environment. The Guiding Hand, by
contrast, argued that they had merely been acting in
character, and warned their victims against reading
too much into representational friendships. This,
both illustrated and analyzed in the previous sections,
is the paradox of virtual reality: Users are simultaneously participating in representational and actual
worlds.
33
Yee, for instance, has found that 20–30% of virtual
world users have told personal issues or secrets to other
users that they have not told to their offline friends. Quoted
from Yee, Demographics, 2006, p. 26.
34
For several descriptions of identity deception within
virtual environments, see the story of Sue the Witch in
B. King and J. Borland. Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise
of Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic. McGrawHill, New York, 2003. See also the story of Miss Norway in
T. Spaight. Who Killed Miss Norway? In J. Balkin and
B. Noveck, editors, The State of Play: Law, Games, and
Virtual Worlds, pp. 189–197. New York University Press,
New York, 2006.
35
For a description of this process, see Nightfreeze. The
Great Scam. Retrieved October 1, 2007 from http://
www.wirm.net/nightfreeze/.
While those familiar with the EVE universe have discredited Nightfreeze for several factual inaccuracies and
generally written off the description as exaggerated, if not
apocryphal, the work nevertheless serves as an interesting
example.
212
ASHLEY JOHN CRAFT
Morality within virtual worlds
After understanding these two paradigms, we can
proceed in our moral analysis of the Guiding Hand’s
actions. Here there are two separate issues at stake.
The first issue is virtual theft: The Guiding Hand
acquired virtual items that have both value and utility
within the virtual world, and deprived their victims of
not only the items themselves, but also the time and
effort spent acquiring them. Our analysis of virtual
theft is representative of a class of crimes against
virtual property, including acts of virtual assault,
murder, and assassination, which target users’ characters and set them back in acquired skills.
The second issue is virtual betrayal: The Guiding
Hand misled their victims for a year in order to gain
their trust and the access needed to acquire their virtual
goods. Our analysis of virtual betrayal is representative
of speech-act crimes against users themselves, a class
which also includes defamation, promise-breaking,
verbal assault, lying, and cyber-rape.
Virtual theft
The peculiar nature of virtual worlds may tempt us to
treat problems like virtual theft as new and unprecedented phenomena.36 However, we should not jump
to this conclusion, for we have reason to understand
virtual theft as simply a new kind of theft.
We can define theft as an action wherein ‘‘a person
(1) intentionally, and (2) fraudulently, (3) takes personal property of another, (4) without permission or
consent, and (5) with the intent to convert it to the
taker’s use.’’37 Virtual theft is theft insofar as the
former meets all the definitional criteria of the latter.38
We can look to the perpetrators’ own descriptions39 to satisfy several of these criteria. For
instance, we can reasonably assume that the group (1)
intentionally, and (2) fraudulently, gained the trust of
their target organization in order to gain access to
their virtual hangars. The Guiding Hand also (5)
transferred a large amount of virtual currency and
36
Compare J. Elkins. There Are No Philosophic Problems Raised by Virtual Reality. ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics 28(4): 250–254, 1998.
Elkins cautioned philosophers against seeing virtual
reality as raising entirely new sorts of philosophical problems rather than recognizing familiar problems in their
most recent incarnations.
37
Hill, Gerald, & Hill, Kathleen. ‘‘Theft.’’ The People’s
Law Dictionary. Fine Communications, 2007. Accessed 7
April 2007 from http://www.dictionary.law.com.
38
G. Lastowka and D. Hunter, Virtual Crime, 2006.
39
T. Francis, Murder Incorporated, 2005; J. Rossignol,
A Deadly Dollar, 2005.
items to their control so that they could benefit, either
within the virtual world or by cashing out for actual
currency.
However, in order to assess the remaining criteria,
we must answer several more general questions
regarding the nature of EVE. The first is (3) whether
we should consider virtual items and currency personal property, if not in a legal sense, then at least in
a moral one.
Personal property belongs to its owner. In EVE,
virtual items exist only in the inventories or hangars
of the characters who received them. While users can
transfer permission to use such objects to others to
share or borrow – the Guiding Hand sought their
victims’ trust to obtain this permission, and then took
permanent control – only one user at a time can
possess, use, or sell a virtual object.
Although the EULA forces users to relinquish any
legal claim to virtual property ownership, users still
possess virtual items within EVE. They reasonably
expect that the same items they have in their inventories when they log off will exist when they log back
in. The persistence of virtual items is a big reason why
users keep paying their monthly subscription fees:
Such items represent significant investments of time
and effort, as well as the user’s increased ability to
affect her environment. The reason why administrators do not shuffle items randomly among users’
inventories is the same as why they do not tolerate
one user stealing another’s login information and
transferring ownership of virtual property: If they
allowed either to happen, users would leave.
Personal property has value. In their article on
virtual crime, Lastowka and Hunter note that virtual
items behave like other representational items which
are given actual monetary value when bought and
sold on the marketplace. They draw a comparison
between virtual items and objects like paintings, fictional characters, and domain names, recognizing
that each are given legal protection against theft or
infringement. Like any other virtual world, EVE has
its share of online auction bids for virtual currency,
spaceships, and character accounts, all of which
exchange virtual items for actual currency.
But Lastowka and Hunter overlook another, more
important feature of personal property: It also has
utility in the environment in which it exists. The
creators of EVE have coded the world so that a user’s
having a virtual spaceship is a practical necessity.
A virtual spaceship allows a user to quickly access
different points within the virtual world of EVE.
Users can upgrade or replace their spaceships to make
them more powerful, using virtual currency accumulated through time and skill accrued in EVE universe.
The better the spaceship, the more dangerous and
METAPHYSICS
lucrative places the owner can visit, the more and
more powerful users she can interact with, and the
better she can defend herself from computer- or usercontrolled space pirates who would attack her. Simply
put, a user’s virtual spaceship unlocks a significant
amount of representational and communicative content within the world.
If a user’s spaceship is destroyed or stolen, she
loses access to this content until she can obtain
another one. This loss is made worse because much of
the politics, trade and exploration among high-level
users occurs in such restricted areas; the victim has
effectively been cut out of her social circle. A user
who loses a spaceship cannot petition the administrators for a free replacement, nor is she in any
position to steal it back or exact revenge. In order to
regain access to this content, and her place in EVE
online society, she must buy another one. A user who
has lost her virtual spaceship has lost a significant
investment, in the form of the time and money it took
her to buy the spaceship in the first place.
Just like any other piece of property, then, a virtual spaceship in EVE belongs to its owner, and has
both utility and value in the world in which it exists.
This is exactly why we think theft is morally wrong: It
harms the victim, depriving her of the utility she
would have derived from using the object and wasting the time and money she spent acquiring it.
But perhaps the nature of virtual worlds is such
that (4) the user effectively gave the perpetrator
consent to try to steal her spaceship. It may be that
virtual worlds, like casinos or basketball courts, are
places where people try to take others’ objects
because that is the nature of the activity in which they
are involved.40 Even though a player may take a
significant amount of money or property used as
collateral in gambling from another, he is not a thief
because both understood the nature of the game and
the risks involved; so the same would be for the
Guiding Hand.
When we analyzed EVE as a legal contract, we saw
that EVE’s administrators remained silent on the
issue of virtual theft. However, the language of the
EULA, both in reserving ownership of virtual property to the administrators and elsewhere,41 carries
several implications of what users might expect in
terms of in-world property possession.
The first implication is that the virtual world is ‘for
entertainment purposes only.’ The EULA gives clear
indication of the recreational, rather than vocational,
nature of EVE when it prohibits the auction or sale of
40
Compare with G. Lastowka and D. Hunter, Virtual
Crime, 2006.
41
End User License Agreement, CCP Games, 2007c.
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MORALS
213
virtual items for actual currency. Yet even though
users are contractually obligated to not cash out on
their virtual earnings, this does not mean that virtual
credits have neither value nor utility. In a video game
arcade, players change quarters into tokens which
cannot then be exchanged back. Yet we would still
treat one player’s taking another’s tokens as theft,
because we recognize both their monetary value and
potential for entertainment.
If the EULA is neutral on the issue of virtual theft,
so are the mechanics of the virtual world. The interface of EVE allows one user to transfer control of a
virtual spaceship to another. If there is trust between
users, the interface has enabled sharing. If one user
has deceived another, the interface has enabled theft.
Spaceships are not ‘‘designed to be stolen’’ any more
than they are designed to be shared; the same interface mechanic can result in either action, depending
on the users’ intent.42
The second implication is that the EVE administrators have, in effect, posted a sign saying ‘not
responsible for lost or stolen valuables’ on the
entrance of their virtual world. The provision functions as a legal disclaimer, indemnifying the administrators against users who could otherwise sue the
company for the value of their virtual items in the
event of data loss or decision to discontinue service.
But the administrators’ relinquishment of responsibility for theft within their world does not mean that
they are encouraging the practice, any more than
would a similar sign outside an amusement park.
In the absence of countervailing conditions, then,
our case study of virtual theft satisfies all of the criteria of actual theft. Virtual theft harms its victims in
just the same ways as actual theft, and EVE users,
unlike gamblers or basketball players, have no good
reason to assume that the world is one in which virtual items are made to be stolen.
Virtual betrayal
In the EVE universe, acts of theft are inextricably tied
to acts of betrayal. The world mechanics of EVE bar
potential thieves from breaking into a hangar and
hotwiring a virtual spaceship. The only way the
Guiding Hand could steal from their victims was by
first gaining their trust and then asking for shared
access to their possessions. EVE is not a world in
which virtual items are made to be stolen because
EVE is not a world in which users are supposed to
betray each other. It is, by contrast, a world designed
to reward user trust and cooperation. And, like in the
42
127.
G. Lastowka and D. Hunter, Virtual Crime, 2006, p.
214
ASHLEY JOHN CRAFT
actual world, such trust is only possible when users
assume that others are telling the truth.
Like a theater stage, a virtual world is a site of
both representational performance and actual conversation, where users can participate either in character or in person. As performers, they can engage in
improvisational live-action role-playing, bringing the
space-age science-fiction universe of EVE to life. As
people, they can discuss specific events and characters, including their own, as well as commenting on
the performance in general. Or they can discuss topics
unknown to the fictional world of EVE: Sports,
politics, and life in general in the 21st century.
Unlike actors in a play, however, EVE users are
not always sure when others are performing. An
actor on stage can tell that another is in character by
the presence of a costume, the inflection of her voice,
or the exaggeration of her gestures. In virtual environments, however, these visual and aural cues are
obscured. In order to tell whether others are acting in
character or in person, virtual world users look primarily to the content of their communication.
Users indicate the world in which they are operating when they refer to objects that are particular
only to the representational or the actual world. If,
for instance, User A hears User B talk about ‘flying
to the warp gate’ or ‘firing the lasers’ on his ‘spaceship,’ User A understands that User B is in character,
since warp gates, ship-mounted lasers, and personal
spaceships do not actually exist. User A may then
respond in kind, asking B if he would like an escort to
the next ‘jump point’ or an extra battery of ‘antimatter missiles’ for his next engagement. Likewise, if
User B says he’s sorry but he must ‘‘take his daughter
to her piano lesson,’’ User A understands that User B
is referring to the actual world, because within the
representational world of EVE there is no such thing
as a piano lesson. User A may respond by asking
when User B will next log on.
Things are not quite so clear, however, when one
user refers to something found in both representational and actual worlds. Among the most important
of these ambiguous referents are the pronouns ‘you’
and ‘I’. By convention, participants of virtual worlds
can use ‘you’ or ‘I’ to refer either to a user’s character
or to the user as a person. And while in context users
can infer the intent of some utterances – ‘‘You killed
me!’’ necessarily refers to the representational ‘you’
while ‘‘I have to take my daughter to her piano lesson’’ refers to the actual ‘I’ – a significant amount of
communication lacks these contextual cues.
In a virtual world, the entire process of befriending
someone and gaining his trust – built through messages like ‘‘you know, I’m really getting to like you’’ –
can be undertaken either in character or in person.
The ambiguity of this process is it is well understood,
if left unmentioned, by those who use it to their
advantage and invoke it to defend their behavior,
even as it is overlooked by those who may ultimately
find that their ‘friends’ have broken their promises,
lied to, and betrayed them.
The complication with lying or promise-breaking
in a virtual world is that those responsible can use the
excuse that they were simply acting in character. In
character, the members of the Guiding Hand are
masterful mercenaries for hire, directed to ‘‘seduce
and entice’’ their victims ‘‘into a state of trust and
confidence.’’43 In their minds, they are role-playing
friendship, a relationship that obtains only between
characters in the representational world. Insofar as
the Guiding Hand’s victims were also in character,
there is no moral content to the Guiding Hand’s
actions, for both parties were merely participating in
a representation of seduction and betrayal.
However, the victims of such acts do not usually
see eye-to-eye with their betrayers. In his mind, a
victim likely sees that he was working towards an
actual relationship, a friendship obtaining between
two users through the medium of their characters.
The victim thus feels as devastated when he finds out
his friend has betrayed him in the virtual world as he
would have been had he been betrayed in the actual
world.44
Given the understanding of the users involved, we
have thus arrived at an asymmetric, and metaphysically impossible, relationship. User A maintains that
he is performing only in character, while User B
insists that he is acting in person. But according to
the internal logic of representational worlds, a character cannot have knowledge of a person; Character
A does not know of a world outside the representational one of EVE, and so cannot have knowledge of
Person B.45 Communication, the building blocks of
relationships, can only occur between two characters
or two users, and relationships can only obtain in the
same manner (see Figure 2).
When two users communicate within the virtual
world without specifying the world in which they are
participating, are they both acting in character or in
person? At first glance, the fantastic universe and
43
Shotgaatsu, quoted in Rossignol, A Deadly Dollar,
2005, p. 129.
44
A parallel situation arises in cybersex, another
cyber-relationship which users may approach with different
expectations. Collins offers a well-reasoned exposition of
the perils of cybersex from a feminist perspective.
L. Collins. Emotional Adultery: Cybersex and Commitment. Social Theory and Practice 25(2): 243–270, 1999.
45
Walton, Mimesis, 1990.
METAPHYSICS
User A
Actual World
User B
Person
A
Person
B
Character
A
Character
B
Representational World
Figure 2. Representational epistemology. One-directional
arrows show a user’s knowledge of a character. Twodirectional arrows show each user or character has
knowledge of the other
on-screen representations of EVE suggest that users
are always, as it were, in costume, and therefore in
character. However, there are several good reasons to
believe that all communication within virtual worlds
takes place between people.
For one, in the representational world of EVE,
characters are not automata; they are puppets, unable
to perform without the constant presence of a person
sitting in front of a computer. Whenever a user sends
a message, or makes a promise or a request, through
a virtual world, even if in character, she assumes that
another person will act in response. The representational promise ‘‘I’ll let you ride in my spaceship’’ is
also an actual promise that ‘‘I will execute the interface commands that enables you to experience the
virtual content that I am currently experiencing.’’
Without the implication of an actual promise, the
user might as well be talking to one of the computercontrolled characters in EVE, or even a representational potted plant, and should expect as much of a
meaningful response. So every meaningful communication within the EVE universe is, explicitly or
implicitly, directed as much to the person behind the
computer as it is to the character she represents.46
For another, any user with even a little experience
in virtual worlds understands their inherent duality,
and the potential ambiguity of language which does
46
Powers draws on the Speech Act Theory to make a
similar point:
Because what an agent says, intends, and achieves is
real, it is the subject matter for moral judgment, even
when his or her agency is mediated by computers.
The utterances and intentions of agents in cyberspace
are partly constitutive of the socio-technical system
that we call the online world.
T. Powers. Real Wrongs in Virtual Communities. Ethics
and Information Technology 5(4): 191–198, 2003.
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MORALS
215
not, through context, clearly establish itself as operating to one world or the other. A potentially asymmetric relationship can be resolved at any time by
clarifying whether the conversation is taking place
within the representational or actual world. This
technique can even be performed theatrically as an
aside or through a kind of text called an e-mote,
which seeks to restore some of the body language lost
in the transition to a virtual medium.47 The only
reason why a user would be loathe to clarify such a
communication is if she thought it might arouse
suspicion in another user; this in itself is proof of the
user’s intent to deceive.
Had the members of the Guiding Hand clearly
indicated the duplicitous nature of the characters they
were playing, there would be no reason to treat their
subsequent betrayal as anything other than a masterful
representational performance. Whether from an aside
or an out-of-character message, the users role-playing
the ‘victims’ would have been clued in on the impending deception, and role-played their parts accordingly.
However, insofar as they misled their victims for
over a year into believing that they were building an
actual friendship, before betraying their trust at the
most opportune time, the Guiding Hand behaved as
immorally as if they had done the same over the
telephone or in face-to-face conversation.
Conclusion
We can only undertake a moral analysis of the
Guiding Hand’s actions after we have understood the
metaphysical nature of the environment in which they
acted, and the nature of virtual worlds is a paradoxical one. Virtual worlds have both representational and actual elements, and the intermingling of
the two is cause for ambiguity and misunderstanding.
However, it is the dependent relationship of these
elements that has allowed us to judge certain behaviors within virtual worlds as immoral.
The representational world of EVE is pinned to
the actual world through virtual characters and items.
Both exist simultaneously as representational and
actual users or objects. Behind every virtual character
is an actual person, who sits down in front of a
computer and logs on in order to derive enjoyment
from adventuring and socializing in virtual worlds.
And behind every virtual object is the time, money,
and skill a user spent acquiring it, and the access to or
47
The user role-playing the Guiding Hand operative
could, for instance, type an e-mote during a lull in the
conversation: ‘‘Shogaatsu’s eye twitches involuntarily, as
though he has something to hide.’’
216
ASHLEY JOHN CRAFT
manipulation of the virtual world that it allows.
Users’ interests are harmed when others steal their
virtual investments or betray their trust online.
In EVE, virtual theft and betrayal are immoral
because users do not have good reason to believe that
they should be trying to take others’ property or
deceive them. Virtual worlds, like casinos or football
fields, can be places in which ordinary moral duties
towards property and personhood can be suspended.
But without universal informed consent from all users
as to the nature of the environment in which they are
participating, users have the same de facto duties
towards each other when they interact within virtual
spaces as they do when writing in print, talking over
the telephone, or meeting in person. To paraphrase
Castronova, users’ duties towards others within virtual worlds ‘‘have nothing to do with the fact that
moral agents are interacting through their characters
in virtual reality; it has everything to do with the fact
that they are moral agents, interacting.’’48
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