How to Be a God

How to Be a

God

A Guide for Would-Be

Deities

Richard. A. Bartle

First published in Great Britain by NotByUs, 2022

Orchard House, Queens Road,

West Bergholt, Essex. CO6 3HE

http://www.notbyus.com

The right of Richard A. Bartle to be identified as

author of this Work has been asserted in

accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and

Patents Act, 1988.

ISBN 978-0-9556494-9-3

iii

To gods-who-are and gods-to-be.

 
iv 
 
 
Contents 
 
Virtual Worlds as Virtual Worlds .................... 5 
1.  REALITIES AND GODS ............................................ 6 
Definitions................................................................... 7 
History ...................................................................... 20 
Unrealities ................................................................ 35 
The Central Conceit .............................................. 46 
2.  CONTENT TO CODE .............................................. 52 
Dramatis Personae .................................................. 54 
Software .................................................................... 62 
Engines ...................................................................... 69 
Content ..................................................................... 75 
Resets ......................................................................... 84 
Real Content ............................................................ 92 
Replications ........................................................... 105 
Reboots .................................................................... 120 
Virtual Worlds as Realities .............................133 
3.  REALISING DREAMS ............................................ 134 
Making it Real ........................................................135 

 
v 
Origins of Reality .................................................. 147 
Origins of Sub-Realities ...................................... 154 
Realities Determined ........................................... 157 
Getting Personal ...................................................168 
Self-Modifying Systems ..................................... 183 
Granularity ............................................................. 195 
Simples.................................................................... 208 
4.  EXISTENCE .............................................................. 218 
Ontology .................................................................. 219 
Representing and Absenting ........................... 228 
Copying................................................................... 237 
It’s All Relative ...................................................... 242 
Coincidence ........................................................... 248 
Perspective ............................................................ 252 
5.  IMMERSION ............................................................ 257 
Our Own Image.................................................... 259 
The Fiction .............................................................. 271 
Realisticness .......................................................... 285 
Physics and Causality ........................................ 294 
Realities as Realities ........................................ 309 
6.  SAPIENCE ................................................................. 310 
Mobiles ..................................................................... 311 
The Bots Among Us ............................................ 327 

 
vi 
Freeish Will ............................................................ 334 
Theory of Mind ..................................................... 343 
Speculation ............................................................ 356 
Keeping Up Appearances .................................. 364 
7.  MORALITY ............................................................... 376 
Changing People .................................................. 378 
Mortality ................................................................. 385 
The Soul of an NPC .............................................. 398 
Being Moral Beings ............................................. 414 
Religious Places .................................................... 438 
Creation Destruction ..........................................449 
Realities as Virtual Worlds ............................ 457 
8.  CONNECTIONS ...................................................... 458 
Consequent Realities ......................................... 460 
Gods and Governments .....................................469 
9.  POINT OF YOU ...................................................... 480 
Motivation ..............................................................482 
A Lens ...................................................................... 507 
Answers and Unanswers ...................................520 
Well How About That ..........................................531 
Reflections .............................................................. 538 
 

vii

Acknowledgements

This book would not be as it is without the input

of:

My daughter, Jennifer Bartle, who told me

bluntly that the entire text needed to be

completely restructured.

Veteran game designer Eric Goldberg, who

concurred with Jenny but was less blunt about it.

Computer Scientist Pat Parslow, who found

multiple bugs both in my text and in my

arguments.

Game designer Zoë O’Shea, who demanded

more diagrams and got more diagrams.

Philosopher Hazel Speed, who survived the first

draft all the way to the end.

My student Rachel Lowe, who suggested that I

drop the words “to conduct” from the subtitle.

The dozens of people who pronounced on early

ideas for the cover. Without their comments, you

would never have even looked at this book.

My wife, Gail Bartle, who could have stopped

me but didn’t.

Prologue

This is a book about philosophy, theology and

computer games.

I myself am a computer game designer. In

common with all other computer game designers, I

am an expert in neither philosophy nor theology.

That said, the number of philosophers and

theologians who are able to claim they’re experts

in computer game design can be counted on the

fingers of no hands, too. This lack of intersection

isn’t perhaps surprising, because what could one

group possibly have to say that would be of any

interest to the other?

Well, that’s what I aim to set out in the coming

chapters.

The kind of game I specialise in is the virtual

world. Also known as Massively-Multiplayer Online

Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs for short) (MMOs

for shorter), virtual worlds are among the largest

and most expensive games yet created. World of

Warcraft is probably the best-known of them, but

there are thousands of such games around,

boasting hundreds of millions of players

worldwide. They’re basically pocket universes –

How to Be a God

pocket realities – cut off from the world we live in

precisely because their players want to be cut off

from the world we live in every once in a while

The folks who design and build virtual worlds

are often referred to as the “gods” of those games,

and for good reason: MMO designers entirely

control the functionality of the realities they

construct. That’s exactly what makes a god a god:

absolute control over a reality. Philosophers and

theologians debate in depth the nature of the

reality in which we live, but they’ve never had

cause to design and implement a reality

themselves. MMO designers have. They can

profess actual experience of being gods, and of

making those decisions that only gods typically

have to make. This puts them in a position to help

answer some of the questions that have been

bothering students of Metaphysics since forever –

and to bother them further with questions that

they haven’t yet considered. This is largely what I

shall be attempting to do in this book.

My approach will be broken down into four

unequal parts.

Where “every once in a while” typically means two to four

hours a day. Some people watch TV in the evenings; some

people play MMOs instead.

I was going to add “Wish me luck.”, but I suspect you’re

going to need it more yourself.

Prologue

• Part 1: Virtual World as Virtual Worlds

I’ll start off by explaining what virtual

worlds are and whence they came. This will

have the additional effect of enabling you to

judge whether I may know what I’m talking

about or not.

• Part 2: Virtual Worlds as Reality

Next, I shall consider some problems that

philosophers have identified regarding the

nature of our own reality and outline how

these are tackled in virtual worlds – where

solutions actually have to be implemented.

• Part 3: Realities as Realities

After this, I’ll change focus from looking at

virtual worlds as purely physical (well,

virtual) spaces, and instead concentrate on

their inhabitants – the non-player

characters with which

we populate them.

Assuming that the field of Artificial

Intelligence eventually gets its act together,

we could end up with virtual worlds

containing simulated beings as smart as or

smarter than we are.

• Part 4: Realities as Virtual Worlds

Finally, having thought about how we, as

gods, feel we ought to treat the denizens of

the realities we make, I’ll shift the

perspective up a level: if our own reality has

one or more gods, is the way that they

Or with whom.

How to Be a God

apparently behave towards us the same as

or different to how we propose to behave

towards the beings of our own creations?

The narrative thread therefore goes something

like this: explain what realities are; describe how

we create realities; discuss what responsibilities

those who create realities have; assess whether any

creator of Reality lives up to these responsibilities.

The title of this book is How to Be a God. It’s not

How to Become a God, because in time anyone who

wants to be a god (of a virtual world) will be able to

become one. Neither is it How to be a God, with an

uncapitalised be, because that would emphasise

power over responsibility. It’s How to Be a God,

because it concerns how people should behave

once they become gods (regardless of whether or

not they want to become gods – this isn’t a power

fantasy).

As for what “should” means there, well that’s for

you to decide. I’m no demagogue: as I said, I know

how to design realities, and I know some of what

does and doesn’t work with them, but I’d have to be

even more arrogant than I am already to suppose

that how I think things “should” be is indeed how

they should be. That’s a decision for the bulk of

humanity to make; all I can do is point out that

humanity does need to make it.

So yes, that means it’s a decision for you.

Right, then! Shall we begin?

Part 1

Virtual

Worlds as

Virtual

Worlds

How to Be a God

Chapter 1

REALITIES AND

GODS

I am a god.

It’s great! I love being a god!

Three or four seconds ought to do it.

So, having despatched to social media those

readers who are more interested in indignation

than in explanation, I should now be left with those

of you who thought “What does this mean?” rather

than “What’s the meaning of this?!”.

Hi, folks!

Although of course there was an element of

trolling to my opening remark, I do stand by it: I

am indeed a god. Naturally, I don’t mean that I’m a

god of the physical reality in which we live, which

is fortunate both for me (because that kind of

attitude tends to spawn angry mobs of pitchfork-

wielding villagers) and for you (because you

needn’t worry that I might strike you down with a

thunderbolt). I especially don’t mean that I’m the

particular and popular god called God, although I

do acknowledge that it would be cool if I were.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

Nevertheless, I am a bona fide, literal-not-

metaphorical god; this book is my shot at sharing

with you some of what I’ve learned from being

such over the past four decades, so as to help

prepare you for the day when you’re a god (if you

aren’t one already).

Definitions

Indulging me for a moment, under what definition

of the word “god” could I possibly be one?

Well, I’m one under the very first definition of

the term in the Oxford English Dictionary: A.I.1.a. It

describes a god as being:

A superhuman person regarded as having

power over nature and human fortunes; a deity

(Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, 2014)

OK, so it’s not immediately apparent how the

OED’s definition could apply to me. The word

“nature” usually refers to the phenomena of our

own physical reality, yet I’ve explicitly stated that

I’m not a god of this reality (leastwise if I am, I

haven’t noticed). However, you don’t have to bind

the word “nature” only to the context of our reality:

all realities have their own natures. Given a

different reality, a god of that reality would

How to Be a God

therefore be someone who has power over that

reality’s nature.

That’s the kind of god I am.

Sadly, merely asserting this statement isn’t on

its own enough to make it true. If I’m to persuade

you that I really am a god, I need to explain: what I

mean by a reality; what is meant by the nature of a

reality; and what it means to have power over that

nature. Only then can I point at a reality over the

nature of which I have power and thereby justify

my claim.

What’s a reality, then?

Well we’re all familiar with at least one reality:

the objective, physical reality in which we are

presumed to exist. The consensus is that this

existed before each of us was born and will

continue to exist after each of us has died. In this

book, I shall be referring to it using the proper

noun Reality, to distinguish it from all the other

realities that I’ll be discussing. Yes, there are other

realities. For example, if you believe that when you

die, your consciousness goes to another plane of

existence, that plane of existence would qualify as a

reality – just it’s not Reality.

I’m calling these places “realities”, rather than

“worlds” or “planes” or “universes”, because I want

to keep them absolutely distinct both from Reality

and from each other. A reality is a self-contained

space of existence; I hope not to give the

impression that one reality can be part of another

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

reality (although, as we shall see in due course, one

reality can be implemented in another reality).

A reality isn’t a free-for-all space where

anything goes: each one adheres to a set of physical

rules

individual to it that define its characteristics.

Collectively, these characteristics are a reality’s

nature. The rules themselves are its physics. Reality

unquestionably has physics, because otherwise

physicists would be out of a job, but other realities

also have physics – it’s what makes them realities.

Note that I usually talk in terms of a reality’s

physics rather than its nature, as the latter derives

from the former; it’s like algebra, with physics

being the equations and nature being the solutions.

The rules pertaining to realities in general don’t

have to be the same as the rules pertaining to

Reality in particular. If, for example, you believe

that some people who die go to a place of

punishment where they are burned for all eternity

in a lake of fire, well clearly the way that fire works

there is different to how it works in Reality

;

therefore, its physics must be different to Reality’s.

The physics of a reality affects

its nature in

three ways:

Or laws; I’ll be using the terms pretty well interchangeably.

Besides, what makes a law a law is the subject of some

disagreement even among philosophers (Carroll, 2016).

Contact with it is still likely to hurt, though.

The word here is “affects” rather than “affect” because the

noun “physics” is singular. Well, it is except when referring to

How to Be a God

1. It determines what the components of the

reality are. Everything in Reality is either

matter, energy or (quite possibly) both.

2. It manifests these components in an

ongoing configuration

. The atoms in

Reality that comprise your body

were

doing other things a thousand years ago.

3. It determines how the current

configuration is transformed to give a new

configuration. In Reality, gravity

encourages objects to move towards each

other, meaning their positions tend to

change dynamically.

The consequences of a reality’s physics are the

nature of that reality. Gods of a reality have power

over its nature, so that’s equivalent to saying they

have power over its physics. What, then, in

practice, can they do?

Well, a god of a reality has the ability to change

any and all aspects of physics for that reality. If you

were the god of a reality made up of bottles of soda

water

, you could decide to allow it also to contain

ping-pong balls. If you were the god of a reality

several different physics, a situation brought on because

“physicses” isn’t a word.

The configuration may well be of components that are

entirely manifested as fuzzy balls of probabilities, but there’s

only one of it.

Roughly 10

of them for each kilogram you weigh.

If this sentence refers to “soda water”, that means the

sponsorship deal didn’t come through.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

made up of sounds, you could spontaneously create

(or, if your composition skills aren’t great, recreate)

a symphony within it. If you were the god of a

reality with colours, you could make their

saturation automatically cycle every Sunday.

The non-god inhabitants of a reality can

perform none of these activities. They can make

changes to the reality’s configuration if its physics

allows them to do so, but they can’t change the

physics itself

. For example, I am able to bring a

sandwich into existence because the

transformative rules of Reality’s physics allow me

to make gradual changes to the way that Reality is

configured such that the result is a new

configuration in which I have a sandwich. Only a

god could make it a stegosaurus sandwich, though

(notwithstanding future advances in paleobiology).

The physics of a reality encapsulates the laws of

nature for that reality. Unlike regular laws that are

enforced by police, they’re self-enforcing; as such,

they’re unbreakable by non-gods. Laws of the land

operate within the laws of nature, and can

physically be broken (not that I’m advocating this).

For example, it isn’t a law of nature that you must

drive on the left in Britain; you’d be risking your

life and the lives of others if you drove on the

right

, but you could, physically, do it. You could

“I can’t change the laws of physics.” (Scott, Stardate 1704.2).

Except along Savoy Court in London, where it’s the other

way round.

How to Be a God

not, however, drive both on the left in Britain and

on the right in France simultaneously; this is

because Reality’s physics makes it incredibly

difficult to be in two places at the same time. It’s

possible to conceive of a reality in which this kind

of thing would be a breeze, but Reality is not such a

reality. It does readily allow you to be in two times

at the same place, though.

So to summarise: a reality is a self-contained

space of existence that’s defined, maintained and

continually modified by its own physics. A god of a

reality is an individual with control over the

physics of that reality.

Notice how I seamlessly segued back to the

topic of gods, there.

I should mention that I’m using the term “god”

in a gender-inclusive fashion in this book – and not

only for the purely pragmatic reason that I don’t

want to have to write “god or goddess” every single

time. The thing is, some gods have no or multiple

genders (the concept of gender fluidity is not a

modern one), so even “god or goddess” doesn’t

always work; it might be “god and goddess” or

indeed something else entirely

I make this point because of an important

convention that I have adopted throughout this

text: all Reality’s gods exist. I don’t want to offend

I could have used the more gender-nonspecific term deity,

and almost did, but you wouldn’t have bought this book if I’d

called it How to Be a Deity.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

anyone by suggesting that their deeply-held beliefs

are wrong

, so I treat all of them as if they were

right. If I say that Apollo is both a healer and the

bringer of disease and death, but you think that

Apollo is just a pretend person that the Ancient

Greeks made up, well it’s for you to field

complaints from angry Apollo-worshippers – I’m

staying out of it. Thus, I’ll talk about accounts

rather than myths, even though in all cases more

people think they’re myths than think they’re

accounts.

This will undoubtedly come across as weird on

occasion. I’ll sometimes support my statements by

referencing as fact what no human being alive

regards as being anything other than fiction. For

example, I might say that some gods can’t control

the physics of Reality themselves but do have a

veto on other gods’ actions; I could illustrate this

by pointing to the Slavic gods Zorya (she’s two

gods in one) who prevent the doomsday hound

Simargl from destroying the universe. It’s

irrelevant that this description carries the distinct

whiff of having been invented: what’s important is

that my subsequent argument (about whether

having power over a god makes you, too,

effectively a god) hasn’t come out of nowhere. It’s

not a straw man: it’s based on an assertion that

either was or is widely accepted as being true. It’s

Although I do realise that I may still cause offence by

suggesting that all gods are of comparable validity.

How to Be a God

therefore legitimate to ask whether, if Zorya can do

what she can do, there is an equivalent situation in

virtual worlds, and if not, why not

. Taking it

further: if, in Reality, you are the boss of a virtual

world’s boss, can you yourself also be considered a

god of that virtual world even if you never play it?

I’ll sometimes refer to accounts of gods’

behaviour as evidence. This may also come across

as weird. For example, consider the observation

that in popular books and films featuring a “chosen

one”, the chosen one is often a teenager

. I might

point out that there is scant evidence that gods

choose teenagers as their chosen ones, the

implication being that it’s a bad idea. In support of

my argument, I could mention that Abraham was

aged 75 when called by God

. This would definitely

count as admissible evidence for debating what, in

theory and practice, gods can do, don’t do and do

do – regardless of whether you, personally, believe

there’s any truth to it or not.

Although my definition of the term god

basically the same as the OED’s, it does differ in

one important respect: I don’t connect being a god

I don’t actually ask this question, but the short answer is

that there can be such a situation but usually isn’t.

I do look at this briefly in Chapter 8.

Not always: Neo from The Matrix is not a teenager, for

example.

It says so right there in Genesis 12:4.

To wit: an individual with control over the physics of a

reality.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

with being regarded as a god. Using my definition,

you can be a god without being regarded as a god,

and you can be regarded as a god but not actually

be a god. When it comes to practicalities, what’s

important is whether you have control over the

physics of a reality, not whether someone else

thinks you have it.

Of course, most established gods of Reality

satisfy both these criteria anyway. Perhaps the

best-known example of a god of Reality is the one

known in English as God

. God is clearly regarded

as a god (he’s worshipped as one), but he can also

back up the contention with action: stopping a

burning bush from being consumed by its flames;

turning a woman into a pillar of salt; bringing flood

waters to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of

life (except that on a 300-cubit ark); the list of

examples is long. With such physics-defying

abilities at his command, God definitely qualifies as

a god (of Reality).

Other candidates may be lacking, however. For

example, you might regard one of Reality’s rivers

as having control over nature because it floods

each year and deposits fertile silt that helps your

crops grow. Now while helping crops grow does

indeed look like a power over nature, it’s one that a

river only possesses as a consequence of its own

The word “God” is a proper noun in this context, hence its

capitalisation. To be fair to other gods, however, I won’t be

capitalising the associated pronouns, so “he” not “He”.

How to Be a God

place in nature. Sure, you may believe that your

river has power over nature, but actually nature

has power over your river. Your river therefore

wouldn’t qualify as a god by my definition, but it

would by the OED’s.

Conversely, it’s possible that someone does

have control over Reality’s nature, but isn’t

regarded as a god simply because they’ve kept a

low profile. It’s even conceivable that they don’t

know they’re a god. I confess that one of the hopes I

have for this book is that it will alert people who

are gods of realities other than Reality to the fact

that they are gods of those realities, thereby

dissuading them from doing anything horrific by

accident

Adopting this tighter definition of what makes

a god a god doesn’t help me in my quest to show

that I myself am a god

, but the reason I

nevertheless chose to go with it is that it removes

opinion from the equation. If I’m to bring my

practical experience of being a god to bear, I need a

definition that’s less to do with psychology and

more to do with engineering. You can therefore

assume that when I refer to a god of a reality, I

mean that the individual in question actually has

They can, of course, still do something horrific deliberately;

not every god is a paragon of all that’s good. Yes, Whiro-te-

tipua, Māori god of darkness, I’m calling you out.

Under the OED’s definition, I could show it merely by

bribing people to regard me as having power over nature.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

power over that reality’s nature, irrespective of

whether they’re regarded as having power over it.

From what I’ve said so far, it would seem to

follow that the gods of a reality must be equal in

standing: either you have power over that reality’s

physics or you don’t. It’s true

, too: a reality’s gods

are indeed all equal in terms of what they can do to

that reality (if not necessarily to each other) – but

this doesn’t mean that they all have the same

status. There’s a qualitative difference between the

Mongolian god Esege Malan (who created Reality)

and his sons (who created the flying serpents, giant

dogs, invisible spirits and multi-headed beasts that

are manifested within Reality). I’ll be discussing

later why this distinction is important, but for the

moment I’ll simply note that some gods are creator

gods and some aren’t.

It’s also worth pointing out at this stage that

there are accounts in Reality of beings who, while

they’re not exactly gods, are nevertheless in

possession of some pretty serious capabilities. It’s

clear that the gods of a reality can change its

physics and that the ordinary people of that reality

(who are bound by its physics) can’t, but between

the two are what are generally called supernatural

beings (if they’re entirely spiritual) or demigods (if

they’re not). These individuals remain bound by

their reality’s physics, but a different physics

applies to them than applies to ordinary people.

Trivially so if the reality has one or fewer gods.

How to Be a God

For example, in Reality ordinary people are

statistically very unlikely to be able to walk

through walls (believe me, I’ve tried). Ghosts,

however, can walk through walls whenever they

feel like it. This makes ghosts supernatural beings:

they can’t control Reality’s physics, but they do

have a special, permeable-to-walls dispensation.

Similarly, the Ancient Greek hunter Orion was a

demigod who could walk on the sea, a talent he

inherited from his father, Poseidon

. When it

came to water-walking, different rules of physics

applied to him than applied (or indeed apply) to

ordinary folk. Apart from that one difference,

though, the same rules applied to him as apply to

you and me

Wielding my definition ruthlessly, it turns out

that some so-called gods are actually just very

powerful demigods. Hermes, for example, the

Ancient Greek messenger of the gods, can fly very

quickly because of his winged sandals; if he had full

command of the physics of Reality, he wouldn’t

need the sandals. Either he’s not a god, or he has

some explaining to do.

OK.

So if you’re a physicist, a philosopher or a

theologian, for some time now you’ll have been

ranting to anyone who will listen about what

Do not attempt this unless your father is also Poseidon.

You, too, could be killed by a giant scorpion and made into a

constellation of stars.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

you’ve been reading herein. It will seem to you that

I’m presenting a naïve, unsophisticated view of

How Things Are that has been thoroughly

understood (or possibly misunderstood) for a long,

long time.

That’s fair enough. I’m neither a physicist, a

philosopher nor a theologian, so entirely accept

that people who have studied these topics for their

entire academic careers are going to look upon my

words with a mixture of amusement, impatience,

pity and “he hasn’t even read Hegel!”.

What I am is a game designer.

This means I know some things that, regardless

of how long and distinguished their careers may

be, physicists, philosophers and theologians don’t

know. They may have described, analysed and

speculated about realities, but I’ve actually made

realities. What’s non-obvious to those who use a

product can be obvious to those who make it

This book recounts lessons I have learned from

doing such, and points out some of the inferences

that this knowledge allows us to make regarding

the implementation of Reality.

I suppose I need now to explain what kind of

games I design and why these qualify as being

realities.

See the short section on paper manufacture in (Updegraff,

1916).

How to Be a God

History

In October 1978, at the age of 18, I began my

studies at the University of Essex, England. Just

because I’m a game designer, that doesn’t mean I

can’t be old.

Some time that month – our best guess is

October 20

– an undergraduate in the year above

me, Roy Trubshaw, began work on a computer

game he called MUD (short for Multi-User Dungeon,

but we only ever referred to it as MUD). I met Roy a

few days later when I joined the university’s

Computer Society (Roy was its secretary). He

showed me MUD, I described some games I’d

designed myself, and we rapidly became friends.

I realise that this sounds as if I’m about to lay

out my credentials so as to enable you to judge my

level of expertise, and to a large extent that’s true;

however, what I say here will turn out in much

later chapters to have further relevance, so it’s not

entirely an exercise in self-aggrandisement.

At this point, MUD was just a test of technology,

but Roy had already started work on the fully-

fledged game itself. He began with the physics (you

can see where I’m going with this, right?) and had

something playable by Christmas. He then added

more of what nowadays is called content

, along

There’s a detailed section on content in Chapter 2, if you’re

not sure what it is and don’t mind skipping ahead to find out.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

with additional physics

to widen the range of

content that could be supported.

Although Roy undertook all the programming

himself, he let several other interested students

help with occasional acts of content-creation. I was

one such student; we didn’t add much, but we got a

handle on what he was doing and discussed at

length its possibilities.

Work on MUD proceeded apace, however it

gradually became clear to Roy that its program

was becoming somewhat unwieldy. He’d written it

in an assembly language, which runs fast but is

slow to program. Also, he’d implemented it such

that the functionality to add content to the game

sat within the game itself; it occupied so much

memory that it significantly reduced the amount

left available to store the content that it was meant

to be being used to add.

After about a year, Roy snapped and began

work on a third version of MUD. He separated the

game’s content-creation from its physics and

rewrote everything from scratch in a systems

programming language called BCPL

This was an ambitious project, and by Easter

1980 Roy had only managed to rewrite about 25%

of the game. Noticing that his finals were

Like water, physics is uncountable. That’s why this word

isn’t “physicses” either.

As historians of computers will attest, BCPL was the

language that the language that the language C was based on

was based on.

How to Be a God

impending, he passed the baton to me. Because I

was (and still am) younger than Roy, I had another

year before my own finals would loom, during

which I duly completed the remaining 75%.

Unlike Roy, however, I didn’t leave Essex

University when I graduated. I was the only

student in my cohort to achieve first-class

honours

, and because of this won a grant to do a

PhD (in Artificial Intelligence, for reasons I’ll touch

on later).

Over the next few years, I kept adding bits and

bobs to what (notwithstanding its actually being

the third version of MUD) came to be known as

MUD1. Inevitably, though, I too finally hit my

frustration limit, and in 1985 rewrote it all yet

again as MUD2. We’ll stick with calling it just MUD

for now, though.

OK, so this is all very

interesting, but why am I

telling you about a game from the dawn of time

that today is little more than a museum piece? It’s

pretty obvious I’m going to claim that MUD is a

reality and that I, as one of its designers, am

therefore a god of it, so why not just cut to the

chase? Why the history lesson?

Well, I shall soon be explaining how MUD

qualifies as a reality, yes, but I’m going to keep

They were much less common back then. Some years,

nobody got one. Nowadays, around a quarter of students in

the same department graduate with a first. Modern teaching

methods are just so much better than they were in the 1970s.

For certain charitable definitions of the word “very”.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

going with the history for just a little longer so

that I don’t have to re-undertake the whole process

again half a book from now. MUD’s history, you

see, is its origin myth.

These days, around half of British 18-year-olds

go to university. Back in the 1970s, it was more like

one in seven. The vast majority were from middle-

class backgrounds and studied History, or English,

or Medicine, or Economics, or (if they weren’t

especially bright) Sociology. Few middle-class

parents wanted their children to be engineers,

because engineers mend broken railway

locomotives, climb up telegraph poles and

(horrors!) consort with mathematicians.

The country did need engineers, though; in

particular, because these new-fangled “computers”

looked as if they might one day be beneficial, it

needed software engineers. So it was that

exceptionally-clever working-class children with

sufficient flair to pass their exams could find places

at university on courses that involved Computer

Science.

Flair was required, too, because most of us had

completely the wrong impression of how

examinations were marked. Surely, if asked to

calculate the integral between 0 and

of x cos(x)

with respect to x, you’d be awarded more marks

for writing simply

-1 than for showing a step-

by-step solution? You’d managed to work it all out

in your head – that had to be worth more marks! It

didn’t occur to us that if there were five marks for

How to Be a God

a question, you could nevertheless obtain four for

getting it wrong and only one for getting it right.

With flair, you’d at least get that one mark, though,

and so could pass overall (albeit with an indifferent

grade); without flair, you’d get nothing.

Those of us who found ourselves studying

Computer Science at Essex University were

therefore often pretty smart cookies, either from

underprivileged backgrounds or from more

privileged backgrounds in defiance of our parents.

Either way, we were social outcasts. All other

students at the university looked down on us. We

were the lowest of the low

In all fairness, we were a little different. To

study Computer Science in its early days required

a certain mindset. Those who were drawn to the

subject needed to have a systems-oriented way of

thinking, coupled with natural creativity – an

unusual combination

. The requirements were the

same in Computer Science departments across the

globe: they were populated by people who saw the

enormous potential afforded by computers to

change the world for the better and who found joy

simply from playing with them. They didn’t want

A situation which prevailed until the Psychology

department was founded in 1991.

This remains the case for all designers of MUD-like games.

Indeed, Mike Sellers (who was one of the designers of the

early graphical world Meridian 59) persuasively advocates

using a systems-thinking approach for game design in

general (Sellers, 2018).

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

to be told what to do; they wanted to be shown

how to use tools, which they could then employ

however they liked in ways that no-one else had

yet imagined.

In Dungeons & Dragons alignment terms, we

were Chaotic Good

This collective viewpoint came to be known as

hacker culture, but it wasn’t a culture in the sense

that when you arrived at university it was

inculcated in you by those already there. Rather, it

was that Computer Science selected for people

with a particular world view, who upon arrival

discovered that everyone else doing Computer

Science had that same world view. They shared

notions of freedom, of fairness, of the limitless

possibilities of computers – all of which informed

the creation by Roy and I of MUD.

The thing is, we didn’t like being bottom of the

pile. We didn’t like poverty. We didn’t like being

judged by how we dressed

or by our accents, as if

we were uneducated, unsophisticated yokels. We

didn’t see ourselves as losers at all. We railed

against it! We particularly disliked the smug,

paternalistic, patronising attitude of middle-class

students who paid lip service to equality of

opportunity but who fully expected to go on to jobs

Chaos is officially opposed by Law, but it always seemed to

me that Law only existed because of Evil. If everyone was

Good, we wouldn’t need Law.

In general, shabbily, which was nevertheless quite smart by

1970s undergraduate standards.

How to Be a God

in which they would boss people like us around for

four times our salary. We didn’t like being trapped

by the way we looked, by the way we sounded, by

whatever particular hand of gender, sexuality,

ethnicity and physical form Reality had dealt us.

We wanted to be judged by our actions and by our

character, not by other people’s uninformed

interpretations of how we were – or worse, of how

we must be. The world of 1970s Britain was not a

pleasant place for people like us. Frankly, it sucked.

We were, therefore, as is so often the case when

it comes to instigating social change, Angry Young

Men. We’d have said Angry Young People

ourselves, but as Roy and I are indeed both male,

let’s go with Men.

When Roy started work on MUD, it was because

a fun piece of operating system functionality had

provoked in him a visionary idea. As he continued,

he – and those of us he discussed it with – soon

concluded that what he was writing was not only a

game, but something else. It was our way out; or, if

not ours, then a way out for people like us in the

future.

MUD, you see was unlike any computer game

yet invented. It was its own, separate-from-Reality

reality, what would today be called a virtual world.

Virtual worlds are the kind of computer game that

I design.

Annoyingly, the term is “virtual world” rather

than “virtual reality”. Virtual reality is a technology

that presents physically-immersive interfaces to

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

computer-maintained environments

, whereas

virtual worlds comprise one particular sub-class of

such environments. Given how much I talk about

realities in this book, I really wish I could call them

virtual realities instead of virtual worlds, but the

VR people called dibs on the name first. Whatever, I

digress….

We didn’t know at the time that there weren’t

hundreds of games just like MUD running in

universities elsewhere, but we didn’t particularly

care. We knew what we had, and what we could do

with it.

When you ran MUD for the first time, it would

ask you by what name it should call you and (for

reasons of English-language pronoun usage) what

sex you wished to be. It would then drop you into

its world, to join everyone else who happened to be

playing at that moment. You could talk to them,

explore with them, work together with them,

attack them, or of course simply ignore them – all

in a strange, fantastical setting in which the older

something looked, the more powerful and

dangerous it was likely to be.

Because who you were in the game world both

was and wasn’t who you were in the world of

objective reality (that is, Reality), you were able to

experiment with your identity. You could cast off

whatever social and psychological chains were

holding you in place and be someone else. More to

In the terms of this book, then, it would be “virtual Reality”.

How to Be a God

the point, through doing this you were freed to

become and to be yourself.

All of this was quite deliberate. I told you I was a

game designer, and MUD was very much designed.

Never think that nerdy, teenaged computer

programmers only know and care about computer

programming (or teenagers) (or nerds). Just

because you are acquainted with plenty of well-

read, rounded individuals who are technologically

illiterate, that doesn’t mean that the

technologically literate can’t be well-read, rounded

individuals. All you’re doing by treating them as if

they’re culturally-unaware, one-dimensional

dweebs is giving them an axe to grind. Roy and I

obligingly ground our axe.

MUD was

a program that its players

connected to and played concurrently. That made

it multi-user (hence the first two letters of its name,

although the modern preference with regard to

games is multi-player or multiplayer). There were

plenty of other multi-player games around at the

same time, of course – Monopoly is a multi-player

game, as are team sports – but MUD differed in

several important respects. Unlike anything that

had come before it, it simultaneously satisfied all

the following criteria (which double as a definition

of the term virtual world):

Well, as with many ancient virtual worlds that haven’t yet

closed, perhaps still more “is” than “was”.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

• The game world operated by using an

underlying automated rule set – its physics.

• Each player was represented by an

individual “in” the game world – their

character.

• Interaction with said world took place in

real time.

• The world was shared with other players.

• The world didn’t end when you yourself

stopped playing – it was persistent.

Actually, there was something like MUD that

had come before it: Reality. Indeed, of the

properties listed above, all but the first were

bounded by Reality. Even so, MUD was

nevertheless a self-contained space of existence

that was defined, maintained and continually

modified by its own physics; in other words, MUD

was also a reality.

Because that first property – MUD’s physics –

was not dependent on Reality, it was the only one

over which the game’s programmers (Roy and I)

had full control. We couldn’t do much about the

other criteria (not if we wanted people from Reality

to play our game), but we could – and did – both

formulate and change MUD’s physics.

That was enough to make us the gods of the

reality that was MUD.

This is why I can honestly say that I’m a god.

I’ve been a god of MUD since 1978.

How to Be a God

So now you know the rather unintuitive

rationale behind the creation of MUD. It was

written as a response to the British class system.

We really, really didn’t like how the world worked,

so we did something about it: we wrote our own

world.

Bear this in mind should you manage to stagger

to Chapter 9, where I discuss why gods commonly

create realities.

To be honest, when people ask me what our

discussions about MUD’s design were like, the

answer is a little disappointing. We didn’t have

long, philosophical conversations that went on

deep into the night. Our chats were mainly ideas-

oriented. There were no grandiose debates about

what we were trying to achieve – or even why we

were trying to achieve it. Much of our resentment

about our lot in life was unspoken. See, when

someone thinks the same way that you do, you

don’t need to know why they think what they

think; there’s little to deliberate. You know already

that they have similar goals to you; your

conversations therefore concern suggestions

regarding how to achieve those goals – they don’t

concern what those goals should be.

Roy started constructing MUD in earnest for

the same reason I joined him constructing MUD: to

make our world better by making a better world.

So, we’re now just about done with the history

of MUD – but we’re not quite done with the history

of virtual worlds in general. It remains for me to

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

outline how we got from where we were to where

we are today. This is because the second half of the

book is mainly about certain aspects of where

we’re going.

Now I mentioned earlier that Roy and I didn’t

know that what we were creating was the first

example of a new kind of game. I later discovered

that it was, although feel free to disagree if you

have a broader definition of what a virtual world is

than the criteria-based, bullet-list one I provided

just now.

As it happens, the concept of a virtual world

was invented independently multiple times. Just

because MUD was first, that doesn’t mean all

subsequent virtual worlds owe anything to it. The

full list of original, invented-from-nothing virtual

worlds that I know of is:

• MUD in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw and Richard

Bartle (wave).

• Sceptre of Goth in 1978 by Alan Klietz.

• Avatar in 1979 by Bruce Maggs, Andrew

Shapira and David Sides.

• Island of Kesmai in 1981 by Kelton Flinn and

John Taylor.

• Habitat in 1985 by Randy Farmer and Chip

Morningstar.

• Monster in 1989 by Rich Skrenta.

That said, almost all modern virtual worlds do

ultimately descend from MUD. There’s a reason for

this.

How to Be a God

Roy and I wrote MUD because we wanted to

give people the freedom to be. We didn’t write it to

make money. When anyone asked me for the

source code, then so long as I could be persuaded

that they weren’t merely players looking for an

edge over other players, I sent them a copy. We

encouraged people to write new virtual worlds,

either by using the MUD engine itself or by writing

their own.

Several people did write their own games based

on MUD. Some such games were worse, some were

better; most were at least different. People played

these games; inspired, several more wrote their

own. So it continued. New ideas were tried out,

discarded, amended, incorporated, refined; in

short, new virtual worlds evolved from older ones.

The class of such games as a whole came to be

known as MUDs; this is why MUD itself was later

referred to as MUD1 – to make it distinct from the

genre that now bore its name.

The number of MUDs grew and grew, helped by

the free availability of newly-written, customisable

source code that you could adapt to your own

requirements. There were so many of them that in

March, 1991, MUDs accounted for 11% of all

transatlantic Internet traffic (Wakeman, et al.,

1991).

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

These MUDs were primarily text-based; there

wasn’t enough bandwidth for graphics back then

This in part explains why those early games with a

graphical element to them – Avatar, Habitat and to

some extent Island of Kesmai – didn’t spread to the

Internet at large from their host systems. The text-

only Sceptre of Goth wouldn’t have done so either,

but its source code was ripped off by a disgruntled

programmer, prompting the franchising of the

game (Alberti, 2010). As a result, a visible thread of

SoG does run through the otherwise MUD-woven

fabric of virtual worlds from the past to the

present day.

We always knew that there would be 3D

graphical MUDs, just as today we know there’ll be

virtual reality equivalents once the technology is

up to it

. It took longer than we expected, but in

the 1990s commercial game developers finally did

decide to try making graphical MUDs for

entertainment and profit. Naturally, they sought to

employ people with existing expertise in the area,

and through sheer force of statistics almost all of

these designers and developers turned out to have

a MUD heritage (outnumbering as they did those of

other heritages hundreds to one).

Besides, we started off using teletypes. Graphics don’t go

well with what are essentially typewriters that write slower

than you can type.

Traditionally, the time when the tech will indeed be up to it

is always “ten years from now”, or five years for optimists.

How to Be a God

The term “graphical MUD” didn’t stick. Today,

the virtual worlds these pioneers created are

known as Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-

Playing Games (or MMORPGs, although the

abbreviated acronym MMOs is usually preferred

The genre went on to become wildly popular and

incredibly lucrative. World of Warcraft, which

launched in 2004, still has more players than most

countries have population, and continues to rake in

billions of dollars a year. It’s not the only virtual

world that does that, either – it’s just the one that’s

best-known.

Almost all modern MMOs therefore have an

ancestry that tracks back to a single progenitor.

That progenitor is MUD.

This is why I’m writing this book and you’re

not

In Britain, if you develop an idea that makes you

billions of dollars, you get a seat in the House of

Lords. If you develop an idea that makes other

people billions and billions of dollars every year for

decades, you get to be an Honorary Professor of

Computer Game Design at a provincial university.

Now I realise that this perhaps sounds rather

bitter, but it’s not: Roy and I didn’t do what we did

for personal gain; we wanted the idea of virtual

It turns out that some people find unpronounceable six-

letter acronyms cumbersome to use.

Unless you’re Roy Trubshaw (hi, Roy!), in which case the

reason is that I need the money more than you do.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

worlds to spread far and wide, and to change

people’s lives for the better. If we hadn’t wanted

this, we wouldn’t have written MUD in the first

place

We achieved our goal, too, although the pace of

change is frustratingly slow. There’s so much more

that could have been done by now! Nevertheless,

I’m relatively content. I don’t see visiting a virtual

world as a retreat from Reality; I see it as

movement to an improved reality

. At the very

least, virtual worlds give Reality some competition.

So now you know the following: what I mean by

a reality; how I define what a god of a reality is;

why I myself am such a god; what drove me to

create a reality; and why it is I feel qualified to

write about creating realities.

I may, however, be wrong.

Unrealities

I’ve argued quite strongly that the virtual worlds

we create are realities in the same sense that

Reality is a reality. However, those of us who

develop virtual worlds do not speak with one voice

Don’t get me wrong, though: I still think that the British

establishment treats game development disgracefully in

comparison to other creative industries.

Gratifyingly, I’m not alone in this view (Kania, 2017).

How to Be a God

on the subject; in fact, there are long-standing

differences of opinion among us as to whether

virtual worlds are indeed separate from Reality, or

whether they’re simply part of or an adjunct to it.

Three main positions are argued. The most

idealistic one is what might be called optimistic-

exclusive. This says that virtual worlds are separate

from Reality (that is, exclusive) and that they can

for the most part fend off attempts to bring Reality

into them (that is, optimistic). Because of the need

to visualise virtual worlds in advance of their being

made, most designers tend to think this way.

The second position is pessimistic-exclusive. This

says that although virtual worlds are in theory

separate from Reality, in practice too much Reality

is brought into them for the proposition reliably to

hold except in short bursts. This is the popular

view among most of the non-designers who work

on building virtual worlds; they’re sustained by a

vision of hope, but know in their hearts that it

won’t survive contact with the players.

The third position is inclusive. This simply says

that virtual worlds are part of Reality, and denies

that they can ever be independent realities

themselves. Yes, they are venues for play, and as

such afford their players a release from quotidian

life; nevertheless, they themselves exist firmly in

Reality. This is the predominant view of those who

design or create virtual worlds for other people to

exercise their own creativity within.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

The disagreement, then, is not over whether

virtual worlds can be treated as if they were

realities

. Rather, it’s over whether the reality

they’re being treated as collapses to Reality. In this

book, I shall be taking the optimistic-exclusive

position: that it doesn’t actually matter how much

Reality impinges on a virtual world, it always

remains a reality in its own right. To explain why,

let’s consider the two other competing views.

For game worlds, such as all MMOs and most

text MUDs, the players readily take on board the

idea that they’re visiting a separate reality. When

people play World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV or

Black Desert Online, they know intellectually that

they are merely interpreting pixels on a screen,

just as you know that this book is merely marks on

a page. It takes a minor act of will to accept that

the pixels represent a view from within a virtual

world, but the players are happy to comply because

of what they gain from it.

What if they don’t perform that minor act of

will?

Well in social worlds, such as Second Life and

Sansar, that’s largely what happens. Although

players can still treat the virtual world as a reality

if they care to, there’s no incentive for them to do

this. Social worlds aren’t billed as being fictional,

Unsurprisingly, because the word “virtual” is being used in

the very sense of “that which isn’t, having the form or effect

of that which is” (Bartle, 2003).

How to Be a God

they’re billed as being venues populated by

interesting people where you can do interesting

things. A security guard interprets the images on a

CCTV screen as showing a piece of Reality, and the

players of a social world typically interpret the

images they see on their own computer screens in

much the same way. To them, the virtual world is

just a visualisation of more Reality.

This is why the designers of social worlds tend

to think of them as adjuncts to Reality rather than

as separate realities in their own right – it can be a

genuinely more useful perspective for them

Routinely thinking of a virtual world as being

part of Reality doesn’t mean it is part of Reality,

though. The fact that virtual worlds are not part of

Reality is substantiated by one, simple observation:

they have different physics.

If you advocate the inclusive argument, then,

you’re abstracting away the differences in physics

because they’re not important to you.

Nevertheless, while it might be useful in some

contexts to think of your virtual world as if it were

part of Reality, objectively it isn’t.

If the inclusive argument concerns absorbing

the virtual into the real, the pessimistic-exclusive

Many academics take this point of view, too, for example

(Hammer, 2005). In some cases, this may be because much of

the early, foundational research on virtual worlds all but

entirely concerned social worlds (most notably,

LambdaMOO).

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

argument concerns absorbing the real into the

virtual.

Even if we restrict ourselves to game worlds, a

great deal of Reality does ooze into them. Indeed,

some of the people who play do so precisely

because they wish to exploit this potential.

Examples include: social scientists studying those

who play virtual worlds; journalists looking to

interview players for a story; gold farmers,

systematically collecting in-game currency to sell

to players for you-can-buy-food-with-it currency;

and designers of other virtual worlds, checking out

how this particular virtual world hangs together.

Such players are in a minority, but the

pessimistic-exclusive argument is that their

activities have disproportionate weight. If every

time you try to will yourself into the virtual world

there’s someone there talking about the current

sorry state of either politics, their favourite sports

team or their love life, you’re repeatedly snapped

back to Reality. It’s like the virtual world is coffee

and Reality is water: how many drops of water can

you add and still call it coffee?

The claim being made here is that so much

Reality is being dumped in virtual worlds that for

all intents and purposes they’re pretty well part of

Reality regardless of how wonderfully-independent

Homeopathy answer: all of them, whereupon it will cure

you of all the ailments that resemble the effects of undiluted

coffee.

How to Be a God

their physics is. Having myself experienced

bombardments of offers to buy World of Warcraft

gold for United States dollars, I can well see how it

might look that way to players; that said, how it

looks to players isn’t actually relevant here.

Players’ views are subjective; my definition

consciously removes subjectivity. Although it’s

legitimate to talk about whether intrusions from

one reality can change the character of another

reality

, it doesn’t alter the fact that they’re both

realities.

A simple way to demonstrate the point is to

deny all players access to the MMO that they’ve

supposedly transformed into a near-as-makes-no-

difference simulacrum of Reality. OK, so the

immediate effect might be that the virtual world

loses all financial viability, but be that as it may,

there won’t remain one iota of Reality in it; it’s

therefore clear that whatever the player

experience might indicate, the virtual world’s

fundamental nature is not that of Reality. Players

aren’t gods: they can’t make the changes to the

physics of a virtual world that would be necessary

to incorporate it into Reality

. Transient changes

to how a reality is interpreted don’t stop it from

being a reality.

I do this indirectly in later chapters.

For example, by giving the non-player characters in a

virtual world control of killer robots in Reality.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

Having successfully seen off the main

objections against it, the optimistic-exclusive

argument looks to be sitting pretty. It’s not,

however: unfortunately, elements of the

pessimistic-exclusive argument can be employed

to amplify the inclusive argument in a powerful

way. The basic line of attack, which draws on

theories both from Game Studies and from

Philosophy, suggests that virtual worlds aren’t

realities because Reality isn’t one either. Realities

are just constructions of the mind.

Here’s how the argument goes.

So, although there will often be people who are

playing an MMO for ulterior reasons, those who

are playing it straight nevertheless usually make

up the vast majority of its player base. When

designers talk about the “players” of such games,

these are the people they generally mean. The

reason such players play is that doing so gives

them something they want; that something

(despite the best endeavours of academics to label

it as engagement), they call fun

. To achieve this,

however, requires a certain outlook.

For any game, players must adopt what’s called

a lusory attitude (Suits, 1978), which is the

acceptance of the game’s rules and fiction as being

At a conference in Germany, I once asked what the German

word for “fun” was, genuinely wishing to know. I was told

there wasn’t one – much to the pained amusement of the

(almost wholly German) audience.

How to Be a God

limiting and true, even though the players know

they’re contrived. In Chess, for example, you could,

on your first move, take your opponent’s king and

declare yourself to be the winner. That you don’t,

and play by the rules instead, is due to your

adoption of a lusory attitude. The rules are there to

enable the conditions under which you’ll find

playing the game fun; Chess wouldn’t be much fun

if players didn’t play by the rules

. When all

players in a game have a lusory attitude, it’s called

a magic circle

(usually “the” magic circle in the

abstract).

The magic circle is porous, though. People bring

things into the game from Reality (and every so

often, the other way around). The language you

speak in a virtual world is a language from Reality.

You yourself are real, come to that; only the

character you play is virtual. Players can choose to

ignore these intrusions up to a point, but Reality

can always break in and end proceedings. “It’s all

Indeed, it’s debatable whether the resulting activity could

still be referred to as Chess.

The origin of the term is a book by Dutch historian Johan

Huizinga (Huizinga, trans. 1949), but it appears only as an

element in a list of examples. It was chosen from this list as a

synecdoche for the overall concept by US game designers

Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (Salen & Zimmerman,

2003), who in so doing popularised it.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then,

it’s just fun.”

So far, the argument is pure pessimistic-

exclusive. This is the point at which it changes

tack.

Suppose the reason the magic circle is porous is

that virtual worlds are indeed part of Reality. For

the purposes of play, the players wishfully

maintain the idea that they’re separate realities,

but in truth (as can be seen by what happens when

the bubble of the magic circle is popped) they’re

just kidding themselves. If you remove the players,

you don’t have a reality: all you have is a

sophisticated computer program.

This suggestion – that virtual worlds live all in

the imagination – is a seductive one. I would

nevertheless argue that the word “reality” does

remain appropriate here. Yes, all you have may

well be a sophisticated computer program – but

it’s still a reality. It may not be a reality for us, but

it’s one for those characters we create to inhabit it.

That’s not the end of the attack, though.

What these examples have in common is the

notion that for you, a reality is a conceived space

that your consciousness can inhabit. Even my

engineering-oriented line of argument accepts this

as the truth; where it differs from the more

I believe this is a quote from Wednesday Addams, but all

my attempts to find confirmation have to date been

frustrated.

How to Be a God

human-oriented line of argument is that mine

doesn’t treat the statement as a definition of what

a reality is, whereas the other one does.

If we nevertheless accept for the moment the

“virtual worlds live all in the imagination”

argument, it follows that there’s a single

paramount reality (Schütz, 1945) – what I’m calling

Reality

– and then many strata of other realities

depending on where people are currently

projecting their thoughts. “The world of science”

would be a reality in this light – as would “the

world of athletics”, “the world of philately”, “the

world of Robin Hood” and so on. This way of

couching what realities are has quite some

philosophical heft to it, too, as we shall see later.

So, that’s the combined argument: virtual

worlds aren’t separate from Reality because your

mind constructs and interprets them the same

way it does Reality. If they’re separate realities

then so’s Leicester.

To be honest, I do have some sympathy with

this approach, because it’s satisfyingly

reductionist: all you really know is that you know;

everything else is speculation

. When it comes

down to it, though, I side with objectivity over

subjectivity. It’s not believing that something is real

Tolkien called it the primary world (Tolkien, 1964), which I’ll

bring up again in due course.

This is Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”, only less well

put. I’ll bring this up again in due course, too.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

that makes it objectively real

; it’s the possession

of certain physical properties that makes it

objectively real.

We could both work in “the world of high

finance” and yet have completely different ideas

regarding what is and isn’t part of it; a virtual

world, on the other hand, is necessarily the same

for both of us. Likewise, “the world of 1980s pop

music” fades into and out of existence depending

on how many people are talking or thinking about

it; virtual worlds continue to exist independently

of whether anyone is playing them or not.

The way to decide if a candidate reality is part

of or separate from Reality centres on how you

access it from Reality.

If, to access a reality, you have to attach to an

entity operating under a different set of physical

rules to that of Reality, how can you legitimately

claim that this reality is Reality? It must be

separate from it. If you don’t have to access it this

way, how can you legitimately claim it is anything

other than Reality? It must be part of it.

So it is that for the remainder of this book I

shall be referring to realities as if they were

physical spaces

rather than perceived spaces –

albeit physical spaces which may be contingent on

Actually, it is for some gods – it’s how Ptah created Reality,

for example. Yes, you guessed right: I’ll also bring this up

again in due course.

Which is to say places. I briefly discuss the difference in

Chapter 7.

How to Be a God

the existence of other physical spaces to support

their own existence. MUD qualifies as a reality, but

the hardware that runs it is in Reality.

That said, there is a way to reconcile these two

definitions of a reality (that is, as physical or as

perceived spaces); I briefly alluded to this earlier.

The key is that you define a space to be a reality if

it is (or at least in principle could be) a paramount

reality for an individual native to it. It doesn’t

matter whether we, as visitors to a space, think of

it as a reality or not: it’s what that space’s

programmed-in characters think (or would think, if

they had the smarts) that make it a reality.

Virtual worlds, then, are examples of realities.

The Central Conceit

Thank you for your patience.

I’ve spent most of this chapter blithely touching

on topics that are relevant to what I want to say,

but aren’t themselves what I want to say. I had to

present them in a certain order, so that I didn’t use

any technical terms before I explained them. The

result is rather more impressionistic than it is

expressionistic; I hint at where I want to go, but I

veer off in other directions, too. Really, you

probably could do with a signpost.

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

So, here’s the signpost. It has two parts: where

we’ve been and where we’re going.

First, where we’ve been.

Several decades ago, I co-wrote the progenitor

of a class of computer games known variously as

MUDs, MMORPGs and MMOs, which here I’ve

been calling “virtual worlds”. These worlds share

enough properties with the world we live in, which

I’ve been calling “Reality”, that it’s worth

investigating whether conjectures about the

former could apply to the latter. I’m calling the

kind of thing that virtual worlds and Reality are

“realities”, because I need an umbrella term and

this one fits (at least from the perspective of

someone who has made one). I’m calling the people

who design realities the “gods” of those realities,

which is indeed what the players of MUDs called

them until the worlds became so large that said

gods stopped making appearances.

Second, where we’re going.

Although not all realities are examples of virtual

worlds, virtual worlds are all necessarily examples

of realities. If you’re a god of a virtual world, you’re

a god of a reality; you can speak with some

authority about what it means to be a god of such a

reality. Sure, that doesn’t mean you know anything

much about being a god of other kinds of reality,

but it does mean you’re better qualified to talk

How to Be a God

about the practicalities of being a god than are

people who have never been one at all

I know what decisions those who create

realities have to make. I know why realities are

created, how they are designed and who gets to

visit them. I also have questions regarding how to

treat the population of characters that we install in

them.

The central conceit of this book is that if I know

these things about creating realities, that’s

practical advice which may be useful for anyone

pondering the creation of Reality.

I am an academic

, but (despite its having a

references section) this isn’t an academic book.

There have been thousands of works written about

gods, belief systems, religions and multiple worlds,

and the people who have studied them know more

about the subject than I possibly ever could.

There’s no shortage of research papers even on the

specific sub-topic of religion in computer games,

with special issues of journals devoted to it

. My

aim isn’t, therefore, to support some hypotheses

and to debunk others; how could it be, when I have

only a superficial understanding of them at best?

No, my aim with this book is to say how things

are in practice when it comes to creating realities.

Post-modernism is all well and good for understanding a

reality, but it’s next to useless for creating one.

You can tell by the presence of all these footnotes, right?

Such as (Heidbrink & Knoll, 2014).

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

Philosophers and theologians can do what they will

with this information, and that’s fine; the only

thing they can’t do is dismiss it. It may be mainly

opinion, but it’s well-founded opinion.

Suppose a professional historian has spent the

bulk of their adult life to date studying, say, the

way that folk tales were adapted for different

audiences in 1400s Ireland. If a monastic archive

was found to contain an old text, written by an

Irish bard, explaining exactly how tellings and

retellings of ancient stories were achieved from

the perspective of a practitioner, the historian

would be somewhat remiss not to treat this as

potentially useful information.

Likewise, if you’re a career theologian (or even if

you merely have an interest in the origins of

Reality), you should at least take some note of what

a practitioner of reality-creation says. Hey, if the

practitioner is speaking nonsense, maybe you can

explain exactly why it’s nonsense so they can

update their knowledge accordingly? I for one

would certainly be interested if a theoretician were

able to tell me how to design better virtual worlds,

because the end result would be something I

passionately want: better virtual worlds.

Creating virtual worlds is not science. It’s art

expressed as engineering. Whether your culture

roots its philosophy in reason (Ancient Greece),

karma (Ancient India), harmony (Ancient China),

emotion (Ancient Africa) or anything else may

How to Be a God

speak to the art, but the engineering is deaf to it.

Engineering and science are related, however.

Scientists decide what to research by

alternating between theory and practice. They

make an observation about the world that they

can’t explain (“Why is there gravity?”) then they

develop hypotheses to come up with answers

(“Maybe there’s a fundamental particle that carries

it”). They design experiments to test these ideas

(“Let’s smash billions of large hadrons together

underneath the France/Switzerland border”) and

either these produce evidence in support of the

hypotheses (“Yay, Higgs bosons!”) or they don’t (so

one of “I guess we were wrong” or “We’re going to

need a bigger collider…”).

There’s an old joke in academic circles

concerning which university department is the

least expensive to run. A mathematician claims

that it’s Mathematics, because mathematicians

need so few resources: just a notepad, a pen and a

waste-paper basket. A theologian counters that no,

it’s Theology, because theologians don’t need the

waste-paper basket.

What this joke is saying is that theologians are

all theory and no practice. Unlike mathematicians,

they can make statements but they can’t prove

them; unlike scientists, they can construct

hypotheses but they can’t test them.

Well, with virtual worlds we can now at least

test some of these hypotheses: we have the ability

to look at, to reason about and to experiment on

Chapter 1 Realities and Gods

objective realities in ways that are simply not

possible with Reality. What previously has been a

matter of faith can now become a matter of, if not

necessarily fact, at least factually-informed faith.

What if Reality is to its sub-realities (such as

MMOs) as some super-reality is to Reality?

That’s what this book is ultimately about: using

what we know about reality-creation to inform

what we don’t know about Reality-creation.

As Charles Babbage rather ponderously put it: “The notions

we acquire of contrivance and design arise from comparing

our observations on the works of other beings with the

intentions of which we are conscious in our own

undertakings.” (Babbage, 1838).

How to Be a God

Chapter 2

CONTENT TO

CODE

If I’m to address questions regarding how Reality

might work by making reference to how virtual

worlds do work, I should perhaps begin by

devoting some time explaining the latter, rather

than by simply diving right in.

As a designer, I’m mainly interested in how

virtual worlds are designed. That’s only part of the

story, though. Ideas and plans don’t make

programs: someone actually has to implement

them.

In software engineering terms, design takes

place during the pre-production phase of

development. The process of turning a design

document

into an executable program takes place

during the production phase of development. There

are two other phases: roll-out, in which the product

Indulge me, please, programmers. I don’t want to have to

alarm non-programmers with the full truth of how

incomplete, inconsistent and at times incomprehensible

these collections of badly-written specifications really are.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

is released; and operation, in which it is run,

maintained and operated as a service. For virtual

worlds, there’s a further, final stage known as

sunset, during which the service is closed down in

an orderly manner (usually because it has too few

players to break even).

I’ll be touching on all these phases in this book

but I’m going to begin with production because

that’s where the machinery of virtual worlds is

brought into being.

The designer of a virtual world can’t simply

produce their design and expect to see it

materialise exactly as written: there are limitations

on what it’s possible to program, and the design as

envisaged could well have flaws

. Also, the process

of manufacturing a virtual world will itself affect

the design: there will inevitably be aspects that the

designer hasn’t considered which will only come to

light when the program intended to match the

design is being written; there will also be other

aspects that the designer has considered but which

the programming exercise exposes as impractical.

The general rule is that design dictates 80% of the

final product and implementation dictates the

other 20%. The trouble is, you don’t know at the

In the case of pre-production, probably more like thumping

than touching.

I may be kicked from the designers’ union for suggesting

this, but here goes: we aren’t entirely perfect.

How to Be a God

outset which 80% of the design is the part that’s

fine and which 20% is the part that isn’t.

This is the fault line where reality design and

program design collide: it restricts what you want

to what you can have. In line with the aims of this

book, it will in due time present us with new ways

to think about what both might mean for Reality.

You’re safe from that for the moment, though.

All this implies that I’m first going to have to

talk a bit about the construction of virtual worlds if

much of what follows is to make sense

Dramatis Personae

Let’s begin by looking at the various people

involved in the creation and playing of virtual

worlds.

The vast bulk of humanity has never had any

contact with a virtual world (yet). For those of us

who have, there’s a relationship between who we

are in Reality and who we are in any given virtual

world. The principals are:

• Designers.

• Developers (programmers and artists).

• Customer support representatives.

• Players.

Note how I carefully avoided saying that it will make sense.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

• (Also another category that isn’t exactly …

oh, wait and see.)

Designers are the people who plan out what a

virtual world will be like. As such, they are the gods

of these realities.

Modern MMOs are rarely designed by just one

person, though: there’s a design team. Team

members specialise in particular systems (such as

the game’s economy) or particular spaces (such as

a specific zone of the game world); they all qualify

as gods, but most design in accordance with the

design of someone else. This person, who has full

overall creative control, is called the lead designer

(or, for very large projects, the game director).

The lead designer also operates within

constraints, any of which could quite possibly

change during the production phase (so entailing a

redesign). Uppermost among these are the

project’s business requirements, covering aspects

such as the budget and the scope of the game.

These can at times be quite prescriptive, for

example if you’re designing a virtual world for an

existing intellectual property then much of its lore

will be imposed upon you externally. Even so, in

the general case it’s the lead designer whose

artistic vision is being realised

by the rest of the

design team and by the programmers, artists,

musicians and everyone else involved in

developing the virtual world (there could be

Strictly speaking, I guess this should be “virtualised”.

How to Be a God

hundreds of them). Thus, it’s the lead designer who

is definitively responsible for how the virtual world

will be.

That’s not quite the same as saying that lead

designers are gods, though.

My basis for asserting that the designers of

virtual worlds are the gods of those worlds is that

they control the physics. Do they, though? Don’t

the programmers control the physics? With MUD,

it didn’t matter because Roy and I both did both

jobs

. However, for modern, large-scale MMOs,

designers design and programmers program. So …

are an MMO’s gods its designers or its

programmers?

Well, ultimately the designers are, because the

programmers program to the designers’ design.

Programmers nevertheless do have a meaningful

level of creative input, so you could argue that they

are indeed gods, just lesser gods. Artists often

undertake design work, too, as a lot of the world-

building can be (and indeed is) handed over to

them. They aren’t able to change the physics of the

virtual world, but they do get a say in how its local

geography is set up, so also make a god-like

contribution

That said, this can itself lead to internal conflicts when a

single individual has the roles of both designer and

programmer (Farmer, 1993).

The graphics themselves, like the music and voice-acting,

are purely interface elements present for the benefit of the

Chapter 2 Content to Code

If you’re alert to mappings, you may well have

noticed a correspondence here. Lead designers are

like ruling gods such as Zeus, with the rest of the

design team being specialists in either particular

systems (in the same way that Hephaestus is the

god of crafting) or particular spaces (in the same

way that Athena is patron of Athens, Sparta and

Syracuse). Programmers and artists are like

nymphs: divine beings who form and animate

nature at the behest of gods

To keep things simple, in this book I’ll tend to

refer generically to “designers” as being the gods of

virtual worlds. I thought I’d give programmers and

other developers a shout-out, though, so they know

I haven’t forgotten them

. They rarely get the

creative credit they deserve. Formally, they’re the

supernatural beings of virtual worlds.

Customer service representatives are not

developers. Their position involves dealing with

the flak that is inevitably thrown up by the people

playing the virtual world. CSRs are effectively

demigods: they can’t define or change the physics

of the virtual world in any way, but they are able to

perform tasks that players can’t by using tools and

commands that are not available to customers. For

people who play the virtual world; as they’re used at the

moment, they don’t contribute to its physics.

The difference is that programmers and artists wear more

clothes when at work and nymphs don’t subsist on pizza and

Red Bull.

Not producers, though: those, I have forgotten.

How to Be a God

example, they may be able to advance a quest for

you, or to teleport you back to civilisation if you

somehow fall through the virtual world’s

architecture

. Note that although CSRs (and this

also applies to playtesters) aren’t gods themselves,

they do have the ear of the gods: they can tell them

what damn well needs to be fixed right now if

Terrible Things aren’t going to happen, and expect

the gods to hear if not necessarily to listen.

The people who play a virtual world are its

players. They are individually represented within

the virtual world as characters. Because the gods

and demigods are also represented by characters

when they make an appearance in the same reality,

sometimes a distinction is made between

immortals and mortals – a relic from the days when

regular player characters could die and stay dead.

Players themselves (as opposed to their characters)

can also be legitimately referred to as heroes, for

reasons I’ll explain in Chapter 5. No-one does refer

to them as heroes, though; I really only mentioned

it to manufacture a paratextual reference to the

title of the fourth supplement to the original set of

Dungeons & Dragons rules: Gods, Demi-Gods and

Heroes (Kuntz & Ward, 1976).

This has happened to me as a player in World of Warcraft,

The Secret World and The Elder Scrolls Online. Only in WoW did

a CSR actually rescue me – I had to quit and reset in the

other two (and no, to those TSW and ESO CSRs reading this,

the /stuck command didn’t work).

Chapter 2 Content to Code

Some players refer to their characters as

avatars. The term, which was borrowed, loaned,

imported, appropriated or stolen (your choice

)

from Hinduism, has a long history in virtual

worlds, its having been used as the actual name of

one of the first such realities

and to refer to the

graphical appearance of player characters in

another

. Designers continue to use it in the

appearance-only sense, but the novel Snow Crash

(Stephenson, 1992) popularised it among players to

mean the character itself, which has led to some

confusion

. I shall be avoiding its further use in

this book (except in the context of Hinduism), but

have mentioned it here because it is a term that

still has currency – especially in social worlds –

and I would be remiss if I didn’t.

Sometimes, by the way, players can play

characters who are “gods” in the fiction of the

game world. This was the major selling point of an

early MUD called Lap of the Gods (or Gods for

short), and is also the premise of the rather more

recent MMO, SkyForge. However, players are only

actually gods of a virtual world if they can change

its physics – something impossible in both these

If you want help deciding, see (De Wildt, et al., 2019).

The one called Avatar.

The one called Habitat. It’s generally recognised that

Habitat first introduced the term this way, although it was

also introduced independently by other games.

See (Carter, et al., 2012) for evidence of this with regard to

EVE Online.

How to Be a God

examples, because if they could then they would

and the game would inevitably crash as a result

Some players may have god-granted access to

different physics, but that only makes them eligible

to be thought of as demigods, not as gods. That

said, if the gods no longer bother with the game

then the demigods may well have sufficient powers

to run it as ersatz gods (Lawrie, 1991) (Lawrie,

2003).

So: we have gods (designers), supernatural

beings (developers), demigods (administrators) and

characters (players). I did, however, suggest that

there was another category of person involved in

virtual worlds, but that there was something fishy

about it.

Well, this other category is comprised of the

ordinary inhabitants of the virtual world who have

no player controlling them: the non-player

characters, or NPCs. NPC is an old role-playing

game term which came about in opposition to the

characters played by players – player characters, or

(less commonly nowadays) PCs

. NPCs, along with

See Chapter 3’s section on self-modifying systems for an

explanation as to why “a virtual world based on unconditional

but consequential magic cannot exist” (Bainbridge, 2010)

(italics original).

I used to spell this rôle-playing, but reluctantly had to move

with the times.

Some social worlds call the player characters players and

the players typists (Hess, 2003).

Chapter 2 Content to Code

monsters

and everything else, are handled

entirely by the physics of the virtual world of

which they are ingredients. They aren’t played by

people from Reality, but it’s not unimaginable that

they could be the people of their own reality (as

we’ll consider extensively in Part 3).

Figure 1 summarises all this as an easier-to-

follow-than-the-text table

NPCs and monsters are examples of what are called

mobiles, or mobs for short. The differences between them are

discussed in Chapter 6.

Contrary to custom, I don’t number tables and figures

separately, because in my view that makes them harder to

find. What can I say? I’m a rebel.

Rank

Virtual

worlds

Ancient

Greece

Ruling gods

Lead

designers

Zeus

Specialist

gods

Designers

Athena

Supernatural

beings

Developers

Maia

Demigods

Administra-

tors

Hermes

Heroes

Players

Heracles

Everyday

folk

NPCs

Ancient

Greeks

Figure 1 – Dramatis Personae Examples.

How to Be a God

I should perhaps point out that although

Athena, Hermes and Heracles are all children of

Zeus, and Maia (the eldest of the Pleiades) is the

mother of Hermes, such a degree of nepotism is

not normally evident among those who work with

virtual worlds.

Anyway, now that we’ve covered who does what

and vaguely why, let’s look at the virtual worlds

themselves. What are they?

Well, they’re a collection of pieces of software.

Software

I won’t be delving into great levels of detail in this

section, because the result would be a stodgy

mess

The consequences of this decision are sure to

annoy those readers who know about software

but by providing a somewhat simplified overview I

can spare those readers who don’t know about

software from undue suffering. Therefore, if I make

a statement and you want to shout “Duh!

Firmware!” at me, be assured that I am actually

I can say this with some certainty, because I did initially

delve into great levels of detail and the result was a stodgy

mess.

I can say this with some certainty, too. because I know

about software myself and said consequences do annoy me.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

aware of what I’m glossing over, but that from the

perspective of this book the cost of precision

outweighs its value.

So: computers are pieces of hardware which

follow instructions presented to them as software.

The hardware is a physical machine. If you want

to change how it works, you have to change the

wiring

. You can’t replace a memory card by

running a program: you have to switch off the

machine and do it manually.

Software constitutes the data for hardware. It

encompasses whatever programs run on the

hardware, along with whatever ancillary data they

use. It can control the hardware, but it can’t change

it. It can change the software, albeit not freely:

while running

, programs are usually considered

to be invariant and inscrutable, for reasons I’ll

explain anon. Indeed, programs (the stuff of which

is called code) are often loaded into a specially-

protected area of computer memory precisely to

prevent them from being modified while they’re

running.

Regardless of whether or not a program is

running, changing it will usually require the

attention of a programmer – that is, a human

Ah-ah-ah, programmers and electronic engineers! No

shouting at the author, remember?

The technical term is executing. Fortunately, executing a

program is not the crime that executing people is. That said,

see Chapter 7….

How to Be a God

being

. Programmers and computers are in the

main mutually unintelligible. Programmers write

programs in high-level languages, which are

meaningful to programmers but meaningless to

computer hardware. A program called a compiler

translates high-level language source code into

binary executable code that is meaningful to

computer hardware but meaningless to

programmers. The computer can then load this

binary form into its memory and run it directly.

To make changes to a program, a programmer

must: edit the source code; recompile it; stop the

program if it’s currently running (they may indeed

need to do this before the recompilation); start the

new version running from the beginning.

The reason the program must be stopped if it’s

currently running is that otherwise its behaviour

would almost certainly cease to make sense.

Imagine you were reading a book on an e-reader

and, mid-sentence, the entire text was replaced by

an updated version. You could now be looking at a

completely different word, and even if you found

your old place (assuming it still existed) you

wouldn’t know if everything you’d read up until

that point still held. This is what it’s like when you

overwrite a running program with a new version:

it’s almost certainly going to result in garbage

behaviour.

Despite what media stereotypes of programmers might

have you believe, programmers are human beings.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

You can sometimes safely modify the code of a

running program from another program, as

anyone who has poked bytes in a 1980s home

computer will be aware, but even then you’d really

want to suspend the program while you did it

(unless screwing yourself over was your goal).

Refreshingly, non-executable data can

arbitrarily be changed (or looked-at) (or both) while

the program using it is running, so long as it stays

within whatever limits the program expects

Right now, I’m entering this text using a word

processor (Microsoft Word, because often it works

just fine

). When I started the program up, it

loaded the text into computer memory (as data)

from a file. The keyboard characters flowing freely

from my fingers are being used to direct changes

to said data; the end result will be stored in a new

version of the file.

In terms of this example, then: the word

processor is a program – a piece of software; the

text of this book is data for this program; the

program’s executable runs on hardware, which at

the moment is my personal computer

For example, if the program is expecting to see an integer

between 0 and 6 that represents the day of the week, it’s

going to complain should you change a 3 to 4.7, -6 or

“Sunday”.

Hmm, maybe I’ll save, just in case.

I use the word “runs” for reasons of convention only.

Despite the fact that I have a high-end games machine,

How to Be a God

Data can be fiddled with using programs, but

there’s not always the need. For example, a word

processor’s dictionary qualifies as data, but it won’t

usually be changed except perhaps if the user

switches it out for a different dictionary (an

English one isn’t going to be much use if you’re

writing in Spanish

Some data will absolutely never be changed,

though. If your program uses the mathematical

quantity π (pi), there’s no sense in keeping it in a

separate data file to load in every time you run the

program: its value is fixed

. Constant quantities

such as π can therefore be embedded in program

code directly.

When data values are written straight into the

code, they’re said to be hard-coded. If they’re

initialised from or stored in files external to the

program, they’re said to be soft-coded. The latter

term isn’t actually used very often, because the

default assumption is that data values are soft-

coded; it’s mainly employed when referring to soft-

coded code.

Ah, yes. I said earlier that computers are pieces

of hardware which follow instructions presented

“walks” would be a better description of its behaviour.

Thanks, Windows 10.

I intend one day to write a general English-to-non-English

dictionary that has each word in English translated into that

same word but IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

Approximated in binary (because it’s an irrational), but

nevertheless fixed.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

to them as software. This is indeed correct.

However, it’s also possible for pieces of software to

follow instructions presented to them as data.

Programs can handle data in a manner analogous

to that in which hardware handles software. The

meaning of the ones and zeroes in a program’s

memory is determined by the program: if the

program chooses to interpret them as instructions

then that’s what they are.

When this happens (and it happens a lot), it’s as

if we have two programs running. One, running on

the hardware, is an interpreter. The other, running

on the interpreter, is a script. It could also just be a

program, though: whether to call an interpreted

program a script or not is largely a matter of taste

and context.

Scripted code is of special interest from the

perspective of this book because it can self-modify

much more easily than can regular code. The

designers of computer hardware and operating

systems go to great lengths to stop code that’s

currently executing from being accidentally

overwritten, and they also put barriers in place to

prevent programs from stomping on one another’s

data. They aren’t at all bothered by the possibility

that a program might run riot over its own data,

though; that is, after all, what many programs are

meant to do. To an interpreter, its script

constitutes its data; as such, the script is already in

a form amenable to program manipulation, so it

can in principle be changed by itself relatively

How to Be a God

easily while it’s executing. Whether that’s a good

idea or not is beside the point.

To summarise, then: scripts are interpreted by

interpreters, and can readily (if not necessarily

advisedly) be modified while they’re running;

programs (including interpreters) are executed by

hardware

, and are very difficult to modify while

they’re running; hardware operates according to

the physics of Reality, and can’t be modified

programmatically at all while it’s running

Fundamentally, then, the basic model of a

digital

computer involves parts you can’t change

(hardware) and parts you can change (software).

Software that is run (programs) is harder to

change than software that isn’t run (regular data).

Figure 2 illustrates this diagrammatically.

You can script interpreters to script interpreters, but

happily that isn’t germane to this book.

Other methods for modifying hardware remain possible: I

once took a sledgehammer and a power drill to a hard drive,

for example. It had it coming.

Analogue computers don’t even have the programs. In

effect, for the task they do, the code is constant and can be

embedded directly in Reality. This means that analogue

computers can only really do one task, but that this can

involve continuous quantities rather than discrete (that is,

digital) quantities.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

Let’s consider what this means for the

implementation of virtual worlds.

Engines

Right! So, virtual worlds! Fascinating though the

foregoing overview of basic computer architecture

was in its own right

, I did undertake it for a

reason; well, for several reasons actually, of which I

shall now relate the first.

Especially if you forewent it.

Figure 2 – Hardware and Software, Somewhat Simplified.

Computer

software

hardware

Program

Data

Script

executed

by a

uses

which

can be a

that

uses

How to Be a God

Virtual worlds are programs. One of their

primary functions is to implement the set of

physical laws governing their reality. These laws

are embodied in the virtual world’s software.

So far, so good.

There are three main ways a virtual world’s

physics can be so embodied:

• Hard-coded. The physics of the virtual

world’s reality never changes and can be

implemented directly in an efficient

systems-programming language. Only the

current state

of the reality needs to be

stored as data.

• Soft-coded. The physics can’t itself be

changed, but some of its properties can be.

Gravity’s strength (represented as a

number) could be increased or reduced, or

even made negative, but gravity will always

have the same functionality. It can’t be

made to apply only to liquids, for example.

• Interpreted. The physics can be changed

even while being applied. The laws of

physics are objects of the virtual world, and

could themselves be subject to laws of

physics if the designer so decided.

Virtual worlds can be implemented using any of

these approaches. Given the complexity of modern

This is actually a technical term, but it means what it looks

as if it should mean. I go into more detail about states in

Chapter 3.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

MMORPGs, they’re probably going to use all three

of them in various capacities; however, there will

always be one that dominates the others. Crucially,

this central approach determines what

supernatural powers the reality’s gods (and to

some extent demigods) have while the virtual

world is running.

If a reality is hard-coded, the only powers its

gods have are the ones explicitly coded-in. In such

a situation, the gods will be able to do some things

that other beings can’t, but they don’t have much

flexibility. If they want to make a permanent

change, they have to carry out the appropriate

alterations to the reality’s source code, then

compile it into a new executable, shut the reality

down, then restart it using this new executable.

From within such a reality, if you asked a god to do

something for you, OK, well the god could do it, but

they’d have to stop and restart the reality for it to

happen. Such a reboot would annoy the players and

could have major implications for the NPCs; I’ll be

discussing these in Part 3.

If a reality is soft-coded, gods have more

extensive powers at their fingertips. They can

create new objects at will without interrupting the

operation of the reality (so long as those objects

aren’t too dissimilar to existing objects), and they

can tweak the settings of what in a hard-coded

world would be a constant value (such as the

atomic mass of gold, say). What they can’t do is add

new functionality to an object. They couldn’t make

How to Be a God

it that if you now put two gold coins next to each

other then they will melt together and form a

single gold coin with the same volume as one coin

but double the mass. The physics software would

have to be rewritten and recompiled to do that,

entailing a reboot.

If the reality is interpreted, well, anything goes!

The virtual world will run more slowly in Reality

but the NPCs won’t notice and the prize is that

their reality’s god or gods will be able to make

whatever changes they desire, on the fly. Of course,

were one of the gods a feeble programmer then

we’d see a few extra crashes this way, and the more

that physical laws were changed then the harder it

would become to keep track of what such laws

currently pertained. It’s a very, very flexible

technique, though.

For the most part, virtual worlds today take the

soft-coded approach. Interpreters are less efficient,

and although designers would appreciate the

flexibility, live updates to a virtual world’s

functionality aren’t a good idea (for soon-to-be-

discussed self-modification reasons). The soft-

coded solution, which endows the ability to make

extensive tweaks to object properties without

kicking everyone out for a reboot, is still pretty

good, though – especially when fire-fighting bugs

As a general rule of thumb, interpreted code runs about ten

times slower than the same code would if compiled and

executed directly.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

or stomping on exploits

. Hard-coding is only

worth it if you know you’re not going to make any

changes. Thus, the soft-coded approach is usually

preferred.

This division between what should be coded-in

and what should be stored as data brings us to the

topic of game engines.

Game engines are basically portable pieces of

software that can be employed to create games (of

which most virtual worlds are examples). They

typically have functionality covering graphics,

physics, artificial intelligence, audio, networking

and the popular “much, much more”. There are

often several specialist engines available for each

of these components, and to some extent

developers are able to mix-and-match between

them; for the sake of simplicity, though, I’m just

going to use the term “game engine” to refer to the

general software platform upon which the game is

built, whether it’s all-in-one or made up of

middleware stitched together in a bespoke fashion.

The developer’s choice of game engine affects

the character of the resulting game (which in our

case will be a virtual world). Things the engine

makes easy to implement have a far better chance

of appearing in the final release than things it

makes difficult. If the engine has rag doll physics,

for example, this offers the designer options

An exploit is a design or programming bug that a player

consciously takes advantage of for their own ends.

How to Be a God

regarding combat that would otherwise be tricky

to include; furthermore, the designer may be more

tempted to pursue these options because of this. If,

on the other hand, the engine is poor in its

handling of, say, shadows, then the designer will

probably want to avoid heavy use of strong

lighting rather than waste programmer time

trying to improve matters for little material gain.

In the text days, the differences between

engines

were more pronounced than they are

today. For example, if an engine had magic hard-

coded into its physics then that would make it a

good choice to implement a virtual world that used

a similar magic system. It would be a bad choice to

implement a virtual world set aboard a starship. If

you wanted to construct an original magic system,

there were game engines that would make it easier

for you to do so. If you wanted players to be able to

create their own, independent magic systems

within the virtual world, there were game engines

that would accommodate this desire, too. Several

major game engines existed, each with their own

offshoots

, so designers weren’t overly dictated-to

by engine availability.

That said, some textual engines came with

predefined sample worlds (which is easier to do in

They were called codebases back then; only the hard-coded

part was referred to as the game engine.

For a late contemporary genealogy of MUD codebases, see

(Keegan, 1997).

Chapter 2 Content to Code

text than in graphics). These were often

incorporated into the final games, as anyone who

knows Midgaard from playing a DikuMUD can

doubtless confirm. After all, if it’s already written,

why throw it away?

As a result, we wound up with a group of virtual

worlds with similar content that were much of a

muchness (a phenomenon known as stock MUD

syndrome).

You may have noticed that I used the word

“content” again there. This is an important concept

in virtual worlds.

Content

What’s the point of restaurants?

The owners, the chefs, the kitchen staff, the

wait staff and the customers may all have different

answers to this question, but ultimately it comes

down to food. A restaurant without food isn’t a

restaurant.

Food is the content

of restaurants. It’s

different in each restaurant (or at least each chain

of restaurants), but it’s what makes a restaurant

worth visiting as a restaurant. It doesn’t matter

Pronounced CONtent, not conTENT.

How to Be a God

how good the restaurant’s location, ambience,

menu or chef is if there’s no food.

In computer games, content is that which the

players consume while they play.

You could create a vast virtual world, with

beautiful scenery, exotic creatures, a fully-realised

populace of NPCs and an enticing character-

creation system, but if there’s nothing for players

to do in it, it lacks content

. They might spend

some time looking at scenery, or admiring the

wildlife, or stalking NPCs, or creating a character

who looks just like their favourite pop star might

after falling down an elevator shaft; all of these

count as content. The player is soon going to tire of

it, though, because whatever they do will rapidly

get repetitive. It’s content, sure, but there isn’t

enough of it. In a virtual world (well, an MMO,

anyway), you need gameplay.

This is from the perspective of the players.

From the perspective of the NPCs, there may be

quite enough content to keep them occupied. They

have people to see, places to be, giant spider legs to

purchase, undead horses to be tormented by: they

don’t play, they live

NPCs don’t pay the bills, though: players do.

Well, some players do: in virtual world with a

The best-known example of this is No Man’s Sky, which

launched with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 different planets

(Murray, 2014), all basically the same. It’s improved since

then.

Not necessarily for very long.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

subscription revenue model, sure, they all do, but

under the free-to-play model that most MMOs use

today it’s mainly the stupidly rich or the richly

stupid who do. The majority of players either

hardly pay anything (in Asia) or never pay

anything (in Europe and North America).

This suggests that smart MMO developers

should target their games at high-rollers (known

as whales, a term originating in the gambling

industry); after all, these are the only players likely

to hand over money in noticeable amounts. Doing

that would be a mistake, though: the non-paying

players will leave if there’s not enough content for

them. As for why you might care if non-payers

ceased to sponge off you, well the answer is simple:

if they go, so do the whales. This is because players

themselves are content for each other.

If you have a virtual world, you therefore need

sufficient content to keep all your players happy,

not just the whales. Otherwise, you’ll have an

empty world. This is fair enough if that’s what you

want, but if not then there has to be a range of

activities that players can do with, to and

independently of each other.

So, here’s the thing you need to know about

content: it’s expensive to create. In its basic form,

some designer has to sit down and think up things

for players to do. They have to think up lots of

these things. Lots and lots of them. They need

other designers to be thinking up lots and lots of

them, too. MMO players typically play for two to

How to Be a God

four hours every night for months, years. That’s a

great deal of entertainment they’re going to

require to occupy their time. World of Warcraft

launched with 2,600 quests; its Burning Crusade

expansion raised this to 5,300; its Wrath of the Lich

King expansion took it to 7,650. Six expansions

later, it surpassed 32,000

That’s just the quests. Content also comes from

the raiding, the exploring, the guild drama, the

player-versus-player (PvP) combat, the role-playing

and the myriad other opportunities players have to

engage with the virtual world and with each other

for extended periods

. In a modern MMO, it’s

mainly driven by the quests, though.

Virtual worlds don’t actually have to have

quests in the sense that World of Warcraft has

them. WoW’s quests are an example of explicit

content: content that is flagged explicitly to the

players by the game’s design as being content.

Virtual worlds can also have implicit content:

content that emerges implicitly from the rich

interactions of the various systems that make up

the virtual world’s reality. Most MMOs have some

of both, but will favour one over the other. The

The first three figures are official, having been cited by

WoW’s former director, Jeffery Kaplan, on a panel at the

Game Developers’ Conference in 2009. The figure of 32,000+

comes from (Wowhead, 2021).

In my case, when I cancelled my World of Warcraft account

in 2012, the total time I’d spent playing came to a few

minutes over 5,400 hours, or about 225 days.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

ones that favour implicit content are called

sandboxes; the ones that favour explicit content are

called theme parks.

Yes, I am indeed aware that “explicit content”

sounds as if it ought to be racier than it is, but

that’s technical terms for you. It’s therefore

somewhat ironic that non-game worlds such as

Second Life have entirely implicit content (in the

technical sense) which at times can be quite

explicit (in the ye-gods-how-many-penises-do-you-

need?! sense).

Because content is expensive to create, a

number of different methods have been employed

over the years to reduce the cost. Their availability

depends on the game engine used, but the main

ones that have found favour are as follows:

• Game-mastered content (GMC). This is both

the most high-quality and the most

expensive kind of content, involving as it

does live interactions between select groups

of players and game masters (a bit like in

tabletop RPGs such as D&D). It doesn’t scale

well and requires both talent and flexibility,

so it tends to be the province of text MUDs

rather than graphical MMOs

In the best-known MUD that does this, Achaea, the game

masters have actual physics-changing abilities so qualify as

gods. Indeed, they’re formally referred to as “gods” in the

game. See (Iron Realms Entertainment, 2021).

How to Be a God

• Hand-crafted content (HCC). This is also

expensive, as it requires each element to be

constructed individually by a designer. It’s

generally high-quality and can carry layers

of meaning that are rarely found in cheaper

types of content. Formal tutorials invariably

use HCC.

• User-created content (UCC). This is content

overtly created by players, for players,

usually employing in-world tools. It’s

inexpensive (for the developer) and can be

fun (for the player). In a game context,

however, unless the player doing the

creation has some design ability, the result

will be content that either gives away loot

for next to no effort or is a death-trap

• User-generated content (UGC)

. This content

emerges from interactions between players.

Competitive, PvP combat is a good example

of it, but UGC can also be co-operative. In

general, UGC is relatively inexpensive to

implement but can be expensive to manage

if relied upon too heavily.

I briefly explain why in (Bartle, 2016).

UCC and UGC are often confused. People will routinely use

the terms interchangeably, or just stick with one and employ

it for both types.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

• Procedurally-generated content (PGC

). The

content here is created algorithmically to

programmed specifications

. It’s popular

because it’s cheap and can produce new and

individualised content in great quantities

dynamically. Sadly, in most

implementations to date it has tended to

get very samey very quickly.

• Systems content. This doesn’t really have a

formal name, hence its lack of an acronym.

It’s the default kind of content, which

emerges from interactions between players

and the virtual world’s systems and

environments.

Systems content is implicit and underpins all

the others, thereby forming the basis of a virtual

world’s gameplay. The sandbox ideal is to have all

content be of this nature, but for it to work the

virtual world has to have multiple, complex

interacting systems that provide players (and

possibly NPCs) with a variety of objectives that

they can define for themselves and which they can

pursue either alone or in groups. Few MMOs

achieve this (EVE Online is perhaps the best-known

one that does), but most don’t try anyway as an

immediate wall of possibilities can overwhelm

The act of creating PGC is sometimes referred to as

procedural content-generation (PCG).

Not so much intelligent design as artificially-intelligent

design, then.

How to Be a God

newbies. Systems content, hand-crafted content

and game-mastered content are sometimes

described as designed content, as they’re created by

designers.

These different forms of content-creation can

usefully be classified as being either direct or

emergent, freeform or contextual:

• Direct content is content created explicitly.

Hand-crafted content and user-created

content are examples.

• Emergent content is content created

implicitly. Systems content, user-generated

content and procedurally-generated

content are examples.

• Freeform content is content that can

potentially break the context of the virtual

world. User-created content regularly

delivers this (sports cars in medieval

worlds, that kind of thing), but user-

generated content can too (players

discussing the current president of the USA

in a fantasy setting

• Contextual content is content that fits the

fiction of the virtual world

. Game-

mastered content, hand-crafted content,

procedurally-generated content and some

I’m aware that on occasions the fantasy may be more

believable than the reality.

Such content is called diegetic by scholars of Game Studies.

The term crops up again in Chapter 5.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

user-generated content are examples.

Systems content also formally goes here.

The most apposite of these relationships are

summarised in the table that is Figure 3. From this,

we can see that all contextual content is either

designed, emergent or both. Given that we have no

evidence that Reality contains anything other than

contextual content, we can therefore deduce that

it’s either designed, emergent or both.

Put another way: if Reality was created by one

or more gods, they knew what they were doing.

Having thus explained how virtual worlds do

content-creation, the natural question to ask is

how Reality does it. I shall indeed be asking that in

Content Type

De-

signed

Emer-

gent

Con-

textual

Game-mastered

(GMC)

yes

can be

yes

Hand-Crafted

(HCC)

yes

User-Created

(UCC)

can be

User-Generated

(UGC)

yes

can be

Procedurally-

Generated (PGC)

yes

Systems

yes

Figure 3 – Content Creation Features.

How to Be a God

the next-section-but-one, however before I do so I

have one more concept to describe that wraps up

my discussion of how virtual worlds work (or at

least how the parts relevant to reality-creation

work).

Resets

For reasons of expensiveness, most virtual worlds

today have content that is consumed much faster

than it can be created, the few exceptions being

those that have a very high level of emergent PvP

content-creation (such as Crowfall and Albion

Online) or of very-slow-to-consume content (such

as Black Desert Online)

. This means that,

periodically, either new content has to be added, or

consumed content has to be made available again

for different people to consume. Otherwise, the

players won’t have enough to do and will leave.

Non-emergent new content comes in the forms

of patches and expansions.

When content involves repeatedly doing very similar

things over and over for little appreciable gain, it’s known as

grinding. Some players like it, but most don’t; the latter will

only (grudgingly) tolerate it for occasional, limited stints.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

Patches are updates performed to a regular

schedule (usually weekly

) in which bugs are fixed,

gameplay balance is adjusted, and, occasionally,

new quests or enemies are added. A patch is

basically like any other kind of software update,

except because it applies to an MMO (or other

game) it can include new content.

Expansions are large-scale changes, having

more of a revolutionary than an evolutionary feel.

The whole point of them is to add great swathes of

new content

, perhaps at the expense of some

existing content which may be sacrificed to serve

the overall narrative; this most memorably

happened with World of Warcraft’s third expansion,

the aptly-named Cataclysm.

As I said, though, new content is usually added

at a slower rate than that at which it is consumed,

so most MMOs also recycle content to ensure that

there’s enough for the players to do. There are two

ways of doing this: sudden resets (also known as full

resets or the Groundhog Day approach) and rolling

resets (also known as respawning).

Most modern MMOs use respawning to recycle

content. A monster is killed, its treasure is looted,

then the player goes off to do something else. A few

minutes later, the monster pops back to life (that

If a big hoo-ha is made over them then they’ll be months

apart and the weekly updates will just be called updates.

Cynics might argue that the whole point of them is to make

money, which may well be true but the way to make the

money is by adding new content to keep players engaged.

How to Be a God

is, it respawns) and the next player to wander past

can take it on. Alternatively, if the player doesn’t

leave, the monster is killed again by the same hand;

this tends to happen if the monster is wealthier

than usual (meaning its risk/reward ratio is lower

than for comparable monsters), or if staying in the

same place is less bother for the player

(comparable monsters could be far away), or if the

player desperately wants a particular item of loot

that the monster drops only very, very

infrequently

Figure 4 illustrates the difference between reset

and replacement strategies in the form of a handy-

dandy table.

Respawning isn’t exactly realistic, in that

Reality doesn’t work this way (don’t test it out,

kids!), but players accept it for its convenience. It’s

I once needed a particular tailoring recipe in WoW and

killed the same NPC more than 300 times in a row before

finally obtaining it. Because the NPC respawned faster than

its corpse despawned, I was standing in a sea of 30 identical

dead bodies for most of that period.

Reset

Replacement

A bit at a

time

Rolling resets

Patches

All at once

Sudden resets

Expansions

Figure 4 – Reset and Replacement Strategies.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

only suitable for creatures and maybe some

destroyable objects, though. Complicated pieces of

interrelated content can’t easily be reset one

component at a time. For example, suppose nixies

inhabit the ruins of temple that’s submerged in a

lake behind a dam: if you were to destroy the dam,

the waters would subside and you’d gain access to

the nixies; you could then proceed to give them a

good telling-off for their policy of enslaving

humans. While so engaged, you wouldn’t want the

dam and the water suddenly to respawn and

drown you. You’d probably rather that it held off

awhile until after you were done with the quest.

MMOs that have this problem will instance the

content. This means that a special copy of the

content is created that’s private to the individual

or group experiencing it. Anyone else experiencing

the same content will be in their own instance. For

you, the nixies guarding the dam may be still alive

and putting up a fight to save it; for someone else,

these could be dead and the dam is starting to

crumble from the effects of multiple fireball spells;

for a third person, the dam is down and there’s a

fight going on in the temple to kill the

unreasonable nixie queen.

An instance, then, is like a pocket universe

that’s created to a template when the player

enters, only to disappear when the player leaves.

These are water sprites, ripped off from Germanic folk

tales by generations of RPG designers.

How to Be a God

A related feature is phasing. This is where the

world changes as a result of your character’s

having consumed content, so that in subsequent

visits to the area it’s no longer the same as it was

before. Other people, though, who haven’t

consumed the content, will still see it as (for you) it

was.

A good example of this appears in WoW’s

second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, in which

a battle is about to take place at a location known

as Angrathar the Wrathgate. When the player’s

character arrives there for the first time, two

armies are laying siege to it. A number of quests

are given that help prepare for the combat to come.

These culminate in the start of the battle, the

outcome of which is shown as an extended cut

scene. Afterwards, whenever the player character

visits Angrathar the Wrathgate there will be no

armies present but there will be some wounded.

This is because the area is phased. If two player

characters enter its vicinity, one of whom has

previously fought in the battle and the other of

whom has yet to experience it, they will be placed

in different phases and will no longer see or be able

to interact with one another (communication

excepted) until either they both leave or the one

behind in quests catches up.

When the virtual world is simply too

complicated for either a rolling reset or localised

phasing to work, it has to be reset as a whole,

suddenly. The “suddenly” is because it involves

Chapter 2 Content to Code

unceremoniously kicking everyone out so the

virtual world can be rebooted. With instanced

content, you can wait until everyone has left until

you reset the instance; with the virtual world in its

entirety, there’s almost always someone playing it,

therefore there’s almost always someone who’s

going to be kicked out when it shuts down.

All early MUDs reset using this method (it

was/is timed to occur every couple of hours for

MUD2), but it slowly lost popularity. No-one likes

the inconvenience of being evicted mid-quest

several times an evening, and it can be dispiriting

to enter a game that’s close to being played-out.

Because of this, rolling resets have become the

norm.

That said, all virtual worlds have a sudden reset

when they’re brought down for patches or

maintenance. The forthcoming reset is advertised

well in advance, so people are aware that it will

happen; nevertheless, they’ll often continue to play

right until the moment that the server actually

disconnects them. Sometimes, it might be possible

for one geographic area of the game to be taken

down while another remains playable, but usually

it’s just easier if the whole shebang is halted and

the players are all locked out while the

programmers do their jobs.

Sudden resets also occur if the programmers

haven’t done their jobs and the game crashes.

Most MMO operators run multiple,

simultaneous instantiations of their virtual worlds;

How to Be a God

these are known as shards

. Basically, the

developers just duplicate their software on

separate server

clusters or cloud configurations.

This means that if a virtual world has only enough

content to service ten thousand players at once but

a hundred thousand people want to play,

overcrowding can be avoided by creating ten

separate shards that serve ten thousand players

each. All shards can use the same program, but

there will necessarily be differences in their data

because their players will not be performing the

exact same actions in each one.

Over time, the popularity of virtual worlds can

rise and fall. It may be necessary to add more

shards or to merge shards together. The latter

tends to happen more often than the former, and is

known as a server merge (because for historical

reasons, players tend to call shards servers); when a

nigh-full shard is split into two half-full copies,

that’s a server fork. Players don’t usually like server

merges as it disrupts the social status quo and is an

indication that the virtual world is in decline. Some

of them may have to change their character name,

The term originated with Ultima Online as a fiction to

explain why there was more than one copy of Sosaria (the

game’s world). The evil wizard Mondain trapped Sosaria in a

crystal which was then shattered; each shard contained a

refracted copy of the world (Garriott & Fisher, 2017).

A server is a computer or piece of software that provides

functionality for another computer or piece of software (a

client) upon request.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

too, if it clashes with that of a character on the

other shard

To avoid the problems of server merges, and to

help spread the computational load more

efficiently, many modern virtual worlds use an

approach called layering. In this, it’s as if every

shard is its own phase. As an individual player, you

will usually be placed in the same layer every time

you enter the virtual world, but layers are dynamic

and you can be switched between them

spontaneously (and imperceptibly); this would

happen if you grouped up with other players from

different layers, for example.

Layering isn’t going to work when the shards of

a virtual world diverge substantially (such as in

Ultima Online, where the location of your house is

shard-specific). It can also be a problem if you don’t

require player characters to have unique names. In

general, though, layers are a good way of managing

access to a virtual world that has little or no user-

created content, so long as its players can

communicate and group up across them.

Figure 5 illustrates the ways of replicating

virtual worlds in the form of a second handy-dandy

table.

Character names are often, but not always, unique to a

shard. If they weren’t, 50% of mages would be called Gandalf.

How to Be a God

These implementation approaches I’ve

described fall into two broad areas: replicating

parts or all of a reality (instances, shards, phases,

layers); and reset/replacement strategies (rolling

resets, sudden resets, patches, expansions). It’s

interesting to speculate whether any of these

might apply to Reality – and what kinds of content

Reality has in the first place.

OK, so let’s speculate.

Real Content

Up until now, I’ve spent this chapter outlining

several concepts related to how virtual worlds are

designed and implemented. I haven’t examined any

of them in much depth, because you only need to

be reasonably clear about what they are and what

Base

Overlay

Specific

subset

Instance

Phase

Whole

world

Shard

Layer

Figure 5 – Ways to Replicate Virtual Worlds.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

affordances come with them. I don’t expect you to

go away and code them in C++.

Those of you who nevertheless could go away

and code them in C++ might well be wondering

why I picked up on the particular aspects that I did.

I’m likely to bring more into play later on, yes, but

why start with these ones? Why am I at pains to

discuss the rather obscure topic of reset strategies

instead of maybe security, or account

management, or how to handle floods of

asynchronous commands?

Well, the reason I chose these specific topics to

open with is that they put us in a position where

we can think about what the implementation of

virtual worlds might have in common with that of

Reality. The promise of this book can now start to

be delivered: using what we know about the nature

of virtual worlds to gain insights into the nature of

Reality.

There are two directions from which we can

come at this, both summarisable as questions.

What do we see (or have we seen) in Reality that

rules out some of the approaches used by virtual

worlds? What, if Reality did adopt one of the

approaches used by virtual worlds, could we expect

to see but don’t (or haven’t)?

When I say “what we see” here, I’m essentially

suggesting that we look at evidence. What counts

as evidence, though? The kind of observations that

scientific disciplines accept are definitely

admissible, of course, but they’re not much help

How to Be a God

when it comes to the kind of physics-breaking

events that gods can bring about. In addition,

therefore, and in line with my assumption that all

Reality’s gods exist, I shall also accept as fact any

historical account of supernatural incidents in a

non-fictional context (even when contradicted by

other such accounts

or by science).

I’m happy to do this, because it enables me to

accord each proposal as much support as can be

mustered for it. Whatever conclusions I might then

draw can’t subsequently be dismissed by appealing

to an account that denies them. For example, if I

only accepted hard science then I couldn’t argue

that looking at the right metal snake can cure you

of the effects of snake venom, whereas if I accepted

supernatural accounts then I could

. Being open

to such possibilities from the outset means that

any conclusions I draw will be far more robust –

and far more useful, too.

I’ll begin this exercise by first examining

content generation, then moving on to reality

partitioning, before finishing the chapter with a

look at reset strategies.

So, as I said earlier, virtual world designers

create content for players rather than for NPCs.

This doesn’t mean that Reality has to be that way,

though: it could contain content designed for NPCs

Few explanations of how Reality was created tend to agree,

for example, but that’s no reason to discount them.

Numbers 21:4-9 in The Bible, if you’re wondering.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

(which is to say, us) rather than exclusively for

players (which is to say, beings from the reality

where Reality’s hardware can be found). I’ll

therefore examine the subject of content-creation

from both these perspectives.

The first point of view I shall consider is that of

a player of Reality. We, as I slyly noted in the

previous paragraph, are not players of Reality:

we’re Reality’s non-player characters

. How might

we recognise these “players” of Reality, then?

Although there are plenty of recurring

examples of gods and demigods visiting Reality,

accounts of players doing so are much more

clustered; we haven’t had any for many centuries.

Indeed, Christianity has had no players at all visit

Reality from God’s reality except (if you take a very

bold line) just maybe those playing as prophets

The Ancient Greeks, by contrast, describe scores of

players who have visited Reality – they’re true

standard-bearers for the cause. For example (using

the terminology of virtual worlds), the player

character Heracles

was the son of the non-player

“Though you may think of the world as God’s play, you are

not God.” (Riezler, 1941).

You could view saints as player characters, but given that

many of them met very sticky ends it’s more likely they were

just exceptional NPCs. You or I could conceivably become a

saint if we did the right things (well, you could, anyway) but

we could only become prophets if we were sent as such by

God.

Hercules, if you’re from Ancient Rome.

How to Be a God

character Amphitryon and the designer’s player

character Zeus. There was an abundance of such

characters around in the Ancient Greeks’ heyday.

That doesn’t seem to be the case these days,

though, as far as we can tell. Nevertheless, it

remains legitimate for us to ask: what type of

content is provided for such player characters to

consume in Reality?

As a reminder, the types of content available

are: game-mastered, hand-crafted, user-created,

user-generated, procedurally-generated and

systems.

Well, some but not all of these have been used.

Historically, the player characters of Ancient

Greece (or of anywhere else) didn’t seem to find

Reality interesting enough to experience in and of

itself. They were, however, regularly entertained

by game-mastered content (that is, gods or

demigods overtly intervened to make life

interesting for them); there’s also some evidence of

what might be hand-crafted or procedurally-

generated content (explicitly-authored or

narrowly-algorithmed quests to go find a golden

fleece or golden hind or golden apple). That said,

none of the usual geographic indicators that

content is designed – areas gated to provide

rewards of access (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003),

enemies placed as elements of the environment

(Totten, 2019), tutorial levels (Therrien, 2011) – are

present in our neck of the Reality woods.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

Very little content seems to have emerged from

interactions between players, to the extent that it

caused major drama on those rare occasions when

it did (as documented in Homer’s Iliad). User-

created content was apparently completely absent,

as no reports have reached us of anything spoken

of in Olympus that made no sense in Reality.

What this suggests is that Reality is not itself

shaped in such a way that individuals dropping in

from the reality of its gods necessarily find it

satisfying. Such players primarily want bespoke,

real-time attention from gods or demigods, but

they’ll also reluctantly accept predefined,

narratively-driven experiences

. Anything other

than that, they don’t seem to think worthwhile.

As I said, it’s fairly obvious that we haven’t seen

any of these in-your-face player characters for

quite some time. Perhaps, then, a different solution

offers itself up? It could be that merely walking

among us is satisfying to players of Reality in an “I

could watch this formicarium for hours” kind of

way, in which case we’d never know that the

stranger we’re sitting next to on the bus is, in fact,

a player character. Alternatively, it may be that

people from higher realities have simply stopped

Such experiences could nevertheless be designed

specifically for individual players, even to the extent that

Reality itself might monitor them to model what they find

fun then contrive to give it to them. In games research, this is

called experience-driven procedural content-generation

(Yannakakis & Togelius, 2011).

How to Be a God

playing Reality (the fact that it has no tutorial

would certainly put off newbies) – or that when

they do play, they mess the place up so much it has

to be rebooted from an earlier save point (see later).

To summarise, then: if Reality as it stands

contains content attractive to players from the

higher reality in which dwell the creators of

Reality, then either no-one has played for a while

or people do play but they’re good at hiding their

tracks. The only content that interests them is

either game-mastered or hand-crafted, sitting atop

straight systems content. There could be content

from other sources lying around, but if so, the

players don’t seem to care about it.

What if, then, instead of (or in addition to)

creating content for players, the content of Reality

was created specifically for us, the inhabitants of

Reality

? What could we deduce about the

implementation of Reality’s content in the event

that it was created with us in mind?

The first observation worth a mention is that

the systems content is pretty good. Reality is

packed with more than enough richly-interactive

dynamic structures to be self-sustaining. With all

of us seeking multiple goals at different challenge

levels, some competitive and some co-operative,

there’s a critical mass of activity that creates new

content indefinitely. Sometimes this content is

This is the opposite of what Evolution Theory tells us,

which has us fit the content, not the content fit us.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

boring, sure, but you never have to wait long

before it perks up again

There’s no obvious procedurally-generated

content in Reality unless the universe as a whole is

procedurally-generated, which (as we’ll see in

Chapter 3) is a fair possibility. That said, there

could be more subtle kinds of procedural content-

generation in action. For example, all those

countless stars that we have observed through

telescopes might only have sprung into existence

when one of us looked at them. Likewise, all these

sub-atomic particles being discovered might not

have existed until scientists forced the issue by

smashing atoms together. The stars and the

particles could be being created procedurally, on-

the-fly, and we wouldn’t know it

. Then again,

they could just as easily be part of Reality’s

systems content.

For user-generated content to occur would

require the presence in Reality of a player from a

higher reality (to be the user). The ripples of their

activity here would then generate content for us as

well as for them. As noted earlier, though, we

haven’t seen any such players for centuries. If they

are still visiting Reality, they’re keeping their heads

so low that their play can’t possibly be generating

content for us or we’d have noticed them.

The year 2020 certainly did the business.

They’d be implemented by a technique that programmers

call just-in-time evaluation.

How to Be a God

100

The existence of user-created content is a

possibility. There could be gods secretly at work

creating new content, Minecraft-like, for us to

explore when we encounter it. I have to say, if

there are such gods in action then they’re making

an excellent job of it: their creations are absolutely

seamless integrations into Reality, looking just like

the (literally) real thing. Anyone capable of that

degree of creative discipline should definitely be

making their own realities, rather than tinkering

with someone else’s.

In my opinion, user-created content would be

overkill for Reality. This is because all user-created

content (and some user-generated content) is

freeform – one of the main attractions of which is

that you can use it to make statements about your

own condition. This being so, if UCC for Reality is

indeed taking place, we should occasionally

encounter content that is non-contextual;

otherwise, there’s no point in users’ creating it. We

don’t encounter it, though. Everything we observe,

detect or model-mathematically makes sense in

the setting of Reality: we never come across

examples of comments on the political situation in

the reality of Reality’s creator, nor discussions of

the merits of various celebrities in that higher

reality, nor questions as to whether another

member of that higher reality has gone offline, nor

any of the other out-of-context behaviours that the

NPCs of virtual worlds routinely witness. The most

we can say, then, is that if user-generated or user-

Chapter 2 Content to Code

101

created content is involved in the construction for

us of Reality’s content, the players are following

the designer’s prescriptions to the letter.

Hand-crafted content, as with procedurally-

generated content, could apply to the whole of

Reality. If so, some industrious worker must have

created and placed every item in the universe one-

by-one. This sounds like a tall order to us, given

that there are something like

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars out

there that would need to be positioned manually

but it might not be an imposing task for the

superior being in the higher reality who is doing

the positioning. A hybrid approach

would

perhaps work best: generate the universe

procedurally, but hand-craft parts of it to give us a

better time. If Earth had been procedurally-

generated to be like Venus, for example, you can

see why doing some work for our benefit to replace

the 700°C CO

atmosphere with something less

deadly would be a good idea. This is the kind of

content that benefits us all, though, rather than

just a select few. Is there evidence that any gods

are currently creating bespoke content for

individuals?

Or, if you have an extremely sceptical view of astrophysics,

the something like 5,000 stars out there that can be seen

with the naked eye (2,500 for flat-Earthers).

In game design, this would be called mixed-initiative

procedural content-generation (Yannakakis & Togelius, 2011).

How to Be a God

102

As you might now have come to expect, the

answer is that it used to happen in the past a lot

more often (or at least less subtly) than it does in

the present. In The Bible

, for example, Abraham is

asked to sacrifice his son Isaac to God, and almost

goes through with it before he’s stopped. This

must have been somewhat stressful for Abraham,

and even more so for Isaac

, but it was powerful

content for both of them, regardless.

In today’s world, it’s hard to find evidence of

content-creation by gods. The population of Earth

is much greater now, of course, so there are more

people for whom content needs to be created. For

them all to have individualised content made just

for them, either the gods would have to work

faster, or time in Reality would have to run slower

(relative to the gods), or there would have to be

many more gods doing the content-creation.

Therefore, if gods are indeed creating ongoing

content for us, then focusing on group content

would be the sensible approach; either that, or

If you’re wondering why this is in italics, it’s because I put

the titles of all published works in italics and don’t wish to

imply by not doing so that The Bible shouldn’t be published. I

won’t give it a formal academic-style reference, though, as

it’s easy to find online and in hotel rooms across the world.

Other sacred texts are afforded a similar courtesy.

The Qur’an is more accommodating for Isaac, observing

that he willingly agrees beforehand to his being sacrificed.

That said, he’s not actually named in the text, and the

established Muslim view is that it was Ishmael, not Isaac,

who was going to be sacrificed.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

103

focusing on addressing the needs of those people

who are experiencing the highest levels of

boredom

In summary, then, if the content of Reality is

created with us in mind, systems content

supported by procedural content-generation

(perhaps augmented by some hand-crafted content

to smooth out the wrinkles) looks to be the way it

would be done. The other ways don’t deliver to

their full potential, or even close to it.

There’s another possibility. It may be that

Reality was designed specifically for the benefit of

us or of its players, but that after its content had

been created it wasn’t easy to change. This relative

resistance to external alteration could perhaps

allow us to deduce something about whether

Reality is hard-coded, soft-coded or interpreted.

Reality can’t be completely hard-coded, because

that would mean none of it would change, ever; the

fact that we ourselves can change it is evidence to

the contrary. Nevertheless, it might be that

although the data representing the current

configuration of Reality can be changed while

Reality is running, the rules of physics that enact

the changes can’t themselves be changed except by

shutting Reality down first. In this

implementation, Reality wouldn’t be fully hard-

coded, but the rules component to its physics

would be.

Not as a result of reading this book, I hope.

How to Be a God

104

Reality doesn’t seem to be interpreted. There’s

nothing that says it isn’t, but none of the benefits

that interpreting brings are on show. As far as we

can tell, the rules of physics haven’t altered since

we began studying them: we don’t see large-scale

objects popping into or out of existence, or

physical constants inexplicably adjusting; if there

are ghosts or angels or djinn, they stopped making

appearances once people started carrying camera

phones as a matter of course. In short, there don’t

seem to be changes being made to Reality’s

physical rules at any level – the changes are only to

the current manifestation of Reality.

If we were to detect a concrete example of a

change taking place, we could rule out any

implementations that were unable to do it. For

example, if the speed of light in a vacuum suddenly

began to increase over distance, we could surmise

that the physical rules of Reality must be either

soft-coded or interpreted. As it is, though, we have

no reliable evidence that suggests changes to the

laws of physics can be made at all, let alone what

the reach of those changes might be. It’s therefore

probably worth looking at Reality’s laws of physics

as if they’re hard-coded until and unless we notice

a change. This is indeed the view advocated by

most physicists.

A final point worth mentioning about content is

that sometimes gods split the workload of Reality-

creation: one might concentrate on the physics

while another concentrates on the content, for

Chapter 2 Content to Code

105

example. This is indeed the case in some Hindu

traditions, which relate that Vishnu created Reality

and Brahma created its content (the forms that

populate Reality). This is a bit like what Roy

Trubshaw and I did when working on MUD: Roy

focused on the physics, I focused on the content

There are also Hindu traditions in which

another god

, Shiva, destroys Reality every aeon

such that it can be created anew. The existence of

the universe therefore follows a continuous cycle

of death and rebirth.

This neatly brings us to our next topics for

speculation: replications and resets.

Replications

Having looked at how Reality might obtain its

content, I’ll now consider whether or not in

presenting its content to its players, Reality might

involve the use of copies of parts of itself (in the

sense of shards, layers, instances and phases).

To recapitulate, because I introduced these

terms two whole sections ago:

We didn’t copy this from Hinduism, it just happened that

way.

Who may, depending on how you view Hindu deities, be the

same god.

How to Be a God

106

• A shard is a rendition of a reality that’s

separate from the other renditions that are

in operation.

• A layer is a superimposition of a reality on

itself.

• An instance is a pocket reality that comes

into being when a player (or group of

players) enters it from the main reality; it

disappears when they leave.

• A phase is like a palimpsest, in which a part

of a reality is covered up by another part for

player characters that meet certain criteria.

So, it seems unlikely that Reality contains either

phases or instances, because if it did then each of

us would occasionally experience exactly the same

events in exactly the same place at exactly the

same time, but not do so together. This doesn’t

seem to happen. It would be like finding no queue

at Disney’s Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, walking straight

in, sitting down alone in the front seat and then

accelerating from 0 to 57mph in 2.8 seconds while

5,000 other people contemporaneously did the

same thing in the same place. Your ride and theirs

would be independent (if anyone threw up, you

wouldn’t be showered in their chunky vomit), but

its basic content would be the same. You could

meet up afterwards outside the instance and

discuss the best bits.

This simply doesn’t feature in Reality. There are

plenty of science-fiction stories in which it does,

Chapter 2 Content to Code

107

and some supernatural tales about realities that

overlay Reality; however, there are few claims that

anything like this actually happens in Reality.

Those there are speak in terms of trances, spirit

journeys or reveries, but they still retain a

connection to the physical world. You may think

and feel that you’re in another world, but the

casual observer who didn’t partake of the peyote

may be more sceptical, and any people you meet

while you’re journeying will have no recollection of

the encounter back in Reality.

People don’t utterly disappear from Reality

when they do something that you’ve done before

but they haven’t, only to reappear the moment

they’ve also done it (which would indicate phasing).

Neither do they ever drive ahead of you in a car

that suddenly blinks out of existence at a toll

booth, only for it to blink back into existence when

you reach another tollbooth further up the road

(which would indicate instancing). It’s safe to say

that neither phasing nor instancing occur in

Reality.

This assumes that said phasing or instancing is

localised, though.

See, in a virtual world it’s possible to phase or to

instance the entire reality. That’s exactly what

makes a layer and a shard respectively.

If we were to apply the concepts to Reality as a

whole, then, some event could take place which

would make the world different for you and you

only. You might walk through a Roman archway

How to Be a God

108

and thenceforth you’re in your own instance for

the rest of your life. For everyone else, Reality

would carry on as before (but minus you, unless a

placeholder copy of you remains in your stead).

Now as a player of Reality, you’d notice this

because you’d lose the ability to interact with those

parts of Reality where the other players were.

You’re not a player, though. This is an

important point. You aren’t a character in Reality

being played by someone from a higher reality:

you’re an NPC. You could therefore be in your own,

personal, just-for-you copy of the universe and not

know. All those other people you see are copies of

the originals, duplicated in the branch of Reality

occupied by you. They’re still just as real as you

are, but replicas of them also exist in other

instances. Perhaps replicas of you also exist in

their instances, come to that: you wouldn’t be

aware of it, because to communicate with other

people you need to share a reality with them. Sadly

for you, although players of a reality are able to

communicate with one another through the

medium of their own, higher reality, NPCs aren’t.

In summary, you’re an NPC of Reality: for you, if

you’re in an instance, that instance is your reality –

that is, it’s Reality.

This is useful to note. In a sense, it makes no

practical difference to you (as an NPC of Reality)

whether you’re a unique piece of bespoke software

running on a single machine, or whether you’re

just one of any number of copies of the same

Chapter 2 Content to Code

109

software running on any number of machines. You

have no way of knowing, because you can’t

communicate beyond the limits of your reality (at

least not without help from a higher reality). If you

could so communicate, the realities of you and

your interlocutors would be connected through the

communication channel, which would mean they

were de facto the same reality.

Pragmatically, then, there’s only one you in one

reality: Reality.

It’s worth mentioning that although in this

scenario you can never return to mainstream

Reality having entered a phase or instance

(leastwise if you can, no-one has ever reported

doing so), that isn’t to say you couldn’t exit the

phase or instance into a different reality. Perhaps

in this other reality, people chat all the time about

their experiences in the phased or instanced

reality. We in Reality have no means of

establishing two-way communication with these

people, though, so for us Reality is all there is

Suppose you do exist in your own, private

instance created especially for you. That would

imply that all of (what to you is) Reality ought to

disappear when you leave it, for example by dying.

This in turn would mean that there are no lasting

consequences to any of your actions. Whether

that’s great or dreadful depends on your

Well, Reality and all the sub-realities we create as virtual

worlds.

How to Be a God

110

perspective. Unfortunately, you can’t tell whether

or not you are indeed living in your own, personal

thread spun from a once-shared Reality, so you

don’t know whether your actions will have

consequences lasting beyond your existence. How

this affects your behaviour then comes down to

whether you care about the fact or not. In a similar

vein, you might also like to ponder the possibility

that you’re an NPC brought into existence because

a player entered the instance you feature in: you’ll

disappear when that player quits the instance. New

copies of you, unaware of your past actions, will

continue to be sprung into being every time a new

instance is stamped out from the same template.

The prospect that you may be just one of many

copies of you (and not necessarily the “original”

one) may be a bit disquieting for some people. To

these people, I say: fear not! Again, the suggestion

seems to be the stuff of science fiction rather than

anything supported by witness accounts. Although

copying-through-reincarnation is a concept you

see time and time again in spiritual contexts, it

invariably concerns the same individual living

different lives, none of which overlap. It’s not the

same individual living the same life at the same

time under the influence of different random-

number seeds.

In recent years

, philosophers have been

debating the possibility and implications of there

“Recent” by Philosophy standards, anyway.

Chapter 2 Content to Code

111

being multiple possible worlds

. This is another

idea that doesn’t sit well with all belief systems.

After all, if the creator of Reality is perfect then

said creator wouldn’t need to maintain multiple

copies of it. Also, if your belief system is big on the

idea of souls, their status isn’t clear: do all the

copies of me get one, or is there one we all share, or

does just one of us have one and the others are

unknowingly all empty husks that are mere

substitutions in the instances into which they have

been copied?

I’ve talked here about instances, shards, phases

and layers as if they were equivalent, which at the

level of the discussion so far they pretty well are.

However, important differences do exist, and by

considering these we can postulate which of the

four best fits what we know of Reality.

Shards don’t seem to be a strong possibility. No

visitor from a higher reality has ever mentioned

that Reality is but one of the many realities

stamped out from a template.

There’s an arithmetic argument, too. Shard

numbers are related to player numbers, bringing

little to NPCs except multiple copies of one another

(at least up until such a point when new NPCs are

With regards to Reality, the approach known as modal

realism asserts that all logically possible worlds exist and are

just as real as is Reality. There isn’t much consideration of

anything analogous to the situation we find ourselves in here,

though, wherein a higher reality determines which of its

lower realities are objectively real and which aren’t.

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created, although these would be shard-specific

This means that we could perhaps find evidence in

support of shards by looking at the number of

players we’ve had over time. If there were indeed

copies of what to us is Reality running as multiple

different shards then we’d expect that eventually

they would either fork or merge. Detecting this

would imply that Reality was indeed a shard.

We wouldn’t know directly if Reality had forked,

because each new shard would (from our

perspective) follow on seamlessly from the point at

which the fork took place. We might be able to

deduce it, though, from a sudden halving of the

observed number of players from the reality of

Reality’s creator. As I’ve already said, though, we’re

not seeing any obvious extra-Reality visitors

appearing nowadays; a server fork leading to such

circumstances would therefore seem unlikely

(unless when it happened all the players quit in

protest).

We would know directly if shards had merged,

because no single shard can explain the

consequences of actions performed by players in

another shard. Had a merge taken place, we would

reliably see player-related inconsistencies showing

If Reality is deterministic and no players from a higher

reality were ever to play it, then each shard would be

identical. Introduce any indeterminacy, though, and they

would differ. For example, a single, split-second change in

timing could mean a different sperm fertilises an egg and a

different person is born as a result. Bye bye Shakespeare.

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up: some things would be the way they are for

reasons that defy our understanding of the laws of

physics. However, as our history is not in fact

stuffed with examples of (say) people who were

born to parents who didn’t exist, we can assume

that there haven’t been server merges in the

recorded past. Besides, a server merge should be

accompanied by an increase in the observed

number of players visiting Reality, yet it’s been

flat-lined at zero for centuries.

Both of the above anti-shard lines of reasoning

depend on our having dependable historical

evidence and memories, of course. This isn’t

necessarily the case, though: gods have the power

to change Reality’s data. To erase or to adjust the

past, a god would take Reality down, alter its

database to make the forked or merged versions

self-consistent, then restart Reality using the new

data leaving us none the wiser.

That said, it would be relatively easy to include

in such an immense rewrite some minor changes

to make pertinent aspects of history less

ambiguous. Those embarrassing pro-slavery

verses in The Bible

could be quietly removed, for

example. This being so, the observation that it

remains somewhat difficult to distinguish

objectively between the goodies and the baddies in

Hmm. Perhaps that means we should expect a server

merge sometime soon.

Leviticus 25:44-46 are perhaps the best-known.

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past religious conflicts suggests that it’s unlikely

that such an historical rewrite has taken place (at

least not under the direction of a god in whose

name a war was fought). We can therefore say that

we probably haven’t had a server fork or merge

either way.

So, Reality doesn’t look to be one of many

similar realities running on different shards. That

doesn’t mean it isn’t, it just means there’s no

evidence that it is.

Phasing also doesn’t appear to be supported by

Reality. It, too, exists mainly for players; for the

NPCs involved, it’s quite a disturbing prospect.

Imagine: you’re waiting for a battle to take place in

which the forces of good (your side) are up against

the forces of evil (the other side). The odds are

against you, but what’s this? A high-powered

individual has arrived – a hero who might just tip

the balance in your favour! The battle starts, you

fight long and hard, but with the hero’s help the

enemy is vanquished and good wins the day!

Hooray!

Then, you twink out of existence because the

next time the hero wanders by these parts it would

spoil the fiction for you still to be around.

Fortunately for us, we don’t see today – and

have never seen in the past – evidence in Reality of

phasing involving player characters.

What about phasing involving non-player

characters?

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Well, again, we don’t see it. This could be

because once a phase becomes active for you it

only becomes inactive upon your death (which it

may indeed cause), so you wouldn’t know. Then

again, it could simply be that phasing isn’t a

feature of Reality.

There are also implementational reasons why

phasing is not something we’d expect to see being

used for the benefit of NPCs. Feel free to skip the

next two or three paragraphs if you’re not into

technical arguments.

OK, so phases are implemented in virtual

worlds by sending different information to

different players to reflect their different

experiences of the same space. This happens by

default for geography (what you see and what I see

will be different unless we’re standing in the exact

same spot); phasing adds it for temporal, storyline

differences, too. The equivalent for NPCs would

involve giving them different sensory information

depending on their physical location in the virtual

world, moderated during phasing by what “should”

be there for the time at which the NPC is

supposedly present.

This seems an odd choice, given that NPCs are

embedded in the virtual world: maintaining a

different set of sensory information for the same

space and keeping it all consistent is a far trickier

prospect than simply instancing that space. Put

another way: if it’s easier to give an NPC a

personalised, private, phased existence by running

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its default sensory input through a temporal filter,

it’s also easier to implement the entire virtual

world that way. Either the whole virtual world is a

distributed mess of autonomous phases frantically

communicating with one another to keep in step

or it’s a single entity from which sensory data can

simply be read as-is.

In my view, phasing content for NPCs is a bad

idea unless you have a particular reason to phase it

for a small number of them at once (for

experimental purposes, say). Creating single-NPC

phases that somehow have to remain consistent

with the unphased reality upon which they are all

based is a nightmare in comparison to using

instances to achieve the same ends.

Because layering is essentially phasing on a

reality-wide scale for the benefit of players, the

same arguments that count against phasing count

against layering, too.

Instancing is the strongest candidate for

something Reality might actually implement. It’s

consistent with philosophical theories of multiple

possible worlds (albeit by creating a new instance

for every different result the random-number

generator could produce, every time it’s consulted

in any extant instance), but it’s also more

explicable. This is because each instance is itself a

virtual world in miniature, so the same logic that

applies to virtual worlds as a whole applies to their

An idea that may appeal to particle physicists.

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instanced content. The whole of Reality could be an

instance invoked from a host reality, to which its

players will return once they’ve played out

Reality’s content.

If Reality did invoke instances, it could do so

either for players or for NPCs

. In either case, we

wouldn’t know unless some of us survived the

ending of the instance or if the players told us

what was going on.

We might be able to deduce that we had entered

an instance if suddenly some crazy stuff started

happening relative to what we were experiencing

before. We wouldn’t be able to inform the people

back in uninstanced Reality what was going on, but

we’d know it ourselves.

The main argument in support of instances

over layers, phases and shards, then, is that it’s

easier to explain why we never see evidence of

instances than it is to explain why we never see

evidence of layers, phases or shards. We still have

to suppose some limitations on the way that

instances are used, though, primarily because for

any of this to match what we know of Reality, the

fact that instances exist mustn’t get out.

It’s easy to see how we NPCs might be unable to

reveal the necessary information of the existence

of instances: all it would take would be to prevent

It could do it for inert objects too, if so inclined, although

giving a bassoon its own sub-reality to enjoy seems a little

indulgent.

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instance-to-Reality communication and for those

of us in instances to be destroyed when our

instance closes.

What about players, though? Couldn’t the

people from the reality of Reality’s creator let us

know about instances?

Given how free some visitors from higher

realities were in the past when it came to playing

fast and loose with Reality, it’s quite striking that

none of them have ever expressed any indication

that there might exist pocket realities in which

anything goes

. This would seem to suggest that

there aren’t such pocket realities; certainly, no

religions make a big thing of it

. That doesn’t

mean Reality doesn’t have instances, of course, just

that no-one seems to have argued in the past that

it might, and if it does have them then they’re used

in a more restricted fashion than we use them in

virtual worlds.

Knowing that you were an NPC in an instance

could be quite disturbing, by the way. Even if you

thought you yourself were likely to get out (which

if virtual worlds are any guide, you won’t), the new

NPCs you meet in the instance will not be joining

you. The instance is their entire reality. When you

That is, like Las Vegas but real.

Of course, some religions (such as Hinduism) are so vast

that there’s bound to be something in there you could

interpret as referring to instanced sub-realities if you were to

look hard enough. They’re not signature features of the

religions in question, though.

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leave, that instance – that reality – will disappear.

This means you’re set to kill them all unless you

stay forever.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that from our

own perspective, we can regard Reality as a single

entity with no copying involved. There’s no

evidence for the situation’s being anything

otherwise, and even if there are multiple copies of

Reality or parts of it, they’re not the Reality in

which we currently exist, therefore from our

perspective they don’t exist. They only exist from

the perspective of a person in the higher reality of

which they are sub-realities.

There’s more on the concept of relative

existence in Chapter 4.

I’m hoping that by now it should be becoming

apparent that applying what we know about

virtual worlds to what we know about Reality does

raise questions about Reality that haven’t been

raised before, and could perhaps answer some that

have.

Sure, they may not be at the level of “why are

we here?” yet, but that does come later.

Sorry about all these forward references, but I’m a

programmer: it’s what we do.

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Reboots

Reality doesn’t seem to implement rolling resets.

People don’t die then recover; objects don’t fall

apart then rematerialise in one piece; ore that has

been mined from the ground doesn’t grow back. It

could be that on an extremely long timescale parts

of Reality do reset piecemeal (perhaps black holes

spit out new stars or something), but if so we have

yet to observe it.

The question of whether or not Reality

implements full resets is less easy to dismiss. We

have to back up a little to understand why.

Virtual worlds are computer programs. This

means they usually contain bugs. Things don’t do

what they were intended to do, or do do what they

were intended to do but what they were intended

to do was faulty.

Bugs cause three general types of behaviour:

• Crashes. The virtual world simply stops

running and exits.

• Hangs. The virtual world gets stuck. Either

it keeps doing the same thing over and over

without getting anywhere, or it goes to

sleep waiting for something to happen but

that something never happens.

• Logic errors. The program is running and

doing things, but these aren’t the things you

wanted it to do. For example, you might

write a program to calculate the n

root of a

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number, but you made it calculate the (n-1)

root instead.

Sometimes, a logic error produces better results

than what you intended to produce, so you adopt it

instead of fixing it

If Reality had logic errors, we wouldn’t know.

This is because Reality is all we do know, so we

can’t tell if the things that happen are supposed to

happen or not. There could be a programmer in a

higher dimension saying “How about that? I made

a typo initialising Planck’s constant but it all still

seems to work!”; we wouldn’t know.

Likewise, we wouldn’t know if Reality were to

hang. If it was waiting for an interrupt, it would

just sit there with time stopped, so we’d be stopped

with it.

There may be a possibility we could suspect

that Reality was stuck in an infinite loop if the

period between each looping was sufficiently long

and we were able to predict what was coming; a

programmer in a higher dimension could be saying

“This Reality is hanging, it’s stuck in the Big Bang

to Big Crunch loop”.

Whether we’d notice a smaller loop or not

would depend on whether our memories survived

each iteration. This is what happens to the

character Phil Connors in the movie Groundhog

Day, for example, who remembers what happens

Programmers announce this by calling it a feature (because

clearly it’s not one).

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from one iteration to the next (but no-one else

does). Indeed. that’s the very reason that sudden

resets in virtual worlds are sometimes called

Groundhog Day resets: the players remember

everything from one reboot to the next but the

NPCs don’t (although they could if we wanted

them to do so).

If Reality were to crash, we wouldn’t notice. The

instant the crash happened we’d cease to exist, and

therefore be in no fit state to notice anything at

all

All things considered, it has to be said that

Reality seems to be running pretty well, unlike

many virtual worlds (although some of the latter

have been in continuous operation for decades and

are now pleasantly stable). There’s always the

possibility of a hidden bug, though. I’ve looked at

code I myself have written that has been happily

executed millions of times over thirty years and

never caused a problem, yet I’ve been unable to

figure out how it ever managed to run even once

without falling over.

What does a crash (or a process kill following a

hang) mean for a virtual world?

Well, it means that either: the virtual world will

be abandoned because the problem is too

It’s conceivable that Reality is implemented as multiple

processes – threads – and that one of these could crash or

hang while the rest didn’t. If we had any interactions with

that out-of-order subsystem, we could perhaps notice (“So,

everyone: gravity seems to have stopped working…”).

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expensive in time, effort or both to fix; or (more

likely) it will be rebooted just as it was, because the

crash isn’t worrying enough to warrant immediate

attention; or (most likely) a fix will be attempted

and it will be rebooted with the fix in place.

Assuming the virtual world is rebooted, then,

from what point is it rebooted?

Well, there are four main possibilities:

• From scratch. The fix involved altering the

data format in some fundamental way, and

it needs a clean start.

• Partial. Some sets of data survive (such as

character records) and some don’t (such as

the current hit points of orc #288).

• From a back-up. The virtual world is

periodically saved, and when it starts up it

restores the last safe save.

• From a dump. In the process of crashing,

the virtual world saves its current state.

When it’s restarted, it loads the data it

needs from this dump and carries on from

exactly where it was

The data loaded from a back-up or a dump can

be whole or partial. For most game worlds, partial

is fine: the players don’t mind if the game world is

reinitialised, so long as they don’t lose any of their

stuff. For social worlds, which can involve a lot of

construction, it’s less fine: a player who has spent

three, painstaking months building a replica of the

In the fervent hope that this time it will keep going.

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bridge (variant 2) of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-

D would be cross were it to disappear following a

reboot initiated to fix a series of minor spelling

errors in the tutorial. Whatever, the latest data will

always be restored if the virtual world is reset in a

controlled fashion (or to use the technical term,

gracefully). Needless to say, if it crashes in a

disintegrating mess of fiery glory, a high-quality

data set may not be available.

Assuming that Reality has the full range of

restore options that virtual worlds have, well, we’d

be oblivious to them. A restart from scratch would

obliterate not only us, but 13.772×10

years

history (less than that if you’re a Young Earth

Creationist, or contend that time is an illusion and

there’s no past anyway). Likewise, a reset from a

back-up or a dump would, to us, seem to be an

unbroken continuation from that save point (in the

same way that the characters in a movie aren’t

aware that you’ve paused or rewound it, or indeed

fast-forwarded it).

We might know something was wrong if there

was a partial restore of data and we were either

part of that restored data or it was accessible to us.

If all the stars outside the solar system suddenly

changed position back to where they were eighty

years ago, it would certainly raise the distinct

This figure comes from a 2015 study by NASA (Lawrence,

2015), so when you read this you might want to add on the

number of years that have elapsed since then.

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possibility that Reality has experienced an

operational issue and that Earth was restored from

a more recent save than was the rest of the

universe.

As for whether this has happened in the past,

well the answer is that yes, it could have done. I

wouldn’t count as evidence the stunts that gods

occasionally pull in which they turn people into

stars or constellations of stars; this appears to be

more of an example of their exercising their

regular powers over physics, rather than the result

of partially restoring the state of the universe from

a save. What I would count as evidence is

prophecy.

Ah, prophecy

. If virtual worlds are anything to

go by, partial restores are more likely to retain only

player data, not NPC or environment data. This

means that we, as Reality’s NPCs, wouldn’t know

that our timeline had been rewound unless a

player character (or an NPC in the confidence of

one) were to tell us. Perhaps surprisingly, this is a

service that some of them do seem willing to

perform. There are plenty of examples of people

with an uncanny ability to predict the future

You know I was going to write that, didn’t you?

I was particularly impressed by Saint Malachy’s prediction

that the pope following John Paul II would choose the name

Benedict. After Pope Benedict XVI subsequently resigned in

office, though, Saint Malachy’s prophecy became more

circumspect. Basically, though, we’re staring down the

loaded barrel of the apocalypse.

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126

which could well be possible because for them it’s

already happened (but Reality has since been

restored to how it was before it happened).

Whatever the precise mechanism, gods do seem to

be largely on board with this one, anyway.

With virtual worlds, data can be edited. It

requires the use of an editing tool, but such

software is usually created during development

and will normally be available. So it is that if

something happens that the designer doesn’t want

to happen, the virtual world can be brought down,

the data files edited, then the virtual world

rebooted using the edited data so it doesn’t happen

the way it did the first time.

Could a god have edited Reality?

Let’s say that we (as Reality’s troublesome

NPCs) spot something that the creator of Reality

would rather we hadn’t spotted. Perhaps we find a

bug that enables a perpetual motion machine, or

hard evidence of the existence of the creator’s

higher reality. It might suit the god to stop Reality,

to edit a save of it from just before the unwanted

event took place, then to restart Reality from the

edited save point. No-one is going to suspect that

the budding young biologist sadly killed by a

falling piano accidentally created a plague that

wiped out all warm-blooded creatures that time

when the piano didn’t fall on him.

This would also explain why we never see

supernatural beings appearing and trashing

Reality: if we did see it, a simple restore to before

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the errant player’s visit would mean that from our

perspective it never happened. Then again,

perhaps supernatural beings have more sense than

to wreck Reality in the first place.

What does this suggest about the possibility

that we could destroy Reality ourselves? Knowing

it could easily be restored from a save, if we found

a way to crash it would this grant us the freedom

to try?

Well, the thing is, we don’t know that

restoration from a save is indeed possible, easily or

otherwise. Even if it could be restored, that doesn’t

mean it would be restored. Besides, we’d probably

only do it again anyway, so why keep on letting us?

A simple edit to remove the people responsible

would sort it all out.

It’s best not to try to destroy Reality, in my

view.

I’ve been talking here as if most reboots were

the result of bugs in the code, but that’s not

necessarily the case. Sometimes, virtual worlds are

rebooted because they’ve been patched or

expanded to add new content. Could something

like this have happened in the past to Reality?

Reminder: patches are evolutionary updates,

usually timetabled; expansions are revolutionary

updates, occurring less frequently but with a

bigger impact.

We wouldn’t notice that a patch was taking

place at the time (it would be instantaneous for us),

but if we were still part of the new content then we

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128

could well become aware that something odd had

just occurred. For example, there might be a

subtle-or-otherwise alteration to Earth’s

geography or to the way that physics worked.

We’ll have little difficulty spotting a patch if it

happens in the future, and even less difficulty

spotting an expansion. Were a portal to open

tomorrow through which poured tens of

thousands of fire-skinned demons, we’d realise

that something was perhaps afoot. We can’t use

this possibility as evidence to suggest that Reality

is patchable, though: for that, we need to look for

patches that have already occurred.

So, has anything happened in the past that

might indicate that Reality has been patched or

expanded

Patches would be a little harder to notice than

expansions as they’re incremental, but they do

have the property of being regular (weekly, for

most virtual worlds). Frustratingly, this isn’t as

useful a guide as it might seem, because although

there’s a connection between the passage of time

in a reality and of its passage in the reality of its

gods

, the relationship doesn’t have to be linear. A

reality’s time could run faster during periods when

no-one was playing it, for example.

“Not only did the Big Bang cause the expansion of the

universe, it was an expansion to the universe.” – Discuss.

It’s why virtual worlds have a “real time” component to

their definition.

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More helpful is the fact that all patches except

emergency ones make a slew of changes at once.

We might think it unusual if a new mammal was

suddenly discovered in New Guinea, but we’d think

it more than a little suspicious if at the same time a

sea monster started swallowing Caribbean cruise

liners, acorns quadrupled in size, three new works

by Leonardo da Vinci were discovered and the

appearance of all penguins changed so they were

white with black bibs. We haven’t noticed anything

happening like this, so patches are either:

infrequent relative to us; too nuanced for us to

notice; mainly obscure bug-fixes; largely

concerned with planets other than those in our

solar system; not a selling point of Reality.

We really ought to notice expansions, because

they’re on a much larger scale. The extinction of

the dinosaurs or the sinking of Atlantis could have

resulted from expansions. Then again, if we think

Reality-wide, well there’s a lot of Reality out there:

the dinosaurs and Atlantis could merely be

elements of patches and the expansion that’s got

all the players excited involves the collision of two

galaxies that we won’t even see from Earth for

another eight billion years.

It does seem plausible that Reality could have

experienced patches and expansions, then,

although it’s not obvious what specific changes to

its content have occurred because of them.

There’s one final point about saves and reboots

I’d like to make before I conclude this chapter.

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While a virtual world is running, its NPCs can

be thought of as being in some sense alive

Closing down the virtual world is therefore

equivalent to snuffing out the lives of the NPCs

who inhabit it.

A back-up can encapsulate the entire state of a

virtual world, including (their being part of the

reality) all its NPCs. If a backed-up virtual world is

subsequently closed down, the possibility remains

that it could be restarted exactly as it was at the

moment the snapshot was taken. A back-up can

therefore be regarded as a reality-in-potential: as

data, it can’t run but it can be run on.

Suppose a virtual world were mothballed in

such a fashion. Its NPCs would be neither dead nor

alive: they’d be in stasis – a condition of potential

life. If someone later used the back-up to initialise a

fresh shard, the NPCs would become alive again, as

they were, unaware of the interruption even

though years might have passed in Reality.

Similarly, deleting the back-up would remove this

contingency and with it the potential continued

lives of the NPCs.

When you switch off a virtual world, you kill

every NPC in it. So, does saving a snapshot at the

instant of its shutdown somehow mean that you

don’t kill them? Would the deletion of the final

Whether NPCs actually are alive is subject to debate, but

for the moment let’s assume they are. The topic is more fully

discussed in Chapter 7.

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back-up be the true moment that they all died?

What if the back-up remained but the virtual

world’s executable code was lost?

There is no way of telling whether or not

anything like this could happen to or could have

happened to Reality.

Thus, do we reach the end of Chapter 2, and

with it Part 1.

You now know what virtual worlds are and

whence they came (if you didn’t already). You know

why they qualify as realties. You provisionally

accept that it might therefore be profitable to draw

comparisons between virtual worlds and Reality.

You’ve seen three major (albeit turgid) examples of

such comparisons, concerning: how Reality’s

content could come about; how Reality might

present aspects of itself in different ways; how

Reality could be stopped and restarted. You’ve

been mildly disappointed that none of these

examples have revealed anything especially

interesting. Your understanding of Reality has not

been improved.

The reason for all this is that by necessity we

had to begin by looking at virtual worlds in their

own terms: as virtual worlds. We could therefore

only talk about Reality that same way: as if it were

a virtual world.

We can go further, though! To do so, we need to

stop thinking of virtual worlds as being suites of

software, and instead think of them as being what

their software implements: realities.

133

Part 2

Virtual

Worlds as

Realities

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134

Chapter 3

REALISING

DREAMS

People are the gods of their own dreams – almost.

When you sleep, you dream. When you dream,

you control the physics of the worlds you inhabit

while dreaming. You may not have fully-conscious

control of what happens, and you may not even be

aware at the time that you are indeed dreaming;

nevertheless, you completely own those dream

worlds.

Imagination is dreaming under conscious

control

Here’s a short exercise. Imagine you’re holding

a soft, squishy ball in your hand. Imagine a plain

wall inside your house. Run through in your

imagination what would happen if you were to

throw the ball at the wall.

You created a world in your mind, right there.

Some people (and yes, annoyingly, I’m one of them) do have

fully-conscious control of their dreams. This is called lucid

dreaming. It’s not relevant to this book; I merely mention it to

stop you from emailing me about it.

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135

Imagine that when the ball hits the wall, it

behaves differently. Maybe it sticks, or it ricochets

off in a random direction, or it experiences

negative gravity, or it transforms into a sparrow.

You control the physics of your imagination.

This makes you the god of the reality that is your

imagination – or of what would be a reality, if more

than you could visit it (hence, the “almost”).

Making it Real

Your dreams and your imagination are created

worlds.

Some people – Sufis and medieval alchemists in

particular (Raff, 2019) – have imaginations so vivid

and active that they can effectively construct

functioning, independent worlds that run on the

hardware that is their own brain. They can visit

these worlds and converse with inhabitants that

seem to have their own free will. Furthermore,

they can hallucinate these visualised beings – and

anything else they choose from their imagined

world (which is called a subtle reality) – into Reality.

Obviously, no-one else will perceive these non-

physical entities, but to the person doing the

imagining they appear as real.

Few people possess this potent an imagination,

but every last one of us can and does routinely

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imagine our own created worlds. Sure, other

people are unable to join us in such worlds, but

that doesn’t mean that they’re completely

inaccessible. A story, for example, is a world of the

author’s imagination serialised into words, from

which a reader or listener can reconstruct the

author’s world in their own imagination. All

interpersonal communication works this way:

what you have in your head that you wish to share,

you express through one or more communication

channels which are picked up by recipients who

then build in their own head a model

of what you

are thinking (while adding some of their own

thoughts and analyses into the mix, too).

There is a difference, however, between

creating worlds because you wish to communicate

and creating worlds because you wish to create.

The former is a means to an end; the latter is an

end in and of itself

The thing is, some people do simply want to

make worlds. The poet W. H. Auden put it like this:

Present in every human being are two desires,

a desire to know the truth about the primary

A model, because they only have your words to go on, not

the actual contents of your imagination. If you want to spend

a happy couple of hours trying to figure out what he meant,

this is Wittgenstein’s beetle-in-a-box thought experiment

(Wittgenstein, 1953).

There are other reasons for creating worlds, too, discussed

at some length in Chapter 9.

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world, the given world outside ourselves in

which we are born, live, love, hate and die, and

the desire to make new secondary worlds of our

own or, if we cannot make them ourselves, to

share in the secondary worlds of those who

can.

(Auden, 1968)

Auden took the terms “primary world” and

“secondary world” from (Tolkien, 1964)

. He

(Auden) knew of what he was writing, too, because

as a child he had created his own imaginary world

based on lead-mining (Auden, 1971)

. He kept the

details of this largely to himself at the time, as

indeed do most children who create such

secondary worlds: they don’t make a secret of their

activities, they just don’t have a particular desire to

open their game

to the primary world. This may

be because there’s an escapist element to it: if you

create a world of your own to escape from Reality,

you probably prefer to keep out the very world

from which you are escaping.

These detailed, imaginary worlds (which are

known as paracosms) are not unusual in children.

The Brontë sisters (along with their brother)

Auden explicitly says in a footnote that he’s indebted to

Professor J. R. R. Tolkien for these terms. You can always

trust footnotes.

Not the most fantastical of settings, but awesome to a six-

year-old boy from York.

Auden explicitly calls his world-creation exploits a game.

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created several paracosms; C. S. Lewis (along with

his brother) also created some; Robert Louis

Stevenson (along with his cousin) created two;

Austin Tappan Wright’s Islandia began as a

paracosm; M. A. R. Barker’s role-playing game

world, Tékumel, began as a paracosm

Whether the paracosm is realised in words,

paintings or some other medium is immaterial.

The author E. Nesbit built paracosms as a child

using household objects, principally books and

ornaments. She called these magic cities, and

decades later wrote a novel about two children

who became the right size to enter into just such a

city that they’d built themselves (Nesbit, 1910). As a

consequence of the interest sparked by this book,

at the age of 54 she constructed a magic city for

the Children's Welfare Exhibition in London

(Nesbit, 1913).

Adults are more likely to want to share their

imaginary worlds with others, because the worlds

themselves are an articulation of something that

their creator desires to express. As mentioned

earlier, the usual way to achieve such sharing is

through serialising the imagined worlds as story,

song, dance, painting, film, whatever. Through

these actions and artefacts, others can see or hear

or otherwise sense the worlds that the world-

Having played some Empire of the Petal Throne in my teens,

I’m persuaded that Professor Barker may have been more

patient as a child than I was.

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creators are presenting; what they can’t do

(perhaps unfortunately, perhaps fortunately) is

visit them. Well, they can, but they visit their own

private renditions of the worlds, as built in their

own imaginations.

This distinction is important. Yes, in a theatre

each member of the audience is observing the same

world that the people sitting next to them are, and

they’re doing so at the same time, but they’re not

visiting the same world. They can’t do anything to

it that anyone else will notice

. The same can be

said of extensive fictional worlds such as the

Whoniverse, Buffyverse and Marvel cinematic

universe: many people share a common

understanding of them, but they can’t go there

This is not true for the co-constructed worlds

that feature in tabletop role-playing games such as

Dungeons & Dragons. In these, players change the

shared world for each other the whole time. The

“role” in “role-playing”, incidentally, doesn’t refer

to the kind of role found in job descriptions (“My

role at work is to teach the uninteresting to the

uninterested”); rather, it refers to the kind of role

in a play (“My role is that of the bitter old man who

laments the loss of his youth”). It’s about playing

characters, not undertaking duties.

At least, not if they don’t want to be unceremoniously

ejected by ushers trained in the art of people-throwing.

For a thorough history of the evolution of such shared

worlds in literature, see (Saler, 2012). Note: Saler uses a

somewhat broader definition of “virtual world” than I do.

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Anyway, the point I want to make here about

tabletop RPGs

is that although one person (the

dungeon master

, in D&D’s case) will typically

design and run the game world, what goes on in it

is determined to a large extent by what the players

decide to do. In this set-up, if I shoot an arrow at a

bandit in my version of the world then the same

bandit is hit

by the same arrow in your version of

the world, too. This is because it is, in fact, the

same world.

It’s a world that relies on consent and co-

operation to subsist, though. If I shoot an arrow at

your character’s knee

, you might argue that it’s

far too difficult a shot to make: you’re running, or

you’re wearing knee armour, or I’m too far away, or

I don’t have a bow. What happens next involves a

process of negotiation with the dungeon master,

who has final say

. This is what stops D&D

campaigns from being realities: their rules of

physics aren’t automated. They may well include

the means by which temporary or permanent

I remember hearing on TV once that rebel forces in some

conflict had fired an RPG at government forces. This is how

rocket-propelled grenades are related to role-playing games.

I’ll leave you to decide if this term is sexist or not. Also,

formally it’s dungeon master

(Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro

owns the trademark), but footnotes and trademarks don’t

play well together typographically.

Let’s assume I’m a good shot.

That one’s for you, Skyrim fans.

Note that RPGs don’t have to have a dungeon master: Fiasco

is one that doesn’t, for example.

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changes to them can be made, but their operation

is not mechanistic.

Look at it this way: if tomorrow you were to

catch a coat button in the framework of a passing

supermarket trolley and have it ruthlessly torn off,

no amount of arguing with Reality about how

unlikely that was is going to put it back

. In a

(somewhat less than enticing, I admit) tabletop

role-playing game set in a shopping mall, you

might well get a result. If the rules of physics were

automated, effects resulting from out-of-game

discussions would be impossible.

There is a kind of role-playing game that does

have a decent amount of automated physics to it:

the live-action role-playing game, or LARP. LARPs

use Reality’s locations and Reality’s physics, only

occasionally resorting to adjudication in cases

where Reality doesn’t possess the physics that

your game needs (such as magic

). The degree to

which a LARP co-opts Reality can vary, with the

ultimate aesthetic experience being the 360°

illusion (Koljonen, 2007): what the player sees,

hears, feels and smells in Reality is congruent with

that of the imaginary game world. This is a fine

ideal, but it’s somewhat exclusionary: because

players are themselves a part of the game world’s

Believe me, I’ve tried. Reality is absolutely without pity!

Of course, as a Wiccan might attest, magic is indeed part of

Reality’s physics but you wouldn’t want to use it in a LARP in

case you hurt someone.

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environment, if you’re the wrong gender, age,

height, ethnicity or anything else for a particular

role, you can’t both play it and maintain the 360°

illusion for others.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, the recent

phenomenon of escape room puzzle games

are

basically LARPs but without the RP and not

distinguished by a great deal of A, either.

Children informally LARP

a lot, collectively

creating imaginary worlds of make-believe which

they inhabit together, only negotiating when they

feel the need to do so (“You can’t sit there, it’s fire!”

“I thought the other rug was fire?” “Oh, yes, you’re

right, that one’s spiders.”). These worlds, as with

grown-up LARPs, are still not independent

realities, though. They do allow multiple people to

enter the same, shared imaginary world at the

same time, but they achieve this through the

device of being overlays of Reality, like ersatz

phases. When all the players stop playing, the

overlay disappears. In essence, a LARP world is a

partial reality, in that it’s a superimposition on

Reality (which, by definition, is itself a complete

reality).

That LARPs aren’t their own realities is clear

from the fact that, unlike virtual worlds, they can’t

Which is to say, puzzles.

The verb is now more usually spelled larp, but I’m too old-

fashioned for that. I can barely accept that the noun is no

longer LRP.

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be said to have Earthbound gods – they’re subject

only to whatever gods (if any) control the physics

of Reality.

Dreams, stories, role-playing games and LARPs

all bring imaginary worlds to life and are

successful to degrees depending on what their

creators want to say and on what those who visit

them want to hear. All are lacking in one respect,

though: the worlds they describe aren’t real.

It may seem odd to suggest that not being real

is a possible deficiency when it comes to imaginary

worlds, especially if those worlds would be

problematic if real

, but it’s a fair point. Sure, not

all imaginary worlds would benefit from being

made concrete, but there are those that would.

Moreover, some worlds can only exist by being real,

so for them not being real is a deal-breaker.

I’m talking, of course, about virtual worlds here:

an artistic creation that people can visit together,

through and with which they can interact. These

are, as the name suggests, worlds; however, as I

stressed in Part 1, in terms of human creativity

they are also something altogether more

interesting: realities. We’ve had imaginations at

least since we became human and possibly even

before then; we’ve had the means to make our

imaginations real only since the late 1970s.

I certainly wouldn’t want the world of Harry Potter to be

real because I loathe the little twerp, but he has magic so I

couldn’t tell him to his face.

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From what I’ve been saying, you will perhaps

have discerned that there’s a hierarchical ordering

of world-fulfilment here. From least-real to most-

real:

• At the bottom are the worlds of our dreams

and daydreams, which can be anything we

imagine (literally, as the imagination is

where they live).

• Next, we have imaginary worlds that we

encode in words or images or music or

movement, possibly for our own

amusement, but which other people can

nevertheless interpret to create in their

own imaginations worlds that reflect the

original.

• Following on, we have the group-

imagination worlds that people create and

sustain together in a magic circle, such as

tabletop role-playing games.

• Above these, we have games that work as

overlays to Reality.

• Above those, we get to virtual worlds, which

exist independently of their players.

• Finally, we reach Reality, our most in-your-

face example of something that’s real.

Reality is the dream from which there is no

awakening.

In abstract terms, the hierarchy begins with the

subjective worlds of the imagination, then moves

to subjective worlds that are treated by their

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145

players as if they were objective realities, then ends

with objective realities that exist regardless of

whether anyone actually believes they exist

I’m mentioning all this to make an important

point. When you create a reality, you are doing so

in the certain knowledge that people – at

minimum, you – ought to be able to visit it. Indeed,

if people couldn’t visit it, this may well undo your

main motivation for creating the reality in the first

place. It is of course conceivable that you may not

want anyone to visit it, perhaps if you merely wish

to see it in action (for example by observing what

the NPCs are up to in it). Whatever, you’re not

going to create a world by accident unless you

unintentionally click the button marked “create

world and run it on the cloud indefinitely” in your

world-creation software.

I’ll round off this section with a few words on

interfaces, as it’s easy to confuse them with that

with which they are interfacing. In particular, my

description of LARPs as overlaying Reality brings

to mind a technology invented to do just that:

augmented reality.

Note that although the consensus is that Reality is an

objective reality, there are those who believe that it could be

susceptible to subjective opinion through a mechanism

known as the Mandela Effect (Broome, 2010). Basically, this

says that things that aren’t true in Reality can become true if

enough people believe that they’re true. Let’s try it: believe I’m

wealthy.

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Augmented reality games are indeed like LARPs

in that they overlay parts of Reality, but the

manner in which they do so is different. Whereas

LARPs co-opt Reality and override it using the

imagination, augmented reality co-opts the senses,

overriding them with new, invented components

Because of this, augmented reality games (unlike

LARPs) can bring with them the appearance of new

physics. This opens up the possibility that they

could be used to interface not only with worlds

that overlay Reality (in the form of virtual phases),

but with independent realities (in the form of

virtual worlds).

They can be, too! The process has to avoid

making situational use of Reality’s physics (apart

from time), because otherwise the game world

wouldn’t be fully virtual. For easy-to-comprehend

reasons, when augmented reality is used to

interface with a virtual world by making it appear

to be part of Reality, the result is called a mixed-

reality game; for MMOs, World of Tanks is the

trailblazer here.

Virtual reality is basically augmented reality

that overrides all of the appearance of Reality,

For someone experiencing psychosis, their own mind

uncontrollably overwrites parts of Reality with invented

sounds (typically voices) and visuals. If you want a sense of

what this is like, try the game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice,

which was made in consultation with individuals who have

lived-experience of the condition. Warning: it’s not for

everyone.

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rather than just parts of it. It therefore goes

without saying that virtual reality could also be

used as an interface to a virtual world. I

nevertheless did say it, because virtual reality and

augmented reality tend to hang out as a couple, so

not bringing both up together would have been

like using an open parenthesis without

accompanying it with a closing one (and we all

know how irritating that is.

Origins of Reality

From where do realities come?

One approach to answering this question is to

look at where virtual worlds come from first, then

apply that understanding to Reality. I’m going to

set about it from the opposite direction, though:

look at where Reality comes from first, then apply

that understanding to virtual worlds. This is

because philosophers and theologians have, over

the centuries, invested quite a bit of thought into

explaining how Reality was created, and it would

be discourteous not to scrounge off their work.

Proceeding in this manner, we can consider

what the implications would be for virtual worlds

brought into being the same way as Reality. In so

doing, we can critique the method of Reality’s

creation. Of course, this does run the risk of calling

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the whole process of Reality’s creation into

question; then again, it could help clear up certain

aspects of Reality’s creation that are otherwise

hard to explain

. Note that the question I’m asking

here isn’t why Reality was created, it’s how it was

created. Why it was created in a Chapter 9 thing.

As it happens, there’s no single answer to this

question for Reality. There are, however, five that

are quite common. Yes, I am going to thrill you

with all of these.

The first answer is that Reality has always

existed. It wasn’t created, as such: it’s always been.

There was no “before” its existence, therefore no

“from” whence it could “come”. This is the

Buddhist and Jainist answer, although most of the

other answers also involve the always-existence of

something, if not of Reality itself. There is a further

refinement of this Reality-has-always-existed

answer that says yes, it has always existed, but it

wasn’t really habitable until a being from a higher

reality (an Earth-diver) descended to Reality and

started improving matters

The second answer is that Reality was formed

out of a pre-existing, primordial state that

contained the makings of Reality but wasn’t itself

Reality. This is the Ancient Greeks’ answer; they

Christian theologians in particular have a pleasant surprise

awaiting them.

This is what a good many Native American accounts will

tell you, for example.

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called the primordial state Chaos. Reality comes

forth from this primordial state in one of two ways.

The first way is what happens when the primordial

state is a dark, empty void: something emerges or

hatches

from it that brings order and so creates

Reality. The second way is what happens when the

primordial state is made up of two opposites mixed

together: something separates them out into

Reality and some other reality (such as a heaven).

In either case, the creation of Reality doesn’t

just occur automatically: some innovative

individual has to get to work, otherwise, we’d still

be living in Chaos

. This being is known as a

demiurge, and is either a creator god or an

individual created and tasked by a creator god to

create Reality. There’s a technical term for this

perspective on the origin of Reality: creatio ex

materia (“creation out of matter”).

The third answer to the question of where

Reality came from is that it was created out of

nothing (creatio ex nihilo

). If you were to liken

Reality to a city made out of bricks then creatio ex

materia is where you start off with an enormous,

mixed-up pile of assorted bricks and have to make

it all from those, whereas creatio ex nihilo is where

you don’t even have the bricks. This is the answer

If it hatches then the primordial state either contains, or is

itself, what’s referred to as a cosmic egg.

Then again, how would we know we weren’t?

You can perhaps tell from the fact these terms are in Latin

that they’ve been around for awhile.

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of Judaism, Christianity

and Islam (the main

Abrahamic religions).

That said, the Old Testament of The Bible is in

truth a little hazy on the origin of Reality, mainly

giving an impression of creatio ex nihilo but

occasionally hinting at creatio ex materia. What it

does make clear, though, is that Reality definitely

was created. This enables a line of reasoning called

the first cause argument

, which goes something

like as follows:

• Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

• Reality began to exist.

• Therefore, Reality must have a cause.

You can take this further, by noting that if

Reality has a cause then that cause must itself

ultimately be uncaused, therefore there must exist

an eternal, uncaused creator of Reality (which is to

say, God

). This clears matters up if you accept the

Old Testament’s position, but if you wished to be

cynical you could ask why Reality needed to begin

to exist if its creator didn’t

The fourth answer to the question of where

Reality came from is that it was created out of the

body of its creator (creatio ex deo). This has two

For most definitions of “Christianity”. Some Christians,

such as Mormons, take a creatio ex materia approach.

The origins of this argument come from the Islamic

discipline of Ilm al-Kalām (“science of discourse”).

The concept of an uncaused being, or a being who contains

within themself their own cause, is called asiety.

This is known as the unmoved mover paradox.

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different flavours. The first is literal: the creator

bled out, spat, sneezed, or otherwise secreted

Reality; or gave birth to Reality; or lost hair, an eye,

hand or other body part

which became Reality.

This is the answer of the Kuba people of central

Africa, whose creator god, Mbombo, vomited forth

the sun, moon and stars (followed a while later by

some animals and people) as a result of a bad

stomach-ache.

The second flavour of creatio ex deo, known as

pantheism, says Reality comprises the being of the

creator

(usually with reference to the Abrahamic

religions’ God, although elements of pantheism do

appear elsewhere – in Hinduism, for example).

There’s a potential flaw here in that God is perfect

but Reality (or at least humanity) isn’t, which is an

inconsistency. This can be explained, however, by

either supposing that all of Reality is part of the

divine but the divine is more than just Reality

, or

by saying that Reality came from God’s being but

once it left it was on its own so could become

I’d list more but I don’t want this book to fall foul of

censors.

Ditto.

Pantheism can also mean the worship (or at least tolerance)

of multiple gods.

This is called panentheism (“all in god”). Reality is a strict

subset of God; while God as a whole is perfect, if you take

such a subset then this isn’t perfect because it isn’t the

perfect whole.

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corrupt

. This second possibility returns to the

more literal flavour of creatio ex deo, but without

going into details regarding precious bodily fluids.

The fifth answer to the question of Reality’s

origin is that it came from another reality. This

solution fuses together some of the themes present

in other answers

. What typically happens is that

proto-realities form, through which humanity (or

its creator) ascends into other proto-realities,

eventually emerging into Reality. This is

essentially a female-biology answer, in that

humanity and Reality are developing in tandem

until humanity is ready to be born. Sometimes, the

birth is literal (from the womb of a female god);

sometimes, it’s more metaphorical (humanity

appears from the underworld via a hole in the

ground)

Although the foregoing are the most common

answers to the question of Reality’s origin, there

are plenty of others

; I apologise if I haven’t

covered one that you know to be true. The

scientific evidence currently points at a Big Bang

This is like saying your blood is fine while it’s inside you

but if you take it out then it’s not really part of you anymore

and takes on a different nature.

Or, alternatively, some of the themes present in the other

answers are diffused from this one.

This is also what a (different) good many Native American

accounts will tell you.

“Next, they [the gods Kane, Ku and Lono] make the earth to

rest their feet upon.” (Beckwith, 1940).

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creatio ex nihilo, but leaves open the possibility that

the Big Bang wasn’t the start of the matter

and

that there could be an always-existed aspect to

Reality (the theory of cosmic inflation suggests this,

for example).

That said, there is a rarer, sixth answer to the

question of where Reality came from that will be of

particular interest later in this book: causa sui

(“cause of itself”). This is the way the Ancient

Egyptian god Ptah did it: he willed both Reality and

himself into existence. That’s pretty damned

impressive! OK, so the Ancient Egyptian gods

Amun-Ra and Atum-Ra did the same thing, but I’ll

nevertheless use Ptah as my exemplar because

Amun-Ra and Atum-Ra could only claim they’d

done it once the gods Amun and Atum respectively

had been merged with the god Ra. Ptah, on the

other hand, could do it from the get-go

Before we leave this topic, there are two more

theological terms that we can just take because

theologians can’t stop us: when a god exists in a

higher reality than Reality then that god is said to

be transcendent; a god that exists in Reality is said

to be immanent

Strictly speaking, these terms only apply to the

pairing of Reality and a higher reality, but I’ll be

Or indeed of the anti-matter.

If you really want to rile the populace of ancient Heliopolis,

point out that Ptah created Ra anyway so the point is moot.

Immanence can also refer to the situation in which a reality

in some sense is its god.

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using them in a more relative fashion (not very

often, admittedly). For example, when you play a

virtual world then your character is immanent to

that virtual world, whereas you, the human being

at the keyboard, are transcendent to it. The same

applies to aspects of a god’s nature: if you and I are

sitting next to one another while playing an MMO,

and I ask you to come to help me, then from the

perspective of the non-player characters of that

MMO I’m exhibiting transcendent powers –

powers that are completely beyond the MMO’s

physical laws. From the perspective of you and me,

I’m merely exhibiting the power of speech available

to most people in Reality

Origins of Sub-Realities

Having answered, multiple times, the question of

how Reality was created, we can now turn our

attention to the question of how the sub-realities

that are virtual worlds are created.

This is much easier, as there’s only one answer:

creatio ex nihilo.

Hmm. Yes.

Note that my power of speech doesn’t qualify as being

immanent; this is because I’m not a god of Reality.

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Well although that’s the coldly-analytical

response, we can argue that many of the other

ways that Reality was created can be applied to

virtual worlds, too.

If, for example, you use an off-the-shelf game

engine to create your virtual world, replete with

physics and predefined objects that you can drop

in and change at will, that sounds an awful lot like

creatio ex materia.

If you do as I tell my students to do, and try to

create a virtual world that says something, you’re

investing a part of your identity in the world you

create, which sounds an awful lot like creatio ex

deo.

If you are a player of a non-game world such as

Second Life, entering its reality and starting to

build sounds an awful lot like you’re Earth-diving

(well, Second Life-diving).

If you create a world, then discard it and

recreate it from scratch, and continue to do so,

improving it each rewrite

, then it sounds an

awful lot like the developmental, gestational, came-

from-another-reality approach I described in the

previous section.

If you want to get really philosophical about it,

and believe in a deterministic universe, you can

even suggest that your virtual world has been

In case you weren’t counting earlier, MUD was rewritten in

its entirety three times. The final version, known as MUD2,

was/is actually version four.

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embodied implicitly in the make-up of Reality since

forever. In the same way that a broken egg is

embodied in the situation of an unbroken egg

that’s falling from the top of the Burj Khalifa, so

your virtual world has been embodied in Reality at

every moment in the past. This sounds an awful lot

like saying your virtual world has always existed.

OK, so some of these “sounds an awful lot like”

expositions rely heavily on metaphor, but given

how much metaphor is routinely involved in

interpreting accounts of Reality-creation, they’re

well within established bounds.

The only way Reality was created that doesn’t

work for your virtual world is Ptah’s method. Your

virtual world was created by you. You didn’t will

yourself into existence at the same time as your

virtual world, so this isn’t how it happened

Looking at all these methods, though, it’s clear

that at some point either you or someone else had

to create the virtual world from nothing: creatio ex

nihilo. Sure, you think it up in Reality, use the tools

and physics of Reality to make your ideas manifest,

and it runs on computers existing in Reality, but as

a reality it came from nothing.

Unless you’re Ptah, in which case I may be in trouble.

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Realities Determined

While describing back there how it could be argued

that the virtual world you make has in some sense

always existed, I touched on the notion of a

deterministic universe.

Are virtual worlds deterministic?

OK, so let’s start off by looking at what I mean

by “deterministic” here. It’s quite a long

explanation, but bear with me. I’ll use games for

my examples, because why wouldn’t I?

So, when you play Chess, it’s possible to write

down: where all the pieces on the board are; whose

turn it is; whether the last move was of a pawn

open to en passant; and whether each side can still

castle or not. Suppose you made such a note of a

game: you could subsequently put away the board

and pieces, then fifty years later take out your note,

set up the board as described, and continue to play

exactly where you left off. Given the rules of

Chess

, someone else could find your note a

hundred years after that and continue the game

from the point you recorded it a century and a half

previously.

This is actually important: the saved positions alone aren’t

enough. We have examples of saved positions from the

Ancient Egyptian game known today as Hounds and Jackals,

but we can’t set up a board and carry on from where the

original players left off – the rules didn’t make it across the

millennia.

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This kind of write-downable description of a

game in play is called a state. It’s a technical term

but a fairly intuitive one – you had no problem

understanding it when I was talking about backing

up virtual worlds earlier. When you save a

computer game, you’re saving some or all of its

state: if the battle you engage in immediately after

the save doesn’t go quite as well as you had

perhaps hoped, you can load the saved state and

try again

We’ll find the concept of a saved state useful

(again) later, but for our current purposes it’s the

relationship between different states that’s of more

interest. The thing is, a state can usually be

transformed into a new state. In Chess, this happens

when you make a move. The pieces are no longer

arranged how they were before and (assuming the

game isn’t over) it’s now your opponent’s turn. You

could still record the game’s state, it’s just that

now it would be a different state.

In Chess, there are normally many alternative

moves that can be made in a given state; figuring

out which one is best is what makes the game fun

(well, that and winning). Each move in one state

leads to a different state, from which other moves

lead to other states.

As people who remember earlier footnotes will know.

In Steve Meretzky’s classic work of interactive fiction,

Planetfall, whenever you save the game in the presence of

your robot buddy, Floyd, Floyd says “Oh boy! Are we going to

try something dangerous now?”.

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Imagine drawing a genealogy-style tree, with

the initial, ancestor state (the one before anyone

makes a move) at the root. For each possible move

in that state, begin a branch that leads to a newer

state. From the starting position in Chess, white

can move one of eight pawns forward either one or

two squares, or can move one of two knights to one

of two squares each – a total of 20 possible moves.

This means that from the initial state there are 20

branches, each leading to one of the 20 possible

states that can pertain when it’s black’s first turn.

Black can also make one of 20 opening moves, so

each of those 20 states also has 20 branches

coming from it, meaning that when it’s white’s

second turn the board could be in any one of 400

possible states. Some of these will have more

moves available than others, and after white has

moved again there are 8,902 states that black could

be looking at; when it’s white’s third turn, there are

197,742 possible configurations of the board

. The

number continues to grow rapidly as play

proceeds.

The first two moves in Chess have a branching

factor of 20. Overall, the average branching factor

across all states is about 35 for Chess.

In a deterministic game, the branching factor is

always exactly one.

I didn’t work these numbers out myself (well, except for the

first two, when I was about ten years old); I got them out of

(Sloane & Plouffe, 1995).

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As a general rule, if the next state in a sequence

is created by applying a function to the current

state, and that function involves no uncertainty

(that is, it’s not random and doesn’t involve

external input), then you have a deterministic

sequence. The same starting conditions will always

lead to the same behaviour.

A famous example of this in Computer Science

is Conway’s game of Life

You can skip past this if you already know

about Life.

So, Life isn’t so much a game as a toy. You start

off with a grid of squares (called cells), and mark

some of them as occupied. Except for the ones at

the grid’s edges, each cell is adjacent (orthogonally

or diagonally) to eight other cells. Every turn (or

generation), you go through all the cells, figuring

out what will be in them next turn. There are three

rules:

• Every occupied cell adjacent to either

exactly three or exactly two other occupied

cells in this generation survives to the next

generation.

Although its name is simply Life, it’s traditional to refer to

it as Conway’s Game of Life. It was invented by John Horton

Conway in 1969 (Roberts, 2015), but as far as I can tell there

isn’t an original monograph describing it. It was first brought

to public attention by (Gardner, 1970).

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• Every empty cell adjacent to exactly three

occupied cells in this generation becomes

occupied in the next generation.

• All other cells become or remain empty in

the next generation.

For example, Figure 6 shows three successive

generations of states in Life using a 6×5 grid. To the

left is Generation 0, the initial state, consisting of

four occupied cells (shown in black) horizontally

across the middle. If you go through each of

Generation 0’s 30 cells in turn, applying the above

rules to see what goes in the corresponding cell of

the next generation, you’ll arrive at the middle

state, Generation 1. Go through all the cells in

Generation 1 applying the same rules to them and

you’ll derive the state on the right, Generation 2.

I chose the set-up for Generation 0 that I did

specifically so that Generation 2 would be stable: all

its occupied cells are adjacent to two other

occupied cells, and no empty cells are adjacent to

exactly three occupied cells, so henceforth nothing

is going to change from one generation to the next.

Generation 0

Generation 1

Generation 2

Figure 6 – Three Generations of Life.

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This particular configuration of cells occurs quite

often in Life and has its own name: it’s a beehive.

Generations in Life don’t have to end up stable.

For example, if Generation 0 had been initialised

with only three horizontally-adjacent occupied

cells instead of four then the Generation 1 which

followed it would have had three vertically-

adjacent occupied cells. Thereafter, all even-

numbered generations would have looked the

same as Generation 0 (three horizontally-adjacent

occupied cells) and all odd-numbered generations

would have looked the same as Generation 1 (three

vertically-adjacent occupied cells). This pattern is

known as a blinker.

Patterns can move across the grid from

generation to generation, too. Figure 7 shows

successive generations of a pattern known as a

glider, which repeats every four generations but in

a new position (that is, Generation 4 is the same as

Generation 0 but diagonally one cell to the right

and one cell down)

Thanks to modern computers, it’s possible to

automate Life and to build absolutely enormous

grids. Cell patterns can move around, interacting

with one another dynamically to create incredible

effects: self-replicating patterns; patterns that

There are two opposing philosophical views as to whether

objects are wholly present every moment of their existence

(endurantism) or whether they have distinct temporal parts

(perdurantism). Look at gliders and see what you think.

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display dot-matrix-like words; patterns that can

perform arithmetic calculations

. It’s amazing to

watch animations of some of these in action.

The thing is, though, no matter how large the

grid, no matter how sophisticated the apparent

behaviour of the patterns, no matter how

impressive the result, whatever happens is

determined only by the rules of Life and the initial

state. Whatever you supply as Generation 0

completely embodies every generation thereafter.

Life, then is deterministic. You set the machine

up, and from then on whatever is going to happen

is fixed. It may look as though things are

happening by chance, but they’re not. If you were

to give someone else the same starting state that

In fact, as they can be built to simulate a Universal Turing

Machine (Turing, 1937), they can in theory compute anything

computable, given time.

Figure 7 - A Glider in Motion.

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you were using, and they plugged it in as the input

for their own software implementation of Life, then

exactly the same sequence of events would unfold

for both of you

So, is Reality deterministic? Or, to paraphrase

Conway himself: are you reading this because it’s

your choice or because it was predetermined?

Life was the first example discovered of what is

now known as a cellular automaton. Everything

about its operation proceeds causally and

relentlessly. The current state causes the state that

immediately follows it, and thence every state that

will ever follow it. Any one state holds implicitly

within it all the states that will come after it.

Suppose that you were to take a snapshot

Reality, recording the position and momentum and

anything else you needed to know for every single

fundamental particle at same instant. You’d have

to do this from outside Reality, of course, because

Reality doesn’t have enough room to store itself

more than once

and time has a relative aspect to

it; let’s suppose, then, that you are in a higher

reality and that all this is therefore possible. So: if

you were to re-run Reality twice from your single

This assumes that neither your program nor theirs is

embarrassingly buggy.

The technical term, which I snuck in earlier, is a dump.

Let alone an infinite number of times over: each copy of

Reality held within Reality would in turn have to keep a copy

of itself, and so on indefinitely (like a fractal but without the

zoom).

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save point, would things pan out the same way

both times or differently?

If they do pan out the same way both times,

Reality is deterministic

and any sense that its

inhabitants may have that they possess free will is

mistaken

. This is the basis of the pantheistic

position advocated by the Dutch rationalist

philosopher, Baruch Spinoza: if Reality and the

creator are one and the same, and the creator is

perfect, then Reality must be deterministic.

If things don’t pan out the same way both

times, Reality is not deterministic and chance plays

a part. At the moment, science has met with some

success treating fundamental particles as globs of

probabilities, so it looks as if free will is winning

among natural philosophers

. Science does leave

open the possibility of changing its mind when

presented with further evidence, though, so this

view need not necessarily prevail in the long

term

To return to the question posed at the

beginning of this section, then: are virtual worlds

deterministic?

Either that, or its random-number generator by pure

chance produced the same series of numbers both times.

Free will is discussed in more depth in Chapter 6.

That is, physicists.

It may be possible to capture the fundamentals of physics

in terms of hypergraph manipulation (Wolfram, 2020). Such a

system works deterministically, a bit like Conway’s game of

Life but on nodal relationships rather than on grid cells.

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Well, virtual worlds can definitely be non-

deterministic, because I distinctly remember

writing the random-number generator for MUD

The interesting point, though, is why they’re non-

deterministic.

Programmers usually like their programs to be

deterministic, because that makes them so much

easier to debug. After all, if you can’t reproduce a

problem, how can you be sure you’ve fixed it?

Nevertheless, programmers of virtual worlds

deliberately introduce non-determinism. For what

reasons?

Well, there are essentially two.

The first reason is the weaker one: you might

get interesting states that you couldn’t get were

the system simply left to run mechanistically. This

isn’t all that important, because you can have any

state you want at initialisation time; where it helps

is in showing you states that you might want but

hadn’t realised you did.

The second, stronger reason for having non-

determinism in virtual worlds is that players don’t

like too much predictability. Uncertainty can spice

things up a bit (and furnish a useful excuse should

you, the player, make a bad move). If you know

The question “Is this reality non-deterministic?” can be

answered in the positive if at least one random-number

generator used in the implementation of that reality is non-

deterministic. MUD’s one-and-only random-number

generator was non-deterministic (it used the real-time clock

as a seed), so MUD itself was also non-deterministic.

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every time you start a fight with a monster what

the outcome will be, well where’s the fun in that?

The game could save you time by flatly telling you

the result, without making you go through the

motions.

As both these reasons suggest, then, virtual

worlds have randomness internal to them because

people external to them find them more

interesting that way. A deterministic virtual world

would only be interesting if it were simulating

some deterministic natural process (and then only

to people who studied this process).

That said, uncertainty doesn’t have to come

from a random-number generator. There are many

sources of uncertainty in games, of which what are

effectively N-sided dice comprise but one

(Costikyan, 2013). The primary fount of

unpredictability in virtual worlds is actually player

activity. Even if a virtual world were entirely

deterministic, it would be impossible to predict

what it would look like at an arbitrary point in the

future were players able to mess with the pieces

There’s an interesting point that arises from

this, which doesn’t seem to have previously been

picked up by either philosophers or theologians.

Without an injection of uncertainty, a virtual

world developer could look at a dump of the virtual

Except if all timelines end the same way regardless. What

Reality will look like after the universe’s projected heat death

might be an example of this, for example.

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world and figure out what any NPC was going to

do next. This would make the developer

omniscient but the NPC bereft of free will. If the

virtual world’s system of causality is influenced by

a random-number generator then NPCs could

perhaps be said to have free will, but then the

developer would no longer be omniscient. If

instead the source of uncertainty is caused by the

presence of players from Reality, though, then the

developer could remain omniscient with respect to

the virtual world, but the NPCs would have free

will because of the uncertainties that come with

input from Reality.

Put another way, if the gods of a reality are

omniscient then the NPCs’ free will in that reality

derives from the actions of player characters sent

from the gods’ reality

Getting Personal

Of the six explanations I gave regarding Reality’s

origins, only in the first is Reality not somehow

brought into being (it’s always existed). In all the

others, Reality is explicitly, if not necessarily

deliberately, created. Supposing for now that

Whether the players of those characters have free will

themselves is another matter, of course.

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Reality was created, a reasonable question to ask is:

who or what created it?

Now of course, there are as many specific

answers to this question as there are specific

accounts describing what happened. Details aside,

though, each will fundamentally espouse one of

only two basic positions: either Reality was created

by an entity

who can be regarded as a person, or

it was created by an impersonal or unknowable

force.

In the case of virtual worlds, it’s pretty clear-cut

that they are indeed created by an entity who can

(charitably) be regarded as a person – the virtual

world’s designer. As we shall see shortly, however,

the issue is less to do with whether they can be

regarded as a person and more to do with whether

they will be.

When a god can be related to as a person, that

god is said to be a personal god. This doesn’t mean

that you have your own, personal god like you have

your own, personal coffee-mug; it means that the

god in question has qualities similar to those

possessed by human beings. These qualities might

include free will, emotions and forethought, for

example.

For Reality, the subject of a personal god is one

area where the major Abrahamic faiths disagree. In

Or entities, but I’ll assume the singular for now so I don’t

tie my sentences up in knots of singularity and plurality.

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Judaism, God

is beyond human understanding

and so can not be related to as a person, although

some degree of anthropomorphism may be helpful

to convey certain ideas about God’s nature. In

Christianity, God is three beings: the Father, the

Son and the Holy Spirit

. The Father and the Son

are definitely personal gods; whether the Holy

Spirit is or not is less certain. In Islam, God is a

personal god but is not of Reality; this means that

although humans can visualise some aspects of

God, their picture will always be incomplete.

The disagreement arises because in order to

have created Reality as advertised, God must be of

a higher reality – one to which human beings have

no access (at least while alive)

. Without such

access, we have no handle on said higher reality: it

lies outside human experience and is

incomprehensible to us. God, therefore, as a being

of this higher reality, must also be

incomprehensible to us. How, then, given that God

is personal, can we comprehend God as a person?

Judaism’s answer is that we can’t. Christianity’s

answer is that God is three people in one and that

although the whole is incomprehensible, each

person making it up isn’t. Islam’s answer is that

For brevity and clarity, I’ll simply refer to the Abrahamic

god as God here, rather than Yahweh/God/Allah.

Also known as the Holy Ghost, but I’ll go with Holy Spirit;

it sounds less like an expression of annoyance made by Robin

in the 1960s Batman TV series.

That is, God must be transcendent.

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there are glimpses of God that are comprehensible

to us, but glimpses of God aren’t God.

These aren’t the only ways to answer the

question, of course. The Hindu god Vishnu is a

transcendent personal god who neatly addresses

the problem of being incomprehensible to humans

by occasionally manifesting in Reality as different

human-comprehensible avatars (Krishna and Rama

being the best-known

). In this sense, Vishnu can

be visualised a bit like matter in a superposition of

quantum states, being all of them at the same time

but able to collapse into any single one to become

observable

There is a conviction that bridges the gap

between a personal and an impersonal god. Known

as pandeism, it holds that the creator god started

out as a person, but in the act of creation became

Reality itself and so ceased to be a person. It’s

basically a fusing-together of pantheism (which

says that Reality and the divine are one, but is non-

committal about how that happened) and deism

(which says that Reality has a creator god, who,

having created it, seems then to have abandoned

it).

Not all Vishnu’s avatars are of human form. Kurma, for

example, is at least half tortoise.

Usually, however, Vishnu is visualised as being a blue man

with four arms.

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Deism and pantheism tend to be at odds

because both take a rational

approach to their

understanding of Reality and therefore have to

defend their positions rationally. Deism holds that

there is a god of Reality, but that this god doesn’t

intercede in Reality (at least not directly). It

suggests that Holy books and prophets are

unreliable and so count as inadmissible, hearsay

evidence, but that the existence of a god can

nevertheless be deduced formally by applying

logical thought, rooted in observations of the

natural world (a teleological argument – an

explanation in terms of purpose rather than of

cause).

Pantheism is a qualification of deism which

goes a step further: it asserts that the universe is

itself a god. Its dispute with deism is over what is

the Absolute – the “most real” being. Pantheists say

it’s Reality; deists say it’s a being of a higher

reality.

Pandeists resolve this by saying it’s the latter

transformed into the former.

Interestingly, although these philosophical

positions aim to further our understanding of

Reality’s relationship with its creator, the same

positions also arise when creators of virtual worlds

aim to further their own understanding of the

You could almost say scientific, if experiments weren’t so

difficult to design and to perform.

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realities they create – even if their motivations are

somewhat more pragmatic.

For example, in MUD there were a small

number of players who had reached such a high

level that they acquired supernatural,

administrative-grade powers; we called these

players wizzes

, but in the terminology of this

book they were demigods. A topic that they

discussed long and hard among themselves was

the appropriate degree of openness they should

exhibit while playing. Some liked to operate

covertly, only altering the game world in subtle

ways, but others preferred to operate overtly,

displaying their powers in an unconstrained

manner. This caused friction between the two

groups. Neither disputed the fundamental right of

gods or demigods to interfere in the affairs of

regular player-characters (mortals); their

disagreement only concerned whether they should

be seen to be doing so or not.

The demigods in favour of overtness were like

those of Ancient Greece, insisting that they were

noticed and that play revolved around them. They

were personal gods in extremis: they wanted to

interact with players

in supernatural ways – it

was the very reason they played. Their (not

entirely persuasive) argument for overtness was

Short for “wizards and witches”.

Probably with NPCs, too, had MUD been able to boast any

that exhibited human-level intelligence.

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that if regular players saw someone using

supernatural powers, or felt the direct effect of

those supernatural powers, then they’d be

incentivised to try to earn those powers

themselves

. Truth be told, though, the demigods

who played overtly did so because they enjoyed it.

The demigods who preferred covertness were

effectively advocating deism, because they didn’t

do anything in or to the reality that couldn’t be

explained naturally (as opposed to supernaturally).

Their argument against playing overtly was that

it’s easier to manipulate the game world if players

don’t suspect you’re doing it. Furthermore, when

regular players can see that a god is around, they

will readily attribute anything unexpected that

they experience to supernatural intervention. If,

say, they underwent a period of bad luck, they

would unhesitatingly blame it on godly

interference. OK, so perhaps more often than not it

was godly interference, but without the visible

presence of a god it could have just been a whim of

the random-number generator

. Also, having

visible gods reduces players’ sense of wonder;

This rationale is harder to justify in modern virtual worlds,

because these days players don’t get to become demigods

through play. Be that as it may, imaginative individuals do

exist in whom a rampant exhibition of godly powers might

inspire an ambition for a career in MMO development.

The acronym RNG is used to refer to a virtual world’s

random-number generator; the god of Reality who controls

the output of the virtual world’s RNG is known as RNGesus.

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when you know there’s a god on walkabout,

everything that happens tends to be coloured by

the presence of that god. You can’t simply play as

normal, because there’s someone there who isn’t

playing in quite the same sense that you are.

The gods and demigods of modern virtual

worlds adopt a third, compromise position: they

moderate their appearances in the virtual world,

only interfering when there’s an issue to address.

This resembles the approach favoured by the gods

of Hinduism, who tend to be covert until there’s a

problem that needs to be fixed, whereupon they’ll

reveal themselves overtly to fix it. If the gods of an

MMO don’t appear, it’s not because they’ve

abandoned their reality, it’s because it’s running

smoothly

The reluctance of such gods and demigods to

show themselves is perhaps explained by the fact

that overtness doesn’t scale well. If a god manifests

in front of 100 players in a MUD, it’s relatively easy

to handle the conversations that 10% of these

players will immediately attempt to start with that

god. If there are 10,000 players, it’s not so easy

A branch of theological thought known as occasionalism

proposes that gods only interfere in the general cause-and-

effect operation of their created realities, er, occasionally.

There’s a suggestion that this could be a profitable way in

general to examine the relationship between the designers

and players of games (Leino, 2019).

Aside: it could be (and has been) suggested that praying in

Reality is akin to issuing a bug report in a virtual world. I get

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This isn’t to say that game designers don’t play

their own games alongside regular players, but if

they do then it’ll usually be as regular players. In

Shakespeare’s play Henry V, King Henry walks in

disguise among his men on the eve of the Battle of

Agincourt so as to find out what they truly think of

him and his campaign. OK, so Henry isn’t a god

but the principle is the same: you’ll get a more

honest idea of what your creation is like if you

wander it as a nobody than if you wander it as a

somebody.

Judging by our experience with virtual worlds,

then, deism is a plausible way for players to view

gods: they do exist, but don’t overtly intervene.

What, then, about the more specialised position of

pantheism? This says that the virtual world is itself

its god.

Well, considering that we know for a fact that

virtual worlds do not create themselves, it looks as

if pantheism is dead in the water as a way of

characterising them. Bad news, pantheists: it is

indeed

. However, pandeism (which suggests that

the analogy, but can state with some certainty that there

were very few gods or demigods of MUD who would have

regarded “I don’t have a kick-ass sword” as a bug.

That said, in the play’s prologue Shakespeare suggests that

the actor playing Henry is to the real Henry as Henry himself

is to Mars, the god of war.

You might be able to argue that a virtual world could be the

end result of a self-modifying computer program. Whether

the program or its programmer was the true creator of the

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a personal god created the virtual world and in so

doing became it) puts up more of a fight.

I’m about to touch on motivation here, which I

really want to leave to the final chapter of this

book; it does help explain the point, though,

therefore I’ll permit a modicum of it to sneak in

early.

So, some of the people who developed early

virtual worlds did so as gifts to their players. They

wanted to create a reality that belonged

collectively to its visitors rather than to its makers.

The gods were to be servants of the players,

implementing whatever changes to the physics of

the world the players requested of them, but

distancing themselves from the social outcomes

that derived from the world as played.

The most famous example of this was Pavel

Curtis’s LambdaMOO, a social world dating from

1990. I’ll talk in Chapter 8 about how this worked

out

, but for the moment I simply want to draw

the analogy with pandeism. LambdaMOO’s god

began as a tool-wielder, but upon completing his

creation gave up his creative identity and became

his creation’s tool. Pavel-the-designer became

Pavel-the-programmer.

Now, I said “analogy” back there because

LambdaMOO’s story doesn’t map exactly onto

world would then depend on whether the program had free

will or not (see Chapter 6).

Spoiler: not as planned.

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pandeism. Its god didn’t lose his godly powers, he

merely chose not to exercise them, deism-style,

except as directed by his creation through the

medium of its players. In true pandeism, the world

created assumes the god’s powers itself (which it

exercises by existing). We can afford to give the

analogy some leeway, though, so as not to dismiss

pandeism’s case on a mere technicality.

In general, it may seem risky for the designer of

a reality to yield control of their godly powers to

others, because said designer could well have made

a mistake somewhere along the line that they

realise too late needs to be addressed. Pandeism

has no problem with this regarding Reality,

because the creator god was (or sort-of is) perfect

and therefore didn’t ever make any mistakes in the

first place. It does have a problem with it for

virtual worlds, but not necessarily in the manner

you might expect.

The problem is not to do with perfection. This is

because, from a pandeist perspective, any reality

that contains the means by which it can be fixed is,

in fact perfect. This was indeed the case with

LambdaMOO: if a bug was detected in the code or

the design then the players could instruct Pavel-

the-programmer to fix it, which he would do.

The problem was that although Pavel, the god

of LambdaMOO, wished to and tried to abdicate his

godly powers, he couldn’t while he retained control

of its physics. He wasn’t merely the agent of his

virtual world’s will (as expressed by its players); he

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was also the agent of his own will. If the players

asked for something that he knew was a very bad

idea, he could yet veto it. If they didn’t ask for

something he knew was a very good idea, he could

yet implement it (which indeed he eventually

did

Perfection has consequences. Try as he might,

Pavel remained LamdaMOO’s god whether he liked it

or not.

As I said, we’ll explore the consequences of this

later.

The failure of the god-as-designer-to-god-as-

programmer analogy seems to suggest that

although pandeism comes close to being able to

describe how virtual worlds (if not Reality) are

created, it ultimately falls short.

That’s only seems, though. It does have one

more card it can play.

To explain this, I need to introduce the concept

of mind-body dualism. This is somewhat oblique to

the discussion so far, but it does enable quite an

impressive observation.

So, the basics of the idea are quite old, but it was

pushed hard by the French philosopher and

scientist René Descartes in the 17

century. The

suggestion is that the body and the mind are

separate and distinct. In one form, substance

dualism, the body is physical and the mind is non-

Details in Chapter 8.

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physical

– helpfully consistent with the idea of an

immortal soul that can be attached and detached

from a human vessel. In another form, property

dualism, the mind is governed by the physics of

Reality just as everything else is, but it’s not part of

the body. There are other forms of dualism, too,

but these are the main ones.

The counter position is monism. This says that

the mind and the body aren’t separate, but that one

is a consequence of the other (or, less often, that

both are a consequence of something else).

Physicalism says that the mind is an emergent

feature of how the brain is put together

; idealism

says that only thought exists, and the material

world is an illusory construction of the mind.

Which of dualism or monism is the better way to

conceive of Reality is the mind-body problem.

When it comes to the nature of virtual worlds,

the mind and body of a player character are

definitely separate, because the mind is in Reality

(or beyond) and the body is in the virtual world.

Whether the mind and the body of an NPC are

separate things or the same thing depends on the

implementation. In either case, idealism is

poppycock: the representation of the reality is as

data operated upon by rules expressed as program

“Physical” here means extending to the space of Reality. It’s

possible that the non-physical mind could be physical in a

different reality.

That is, the mental supervenes on the physical.

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code, which implies either property dualism (if the

code is modular, so different functions govern

different types of object) or physicalism (if the

same code works on all data). Physicalism does still

leave room for the concept of souls, though: just

because the mind and the body are not separate,

that isn’t to say they’re not separable (by extracting

just the right data set and running the physics

code on it independently, for example).

I didn’t bring up the topic of the mind-body

problem to discuss how the mind and body might

be implemented in a virtual world, though (I do

that later). I brought it up because although

idealism is indeed poppycock, the suggestion that

the virtual world is an extension of the designer’s

mind is not poppycock.

Virtual world design is an art form. When

designers design a virtual world, they’re trying to

say something to their players using the virtual

world as a medium. The phrase often used by

designers

to describe this is that they “put

something of their soul” into the virtual world; it

isn’t so much an expression of part of them, it is

part of them, at least in terms of their sense of

identity.

Not just me. See also (Kania, 2017).

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182

It could be argued

, then, that when a

designer’s design is made real and a virtual world

results, this designed reality embodies part of the

essence of who the designer is. It’s fixed, pandeism-

style, because it can’t think, but it encapsulates

something of the designer’s being; from the

perspective of its non-player characters, therefore,

the virtual world itself acts as a medium for

examining their creator. It’s distinct from the

designer, but nevertheless is, in some way, the

designer. This reframing of the pandeistic

interpretation of virtual world creation avoids the

issues with involuntary power retention that I

mentioned earlier with regards to LambdaMOO;

it’s not about power: it’s about identity.

Suppose that the designer visited their virtual

world as a player character. In so doing, they would

provide another medium by which non-player

characters could examine their creator – one

wholly within the virtual world (and so relatable to

through its physics), but not of the virtual world.

The player character is distinct from the designer

playing it, but nevertheless is the designer.

This neatly results in an equivalence of the

Christian Trinity: the designer maps onto the

Father; their player character maps onto the Son;

As indeed I did argue earlier as a “sounds an awful lot like”

exposition. For a rather less superficial argument, check out

Saint Thomas Aquinas’s via negativa approach.

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the game world itself as embodying its creator’s

identity maps onto the Holy Spirit.

It’s interesting how this understanding quite

easily drops out from a simple analysis of how

virtual worlds are designed and played

Self-Modifying Systems

Ptah presents a problem. It’s not just a problem for

us, it’s a problem for him

, too.

Ptah, as I mentioned earlier, willed both Reality

and himself into existence. This clearly isn’t how

virtual worlds are created; if it were, they wouldn’t

be so expensive to make. It’s how Ptah created

Reality, though.

You could, if you wished, use the pandeist

argument I outlined in the previous section to

propose that Ptah first willed himself into

existence and then willed the part of him that

Reality embodies into existence. This would make

I did say that Christian theologians had a pleasant surprise

awaiting them.

Ptah merges with other gods from time to time. For

example Ptah-Nun is Ptah considered as Nun, the god of

primal matter. Occasionally, the result is female: Ptah-

Naunet was the “mother who bore Atum” (Hart, 1986). In

such cases, Ptah is female and so should be accorded

feminine pronouns. When unmerged, though, he’s always

male; hence, my use of masculine pronouns for him here.

How to Be a God

184

sense if Ptah also had an existence external to

Reality.

Ptah doesn’t have an existence external to

Reality, though: he’s immanent but not

transcendent. He either created both himself and

Reality simultaneously (which represents a major

violation of the concept of causality, but hey, he’s a

god) or he had an internal existence but then

thought Reality into existence about him. The

latter is the predominant account, but either way,

Ptah winds up wholly in Reality. He’s not outside it

“except for a part of his soul” nor inside it “when he

assumes human form”: he’s here the whole time.

He’s also a god still in possession of full-on,

Reality-creation and -modification powers. This

means he’s within a reality that he can change any

aspect of while he’s within it.

Considering Reality and Ptah as a whole, then,

what we have here is a self-modifying system.

The rules of self-modifying systems are

implemented using self-modifying code. You may

recall my mentioning self-modifying code earlier

as being A Bad Idea programming-wise. It is, but

that doesn’t mean it’s always avoidable. Because of

how Roy Trubshaw and I intermingled shared code

and overwriteable data to produce shared data

(which we wanted) and overwriteable code (which

we didn’t), MUD was in theory a self-modifying

system; Roy and I were merely very careful about

which parts of it it self-modified.

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The physics of a reality is constituted by the

laws-of-nature rules under which that reality

operates. Some such rules apply to everything in

the reality (for example, all the fundamental

particles in Reality occupy a non-zero volume) and

some only apply to a subset of it (for example, not

all fundamental particles are subject to the strong

interaction

In a self-modifying system, at least one law-of-

nature rule applies to the laws-of-nature rules

themselves, allowing any or all of them (even that

same self-modification rule) to be changed.

So, Ptah has the ability to change the physics of

Reality arbitrarily. He can alter any rule of physics

he chooses. Important: this includes the rule that

says he can alter any rule of physics he chooses.

Because he himself exists wholly as part of Reality,

this is what makes Reality under Ptah’s rule a self-

modifying system.

Note that the actual physical rules change, not

merely the objects to which the rules are being

applied. Even in a non-self-modifying system, the

objects themselves can be changed: flashlights

were invented by people, they’re not fundamental

constructs of nature. In a self-modifying system,

This is expressed as the strong nuclear force, which

according to the Standard Model of physics holds protons

and neutrons together. As is always the case with science,

though, it’s subject to change in the light of new evidence;

the Standard Model may therefore not be considered correct

at the time you read this.

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186

though, the physical rules currently in operation

can also be changed: there’s no such thing in

Reality as a flashdark (which makes everything you

point it at dark), and our current understanding of

Reality suggests that there never will be, but if the

rules of physics were to change (or to be changed)

in an appropriate manner then we could expect to

see flashdarks available in good hardware stores

nationwide within months.

Any god can change the rules of physics, of

course – it’s what makes them a god. They’re

bound by the physics of their own, higher reality,

but they have free rein with regard to the realities

they create. The point about Ptah, though, is that

he has no higher reality: he’s bound by the physical

laws of Reality, which include among them a law

that says he can change those laws. If the laws of

Reality didn’t contain such a law, or only contained

a self-exempting one, he couldn’t fully change

Reality – and he’d no longer be a god of Reality.

Let’s work through the implications for Ptah of

being a god of the reality in which he exists.

Suppose we have a suspicion that the laws of

Reality can be changed from within Reality, but

that we don’t know the mechanism. If our physical

laws can change, the question arises: how is it

determined which physical law will change next?

Ruling out external influence by a god from a

higher reality (we’re only looking at changes from

within), there are three possibilities:

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187

• At random.

• Causally.

• With intent.

If the changes occur randomly then Reality is

capricious and has no controller. What we have at

any one moment is merely a temporary state of

affairs that could switch without warning, its

physics only becoming fixed when the physical law

that’s changed is the one (or last one, if there are

several) that says physical laws can be changed

It could even be that there is no past or future, only

the single instant of now, and that all your

memories and plans are randomly-generated but

just happen to make sense in this one particular

instant out of all possible instants.

If the changes to the physical laws of Reality

occur causally then things happen because of

antecedents. Changes arise logically according to

Reality’s physical rules, following methodically

from earlier changes. The rules of Reality can be

changed, but only as a consequence of earlier

changes. With no external influence or internal

randomness, Reality is therefore completely

deterministic. The future is as fixed as the past.

For example, Reality’s physics may have behaved

chaotically until the physical law that changed physical laws

randomly changed itself out of existence. This suggests a

new, third way that Reality could have been created from

primordial Chaos.

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188

With intent, Reality can change its own physics

in ways it chooses when the opportunity arises.

This would make Reality itself count as a god,

because it has choice (albeit perhaps dependent on

a particular vehicle, for example Ptah). As for how

Reality-as-a-god makes its decisions, well it would

have to do so either at random or causally, so this

form of self-modification is necessarily built on top

of one (or possibly both) of the other two.

Of course, any of these three types of reality can

transform itself into one of the others. For

example, a deterministic reality ceases to be

deterministic if it deterministically changes its

own laws of physics such that randomness is

introduced.

Imagine that we, as the designers of a virtual

world, decide to make that world self-modifying.

To accomplish this, we could have changes to its

physical laws happen at random – that would be

easy. Alternatively, we could build in the facility to

make rule-changes systematically by giving an

NPC godly powers. We could also make self-

modification arise as a consequence of a series of

events leading to it, or we could simply have it

happen periodically when a timer expires. We have

plenty of options.

The programmers would hate you if you did

this. If you were one of the programmers, you’d

hate yourself.

When it comes to implementing self-modifying

systems, the result is self-modifying code. You

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never really know what’s happening with self-

modifying code.

Imagine a recipe for lasagne that changed

dynamically while you were following it. You

collect the ingredients, prepare them, mix them

, then put them in the oven for a period that is

now wrong because it’s right for the new,

rewritten ingredients, not the ones you used.

Worse, when you remove it and find it burnt, you

look back at the recipe and read that it’s now

describing how to make baked Alaska.

Modifying code that is in the process of being

executed is an absolute pain. It can cause crashes

(when you originally set that variable to zero, you

weren’t planning ever to divide by it, but oh look,

you’re going to now); it can cause hangs (true,

there wasn’t a never-ending repeat loop when you

called the function, but there’ll be one when the

function returns); it can be unpredictable (what

fun, this instruction deletes itself while it’s

executing). You have to be very, very careful when

coding the initial version in order to ensure that

none of the modifications the code subsequently

makes to itself are going to be suicidal. It’s

possible, yes, but even if you’re a god who never

makes coding errors it’s going to be easier to

implement your project some other way. Self-

There’s probably a technical term for this, but I’m not a

cook.

How to Be a God

190

modifying code is basically a symptom that your

work is a hack

Even if you have some valid reason for writing

self-modifying code, there’s a general problem

inherent in possessing the ability to modify

whatever of your code is responsible for the

modification of your code: you can ruin it for

Future You. For example, Article V of the

constitution of the United States of America

explains the conditions under which said

constitution can be changed; it doesn’t add that

Article V itself is exempt from any such changes

This means that one generation of United States

citizens could see to it that future generations

didn’t get to amend the constitution further,

effectively fossilising it

. The prevailing views at

that time would be locked in, which could cause

real problems should public opinion change

Note that I never said MUD wasn’t a hack.

Peter Suber’s game Nomic was created in part to

demonstrate problems such as this in modern legal systems

(Suber, 1990).

This is also how holy books work, of course: you don’t get

to change the content of The Talmud, The Bible or The Qur’an.

If you wholeheartedly support one of them but sometimes

wish it didn’t say all of what it says, you either have to suck it

up or to seek a more accommodating interpretation.

Amendment XXI repealed Amendment XVIII (which

prohibited the manufacture, sale or transportation of

intoxicating liquors). That couldn’t have happened if the

constitution had become static at Amendment XX

Chapter 3 Realising Dreams

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It’s worth mentioning that if you were to take

the view that Reality was not created by a god, you

could still have it be self-modifying. Yes, it would

be possibly unstable, but having a creator god

doesn’t guarantee stability

. Self-modifying code

is still code. Physics is still physics. If the way a

reality’s physics changes is determined only by its

self-contained physics of change then that physics

of change is just a part of the reality’s physics like

any other part.

Self-modifying systems have further,

mathematical implications not shared by other

systems. Perhaps the most important one follows

from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems.

OK, so I’m going to simplify this greatly and use

language which will annoy logicians no end

, but

my aim is to get the basic point across, not to

expose the extent of my mathematical logic

ignorance

So, Gödel’s theorems concern sets of rules.

We’re particularly interested in the case in which

those rules define the physical laws governing a

reality, but the theorems themselves are more

general. They have something to say about the

relationship between the consistency and

Although I guess it could help.

Needless to say, using the phrase “no end” will annoy

logicians no end.

If you want a Pulitzer Prize-winning, accessible

introduction to the topic (and beyond), look no further than

(Hofstadter, 1979).

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192

completeness of the rules of any self-modifying

system.

A set of rules is said to be consistent if (and only

if) it can’t be used both to prove that a statement is

true and to prove that the same statement is false.

For example, suppose you have a set of rules for

what counts as a dog: if you can selectively apply

them to a particular animal to prove it’s a dog, but

selectively apply other rules from the same set to

the same animal to prove it’s not a dog, then your

set of rules is inconsistent.

A set of rules is said to be complete if, for any

statement to which it applies, either the statement

or its negation can be proven true. A complete set

of rules about what makes something a dog will,

given an animal to consider, be able to tell you

whether it is indeed a dog or not.

This is generally fine for systems that don’t

refer to themselves. Rules about dogs are rules

about dogs; they don’t include rules about how to

apply or to alter rules about dogs. For self-

referential systems, though, things are not so fine.

What Gödel showed was that if a set of self-

referential rules is consistent, it has to be

incomplete. There are statements about the rule

set which can neither be proved nor disproved

using that rule set.

Gödel’s theorems apply to self-modifying

realities as much as they do to any other system

with the means to change its own rules. What this

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means for Ptah is that either he’s inconsistent or

he’s incomplete or he’s both.

If Ptah wants to be able to do anything and

everything in and to Reality, he’s seeking

completeness: in mathematical terms, he wishes to

prove all statements that can be proved.

Unfortunately for him (if not for us), he can’t do

that without being inconsistent: some of Reality

will be both true and false at the same time

which makes no sense. If, on the other hand, he’s

seeking consistency then there will be statements

about Reality that are true but which he can’t

prove are true.

In other words, Ptah is either all-powerful

(omnipotent) or all-knowing (omniscient), but he’s

not both.

Gödel’s theorems wouldn’t be problematical if

Reality weren’t self-modifying, so it’s possible that

Ptah could choose either to avoid or to evade this

possibility.

To avoid it, Ptah would create Reality then do

away with the physical law that enabled him to

change physical laws. This returns us to a

pandeistic explanation of what happened: in the

act of creating Reality, he decided to remove his

ability to change Reality’s physics further; Ptah the

god created Reality, but in so doing ceased to be a

god.

I don’t mean in a “collapse the superposition of quantum

states” way, either.

How to Be a God

194

To evade the effects of having a self-modifying

Reality, Ptah could retain the power to change it

but simply elect never to use that power, making

Reality effectively fixed. This isn’t to say that the

ability to change Reality is to all intents and

purposes absent, though: if you have a law which is

never used, it nevertheless retains influence. The

ability to change physics may be critical because if

you didn’t have it, you’d need it. Ptah could be

keeping all the other Ancient Egyptian gods in line

by having the potential to use this power (even if

he never does use it), in a way he couldn’t if the

power no longer existed

There’s a final point to do with Ptah that’s

worth mentioning. Whereas a god who creates

Reality externally has the excuse of “it’s only part

of me” to explain why the god is perfect but Reality

is imperfect, Ptah can make no such assertion.

Reality is all of him, so if it has imperfections (such

as those demonstrated by the existence of you and

) then so has Ptah. To be fair, Ptah is never

claimed to be perfect, though, so he’s not as likely

to be as worried by this as he might be by his lack

of simultaneous omnipotence and omniscience.

Other gods, who created Reality the sensible

way (that is, from a higher reality), do have some

In naval warfare, there’s the concept of a fleet in being – a

fleet that remains safely in port but that must be guarded

against in case it did set sail.

Yeah, I know, “speak for yourself”.

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claim to perfection. Weirdly, though, this isn’t as

much fun as it sounds it should be. See, if

something is perfect, it doesn’t need to change –

there’s no reason to change perfection, it’s literally

perfect as it is. This makes the god immutable

. It

also suggests that the god never changes

emotional state, because that’s also a change. This

makes the god impassible. Because human beings

are neither immutable nor impassible, this means

that a perfect god is not a personal god in

possession of the full range of human qualities.

That may be no bad thing, but it’s something to be

aware of if you ever find yourself in conversation

with a perfect god: they’re not going to change

their mind or their emotional state one iota.

For virtual worlds, none of this is an issue. The

gods that create them are not perfect and they

would be foolish to deny the fact.

Granularity

Virtual worlds are written to run on computers.

The physical laws of their realities are

systematised as program code; the objects of their

realities are embodied as program data.

Essentially, hard-coded.

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Objects, then, are basically bits in a database

which are meaningful to the code that operates on

them.

What should those bits in those databases

represent?

Let’s talk in terms of Lego bricks instead of bits.

No, I’m not in the pocket of the mighty Lego A/S of

Billund, Denmark

; I just want a metaphor for bits

with which most readers will be familiar.

Lego bricks are like fundamental particles

100

. In

the universe of Lego, everything is made from Lego

bricks (except air, which is made of absence of Lego

bricks). Although it’s perfectly possible for

interesting combinations of bricks to arise by

chance (as I discovered when I put my childhood

collection in a pillowcase and machine-washed

101

), usually people combine the bricks with some

degree of intent.

Now the thing is, most of the time when you

make something out of Lego bricks, you’re going to

refer to it as an object. It’s a car! It’s a giraffe! It’s a

secret underground laboratory! This is a called

giving the bricks a symbolic interpretation

102

. The

Although obviously I’m open to being so.

100

This is what physicists call them; the term used by

philosophers to refer to entities with no parts is simples.

101

I’d buried some of it in the garden, OK? Pro tip: don’t use

detergent or it’ll leave marks.

102

I realise the everyday usage of “symbolic” suggests that

the interpretation isn’t really worth much, but I don’t get to

decide these words.

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stupendous power of your imagination has granted

this particular collection of bricks in this particular

configuration a coherent identity.

Having a symbolic interpretation does rather

imply that there’s an observer around to do the

interpreting, though. That exact same

configuration of bricks could have arisen by chance

from some kind of primordial brick soup (Althöfer,

2013). If it had done, would it still be a car, a giraffe,

a secret underground laboratory? Or would it

merely be a collection of bricks until someone

came across it and decided what it was (if even

then

103

Regardless of whether you’re looking at

individual Lego bricks or at objects made from

collections of them, in terms of following well-

established laws of nature they behave no

differently to anything else in Reality. Suppose,

though, that when the bricks were put together in

a particular way, new physical laws applied that

didn’t apply in any other circumstances. Perhaps if

you were to stack six red two-by-two bricks on top

of each other, they would change colour to

green

104

. Adding more bricks, or using bricks of

103

The philosophical view that there are no such things as

objects, just simples arranged object-wise, is mereological

nihilism. Full-on nihilism argues that there aren’t the simples,

either.

104

For the purposes of this analogy, you don’t have to be able

to visualise this in your mind’s eye. Those readers who are

colour blind or blind needn’t worry they’re missing anything.

How to Be a God

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other shapes or colours, wouldn’t do this – but a

column of exactly six red four-stud square bricks

would.

For this to work, there would have to be a

special physical law that overrode all lesser

physical laws when its precondition was met. The

colour change wouldn’t be because of some

obscure emergent consequence of mixing bricks a

particular way, in the manner of a chemical

reaction: it would be a special law that rode

roughshod over any other laws that got in its way.

In virtual worlds as they are programmed

today, this is pretty well exactly how things work.

It’s for reasons of abstraction and representational

ease: special-case functionality is attached to

symbolic objects, from which it can be inherited;

it’s not attached merely and entirely to their

components. This active use of physics makes the

whole greater than the sum of its parts

105

In virtual worlds, objects are made of

collections of bits (so, like Lego bricks), but distinct

combinations can be treated in distinct ways. If

this combination of bits represents a rock then the

code that handles interactions with it will only

105

There is a wonderful word used by philosophers to refer to

the concept of an entity that is made up of indefinitely-

divisible components: gunk. Split any piece of gunk in two

and you have two pieces of gunk. This is completely

irrelevant to the current topic; I mention it only because I like

the idea that “gunk” is an actual technical term in Philosophy

(specifically, in Mereology – the study of parts and wholes).

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work on rocks (or possibly on a class of objects of

which this rock is an example). The rock

combination of bits constitutes a unitary object

with its own physics, components of which it may

or may not have in common with other objects.

Some rules that you might think ought to apply

don’t apply

106

(or even exist); some rules that you

might think ought not to apply (or even exist) do

apply

107

Now virtual worlds don’t have to be this way, of

course.

Hmm, let me backtrack on that: to some extent

they do because they’re dictated to by their

graphics, which at the moment have to be

implemented in terms of objects (well, their

surfaces) even in brick worlds such as Minecraft

108

However, virtual worlds don’t have to have

graphics: the early ones, such as MUD, certainly

didn’t, and there are plenty of other textual worlds

still extant (and yet more in development).

106

I’m looking at you, World of Warcraft. I carried that glass of

ice-cold milk around in my backpack for seven years and it

never spilled, warmed up or went off. I swam underwater

with it, and it still remained intact. Text MUDs could handle

this kind of situation better!

107

I recall a difficult decision I once faced in SkySaga: to make

room in my inventory for a quest item, do I drop this one leaf

or these 99 cubic metres of ice? Both the leaf and the ice took

up exactly the same amount of room in my backpack: one

slot.

108

The technical term for how these bricks are displayed is as

voxels.

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Let’s say, then, that in principle virtual worlds

don’t have to be built out of symbolic objects to

which they may attach functionality. For example,

if they took the same approach as Conway’s game

of Life, they’d work the same as Lego bricks in

Reality: bits all operating under the same universal

set of rules, which can form (or be formed into)

patterns that have emergent functionality as a

whole that’s not shared by the individual parts (but

to which they indirectly contribute). Then again,

Life could be written like a virtual world: when you

see this particular pattern of occupied and

unoccupied cells, replace it with this other pattern.

You could indeed have both: regular Life, but

maybe make any stable two-by-two block that

survives six generations be replaced by a random

two-by-two pattern.

It’s a question of granularity, then. A reality can

be implemented in terms of fundamental, Lego-like

building blocks from which everything else

flows

109

, or it can be implemented in terms of

symbolic objects that have their own functionality

beyond that available by default but nevertheless

part of the physics of the object’s reality.

So, what about Reality? How does that

implement what we think of as objects – and can

109

This is essentially the philosophical position of logical

atomism (Russell, 1911), although logical atomism is

somewhat wider in its extent than this as it has an analytical

aspect to it, too.

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knowledge of how virtual worlds do it help in our

understanding of how Reality does it?

In Metaphysics, the way this question is usually

framed fixates less on the objects themselves and

more on their functionality – or their properties, to

use the formal term.

Suppose there exists an entity which both you

and I refer to as a spoon

110

. What makes it a spoon?

Well, it’s an object in possession of a number of

properties, some of which are related to its being a

spoon (it has a concave surface) and some of which

are not (it’s located in my garden shed

111

). Some are

not themselves properties of spoons in general (it’s

made of electroplated nickel silver) but do

implement more abstract properties that are

possessed by spoons in general (electroplated

nickel silver is impermeable to ice cream).

Then again, it may be that the only property a

spoon requires is that the person referring to it

decrees it’s a spoon. Hey, it works for artists and

art

112

Describing the meaning of objects by listing

their properties is an intensional definition. An

extensional definition simply lists every object that

qualifies. If you want to know if something is a

110

Hi, The Matrix fans!

111

I don’t know how it got there. I think I was mixing up some

fuel for my strimmer or something.

112

Well, it has since Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain in 1917 (or

Richard Mutt’s Fountain, depending on whether you believe

Duchamp was Mutt or not).

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duck, you either: look through your list of defining

properties of ducks and see if they all apply; or look

through your list of ducks and if it’s there then it’s

a duck and if it’s not it isn’t. Intensional definitions

are usually preferred (replace “duck” by “water” in

the above examples to see why).

These defining properties of objects are known

to philosophers as universals. The question of

whether they exist in Reality, and if so, what they

are, is the problem of universals.

There are three main approaches to tackling

this problem.

The first approach, known as realism, says that

properties exist as real entities distinct from the

objects that have these properties. Plato’s view was

that properties are independent of the objects that

express them (so even if nothing is beautiful, the

concept of beauty still exists); Aristotle’s view was

that properties rely on exemplars for their

existence (so beauty only exists while there are

beautiful things). In virtual worlds, Plato’s view

holds true: code which doesn’t apply to any objects

may be needless, but it doesn’t cease to be part of

the program.

To show what “properties exist as real entities”

actually means, consider the concept of

translucency in MUD. Only objects that have the

“translucent” property can be seen through: no

other property (or set of emergent interactions

between other properties) will suffice. The fact that

this property uniquely embodies a law of MUD

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physics makes it real (in the context of MUD),

because take it away and there would be no

translucency.

The second approach to answering the problem

of universals, known as nominalism, baldly asserts

that universals don’t exist

113

. When two objects

share a property such as “has a concave surface”,

this simply means that they’re having the same

label applied to them by human beings.

Interestingly, nominalism also works for virtual

worlds, because having the same label applied is

exactly how realism is implemented. I’ll explain.

So: ultimately, nominalism is positing that

universals exist within the mind but are not

external to the mind; we spot similarities, group

them together cognitively, create (or learn from

others) labels for these similarities, then we apply

these labels to refer to items that have the

similarities we’ve associated with the labels. Thus,

properties don’t exist physically; they only exist as

linguistic constructs.

That’s fair enough. However, the job of virtual

world programmers is to turn these linguistic

constructs into properties that are real in the

context of the virtual world: not only do they

associate properties with objects, they implement

113

There are actually two versions of nominalism. This one, to

do with the rejection of universals, is the more traditional;

the other, to do with the rejection of objects with no space-

time presence, is the more modern. Both occupy well-

fortified positions in Metaphysics.

How to Be a God

204

those properties. Thus, nominalism becomes

realism for those who make realities.

The third approach to answering the problem of

universals, known as idealism

114

, is like nominalism

except even more pared-back. Not only are

properties constructs of the mind, but so are

objects (and, if you want to take it to extremes, so

is all of Reality).

While this may or may not be true of Reality, it’s

certainly untrue of virtual worlds (except in the

sense that, as they’re implemented within Reality,

then if Reality is a construct of the mind, so are

virtual worlds). Also, although from the

perspective of NPCs within a reality idealism may

look plausibly attractive, from the perspective of

any god of that reality those NPCs are just flat out

wrong. What a god knows that NPCs don’t know is

that the reality determines what’s in their heads;

what’s in their heads doesn’t determine the reality.

As for the situation with Reality, well

philosophers haven’t agreed an answer to the

problem of universals. That’s what makes it a

problem. The idealist view has the most

explanatory power, but pushed too far suggests

that everything is a construct of the mind: you may

well be the only real object in existence, and the

rest of us are mere figments of your imagination

114

We came across this earlier with reference to the mind-

body problem. Applied to virtual worlds, it was poppycock.

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(in which case, all I can say is that you have a

damned good imagination).

Besides, using what we know from virtual

worlds, we can reject idealism as an explanation of

Reality. One of the qualities of a reality is that it’s

persistent, and even if the rest of us genuinely are

going to cease to exist when you die, operationally

we’re going to continue as if we weren’t. Imaginary

me can die in your imagined world while

imaginary other people carry on in it: your mind

has created what for us is our physical reality, so it

doesn’t matter to us that for you we’re empty

shells with no independent existence of our own.

To us, we’re not. You are Reality, and we exist in a

sub-reality that runs in your imagination.

Idealism says that existence is relative to the

individual, but virtual worlds tell us that existence

is relative to realities (see Chapter 4 for more on

this).

As for the other two solutions to the problem of

universals, well let’s see what they imply.

Accepting the realism view, object properties

are real. Objects, or classes of object, can have

special functionality that applies to them and only

to them. There could, for example, be “soul” objects

attached to living human beings but not to

anything else, so supporting (indeed

implementing) the idea of substance dualism.

There could be plenty of other arbitrary objects or

properties we simply don’t know about, too, of

course.

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Accepting the nominalism view, Reality is a

collection of sub-atomic particles operating under

a single, consistent set of rules (physics). It’s

basically a world of tiny, probabilistic Lego bricks,

and objects such as people are merely vast

collections of such particles configured in certain

similar-at-some-level patterns. There’s no “soul”

object in such a world, because you can’t make a

soul out of quarks. Reality is but data being

operated on by unchanging program code.

The distinction between the two comes down to

the aforementioned level of granularity. Is Reality

made of material objects (“I see a near-

inconceivably large collection of sub-atomic

particles that have come together to form this solid

body”) or is it made of conceptual objects (“I see a

chair”)?

People historically went with the realism

approach for describing Reality, in which

conceptual objects have their own existence and

their own set of properties. Over the centuries,

though, science has been pushing relentlessly in

the direction of nominalism (and indeed idealism),

achieving great advances by considering objects as

if they only had material existence. For a physicist,

properties are emergent consequences of the way

the stuff of Reality is configured locally.

As it happens, this is reflected in the way that

Artificial Intelligence research has gone. It started

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out considering the subject symbolically

115

, but is

now tackling it statistically. AI is a topic for Part 3

of this book, though, so you’ll have to wait if your

interest is piqued (or brace yourself if it’s not).

Virtual worlds do have something interesting to

say about the distinction between realism,

nominalism and idealism, in that they offer a new

way to connect the first two together. This isn’t

entirely why I brought the subject up, though. I

brought it up because of what it says about gods.

If you accept the realism solution, Reality is

coded by one or more gods. They may not be very

good coders

116

, but they have allowed abstract

functionality to be associated with aggregations of

matter, meaning we can have all manner of

supernatural beings and powers in Reality without

breaking its physics.

If you accept the nominalism solution then

there are no exceptionalist laws of physics. The

most that any god or gods or Reality would have

done is to make the equivalent of the washing

machine and to put the equivalent of the Lego

bricks in it.

115

This kind of AI is known as GOFAI, or “Good Old-

Fashioned Artificial Intelligence” (Haugeland, 1985).

116

Implementing concepts such as consciousness by

selectively overriding methods of the physics base class is

essentially a monumental hack. Good luck debugging any

matter leak when you can’t trust that conservation-of-

momentum rules always apply.

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If you accept the idealism solution, the god of

Reality is the bricks and the washing machine – it’s

just they don’t necessarily know they are.

Simples

Suppose you are a sculptor and are inspired to

make a statuette of Boudicca, queen of the Iceni

117

Because she burned the Roman city of

Camulodunum to the ground, leaving an inch-thick

layer of ashes, you want to use an unusual kind of

light, grey clay for your masterpiece-to-be

118

So, you go to the local sculptors’ supply shop

and describe your clay requirements to the (let’s

say) woman behind the counter. She listens,

knowledgeably, to your description of the

properties you desire your purchase to possess,

then says, “Ah, sounds as if you want Andy”.

“Andy?” you ask. “Who’s Andy?”

117

Her name is sometimes spelled “Boudica”, but I think it

looks classier with the double c. She was known to the

Romans as Boadicea, and that’s how the Victorians

mythologised her.

118

Camulodunum is modern-day Colchester. There’s a statue

of Boadicea (the myth) there near where I live. Having one of

Boudicca (the city-razer) was probably a step too far.

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“Oh, Andy is this lump of clay from the slopes of

a particular hill in Derbyshire. I’ve had him for so

long, I’ve given him a name: Andy”.

You take a look at Andy and he’s just what you

were looking for. You buy him there and then, and

take him to your garden shed, er, home studio.

You start to work on Andy, and over the course

of the next few days use all of him to fashion the

statuette of Boudicca you had envisioned. She

comes out great! She’s got some kind of helmet or

whatever your research calls it, and she looks like

just the sort of person who would reduce a Roman

provincial capital to ashes and so force the empire

to transfer its local seat of government to

Londinium instead.

You have two objects now. As a statuette, you

have Boudicca. As a lump of clay, you have Andy.

Whether what you’re looking at is Boudicca or

Andy depends on how you’re thinking of it

119

Someone with an eye for history may, upon seeing

your sculpture, recognise it as Boudicca; someone

who regularly frequents your local clay emporium

may recognise it as Andy.

This would seem to be a simple case of having

two different labels for the same object. Indeed,

one perspective of metaphysics suggests that

119

In Metaphysics research papers, the lump of clay is

generally called Lumpl and the statue(tte) is of Goliath. I’m a

computer scientist by training, though, so want my variable

names to begin with A and B rather than wacky letters such

as L and G.

How to Be a God

210

labels are all we ever do have and that ultimately

all disputes in the field are basically just linguistic

in nature

120

. Another perspective says that Andy

and Boudicca are distinct objects which occupy the

same physical space.

Virtual world designers can’t indulge

themselves with “perspectives”, though. If you’re

planning on programming these objects,

speculation has to turn into specification. Because

players would want to refer both to Andy and to

Boudicca, you’d need to decide whether to have

Andy and Boudicca both be labels for the same

object or be two separate objects sharing the same

space. You wouldn’t have the luxury of merely

theorising how you’d implement it – you’d actually

have to implement it.

Programmers like pointers, so the natural

solution is to add the label “Boudicca” to Andy

when he’s fashioned into a statuette. If a player

subsequently mashed up Boudicca then the

Boudicca label would be removed and it would just

be Andy; if, instead, a player fired Andy in a kiln

then the Andy label would be removed and it would

just be Boudicca.

You’d have to do this label-removal, because

although Andy and Boudicca may refer to the same

bits in your database, as objects they have different

120

This is called deflationism. It’s actually even bleaker than

I’ve made out, as it denies that even the concepts of truth and

falsehood exist, all statements being merely assertions.

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properties. Andy is a malleable piece of a particular

kind of clay with a certain colour, mass and so on.

There’s no requirement that Boudicca be malleable,

but there is a requirement that she looks like the

artist’s impression of Boudicca. Unless you wanted

to make some point about the way that the past is

shaped by the present, well, crumpling her up and

making her into a cup would simply destroy her,

not reinterpret her for the modern era.

So pointers work, then? We’d just use pointers?

Ah, well it’s not quite as easy as that. See, as I

outlined earlier, in a symbolic implementation you

could give either Boudicca or Andy (or both) their

own, special physics. Perhaps Andy has the

preternatural property of bestowing good luck to

anyone who holds him; perhaps Boudicca can be

used for starting fires. Boudicca isn’t merely Andy

(or the simples

121

Andy is made of) arranged

Boudicca-wise: each has their own, unique

property that derives from their very identity.

This does add a layer of complexity, but it’s

nevertheless doable using pointers. What about the

other proposed way of implementing the situation,

121

Those who dutifully read every footnote will know what

simples are, because I’ve already mentioned them a couple of

times. Those who only read some footnotes may have to go

back a few pages to see what they’ve missed. Those who

never read footnotes will have to look up the term using their

preferred search engine (or philosophical dictionary) on their

own initiative. They should have read the footnotes.

How to Be a God

212

though – as two objects sharing the same space?

Perhaps that makes it easier.

Sadly, it doesn’t. If you decide from the outset

that when Boudicca is made you will bring into

being two co-located objects, rather than have one

object with two names, then that’s going to be

more work (and if you leave the decision until later,

even more more work). It’s not too onerous to lock

them together for movement purposes and give

them the same physical appearance, but when

anything happens to the objects then you have to

handle them separately. Hitting the combined

object with a hammer destroys Boudicca but not

Andy; baking it in an oven destroys Andy but not

Boudicca; throwing it into a black hole destroys

both. Andy brings luck, so if you put him in your

backpack then good fortune will head your way;

Boudicca sets things on fire, though, so perhaps

you might want to ensure your backpack isn’t

flammable.

The two-objects-in-one approach involves a lot

of bookkeeping

122

effort that buys you no more

than the much cleaner label (pointer) system. As a

programmer, pointers would be how you’d want to

implement this. You’d have to hack some code

together to allow objects to be granted properties

derived from the pointers pointing at them, and

there may be some annoyances if the properties

122

There’s something satisfying about an English word with

three consecutive double letters.

Chapter 3 Realising Dreams

213

were contradictory, but it’s possible. If you’re a

programmer, you’re probably thinking right now

of how you’d do it.

It gets worse, though.

Suppose that, as the sculptor, you look at your

statuette and decide that Boudicca’s helmet is just

a little too big. You nip off a piece of clay and throw

it away. Is what remains still Boudicca? Well, yes.

It’s a slightly different look, but it’s definitely her.

In a game, a player would still expect to be able to

use her to start fires.

Is what remains still Andy? Hmm, that’s

trickier. It’s most of Andy, but you threw some of

him away. You’d probably still think of him as

Andy, though, in the same way that if you have

your hair cut you still think of yourself as you. It’s

not a problem. He still brings you luck.

Maybe you decide that the helmet is the wrong

colour. It would look better if it were red. You take

it off, employ your sculpting skills to make a new

helmet from a different, red piece of clay, and the

result looks pretty good.

Is what you have still Boudicca? Yes, nothing

has happened to challenge that view to any great

extent. In an MMO context, players would still

expect to be able to use Boudicca as a lighter.

Is what you have still Andy? There’s a bit more

missing now. Does that mean you have two

objects, one of which is Andy (and brings luck) and

the other of which isn’t (and doesn’t)? Or is it just

that Andy is now in two parts (or three, if you

How to Be a God

214

count the tiny piece that you threw away first) and

all of them bring luck, albeit perhaps in different

amounts?

Let’s carry on. You like the look of the helmet,

but now Boudicca’s face doesn’t have the right

contrast. You replace her head with a new head

made of a third type of clay. You also replace her

other exposed body parts, because few people have

a face that’s a different colour to the rest of them.

It’s still Boudicca, but is it still Andy?

Enthused, you then replace the statuette’s

clothing, jewellery and eventually everything else,

so you have a Boudicca made entirely of clay that

has none of the properties which made Andy

distinct from regular clay. Has the incremental

nature of your changes meant that the identity of

Andy has been slowly transferred to the new clay?

Your own body replaces almost every cell multiple

times over during the course of your lifetime: is a

similar thing happening to Andy here? Will you

still have superior luck from possessing the

updated Andy?

We don’t seem to have a problem with

Boudicca. She may have had every component of

her replaced, but what she’s made of is not an

important facet of who she is: it’s how she’s

constructed and perceived that matters.

Hmm. So remember those old pieces of

Boudicca that were made of Andy? The ones you

replaced? The helmet, head, hands, clothes,

jewellery and so on? You may have thrown them

Chapter 3 Realising Dreams

215

out but, unbeknownst to you, someone at the

recycling plant has seen them, recognised their

artistic worth, and collected them all. When you

replaced the last piece, the recycling plant worker

(who coincidentally has world-class sculpting

skills) was able to reconstruct your original

Boudicca statuette exactly as she was.

Is she a new Boudicca or the old one? Can she

be used to light fires, in the same way that she

could when you first made her, or has that ability

been transferred to the current Boudicca? If you, as

a world designer, like the idea of overriding the

laws of physics for specific macro-objects, are you

going to have two Boudiccas that can start fires, or

just one? If you only want one Boudicca to have the

magic in it, which one do you choose? The one that

did have it, which was taken to pieces and

reassembled, or the one that contains not a single

atom/bit/simple of the original but is still referred

to as Boudicca by the person who made it?

The recycling plant worker grows tired of the

reassembled Boudicca statuette and scrunches it

up. It’s now just a single lump of light, grey clay. It

seems to exhibit several unusual properties,

though: maybe it’s worth something?

The worker takes the lump of clay to the local

sculptors’ supply shop and sells it to the

shopkeeper.

“Welcome back, Andy”, she says as she puts him

back into storage.

How to Be a God

216

OK, so this may all seem like philosophical

argumentation of no material value, and indeed in

the main it is little more than an intellectual

exercise. It does have some practical implications,

but they’re hardly mainstream

123

. It’s been

unresolved for a long time, too: the problem was

discussed by Plutarch as the Ship of Theseus (if you

take Theseus’s ship apart and reassemble it, it’s

still Theseus’s ship; if you replace Theseus’s ship

over time, plank by plank, it’s still Theseus’s ship; if

you rebuild a new ship from the planks of the

original ship, is that also Theseus’s ship?).

What relevance is it to us as gods, though?

Well, as a god you have to decide.

That’s you have to decide.

World creation is applied metaphysics. You

have to decide what your world is made of. You

have to decide what betokens an object. You have

to decide whether special objects can have their

own physics-defying properties. You have to decide

how these properties persist.

The virtual world designers of today evade the

issues by simply not allowing the piecemeal

dismantling of objects. What will the virtual world

designers of tomorrow do?

123

In the UK at least, it’s possible to take apart an original

motor vehicle from 1910, rebuild two new vehicles each with

half their components coming from the 1910 original and half

from today, then sell them both as being original 1910

vehicles in their own right. Well, I believe so, anyway: I’m not

a lawyer, so don’t sue me if you try this and it doesn’t work.

Chapter 3 Realising Dreams

217

You’re a virtual world designer of tomorrow.

What does happen with Boudicca? What does

happen with Andy?

You have to decide.

I didn’t say that being a god was easy.

How to Be a God

218

Chapter 4

EXISTENCE

Do gods believe in gods?

Do they believe in gods of their own reality, who

reside in a higher reality?

Do they believe in gods who reside in their own

reality, who have created a lower reality?

Do they believe in gods who reside in a lower

reality, who have created a reality a level below

that?

Do they believe in themselves?

What does it mean “to believe in” a god

anyway?

Well the phrase “believe in” has several

connotations:

• It implies a degree of trust and confidence:

you might say to a friend who’s about to

take a driving test that you “believe in”

them.

• It implies that the believed-in thing is right:

you might say that you “believe in”

vaccinating children against measles.

• It implies faith in the existence of the

believed-in thing: you might say that you

“believe in” the Loch Ness monster.

Chapter 4 Existence

219

It’s this final use that I’m going to look at in the

context of virtual worlds: belief in a god implies

faith in that god’s existence.

Just a moment, though: faith in a god’s what?

What does it mean to say that the gods,

demigods, player-characters and NPCs of a reality

“exist”?

What does it mean to say a reality “exists”, come

to that?

What does “to exist” actually mean?

Ontology

The branch of philosophy concerned with the

nature of existence is called ontology. The mere

detail that there is such a branch tips us off to the

fact that what “to exist” means has yet to be agreed

upon by philosophers; indeed, it’s not even clear

that existence (“I exist”) and being (“I am”) mean

the same thing

Fortunately, it’s not the job of this book to look

at what theories of existence have to say about

virtual worlds; rather, it’s to look at what virtual

worlds have to say about theories of existence (if

anything). Nevertheless, some of the basics of

You can blame (Heidegger, 1927) for this.

How to Be a God

220

ontology do lead to interesting-for-us

observations, so it’s worth our starting with them.

The first point to make, then, is that you exist.

You know you do, because if you didn’t then you

couldn’t know anything. Cogito, ergo sum and all

that

Could anything else exist? Well, based on what

your mind interprets as signals from an external

source, Reality could exist. It could also be

something invented by your incredibly-powerful

imagination, of course, but as a working

hypothesis the management of your own existence

becomes so much easier if you accept the proposal

that there is an objective world out there (which in

this book I’m referring to as Reality). Irritatingly,

you’ll never find out if Reality does indeed exist

independently of you, because the only ways to

discover the truth would be to see if it continues to

exist after you cease to do so yourself or vice versa.

Neither would leave you in a position to make the

observation, though

What other things could exist?

Well, beyond yourself and Reality, anything else

is just a label that you apply to a particular

This originally appeared in French, as je pense, donc je suis

(Descartes, 1637). The phrase is usually translated as “I think,

therefore I am”, but occasionally appears as “I am thinking,

therefore I exist” or similar.

Even if you die and go to the Elysian Fields, you’ll still exist;

Reality could therefore remain a figment of your imagination

(as indeed could the Elysian Fields).

Chapter 4 Existence

221

concept

. Such a label may correspond to a

partition of Reality or it may not. Do atoms exist?

Well the things we call atoms do seem to be a

distinct part of Reality, but an “atom” is merely our

labelling of what scientists believe is a collection of

somewhat more fundamental particles that

interact with one another in certain specific ways.

How about integers? Do they exist? Unlike

atoms, they don’t seem to be embedded in Reality

as tangible entities

, but they’re a concept to which

we’ve applied a label and for which we have rules

that work infallibly well. Integers, then, exist

within a mathematical framework, but that

mathematical framework itself only exists because

we’ve intuited that it does.

It would seem, therefore, that there appear to

be (at least) two modes of existence: the physical

(such as atoms) and the conceptual (such as

integers)

As it happens, mathematics

can itself be

employed to get a handle on this distinction.

Because it exists in an abstract sense, rather than

Here, I’m taking the deflationist point of view as a backstop;

I’m not saying that this is how things are, but it’s the

minimum that students of Metaphysics will accept as how

things are.

You can’t smash a proton into the number 142,857 to see

what it’s made of.

If you think this is reminiscent of the problem of universals,

yes, it is.

In particular, the subfield known as formal logic.

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in a material one, it can be used to describe

concepts common to all realities, not just those of

Reality. Existence is just such a concept.

The way this is done utilises a symbol, ∃, known

as the existential quantifier. Suppose you wanted to

state that there’s such a thing as a table. Formally,

you’d say something like “there exists at least one

object, let’s call it T, such that T is a table”. The way

you’d write it in a logic

is:

∃ T (table(T))

where table(T) is a function that returns true if its

parameter, T, exhibits the properties necessary for

something to be considered a table

There’s some dispute as to whether it’s better

to have different quantifiers for different types of

existence (∃

material

, ∃

abstract

or whatever), but in

general ∃ can range across anything

Importantly, ∃ only indicates existence with

respect to the statement it ranges over: it doesn’t

mean existence in an absolute sense. For example,

even if we’re unshakably confident that the

Ancient Greeks made up the idea of unicorns, it’s

still fine to say that there exists a unicorn, U, and a

More specifically, in the predicate calculus.

If you prefer the extensionalist approach then there’s only

one such property: that of being in the list of things that are

tables.

Computer Science, at least when I was an undergraduate in

the late 1970s, would call ∃

material

a procedural representation

and ∃

abstract

a declarative representation. They’re two sides of

the same coin: ∃.

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person, P, such that P believes they have seen U.

Similarly, while reading a detective novel, we can

suppose that there exists a murderer, M, such that

M is right-handed, weighs less than 70kg and is

fond of cats (so, not me then

) – only to find out at

the end of the book that there never was a

murderer and the supposed victim is still alive

because it was all an insurance scam.

This implies that objects and concepts can be

called into existence (at least temporarily) merely

by naming them

. Even if I say “the only statement

you can make about things that don’t exist is that

they don’t exist”, well that sounds true, yes;

however, as I’ve now named these non-existent

things, I can make all sorts of statements about

them. I can list properties they don’t have (colour,

edibility, the ability to think, …) and properties they

do have (a definition, irony, the capacity to be

conceptualised, …).

Thus, in one sense, questions such as “does X

exist?” always have the answer “yes”, because

merely by asking the question you’ve caused them

to exist as a topic of conversation. That doesn’t

mean they have material existence, though.

I weigh rather more than 70kg.

It’s actually more subtle than that. You don’t need to name

something to turn it into a conceptual object, you merely

need to think about it as a conceptual object. Naming is one

way to do this, sure, but there are others – pattern

recognition, for example. To avoid over-complicating this

discussion, I’ll simply call it “naming”, though.

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For most people

, physical (material) existence

and conceptual (abstract) existence may well be

different kinds (modes) of existence, but there’s

nevertheless an overarching concept of existence

that applies to both: although physical existence is

dependent on a reality (as that of human beings is

on Reality) and conceptual existence is

independent of realities (as is the case with

numbers), it does still make sense to say “people

and numbers exist”. This is a univocal

interpretation of existence; not accepting that

there’s an overarching concept of existence, just a

set of independent ones, is an equivocal

interpretation

It’s conceivable for something to have a

physical and a conceptual existence both at once:

the former in one reality and the latter in all

realities. We could, for example, construct a reality

made up of integers

. The physics of this reality

The exceptions are those who adopt either the

metaphysical position that everything is real (realists) or that

nothing is real (anti-realists). For everyday purposes, though,

such as the status in law of virtual objects, the commonsense

interpretation (which is the one that we non-experts use) is

the most practical (Koepsell, 2000).

It comes down to whether you think “bees, hunger and

traditions all exist” is fine, or if it’s just a pun along the lines

of “sprinters, candidates for office and noses all run” (Ryle,

1949).

Indeed, we could create several such realities. Whether the

integer -1 in one of these realities is the same -1 as the -1s in

the other realities I’ll leave you to decide.

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might allow the integers to do something

(endlessly add themselves up, perhaps); without

such a physics, though, integers are merely a

description of an idea. Similarly, you could argue

that as well as your being a person in Reality,

there’s a general concept of you that transcends

Reality and holds true in all other realities (as is

already the case with numbers). This is indeed a

possibility, but without a physical representation

you’d be just a passive abstraction in those other

realities – like numbers are in Reality.

Objects thought of conceptually pay for their

independence with inertness. Unlike physical

objects, they don’t have a machine to run on. They

can be talked about and they can be used as

conceptual tools, but there are no physical laws

governing them. Even if they describe systems,

those systems won’t run unless they’re made

concrete in a physical system (that is, a reality or

part thereof). Humans are tied to Reality in a way

that numbers aren’t, but humans can act within

Reality in a way that numbers can’t.

Hmm. So if someone asks “Does Odin exist?”,

are they talking in a material sense or in an

abstract sense? The former means that Odin can

do things but needs a physics to enact the doing;

the latter means that Odin can be talked about and

idealised but is incapable of direct action himself. If

he’s both material and conceptual, he can be

discussed across all realities but can only act in his

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own reality and on those realities consequent

his own reality. The same applies if you ask the

question of any other god, of course.

From a virtual world designer’s perspective, we

don’t really care about what existence means: we

care about what can be implemented. This is

existence in a material sense: in the same way that

in Reality it is possible to point at a particular goat

and say it exists, we can do the same in a virtual

world. We can do it in two ways, in fact: either

subjectively (from within the world, pointing at it)

or objectively (from without the world, pointing at

the bits in the database that mean it).

There’s a difference between the two. If, in

Reality, we say “goats exist” then we’re asserting

that the concept of what a goat is can be

instantiated; we can therefore demonstrate the

truth of our assertion by pointing at a goat. In a

virtual world we can still do this, but additionally

we (as gods) can point at the code that says what a

goat is, then point at the data for an object present

in the virtual world to which this code applies, and

thereby show that goats exist there. It could be

that we don’t even need to point at any data – the

When I say that one reality is consequent on another, I mean

that if the latter were to cease to exist, so would the former.

Switch off Reality and all these virtual worlds we’ve created

would disappear with it.

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code alone could be sufficient evidence that goats

exist

Additionally, we can do something with virtual

worlds that Reality doesn’t seem to be able to do:

we can implement a concept physically. We could

place the concept of what a goat is in the virtual

world as a material object, so it can be pointed at

objectively from within that reality. We can give

pretty well any abstract or conceptual entity a

concrete, physical existence. We probably wouldn’t

want to, but I confess to having done so by accident

on occasion

. This isn’t the same thing as

personification, in which a figure serves as a

physical manifestation of an abstract quality such

as truth or justice

: in a virtual world, we could

have the concept of truth just lying around on the

floor (“Lazing languidly within reach is the concept

of truth.”).

OK, so for the concept of truth such a physical

embodiment may be inadvisable, especially if it

could be destroyed – the whole reality would seize

up or crash. For concepts such as “Romeo’s love for

Juliet” or “what a pigeon is”, though, having the

This is the nub of the problem of universals, which I

outlined earlier. If we implement the concept of a goat, is that

itself sufficient for us to be able to say goats exist, or do we

have to instantiate the concept with at least one goat object?

One of the NPCs came across not a sword but the concept

of a sword, and picked it up to use as a weapon. It was a

pretty good one, as it happened.

Fine, fine then, Superman fans: or the American way.

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concept made real and manipulatable might even

at times be useful.

This is not a kind of object that we’ve ever seen

manifest in Reality.

Alternatively, the entirety of Reality is itself

merely the manifestation of a concept.

Representing and

Absenting

Your body is a product of your reality. You can’t

take it with you to another reality. Your mind,

however, can visit another reality if you are able to

arrange a body there to act as a vehicle for it.

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the

technical terms here are transcendence and

immanence. Because Reality is the higher reality

when it comes to the virtual worlds we create, we

humans are transcendent with respect to those

realities – we’re outside their material existence.

Were we to have an NPC-like material presence in

a virtual world, we would be immanent with

respect to that reality. OK, so we can’t actually have

a material presence in virtual worlds as from our

perspective they’re non-material

, but if we could

Cynics might say immaterial….

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then formally we’d be immanent with respect to

them.

Sadly, theologians have not been as helpful as

they might have been in the provision of these

words (transcendence and immanence). We

humans are not transcendent with respect to

higher realities such as the Christian Heaven, even

though we are outside the material existence of

these realities; neither are we said to become

immanent in them when we die, assuming that’s

where we end up going. We’re not even immanent

with respect to Reality. Transcendence and

immanence are strictly for a reality’s gods and

demigods.

There are two words that do apply to gods and

humans alike when it comes to moving between

worlds, though: ascending and descending.

Irritatingly, these aren’t ideal either. When a

person from a lower reality ascends to a higher

reality, they change realities: the higher reality

becomes their new reality. They may get a fresh

body there, or they may not need one if the higher

reality’s physics allows them to exist that way;

nevertheless, they’re now running on the hardware

of the higher reality rather than that of the lower

reality. Similarly, when a person descends to a

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lower reality, they manifest in that reality rather

than in the higher reality

I’ll consider ascendance and descendance as

ways to travel between realities later (albeit rather

briefly). For the moment, it’s going to be more

useful for us to have a way of describing the kind of

movement between realities that these days (as a

result of playing virtual worlds) we routinely do

the most.

So, when we play a virtual world we don’t

become immanent in it or descend to it, we …

what?

Well, we represent ourselves in it.

Furthermore, we present ourselves in our own

reality (Reality)

and would absent ourselves in

higher realities if we knew how

These are the terms I’ll be using, then, although

to show that I mean them in a technical sense I’ll

drop the reflexive part: if I say I “represent myself

in” Guild Wars 2, that’s a comment on how much I

This may only be partial, if the lower reality is not as

complex as the higher one and so can’t contain the entirety of

a visitor from that reality. There’s more on this in Chapter 6.

This would include the situation of controlling a

mechanical body in Reality while remaining in your own

body. Satisfyingly, psychologists call this kind of thing

“presence”, a concept we’ll encounter again in Chapter 5.

I chose “absent” (pronounced ab-SENT) rather than make

up a word because it comes with the implication that to visit

a higher reality requires the permission of that reality. Also,

it has the same etymological stem as “present” and

“represent”. I did actually think about it….

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identify with my character; if I say I “represent in”

Guild Wars 2, that means I’m playing it, and so am

acting as if I were present physically in it while

acknowledging that in truth I’m physically present

in Reality. Likewise, if I were to say I plan to

“absent in” Heaven, this would mean I intended to

access it through some conduit; it would not mean

that I’m actually going there

. Both representing

and absenting concern visiting a reality by

controlling a physical form in that reality while

running on the hardware of your home reality.

Representing refers to visiting sub-realities;

absenting refers to visiting super-realities

I should make it clear that players of virtual

worlds don’t themselves use these terms. They

would say that they “play” or “log into” a virtual

world, wherein they’re mainly quite content to use

the same terms they would for any other place

(“Will you be around later?”, that sort of thing).

There are, however, technical terms from

virtual worlds that do have something more to say

about the relationship between players and

characters. In MUD1, for example, taking control of

a body to interact with its reality was called

Given what I say elsewhere in this book, there’s no chance

that this will happen anyway.

Or to visiting sub-…sub or super-…super realities, as many

levels as you want. The terms can also be loosely applied to

indirectly-connected relatives such as cousin or sibling

worlds, if you want to over-complicate matters (which I

indeed do in Chapter 8).

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attaching. Relinquishing control of a body was

detaching. Logging in would always automatically

attach a player to the body of their own in-game

character, but it wasn’t a requirement that they

stayed attached to it: supernatural powers were

afforded gods and demigods that enabled them to

detach from their own character’s body and to

attach to that of a mobile

instead (but not to that

of another player character).

Interface considerations dictated that a player

could be attached to no more than one body at

once (their character’s or a mobile’s);

implementation considerations dictated that a

body could be controlled by no more than one

entity at once (a player or an AI). If you, as a god,

wanted to control a particular mobile then in

attaching to that mobile you would be detached

from your character (which would then become

inert) and the mobile’s AI would be detached from

the mobile (its code simply wouldn’t be called upon

to execute). Were you subsequently to reattach to

your character then both you and the mobile’s AI

would regain control of your respective original in-

world bodies.

In MUD2, the implementation was such that

more than one player could issue commands to the

In case you didn’t read or don’t remember reading the

footnote about this back in Chapter 2, mobiles are the NPCs

and monsters of a virtual world. Chapter 6 opens with a

section on the subject, if you want to skip ahead for more

details.

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same body simultaneously. This meant that I was

able to permit several players to control the same

mobile at once; furthermore, I could allow several

players to control the same player character at

once. It occurred to me that this could be a helpful

“let me show you how to do that” feature, so I

allowed gods and demigods to attach to other

players’ characters while they were being played.

Needless to say, the feature was employed almost

entirely for pranking and eventually I removed it

because of the confusion it wrought.

There’s no implementational reason to restrict

you to one body at a time when you represent in a

reality, by the way. If you’re good at multi-tasking,

you could perhaps control multiple bodies

simultaneously. Indeed, at this very moment some

individual MMO players will be playing as several

characters in the same virtual world concurrently

(it’s called multi-boxing). Theoretically, as a god you

could even represent as all the NPCs in a reality at

once if you were accomplished enough

In the context of the current discussion, one of

the reasons that the process of attaching and

detaching is interesting is made clear by what

some other MUDs called it: possessing. If you want

a technical explanation of how supernatural

possession might be implemented in Reality, well

you have one right there.

Except for that one, independent NPC you’re going to mess

with for fun.

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When we represent in a virtual world, we create

or take over a body physically present in that

world; we control this body from Reality.

Excitingly, the same thing can be done the other

way round: an NPC of a virtual world can absent in

Reality if we create a physical body for it in Reality

and pass control of said body to the NPC.

Warning: this is quickly going to get wild.

We already have some fairly sophisticated

robots in Reality, capable of such feats as making

cars, exploring oceans and guiding high-explosive

munitions as they hurtle towards their targets. We

command these robots, but they are controlled by

computers. The NPCs in our virtual worlds are also

controlled by computers. It shouldn’t therefore be

hard to put an NPC in control of a machine in

Reality. We could, if we so chose, make that

machine look like a human and have a human-like

capacity to sense and to act upon the objects of

Reality

An NPC with access to Reality might have

trouble resulting from information gain or loss

(which I’ll discuss later), but if we’ve managed to

endow it with half-decent cognitive abilities it

ought to be able to do at least something. We could

communicate with it; we could let it experience

and interact with us and with Reality.

This never turns out well in TV shows, but that wouldn’t

put us off from doing it.

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We could do more, too. If we gave it

programming abilities, we could allow it to code a

new sub-reality of Reality from Reality. We could

allow it to change the code of its own sub-reality,

thus becoming a god of its own world

. Ultimately,

we could allow it to do anything that we ourselves

can do.

We’re not restricted to absenting the NPCs of

those sub-realities immediately below Reality,

either. If our NPCs made the effort and created a

sub-sub-reality, we could absent an NPC of that

reality in the reality above it (which to us would be

our virtual world) or even in Reality itself. We

could then make the lucky two-realities-down NPC

be a god of the reality of its gods.

We’re not restricted to absenting, come to that.

Because we have access (directly or indirectly) to

the physics of all worlds that are consequent on

Reality, we could attach an NPC’s consciousness to

a body in any sub-reality of Reality. An NPC who

went to sleep in one reality could wake up in a

reality that’s a parent, child, sibling or more

distant relative of their own reality

Moving up a level, some god from a reality

higher than Reality could make one of your NPCs

absent in (or even ascend to) Reality: you could

Recalling the earlier discussion of Gödel’s Incompleteness

Theorems and Ptah, it’s unlikely that this would be sensible.

Or indeed in the same reality but a different vessel. Oh,

those body-swap movies….

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meet one of your NPCs in person, as a person, in

Reality. Such a god could also forcibly represent

you in (or even descend you to) your virtual world,

with or without your consent: you could find

yourself living as an NPC in a world you created.

Such a god could attach you to a body in a copy of

Reality, where you could meet its copy of yourself.

Such a god could in theory attach you to a body in

any reality created in any of the realities beneath

the god’s reality.

That’s a lot of things a god could do! So, has any

god of Reality done any of them?

We have yet to experience any of our NPCs

ascending to or being absented in Reality, but that

could simply be because they’re not smart enough

to survive here yet (which is one of the reasons we

haven’t absented them here ourselves). We don’t

seem to have had any visitors to Reality professing

to be from other realities, either, except from the

one immediately above (the realm of Reality’s

god(s)).

We do, however, occasionally have people from

Reality claiming to have visited other realities

while their bodies remained here (often in a

trance). These other realities could be a reality

higher than Reality, or they could be a reality

consequent on a higher reality. Such visits are

never supported by evidence, though: no-one

comes back with technical knowledge unknown to

science. Therefore, either there are some well-

enforced rules concerning what can trickle

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between realities, or those who report having

made the journey are experiencing a somewhat

different phenomenon.

Copying

Absenting and representing keep your mind

running on the hardware of your own reality but

allow you to control a body in another reality.

Ascending and descending transfer your mind in

its entirety to another reality, removing it from the

reality it was in before.

How would that transference process work?

When I copy a file from my laptop to cloud

storage, the original isn’t destroyed: I still have it

on my laptop just as before, but now I also have a

copy of it online. I could later replace the original

with the copy, or vice versa. The act of copying may

overwrite a destination file, but it doesn’t change

the source file. Moving a file uses the exact same

procedure as copying it, but has an additional step

at the end that does delete the original file

We can copy NPCs. We can copy their software

to a different, or indeed to the same, reality. We

If the movement takes place between locations in the same

file structure then it could be a pointer to the file that moves,

rather than the file itself. Copying would still involve

duplication, though.

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can have as many versions of each NPC as we

want.

Well, I say that, but actually it could turn out

that we can’t. It may be that the way we’ve

implemented our virtual world, each NPC’s mind is

in part defined by components from which it can’t

be extricated. It could be like trying to move the

River Seine while leaving the water where it was.

This means that although we may not always be

able to ascend or descend an NPC (if we can’t

separate it from its reality), we can nevertheless

still absent or represent it (by keeping it running in

its own reality but giving it control of a different

body elsewhere). Putting it more succinctly: if the

mind is an emergent feature of the brain, the brain

may have to stay where it is but the mind can yet

wander.

Either way, we can definitely make copies of our

NPCs; it’s just a case of whether we do so by

copying their software or (rather more tiresomely)

by copying their entire reality. We could then put

this copy in charge of a body in their, our, or some

other reality.

This suggests that we can make an NPC meet

itself. That might be interesting, if potentially

devastating for the NPC psychologically.

Looking at our experience of this kind of thing

in Reality, well, we don’t have any. There are no

examples of there being multiple copies of the

same individual here simultaneously. I don’t

include clones or identical twins – those are

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different individuals. What I mean is that you nod

off in a chair, wake up, go to bed and find yourself

already asleep there. That just doesn’t happen.

Something equivalent does happen in virtual

worlds. I myself have created multiple identical

copies of NPCs and released them into the wild.

They got in each other’s way, fought each other,

ganged up on player characters and mobs; each

was one being with a singular experience up until

the point I used it to stamp out copies of itself. The

fact that we haven’t seen anything like this occur

in Reality would suggest that either this kind of

thing is impossible given how Reality is

implemented or that it’s possible but there’s no

god of Reality with a desire to try it out.

Ha! Well there may be no desire from a god of

Reality to attempt this, but there is a desire from

some of Reality’s NPCs (us) to give it a go.

Don’t try what I’m about to describe at home.

So, you can take a Supermarine Spitfire to

pieces, then reassemble it to obtain a Supermarine

Spitfire. Whether it’s the same one depends on

your stance in the statuette-or-lump-of-clay

debate, but whatever, it’s going to fly pretty much

the same as it did before you dismantled it. The

more attention to detail you pay (how tight were

individual rivets?) the more accurately your

reassembled Spitfire will exhibit the properties of

its earlier self.

While it was in pieces, you could copy each

component multiple times and use these to

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assemble multiple new Spitfires. Given a

sufficiently high fidelity of reproduction (down to

the levels of wear and metal fatigue, say), you could

make copies of your Spitfire that were functionally

indistinguishable from the original.

Those copies of the different components don’t

have to be physical copies, by the way. You could

make virtual copies and reassemble a virtual copy

of your Spitfire in a virtual world.

Hmm. What if you tried the same thing with a

human brain?

I’m no surgeon, but I’m fairly confident that if

you did take a brain apart and copied the pieces,

it’s unlikely you’d be able to put it back together

just as it was before the exercise. Maybe some time

in the future it’ll be possible, but it’s not going to

happen anytime soon

That said, there are some exceptionally wealthy

people around and some vast data centres. If, in

examining a brain, you were to take careful note of

where each of its 86,000,000,000 neurones

(Azevedo, et al., 2009) were placed, and which other

thousand or more neurones each one of them was

connected to, and if you simulated the action of

each neurone individually (and at the same time),

you could probably make a working, virtual copy of

We’re probably going to be able to acquire the necessary

component information from scanning the brain before

surgery advances this far, thus making the whole process

somewhat less fatal.

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that brain

. Put the resulting virtual brain in

control of a humanoid robot and you’ve got

reasonably eternal life.

Well, someone has reasonably eternal life,

anyway; whether it’s you or not is debatable. Even

if a dismembered brain reassembled digitally does

amount to little more than a change of hardware

for the mind, it’s nevertheless an act of replication,

not of movement. Multiple digital copies could be

made. Are they all you? Are any of them you? What

does it mean to say that “you” exist?

The idea of making a digital copy of a human

brain and so living forever muahahaha is called

mind uploading or whole brain emulation. It’s often

associated with a wider movement, transhumanism,

which seeks to use technology to enhance the

human mind and body

I mention this because if we are thinking of

going through with it then the thought must also

have occurred to any god of Reality. That being the

case, did they go through with it? If they did, how

many copies of themself did they make? Are any of

those copies extant in Reality?

If a god can still make self-copies on a whim, it’s

entirely possible that each one of us has our own,

individual copy-of-a-god looking after, over or at

At least at the neurone level. If it needed something else to

work, you’d have to make a digital copy of that, too.

And spirit, for those few transhumanists who aren’t

atheists or agnostics.

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us, guardian-angel style. This being so, we’d have

not only a personal god in the like-a-person sense,

but in the like-we-have-a-coffee-mug sense, too. It

could even be that the mind of each one of us is a

copy of the same god’s mind (or at least derives

from it).

What would it mean under such circumstances

to say that the replicated god “exists”? Where does

it exist?

It’s All Relative

In Metaphysics, the general view is that existence

is a binary proposition. Either something exists or

it doesn’t. There may be different modes of

existence, but these modes are themselves binary.

Also, although we may not know the answer to the

question of whether something exists or not, we do

know that there is an answer. For example, from

outside its box we can’t determine whether

Schrödinger’s cat (Schrödinger, 1935) exists

not, but we are aware that inside its box there’s a

clear yes/no answer.

Frames of reference therefore make a

difference. Does a 3D sphere passing through a 2D

Or being, for those philosophers who consider “there are

marmosets” and “marmosets exist” to mean different things.

In the sense that if it’s dead it doesn’t.

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plane exist? Well from the perspective of an

observer in the 2D plane, yes it does exist – but as

a circle. From the perspective of an observer

sharing the sphere’s 3D world, only a slice of the

sphere exists in the 2D plane, but all of it exists in

the 3D world.

When the nature of the frame of reference itself

is called into question, the term partial existence is

sometimes used (Latour, 2000).

As an illustration of this, consider the fallout

from phlogiston theory. Scientists in the 17

century devised and successfully employed a

theory which posited that combustible objects had

a substance in them called “phlogiston” that was

released when they

were set on fire. Had a

scientist in 1700 been asked whether phlogiston

existed, the answer would have been in the

affirmative; furthermore, had that same scientist

been asked whether phlogiston existed in 1600,

before its existence had first been postulated

, the

answer would also have been in the affirmative (in

the same way that gravity existed pre-Newton). It

took over 100 years for phlogiston theory to lose

its dominance; the processes it attempted to

describe are now better understood as oxidation.

So, if today we were to ask whether phlogiston

existed in 1600, what would the answer be? It

I guess this does include scientists, as formally they are

combustible.

By (Becher, 1667).

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would be no from our perspective, yes from the

perspective of scientists in 1700 and no from the

perspective of scientists in 1600. It can therefore

be said to have “partial existence”.

Although philosophers disagree over whether

material and abstract existence are the same thing,

they do tend to agree over what the terms mean.

Material existence implies that the thing under

consideration is present as a physical object in

Reality; abstract existence does not imply this.

What virtual worlds bring to the table is the

suggestion that material existence is itself relative

to a reality. An object can have material existence in

one reality and not in another; therefore, when

discussing material existence, you need to make

clear to what reality the existence in question is

relative

For example, winged horses don’t exist as

physical objects in Reality

, but they exist in

plenty of virtual worlds. You, as a human being,

exist in Reality but you don’t exist in a virtual

world unless you represent in it as a player

character; you subsequently cease to exist in it

when you log off.

The first philosophers to look at virtual worlds considered

the question of whether such worlds were real or not. The

conclusion reached was that they might be (Cooper, 1995). I

don’t believe the argument has advanced a great deal in the

intervening decades, so perhaps the notion of relative

existence might help them make their minds up.

This may change if DNA manipulation gets creative.

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If there are realities higher than Reality, do the

beings in those realities exist as physical beings in

Reality? Well, they certainly do while they’re here,

but otherwise, no: they exist in their own realities,

but they don’t exist in ours.

Again, if someone asks “Does Odin exist?”, in

what sense are they using that word “exists”? If

Odin is in Asgard (where the gods live), he doesn’t

exist in Midgard (that is, Reality); he only exists in

Midgard when he descends to Midgard or

represents in Midgard. From his own point of view,

he always exists; from ours, he doesn’t exist unless

he shares our reality. He has partial existence here.

It could reasonably be argued that representing

or absenting in a reality is not enough to qualify as

existence in that reality, at least in a material

sense. Descent or ascent into that reality would

count, because in these cases the being’s locus of

material existence has moved. An observer in the

lower reality wouldn’t be able to tell this, though,

so whereas someone in a higher reality might

distinguish between ∃

material

and ∃

virtual

, someone in

the lower reality would be unable to differentiate

between the two.

From your perspective, only Reality (or possibly

nothing at all) exists as a thing beyond you

yourself. Lower realities, such as virtual worlds,

exist if you accept that Reality exists, because

they’re consequent on it. What about higher

realities, though?

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Well, the afterlife realities we call Valhalla,

Heaven, the Summerland or whatever, are (like

everything else other than you) merely concepts

denoted by labels. If you were to ascend to one

then it would become your new reality and the

same questions asked of Reality’s existence would

follow you there. You would definitely no longer

exist in Reality, though. If you were instead to

absent in a higher reality, well you’d still be

physically in Reality, so what you were

experiencing as a higher reality may merely be a

quirk of Reality; assuming it wasn’t, though, you

could perhaps legitimately claim that you existed

in both the higher reality and Reality at the same

time

As a final point about relative existence, it’s

worth asking whether realities themselves have

material existence. In particular, does a reality

have material existence relative to itself? This is

important for those gods of Reality who to some

extent are Reality, so listen up Stoics, Cheondoists,

early Taoists and other pantheists.

There is a certain oddness in the suggestion

that although objects exist in Reality, Reality itself

might not exist. If there’s a higher reality upon

which Reality is consequent then Reality would

definitely exist relative to that higher reality; the

question merely moves up to the higher reality,

I say “perhaps legitimately” because it depends on what’s

meant by “you”. As always, you’d still exist in your own mind.

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though. Does that higher reality exist relative to

itself?

Well, the definition I gave way back at the start

of this book defines a reality as “a self-contained

space of existence that’s defined, maintained and

continually modified by its own physics”; a

candidate reality couldn’t be self-contained if it

didn’t contain

itself, and it couldn’t contain itself

if it didn’t exist relative to itself, therefore realities

do exist relative to themselves

. This is if you

accept my definition, of course, which I basically

made by fiat: I’m asserting that the reason a reality

exists relative to itself is that I say it does. Feel free

to disagree – I’m not going to fight you over it.

Where realities do differ from the other objects

that have material existence relative to them is

that they can simultaneously exist as a material

object in a higher reality. MUD, for example, exists

as the reality that is itself, but it also exists in

Reality (if you accept that software systems exist

in Reality and aren’t just a scam perpetuated by

computer programmers to gain employment).

A side-effect of defining realities to be self-

contained is that no reality is ever empty: it always

exists within or as itself even if there’s nothing else

there. If indeed there is nothing else there then

This could be as an object within itself, recursively, or as an

object congruent to itself.

Note that the concept of sets that contain themselves

(universal sets) causes alarms bells to ring for logicians

(Russell, 1903), but fortunately realities are not sets.

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whether or not the reality is interesting rather

depends on its laws of physics

. Overall, though,

it’s useful to be able to consider realities as stand-

alone spaces of existence, even if the realities

themselves aren’t necessarily wonderful places.

They don’t have to be consequent on a higher

reality to exist: they could exist independently,

running on the hardware of themselves. Reality,

for example, could exist independently of a higher

reality in this manner.

Coincidence

The Ancient Mesopotamians built a temple to the

god Nergal which was constructed like a palace. It

had dining rooms, bedrooms and rooms where he

could receive his guests. In the deepest sanctum

was what looked like a statue of Nergal, but it

wasn’t. Following a ritual known as mîs-pî

(meaning “washing of the mouth”), the statue

ceased to be a statue and became the god the

statue represented. He could see, he could eat and

drink, he could smell

and he could act. OK, so he

didn’t actually do any of those things, remaining

uncannily statue-like, but he could have done them

Hey, if you watch it long enough it might perform a big

bang or two for you.

As for what he could smell, my guess would be incense.

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had the mood taken him. Because of this, every day

the priests would bring him fresh clothes and two

full meals.

How would you implement something like this

in a virtual world?

Well, the statue is like a character that the

player isn’t currently playing. It’s been left lifeless

in the virtual world, but the player could log in

any moment and play as it. The statue is therefore

in some sense both the player and a representation

of the player – irrespective of whether the player is

actually playing it or not. It’s fairly easy to

implement, as it’s merely a regular object to which

its player attaches (or doesn’t). If Nergal wants to

attach to his statue in order to represent in Reality,

well that’s his prerogative.

Nergal and his statue show that a single object

can be two entities at the same time. This is not an

uncommon proposition. In Catholicism, for

example, the sacrament of the Eucharist changes

bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus

through the process of transubstantiation. In virtual

world terms, the booze and biscuits aren’t the

blood and body of the player (because the player is

of a higher reality) but they are how the player’s

blood and body are made manifest in Reality.

Or reattach from a mobile or other character.

Participants then eat and drink this, which may seem

unpleasantly like cannibalism to the non-initiated but

apparently isn’t.

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This isn’t mere metaphor or symbolism; nor is

it a problem of reference (as with the example of

Andy and Boudicca that I outlined earlier).

Catholicism takes a very hard line on the subject:

the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine and

actually become Christ’s body and blood. This

means that if thousands of priests simultaneously

turn their local supplies of wafers and wine into

the body and blood of Christ during 7:30pm mass

in churches across the land then there are

thousands of instances of Christ’s body and blood

to be accounted for at the same time.

Now it’s fine for Roman Catholic theologians to

say this happens, but they don’t have to implement

it. If we, as the gods of our virtual worlds, wanted

to implement in them something akin to

transubstantiation, how would we go about it?

I’m going to offer two possible solutions.

In the first, as I subtly hinted above, we’d

instance the body and blood. The total mass and

volume of wafers and of wine would be more than

in the original source, so it can’t be mapped on a

one-to-one basis; we’d have to create copies of the

body and blood, private to each wafer and

mouthful of wine.

Of course, to someone who found a misplaced

wafer and didn’t know about its history of

transubstantiation it would still be just a wafer; it

could in theory be subject to transubstantiation a

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second time

; we’d therefore be wise to phase each

instanced wafer to those who know its history; for

the general, unphased case, we’d just leave the

original wafer as it was. This is regardless of

whether we were copying all of the object (the

material components of body and blood) or just an

aspect of it (the spiritual components, say).

Such a solution would be exceedingly tiresome

to implement and the processing overheads would

be heavy. Furthermore, it would be unsatisfactory

anyway: for dogmatic reasons, the body and blood

can’t be copies, they have to be the actual body and

blood. That in itself is problematical, because eating

something tends to destroy it; we really don’t want

to destroy the actual body and blood.

It seems we’re being asked to construct a single,

uncopiable object that can exist thousands of times

at once, but which doesn’t cease to exist when it

ceases to exist. How can we possibly do that?!

This brings us to the second, smarter way of

implementing transubstantiation.

We have one, original version of the body and

the blood. This exists in a higher reality. The body

and the blood can represent in a lower reality,

thereby allowing both to exist multiple times

relative to that reality without there being more

than one each of them in the higher reality. When

the object through which they are representing is

I can see the advertising slogan already: “Now with double

the Christ!”.

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destroyed, that particular representation ends. The

original version, in the higher reality, remains

extant.

This way of looking at transubstantiation – as a

form of representing – is much cleaner. It’s

compatible with a range of interpretations of what

is called the real presence of Christ in Christian

teachings

; as we saw with Nergal, it can work for

other gods, too.

Cool! From an understanding of how we would

implement the concept of transubstantiation in a

virtual world, we’ve obtained a clearer view of how

any gods of Reality might do it.

You’re welcome, theologians.

Perspective

Earlier, I asked (twice) what the question “Does

Odin exist?” means. The answer depends on

whether you mean physical or conceptual

existence, and which reality you’re using as your

frame of reference.

I am a god of my virtual worlds. I exist in my

own mind, and am happy to go along with the idea

In particular, it explains why we can’t have a Eucharist in a

virtual world: the body and blood represent in the reality one

level below their home reality, not two levels, therefore

virtual bread and wine aren’t going to transubstantiate.

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that I exist in Reality, but do I exist in the realities I

have created?

Materially, no I don’t. I’d have to descend to

them for that, which I can’t do. I can represent in

them, though, and from the perspective of the

NPCs of those worlds it would look as if I did have

material existence there.

That, of course, is if they can detect me.

I can make myself completely undetectable

. If

the NPCs can’t detect me, does it make sense to say

that from their perspective I exist? Sure, from the

perspective of the physics of the virtual world I

exist, because that’s what’s sustaining my

character while I’m representing in that world. Do

I exist from the viewpoint of a free-thinking NPC,

though?

Well no, I don’t. I don’t appear in their model of

their world in any shape or form. They may be

open to the possibility that I am present in their

world

, but if they have no way of sensing me (or

of sensing anything that allows them to deduce my

presence) then I can only exist to them as a

conceptual object. Even if they have absolute faith

that I also exist materially, that doesn’t mean I do; I

could log out any moment and they’d be none the

wiser.

The command to do this in MUD2 is INV’3, which puts me

at invisibility level 3. Even demigods can’t see me at level 3.

This assumes they’re smarter than they currently are in

today’s virtual worlds.

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What if I never represent in the virtual world

but make supernatural changes to it from Reality

that its NPCs can detect? Perhaps I create a

mountain floating in the sky, or give voice to trees,

or make it rain pigs. The NPCs won’t know that I

exist in their reality (which is fair enough, I don’t),

but they may conclude that at least someone exists

in or from a higher reality. If I leave actual

messages, such as surrounding a city with a

20,000-word tract using letters two metres high

each made from a solid diamond, they may even be

inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt. Then

again, they could be cynical and dismiss it all as

coincidence.

What if I allow NPCs to absent in Reality for a

while using robots here as a conduit? The NPCs

will see that Reality exists, be able to chat to me

about this and that, and then when they return to

their own sub-reality they’ll know for sure that I

exist – in Reality. Objectively, though, with regard

to their reality, I still don’t exist unless I represent

in it or somehow descend to it (or make

supernatural changes to it, if you accept that as a

form of second-order existence).

Why would I bother having the NPCs absent in

Reality to achieve this effect anyway? It would be

time-consuming and expensive. How about I

create a virtual world that is a copy of a chunk of

Reality and have the NPCs go there instead? Their

experience would be identical to the one they

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would have had if they’d gone to Reality, only they

didn’t.

Why would I bother with having them visit the

copy of Reality, for that matter? I could just plant

false memories in their minds of having visited

Reality and the end result would be the same.

Would I still exist in all of those situations – or

indeed in any of them?

Could you (as in, you) exist in a virtual world

that you’ve never even heard of? Perhaps, if in their

minds its NPCs have met you, yes, you could.

Suppose I make a virtual world, populate it with

artificially intelligent NPCs

, and then sit back and

watch. Because the NPCs are clever, eventually

they’ll ask questions about their existence (much

as we humans have done and continue to do). If I

never visit their world and make no supernatural

interventions, could these NPCs ever work out that

I exist?

They have the evidence of their own existence

and of their own reality’s existence. They may

misattribute evidence (reading events as being

supernatural when they’re natural), but given

enough time they’ll realise when they’ve made an

earlier mistake

and move on. They may

extrapolate from their own experiences (perhaps

As I keep pointing out, we can’t do this as yet (but see Part

3).

“Hold on, what if the sun isn’t pulled across the sky on a

chariot?”.

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they create their own sub-realities) and figure out

that there’s a nigh-certain chance that I exist.

They won’t know who I am, though.

All their concepts about me would be pure

conjecture. They wouldn’t know why I made their

reality, why I made it the way I did, nor why I made

them. They wouldn’t know that actually I made

their world with a friend, it’s not all my own work.

Beyond the basics of the possibility or probability

that someone made their reality, they’d be pretty

well ignorant. If I appeared in their midst, they

wouldn’t know me at all.

Yes, to them I might exist – but I wouldn’t exist.

For the third time: if asked the question “Does

Odin exist?”, what do you mean by that word

“exist”?

Also, what do you mean by “Odin”?

Feel free, if you wish, to substitute the name of

any other god for that of Odin there.

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Chapter 5

IMMERSION

Artists in medieval Europe had a problem in

depicting the Christian Heaven. They knew it was

a spiritual world that was separate from the

physical world, but how could they envisage what

it looked like in order to paint it? It couldn’t be

experienced until it was too late to paint it, and it

couldn’t even be described in words, let alone in

images.

They had to fall back on metaphor. The

difference between the worlds of the body and of

the soul was as the difference between … what and

what?

Well the part of the universe we live in, the

terrestrial world, can be mapped onto the physical

world. The part of the universe we see but can

never visit, the celestial world, can be mapped onto

the spiritual world. It’s not the spiritual world, but

it’s as remote and unknowable to us (well, medieval

us) as the spiritual world is. The body/soul duology

could be represented as the Earth/sky duology.

This is why medieval artists would depict

Heaven as being in the sky: it was a metaphor

(Wertheim, 1999).

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As it happens, medieval artists were probably

worrying about this unnecessarily.

When we, as gods of virtual worlds, create those

worlds, we base them on Reality. The virtual world

is, for its NPC inhabitants, the physical world that

they experience in their everyday existence;

Reality is their spiritual world, where their souls –

if souls are a thing – reside (on our computers)

The NPCs have no access to Reality, so it’s as

unknowable to them as Heaven was to medieval

artists. Nevertheless, we gods can see that actually

the virtual world works pretty much the same way

as Reality does. Sure, it might have magic, orcs,

unspillable milk and backpacks that can hold

impossibly-heavy weights, but its physics is largely

based on the physics of Reality. If we were

somehow to transpose an NPC into Reality, that

NPC wouldn’t find Reality’s physics

incomprehensible

So yes, for a medieval artist NPC it is true that

Heaven is unknowable, but it’s also true that it

possesses features that can nevertheless be

guessed at with reasonable accuracy.

There are good reasons why this is the case.

You could also argue that if they do have souls then Reality’s

spiritual world (rather than Reality) is their spiritual world.

Even so, that doesn’t mean we can’t implement something we

decide is a soul. Each NPC could have two or more souls this

way.

The inability to change their entire outfit in a single instant

could come as a surprise, though.

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Our Own Image

That there are similarities between humans and

gods is well-established. It’s taken as axiomatic by

the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Norse, for

example. Many Christians also hold this point of

view, primarily because The Bible out-and-out says

that God created man in God’s own image. The

Qur’an makes no such claim directly, but there are

two books of hadith that report the prophet

Muhammad as having mentioned that God created

Adam in God’s own image.

Islamic scholars widely interpret this “own

image” statement to mean that human beings

possess some of the abilities of God (such as being

able to see and to speak, and having free will) but

not in the same measure as God

. This is more like

how it is with virtual worlds: NPCs aren’t the same

as human beings, but they possess some of the

same attributes

that human beings possess.

So … why do we give them those attributes?

Well, the thing is, if we’re to visit (as players) a

reality that we (as gods) have created then that

reality has to make sense to us. It must behave in a

way that we understand intuitively, rather than in

God is never going to need to wear spectacles.

They may indeed have additional attributes that we don’t,

to compensate for their shortcomings. I look at this a bit

later.

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one that requires analysis. Ideally, it has to be

(incoming technical term) persuasive.

Any virtual world that wasn’t persuasive would

be hard for us to accept as being real, and so

wouldn’t feel like a reality

. This doesn’t mean that

the mapping of the virtual to the real has to be

exact, of course. It’s not important that game

worlds faithfully replicate how Reality’s physics

works, but if players are to use what they know

about Reality predictively in the game world then

it is important that said game world replicates the

effects of Reality’s physics with reasonable fidelity

(Upton, 2015).

Upon encountering a human-created sub-

reality of Reality for the first time, our default

understanding of how it works is therefore easy to

state: it works like Reality (Tolkien, 1964)

. Any

divergence from “how Reality would do it” is likely

to be a distraction, so we don’t want such

divergences introduced unnecessarily; we wish our

created realities to share enough aspects of Reality

that we’re not constantly interrupted by thoughts

of “well that’s strange”. It’s also less to remember:

We can create realities we don’t want to visit – one

consisting entirely of ever-calculating multiples of the

number 142,857 for example – but I’m talking about the

particular realities I defined as virtual worlds here.

Also (Bartle, 2011), but you’re more likely to be impressed by

Tolkien than by me. Fiction Theory, which wasn’t created

with virtual worlds in mind, calls this the principle of minimal

departure (Ryan, 1980), albeit with a different rationale.

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you may find it easier to accept that you can have

extra-dimensional access to a safety-deposit box if

you’re not also having to accept that colours work

like magnets, that up and down flip each time you

blink and that politicians will answer a straight

question with a straight answer.

The upshot of this is that if we wish to visit our

created realities, we should configure them to be

similar to Reality

If we do this, it follows that there are

consequences for the design of the NPCs who

inhabit our virtual worlds. To function, NPCs must

be able to negotiate their environment; they need

abilities that allow them to sense their

surroundings and to act upon them. These abilities

will perforce align with those that we ourselves

possess, because we specifically designed the

NPCs’ reality such that it would be suitable for our

abilities.

In summary: the basics of our created worlds

are going to intersect non-trivially with the basics

of Reality

; therefore, the basics of the NPC

inhabitants of these worlds are going to intersect

non-trivially with us

To some extent, we have no choice anyway: the fact that we

ourselves are of Reality intrinsically limits how different

from Reality the realities we create can be (Wolf, 2020).

They may be different worlds, but there isn’t a world of

difference between them.

This helpfully grounds the Hermetic aphorism, “As above,

so below”.

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Now all this is at the systems level – the physics

of the respective worlds. At the access level, the

situation differs.

What an object looks like from outside a reality

isn’t the same as what it looks like from inside that

reality, because senses can only sense that which

exists in their home reality. If you examine the

code of an animated, fire-breathing dragon, you

won’t see an animated, fire-breathing dragon

except in your imagination. When you visit a

reality, there is a barrier that must be crossed both

to inform you of what’s going on in the reality and

for you to inform the reality of what you want to

do in it. Otherwise, were your character to be the

subject of a fire-breathing dragon’s breath of fire,

how would you know and how could you respond?

If you are to visit a reality, then, there has to be

a transformation process to convert the sensory

signals which your player-character’s body in that

reality is receiving into a form that your own,

Reality-based senses can detect. Likewise, actions

your Reality-based body undertakes must be

translated into control signals for your reality-

based character. In software development, such a

set-up is what we call an interface. As I’ve

mentioned before, text and virtual reality are both

interfaces that can be used for virtual worlds

(although screen and mouse/keyboard or

controller are currently more common).

The possibility exists of doing some real-time

computation during these interface adaptations.

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For example, the NPCs in a virtual world might

communicate between themselves using a non-

human language, but in converting this into

sounds for your headphones their words could be

translated into your natural language of choice.

Likewise, your natural-language words could be

automatically translated into the in-reality “sound”

signals appropriate to convey in NPC-language

what you said into your microphone. It would be a

transparent process both for you and for the NPCs.

As I’ve described it so far, what designers of

virtual worlds are aiming for is a sense of what is

called presence: the perceptual illusion that a

mediated experience is non-mediated (Lombard &

Ditton, 1997). This makes the virtual world more

persuasive, and so helps the player to will in

themself the belief that they are in the virtual

world rather than in Reality (which they

nevertheless remain intellectually aware that they

are).

(Lombard & Ditton, 1997) identified six main

uses of the term “presence” in Communication

Studies:

• Presence as Social Richness. How remote or

intimate does the experience feel?

• Presence as Realism. How accurately does

the experience model the real thing?

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• Presence as Transportation

. How well does

the experience make the user feel they’re

somewhere else, or that somewhere else is

here?

• Presence as Immersion. How much does the

virtual environment whelm the real

environment?

• Presence as Parasociality. How much do

unidirectional relationships within the

experience nevertheless feel as if they’re

bidirectional

• Presence as Active Medium. How much do

users treat the medium itself as a social

actor

Not all of these have equal relevance to virtual

worlds: presence as transportation and presence as

immersion are the most significant, and those are

what I’ll be focusing on (although I’ll later

reference presence as parasociality a little, too).

You get presence as transportation in its “I am

there” form when reading a novel; that is, you feel

you’ve been transported to an imaginary land. You

get it in its “there is here” form when watching TV;

It’s also known, rather old-fashionedly, as telepresence

(Minsky, 1980).

You do know that when the TV newsreader says “see you

tomorrow” they almost certainly won’t be seeing you

tomorrow, yes?

When you get an encouraging “well done so far” from a

tedious form-filling automated phone service, do you

thereafter feel encouraged?

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that is, you don’t feel you’re at the Olympics, you

feel the Olympics have been brought to you. With

virtual worlds, you get it in its combined (and

rarer) “we’re all here together” form. You are there,

but other people are also there – or rather here, as

your here is now there.

Presence as transportation is important for

virtual worlds because it’s a major design

requirement: they are places that players are

intended to be able to visit. If the players never feel

that they are in a shared space, it’s not going to

happen. Of course, merely knowing this doesn’t

thereby cause such presence to occur, and it’s

fairly-obviously necessary anyway; still, having a

formal term for the players’ desire to feel that

they’re in another world can at times be useful.

Presence as immersion is the main context in

which the concept of presence is used with

reference to virtual worlds. It’s a little contentious,

because it employs the very powerful term

immersion in a specific way that is readily

misinterpreted by academics new to the field of

virtual worlds.

The thing is, presence as immersion is about

sensory immersion: presenting the senses with a

collection of signals that work together to offer a

coherent picture of an environment different to

the one that actually pertains. Donning the VR

glasses, you really can feel as if you’re walking on a

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girder high above the streets of New York, and that

one false move will result in a fall to your death

This use of the word “immersion” is perfectly

fine, and is arguably its everyday meaning. It’s not

quite what players mean when they talk about

immersion, though. True, they’re not great at

articulating it, but for players immersion is about

identity: being one with your character in the

virtual world. To this end, most people who play

virtual worlds are effectively engaged on a quest of

self-actualisation. Remarkably (because virtual

worlds aren’t particularly designed with this in

mind), they all tend to pursue their goal by

following a common, well-trodden path known as

the hero’s journey (or monomyth).

The hero’s journey was first identified by an

American academic, Joseph Campbell, in an

influential book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

(Campbell, 1949). Campbell discovered that most

ancient myths and folk tales unfold to fit a set

pattern: an (invariably male) individual goes away

to a land of adventure, where he discovers himself

then returns to be the hero he was destined to

become.

Virtual world players’ personal stories follow

this same pattern. Not only were virtual worlds

invented to be places of identity exploration, and

I’m one of those irritating people who immediately makes

that one false move, just because I can. So far, it’s never

resulted in a fall to my death.

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recognised as such by early researchers

(Bruckman, 1992) and even some players (Wagner,

2009), it turns out that this is how they really do

work.

Note that there is a corresponding heroine’s

journey (Murdock, 1990), but few virtual world

players ever walk that path. It doesn’t exactly

describe a pleasant experience and it ends with the

heroine’s understanding that she didn’t need to go

on her journey in the first place.

Tempted though I am to go into considerable

detail about how virtual worlds are able to provide

such transformational experiences for players, I

shall instead defer to an excellent book on the

subject: (Bartle, 2003). OK, so it’s a book I wrote

myself, but there are only two books that cover this

topic in any depth and I also wrote the other one

(Bartle, 2016); I therefore end up looking like a

deluded, self-publicising jerk either way

Unfortunately, it’s common practice among

those psychologists studying virtual worlds to

conflate the sensory-oriented and identity-

oriented meanings of “immersion”

. This leads to

experiments designed to test for the former

obtaining results that are questionable when

applied to the latter. The experiments aren’t

I don’t mind being a deluded, self-publicising jerk, it’s

looking like I’m one that I try to avoid.

Or any of the other meanings – the term is used in at least

six different ways with regard to RPGs (Bowman, 2018).

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invalid, they’re just being interpreted invalidly. As

an analogy, it’s be a bit like trying to explain why

Scots watch football using evidence gained from

asking Americans why they watch football –

they’re different footballs

. Virtual-world

immersion and regular immersion are different

immersions. Those academics who do understand

what virtual-world immersion is (because they’ve

played a lot more virtual worlds for a lot longer)

are hopelessly out-numbered by those who don’t

so we can’t optimistically expect this situation to

change any time soon.

As it happens, sensory immersion is an

excellent tool to help players become identity-

immersed, because it’s quite hard not to believe

what your engoggled eyes are telling you. Setting

aside any worries that you could develop a

splitting headache or that someone is secretly

taking photos up your skirt, the technology of

sensory immersion, when used well, is wonderfully

persuasive.

It’s not actually needed for identity immersion,

though. In fact, it’s not even the most powerful

route to it. Text will lead people faster down the

Formally, one is American Football and the other is

Association Football (whence the abbreviation “soccer”).

I remember reading one paper in which the author claimed

to be an authority on World of Warcraft having spent 50 hours

playing it. To someone who at the time had spent over four

times that number of days playing it, this wasn’t quite as

impressive a qualification as the author perhaps believed.

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path to becoming as one with their character than

will sensory immersion. The problem with sensory

immersion is that it’s too real: you feel as if you’re

you, somewhere else; you don’t feel as if you’re

someone else, somewhere else, and so able to find

the real you somewhere in between. Text, though,

can achieve this almost as a matter of course.

That said, text isn’t a cool interface these days,

so you’re not going to try it for a game any more

than you’re going to read this book using a virtual-

reality headset.

OK, so from all this we can see that the aim of

virtual world designers should be to make their

creations persuasive for players (to help with

easier immersion), without being so persuasive

that the players feel they’re still in Reality (just a

weird version of it). There needs to be some room

for imagination to play its part – which is of course

precisely why text is so good at promoting

immersion among those people willing to read for

fun.

Note that the ability to represent in a sub-world

carries no connotations regarding how persuasive

the experience is; rather, the interface used is the

major determining factor in that regard. A set of

VR goggles makes the world seem more persuasive

than a set of 3D glasses would, but they in turn

would make for a more persuasive interface than a

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flat, 2D screen

. In the future, we may be able to

use neural interfaces to write to players’ senses

directly, so that a virtual world gives at least the

same level and detail of sensory input to a jacked-

in player as does Reality – perhaps even more. We

could also intercept and read instructions from a

player’s central nervous system, so if they tried to

walk then it would be their virtual body that

walked, not their body in Reality.

In such circumstances it would be very difficult

to feel that you weren’t present in the virtual

world, even though intellectually you would know

that you were slumped in a chair with a cable

connecting your brain to a computer. In this full

system immersion, your senses would be

overwhelmed by data telling you that you were in a

different reality; nevertheless, your mind would be

running on the hardware of Reality, so you’d still

only represent in the virtual world, not present in

it.

If the virtual world were sufficiently different,

there could be things that your character was able

to do in it that you are incapable of in Reality. You

don’t have wings in real life (trust me), so if you did

in the virtual world then you’d have to learn how to

use them (assuming you were connected using a

Static images are less persuasive still. Whether or not text

is the least persuasive interface or the most persuasive

depends on how good your imagination is (Asimov, 1973).

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neural interface; it would actually be easier if you

weren’t).

Of course, if the virtual world differed too much

from Reality, you wouldn’t be able to do a great

deal in it – you’d find it incomprehensible.

Although your interface with a virtual world

heavily influences immersion, ultimately it’s the

nature of the virtual world itself that determines

whether or not you can become immersed in it.

Finding just the right level of similarity with

Reality is a goal that all virtual world designers

What happens when they get this wrong?

The Fiction

The reason that persuasiveness is needed in virtual

worlds is that these worlds are fictional. If they

weren’t fictional, they’d be real – which is to say,

they’d part of the fabric of Reality. OK, so they are

part of the fabric of Reality, in the sense that

they’re implemented within Reality, but they’re

still made-up. They may be closer to Reality than

Albeit not necessarily knowingly

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are some other works of fiction, but they

nevertheless are works of fiction.

In discussing virtual worlds, the word “fiction”

has two related but different meanings. Its first,

everyday meaning, refers to wilful fabrications in

general; this is how I used it in the previous

paragraph. Its second, more technically-nuanced

meaning, refers to a virtual world’s own particular

fabrications; in this context, it’s often called “the

fiction”.

I’ve slipped in references to the fiction several

times already. What I mean by the term is that

which you need to buy into to accept the virtual as

being real. Each virtual world has its own fiction;

it’s essentially fixed when you start to play, but you

can learn more about it as you do play. There may

be some off-the-shelf components to it that players

are used to accepting from other creative works

(faster-than-light travel, magic, extra-sensory

perception, that kind of thing

), but although

these can help with buying into the fiction, they’re

usually subservient to it. The fiction is the creative

bedrock of the virtual world.

For example, in the MMO Secret World

Legends

, the fiction is that mundane Reality is

Such extensions to Reality’s physics used to be called

ultraphysics until the term fell out of use.

This is a revamped version of The Secret World. It ironed out

the creases in TSW’s fiction (which was already best in class),

but sadly also removed the subtle beauty of the gameplay. It

then broke it completely by adding a pay-to-win cash shop.

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under constant threat from occult forces that the

vast majority of the population is entirely unaware

exist. You are a member of a secret society who has

been gifted with a form of immortality to take on

and, if not defeat the forces of evil, at least to

prevent them from defeating the forces of good.

Magic works, but so does modern technology, with

attempts being made to employ the latter to

amplify and to refine the former.

Now although that’s just a basic summary of

SWL’s fiction, it’s still enough to tell you it’s no

World of Warcraft – even though both MMOs

involve magic. As you play, you’ll learn that apart

from the secret societies (the Templars, Illuminati

and Dragons), there are other organisations

involved (the Venetians, Phoenicians, Orochi

Corporation and many minor groups), each with

differing agendas. All this, and much more besides,

adds to the fiction but doesn’t change it.

A virtual world’s fiction is almost the same as

what designers call its lore, but not quite. Lore is

the virtual world’s player-independent backstory.

You have to accept it to some degree in order to

situate yourself in the virtual world, but you don’t

need to know it to play; you do, however, have both

to know and to accept the state of the world that

the backstory has led to and your own place within

that world – that is, the fiction. The fiction can

therefore be thought of as the “You are a …” detail

of the lore.

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The lore: the Third World War led to years of

post-apocalyptic soul-searching, during which the

people of Earth made first contact with an alien

species. A period of recovery followed, in which we

began sending starships out to explore strange

new worlds, to seek out new life and new

civilisations, and to go boldly

where no-one had

gone before. A war with an alien species brought

about the formation of the Earth-led United

Federation of Planets, precipitating hundreds of

years of relative peace.

The fiction: in the optimistic universe of the

future, you are an officer of a starship beginning a

new, five-year

mission.

From a player’s point of view, the fiction is

important: it encapsulates those dissimilarities

between the virtual world and Reality that make

the former worth playing (or not). From an NPC’s

point of view, though, the fiction is unknowable

and the lore is truth. “The War of Black Holes

imploded the universe and destroyed all within it,

but after billions of years of darkness it has

exploded anew. Now, on an ordinary planet

orbiting an ordinary sun in an ordinary galaxy, an

ancient peril is once again stirring into being. On

the brink of creating true artificial intelligence, will

the planet’s life forms repeat the mistakes of those

who went before them, or will they recognise the

No infinitives were harmed in the writing of this sentence.

Shorter if you wear a red shirt

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dangers before it’s too late? You are the leader of a

nation state in this world-on-the-cusp. To save the

universe, will you side with humanity or with the

impassive machines it creates?”.

We can see the lore of Reality, but for us it’s not

lore, it’s history

. We can’t see the fiction of

Reality, because we can’t play Reality; for us,

Reality is our reality. The visitors to Reality from a

higher reality would see the fiction, because it

differentiates Reality from their reality

I’ve brought up the topic of the fiction because

of what it implies regarding immersion and

interfaces, both of which I’ve mentioned before and

both of which I’ll mention again; in particular,

they’ll turn out to be fundamentally related to the

reasons why people create realities. For the

moment, though, as the purpose of this chapter is

to offer a practical explanation as to why creators

of realities base their created realities on their own

reality, I shall confine my discussion to that topic.

So, a virtual world’s fiction embodies all the

falsehoods that an individual accepts when they

decide to play that virtual world. By necessity,

OK, so in this example it’s poorly-imagined, speculative

history that I’ve just made up, but the same argument applies

to bona fide origin accounts (such as the one involving Adam

and Eve): they look like history from Reality but would be lore

to someone for whom Reality is a virtual world.

As the novelist E. M. Forster put it: “If God could tell us the

story of the universe, the universe would become fictitious”

(Forster, 1927).

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because nobody like spoilers, this fiction will lack

detail: the designer will have informed prospective

players of its central thrust, but will have stopped

short of explaining everything.

The designer’s aim here is to give the player a

sense of where the virtual world’s boundaries lie

and of what can be expected to obtain within those

boundaries. The designer is making a kind of

promise – a covenant – in which they ask you, the

player, to trust them to deliver what they hope you

will like, but which they can’t tell you about

beforehand because that would rob you of the fun

of finding out

. To break the fiction is to break the

covenant and so to lose your trust. The covenant is

particularly important for virtual worlds, but other

works of fiction have the same thing. For example,

were you to extend a much-loved movie franchise

in a manner that replaced its mysticism with space

aliens, this might arouse feelings of betrayal in its

audience

Breaks in the fiction are particularly potent in

virtual worlds because they unimmerse the player.

The fiction is the player’s anchor: if the ropes the

player is using to keep tied to the virtual world

come away in their grasp, they’ve nothing to hold

onto – they lose their connection to their

character. To maintain immersion, then, designers

I write more about the covenant in (Bartle, 2012). No, this is

not a cheap attempt to increase my citations count by one.

Exhibit one: Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

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like to keep everything well within the fiction –

even if that entails extending the fiction to cover

desired but not-of-Reality features.

For example, at the start of this section I

mentioned that in Secret World Legends, your

character has a form of immortality: you die, then

seconds later you come back to life. Why do you

come back to life in a reality based on Reality when

this doesn’t seem to happen with any frequency in

Reality? Ah, well in the opening to the game you

were granted immortality by swallowing a bee

The fiction therefore covers it. That said, the NPCs

you kill also come back, it just takes them a while

longer. They haven’t swallowed a bee and there’s

no other fiction covering such behaviour; it’s just

how these guys roll

If a designer wants to help their players remain

immersed, then, a strong, robust fiction is a

necessity. They do want to help their players

remain immersed, too, because immersion is

exactly the means by which individuals from a

higher reality represent in a lower reality.

Immersed players present in Reality while

representing in the virtual world. The same

individual is therefore effectively two people at the

I realise that this isn’t the most obvious route to

immortality, but it does make a kind of sense in the context

of the game. In Reality, it’s more likely to shorten your life

than to extend it, though.

I suspect because utterly implausible fiction can be even

worse for immersion than having the fiction remain silent.

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same time: the player and the character. To control

the character, the player has to pass information to

the virtual world; to describe the character’s

situation, the virtual world has to pass information

to the player. Some of this information is knowable

to the character (your attempt to make a bowl of

soup was successful) and some of it is unknowable

(you gained 10 experience points for exhibiting

your soup-making prowess). Some of it appears

within the virtual world (there’s a chest over to the

character’s left) and some of it doesn’t (that red

glow round the edge of the player’s screen means

the character is injured).

Immersion is affected by who is entitled to see

the information passing between the two realities

and by where this information appears. Happily,

there are some technical terms from game design

that we can use here to describe the various

possibilities.

Some things that you might want to do or to

find out in the virtual world don’t involve breaking

the fiction. Let’s say you’re playing a game in a

modern setting, seeing it through your character’s

eyes (that is, with a first-person perspective

camera). You want to know how much time is left

before the bomb goes off, so you perform the

appropriate keystrokes and … what happens? You

might tell the time in Reality by looking at your

watch or phone: does your character maybe look at

their watch or phone in the game world? If so, this

falls within the fiction: the player is being provided

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with the information they requested and their

immersion isn’t compromised in the process.

In game design terms, this kind of interface is

said to be diegetic. It’s the most immersive way

that information can be conveyed, but it’s not the

only way. There are, as you may have deduced

from my preamble, three other main approaches

that game designers would consider for presenting

in-world information to the player; these are

referred to as meta, spatial and non-diegetic

A meta interface maintains the fiction of the

virtual world, in that it doesn’t tell the player

anything that their character wouldn’t know,

however it achieves this outside the geometry of

the virtual world. The classic example is to show in

a special window the text of a book that your

character is reading. Other characters can’t look

over your character’s shoulder to read it, because

the book’s contents aren’t being displayed in-

world; nevertheless, your character is not being

presented with information they’re not entitled to

see.

A spatial interface is like a diegetic interface, in

that it displays information within the geometry of

the game world. However, the information it

displays is for the player, not for the player’s

character; it therefore breaks the fiction. A

For a full discussion, see (Fagerholt & Lorentzon, 2009). For

a shorter, but pretty darn good summary, see (Stonehouse,

2014).

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common example would be that of a targeting

circle showing you where your area-of-effect

weapon would cause damage were you to activate

it right now: it looks as if it’s part of the world, but

it isn’t. Likewise, the billboarding of names above

characters’ heads places text within the virtual

world’s space as if it were part of a character’s

appearance; it’s not, of course – names don’t catch

on the lower branches of trees or anything – but it

looks as if it is. The information is there for the

benefit of the player, not of the character.

Finally, a non-diegetic interface places in the

plane of the screen information which is not

known to the player’s character but which is

known to the player. Examples include: a juicy

overlay announcing you’ve reached level 50; a

window to be used for buying in-game currency;

an announcement that the server is going down

for maintenance.

Whether an interface element is accounted for

by the fiction or not is dependent on the fiction,

not on the interface element. A mini-map, for

example, could be telling the player something that

their character would know (say, which other

characters are within hearing range), or it could be

telling them something that their character

wouldn’t know (say, which other characters are

within a 2km radius); a change to the fiction

(you’re in a helicopter with radar, or using a

clairvoyance spell) could turn a non-diegetic

interface element into a meta interface element

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without changing the look of that element. The

head-up display format adopted by most MMOs is

meta at best unless the player is playing a

character who has a HUD in-world (for example,

they’re a fighter pilot), which could instead make it

diegetic.

As I said, a diegetic interface leads to a more

immersive experience. This suggests that the

player should only have access to the in-world

information that their character has access to, and

that it should be presented to the character in a

way similar to that in which it would be presented

to the player if it happened in Reality. Indeed, for

many years designers of virtual worlds debated

among themselves as to whether they should give

players numbers at all

, its being widely accepted

both that numbers were unimmersive and that

players nonetheless kept on asking for them. Sadly,

players almost always prefer short-term value to

long-term value (Bartle, 2004), and some wrote

addons (interface plug-ins) to deliver what the

designers had withheld; designers capitulated

thereafter. This is why you now see streams of

numbers appearing above enemy characters’ heads

showing how much damage you’re dealing (and

“The ox is stricken by the effort of your proficient,

downward blow.” versus “The ox is stricken by the effort of

your proficient, downward blow. Damage: 3.”.

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that their average has slightly increased since you

paid €15 for a crystal of +1 to critical

I’ve described these different kinds of interface

in terms of displaying information, which is to say

output to the player, but (as interfaces are two-

way

) they can also be applied in terms of input to

the virtual world. You may have to click on an in-

world door to open it (diegetic), or to click on a bag

icon to bring up your inventory (meta), or to

mouse-over a monster to find what level it is

(spatial), or to hit the escape key to bring up the

settings menu (non-diegetic).

There are two axes involved here: in-

fiction/out-of-fiction and in-geometry/out-of-

geometry. Although they’re mainly thought of as

visual elements, they also apply to other sensory

information such as audio. You hear footsteps

crunching over snow behind you (diegetic), or a

disembodied narrator (meta), or a you’re-under-

attack beep in the direction of an aggroed

mob

(spatial), or a fanfare when you finish a quest (non-

diegetic).

Important: only diegetic information is accessible

to NPCs. This is because they themselves are

diegetic. Meta information would make sense to

them as it’s also in-fiction; it’s essentially diegetic

Black Desert Online, if you need to know.

Players interface with virtual worlds, not to virtual worlds.

Aggro is British 1970s slang for “aggravate” that somehow

made its way into modern MMOs via text MUDs.

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information that has been rendered meta to make

the player’s interface with the virtual world more

friendly. Out-of-fiction information, though, is

inaccessible (and quite possibly inconceivable) to

NPCs.

I once heard an anecdote told by a woman about

when she was a little girl. A friend of her mother’s

visited, bringing her own daughter along with her.

While the two mothers chatted, the two girls

played. Our girl kept saying things to the other

girl, but she didn’t seem to understand – our girl

thought she was perhaps a bit stupid – but all the

same they were having fun and got along well.

After a while, suddenly, the other girl stood up and

ran to her mother for no apparent reason. Our girl

looked up and saw her own mother calling for her.

It was time for her friend to leave. After she’d gone,

our girl asked her mother how come her new

friend had suddenly known that her own mother

was calling her. Her mother replied that our girl,

like she herself, was deaf; her friend and her

friend’s mother were hearing.

So it is with NPCs and out-of-fiction interfaces.

An NPC may not have access to the same

information that you do (through the virtual

world’s interface), but if they’re observant enough

they may nonetheless be able to discern that you

somehow know things that they don’t or can

somehow do things that they can’t.

It’s also possible that NPCs could have access to

information that players don’t, or could perform

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actions that players can’t. For example, you as a

player may not be able to look inside an NPC’s

mind to see what it’s going to do next, but its

fellow NPCs could perhaps have this ability.

Unsurprisingly, players tend to take a dim view of

this kind of behaviour, regarding it as cheating on

the part of the designer; designers are actually

quite sensitive to the accusation, though, so will

usually either concoct a reasonable fiction to cover

it or avoid putting it in unless it results in massive

efficiency gains

The difference here between players and NPCs,

then, is that NPCs regard the possession by player

characters of special information or powers as

being some kind of supernatural magic (which

from their perspective, yes, it is), whereas players

regard possession by NPCs of special information

or powers as being unacceptable unless solidly

supported by the fiction. If we apply this maxim to

Reality, it would help explain why there are many

accounts of supernatural beings with supernatural

powers (the use of which we NPCs can often spot),

but there are few accounts of supernatural beings

who lack the natural powers available to us.

It’s worth dwelling on the reason why players

don’t like NPCs to have knowledge or powers that

the players themselves don’t have. It’s not purely

They could naïvely try to conceal that it was happening,

but that would enrage players even more when the scam was

(inevitably) found out.

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out of a sense of unfairness (although this is often a

major factor); it’s also because it breaks immersion.

To fit the fiction, things should happen a certain

way; they don’t, which is the cause of complaint.

The key word here is should. What does it mean

to say that a virtual world or a character within it

“should” or “would” behave a certain way in a

particular situation?

This brings us to the wonderful topic of

realisticness.

Realisticness

Just because a world has dragons, that doesn’t

mean anything goes.

When you play a game or read a novel or watch

a movie, you are entering a world of fiction. There

are truths about the world depicted that are not

true of Reality. You are a medieval general.

Sherlock Holmes is a person. A guitar-playing

trainee nun has a tendency towards over-

enthusiasm. The fiction of the game, novel or

movie constitutes the premise you have to accept if

you’re to invest yourself in its world.

What about everything the fiction doesn’t

describe, though? Well, for reasons justified earlier

in this chapter, this defaults to how it is in Reality.

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Horses can’t operate trebuchets. Queen Victoria

was a person. People live in Austria.

So far, so good.

What about things that neither the fiction nor

the defaults of Reality describe? Arrows fly further

than they should. Watson has a leg wound after

being shot in the shoulder. Germans speak English

to each other.

Obviously, we do know why this is the way

things are. Longer-range arrows make for better

gameplay

. Watson’s wound moves because

Arthur Conan Doyle forgot where he’d previously

put it. An English-speaking audience won’t

necessarily comprehend a conversation in German.

These discordant elements are present for reasons

outside the context of the fictional world: the cause

is that the fiction itself is an artefact of Reality.

Although such incongruities may well be

understandable, they’re somehow unsatisfactory.

This is because they poke holes in the fabric of the

fictional world. We can’t buy into them: we simply

have to accept them then move on. This, as we

shall see shortly, makes the situation less than

ideal.

I explained when describing persuasiveness

that the reason everything the fiction omits

defaults to the way Reality does it is that we have

an understanding of Reality. We need to be able to

In Civilization V, you could shoot them across the English

Channel.

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make rational deductions about what will happen if

we do this or that, or what must have happened for

things to be like that or this, which would be

impossible if the fiction was all we had to go on.

Unless the fiction tells us otherwise, we therefore

ground our analysis in the reality we know best:

Reality.

This is true of any work of fiction.

Suppose we’re reading a novel. We’re following

a story: we want to be able to think about why

things have happened and what that means for

what will happen. This requires us to have an

operational model of the fictional world. Without

one, we can’t establish hypotheses or make

inferences. In the 2010 TV series Sherlock, Watson’s

change of wound-location is revealed to be

psychosomatic as a result of post-traumatic stress

(he was in the army), thus placing it nicely within

the fiction. As a result, the next time we saw

something seemingly at odds with the fiction in

that show, we could feel more confident that

there’d be an in-fiction explanation rather than an

out-of-fiction one.

This raises once more the issue of trust. When

you have a good game designer, or a good novelist,

or a good director, you can trust that what

happens happens because it fits the fiction. If the

enemy doesn’t advance its forces, that’s because

it’s waiting for support from its allies; it’s not

because of bad AI. If a boy hugs himself while being

asked questions, he’s afraid; it’s not just a bit of

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acting business to slow down the pacing. If the

grandmother starts to lose weight, it’s because

she’s developing a terminal illness; it’s not because

the actress has changed her personal trainer.

In the early days of virtual world development,

we called this concept realisticness. A better word

would be verisimilitude, but realisticness was

preferred because it tended to be used in the

negative: concepts were said to be unrealistic if

what happened didn’t match the player’s

understand of what “should” happen. If you drop a

hedgehog off a tall cliff, the hedgehog should die.

Your character dies when you fall off that cliff: so

should the hedgehog. The hedgehog doesn’t die,

though. That’s unrealistic.

If the hedgehog had previously been flagged as

being magical, OK, well you might feel able to cut it

some slack. If it appears to be just a regular

hedgehog, though? Well, in a game that you deem

you can trust, the reason it doesn’t die is perhaps

that it really is magical despite looking ordinary, so

its survival gives you information about the

creature that you didn’t previously have and which

you can later perhaps exploit. You would feel

justified in exploring this possibility, and so be

somewhat disappointed if you discovered that it is

indeed just a nothing-special hedgehog that ought

to die when tossed from a clifftop but doesn’t

This example comes from MUD2. Spoiler: it is indeed no

ordinary hedgehog.

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You can also get unrealisticness when the

fiction doesn’t hold. I’ve just melted a hole through

a castle wall with this wand: why can’t I use it to

negotiate the insurmountable waist-high fence in

front of me? Yes, I know that in Reality I can’t do

much damage to a fence using a stick, but this one

can melt holes in walls so it ought to be able to

remove a less substantial obstacle with ease.

Unrealisticness can sometimes be encountered

when the fiction is missing an aspect that ought to

be there but isn’t. This is usually harder to spot.

For example, did you notice that there’s something

not present in The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1954)

that ought to be there if the peoples of Middle

Earth had developed in the same way that every

society ever in human history has developed? It’s

quite interesting to examine (although I shan’t be

doing so myself

) why “there is no religion at all in

The Lord of the Rings – no temples, shrines, priests,

prayers, amulets, scriptures, ikons, idols – nothing!”

(Carter, 1973). Not having religion in Middle Earth

is unrealistic.

When something is unrealistic, then, it means

there’s an inconsistency. Either the fiction has

failed, or the non-fiction has failed and the fiction

can’t cover the failure. In both cases it’s bad fiction,

and this is why people don’t like it: their model of

the made-up world is being broken for no good

If you want to examine it, letter 131 from (Carpenter, 1981)

is a good place to start.

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reason and their theories about what might

happen next are now worthless

As a non-game example, consider the TV series

Game of Thrones

. Very few of the named

characters in this show wear headgear. They can

be in a land of permafrost with icy winds blasting

down sheets of snow on them, but they don’t put

on hats. They can be in the baking heat of a desert,

yet not shade their scalps. They can be in the

middle of a battle, but won’t sport a helmet. Their

other clothes will be eminently appropriate – furs,

silks, armour – and have carefully-considered

detailing, but their heads will nevertheless be bare.

Crowns, tiaras and maybe a hood are the most

you’re likely to see.

This affectation was noted by fans of the show,

some of whom commented that it wasn’t realistic.

Other characters wore sensible headgear, but very

few of the main ones did.

Well, fire-breathing dragons aren’t realistic

either, and they’re a big feature of Game of Thrones.

The same fans who griped about the lack of hats

were not at all fazed by the presence of dragons.

Why was this?

“To be able to live a moment in an imagined world, we

must see the laws of its existence obeyed. Those broken, we

fall out of it.” (MacDonald, 1893).

I suppose I should put a spoiler warning here, but really, if

you haven’t seen the series by now then the chances are

you’re not going to do so any time soon.

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The answer is that the fiction explains the

dragons but it’s silent on the subject of inadvisable

headwear preferences.

There are several reasonable explanations that

could have been provided to satisfy the fans,

including: “not wearing hats is a sign of rank”;

“gosh, we hadn’t noticed that, thanks, we’ll put

them in hats from now on”; and “yes, they should

be wearing hats but then you’d complain you

couldn’t tell who the main characters were”

. It

would not, however, be reasonable to respond “why

are you saying that hat-wearing is unrealistic

when there are dragons in the world?”. This is

because we know the answer: the dragons are

covered by the fiction, but the lack of headwear

doesn’t seem to be. If the fiction had addressed the

issue, the lack of headwear wouldn’t have been

perceived as unrealistic.

This point is important, because (as I said) it’s

all about trust. Also in the Game of Thrones TV

series, there’s a sequence in season 7, episode 6

(Beyond the Wall

), in which the character Jon

Snow falls into water through broken ice and is

This is (a paraphrase of) the actual reason, as furnished by

the actor Kit Harington: he asked to wear a hat while filming

in Iceland but was told that sensible headwear made it too

difficult to differentiate between people’s faces in that

environment (Vineyard, 2017).

No, I’m not the Game of Thrones nerd – you’re looking for

my wife.

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utterly drenched through, yet he drags himself out

into the polar conditions without any ill effects.

Realistically, Jon should have hypothermia, yet

he doesn’t. OK, so why doesn’t he? Well, if I can

trust the fiction, it’s telling me something. Maybe

his sword is magically protecting him? Maybe he

has an innate ability to resist cold that mirrors the

one Daenerys Targaryen has to resist heat? Maybe

something as-yet-unknown warmed the water? All

these hypotheses have interesting implications.

However, if the reason he doesn’t suffer is that he’s

wearing plot armour, frankly that isn’t good

enough. It’s effectively saying “don’t worry your

pretty head about it, audience dear, just accept it

like you accept the dragons”. The point is, if we did

accept it like we accept the dragons then his

survival should mean something special: the

dragons are something special.

Realisticness matters.

Because of all this, when we look at Reality as if

it were the sub-reality of another reality, we can

therefore be fairly sure that if a personal god were

involved in Reality’s creation, the vast majority of

what we experience of the physical world of Reality

would correspond to the physical world of the

god’s higher reality – that is, it would seem

realistic to a being of that higher reality. It

wouldn’t necessarily have to be as detailed, in the

same way that virtual worlds implement Reality

more in the abstract than in the concrete, but we

could expect it to be close.

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This raises a question of potentially great

significance.

When designers design virtual worlds, they

design them to map onto Reality in most respects.

However, they will gloss over some things that are

deemed to be inconveniences (few insist that your

character uses the lavatory

) and they will add key

elements of difference that they regard as

beneficial (say, magic works). The rest of the

virtual world is as it is in Reality, but the changes

make it more attractive than Reality; if they didn’t,

people wouldn’t care to play

. A similar thing can

be said of books and movies, of course, and the

trade-off between keeping it real while making it

playable is the longest-standing issue in simulation

games (Jackson, 1991). Virtual worlds are more

than books, movies or simulation games, though:

they’re realities.

Reality is also a reality.

If we apply this design logic from the

perspective of a higher reality – one that is to

Reality as Reality is to virtual worlds – then it

would seem that this higher reality is likely to have

details that didn’t make it to Reality because they

are an annoyance. Furthermore, new things will

Strictly speaking, the lavatory is a convenience.

Recall that Roy Trubshaw and I made MUD with the

specific intention that it would be an improvement on

Reality. To an extent, we succeeded: many people do indeed

play virtual worlds because they find them a more attractive

proposition than they do Reality (Castronova, 2005).

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have been added to Reality that the higher reality

doesn’t have, in order to make Reality more

attractive than that higher reality.

In other words, the higher reality is worse than

Reality!

If you don’t think much of Reality, then, you’re

unlikely to discover that any higher reality is an

improvement on it. Such a reality would be similar

to Reality, except that Reality has had the sucky

bits taken out.

We’re part of Reality, though. Have we had the

sucky bits taken out of us, too? What must the

people of a higher reality be like if we’re nicer than

they are?

Suppose there is a reality above Reality: is it a

heaven or is it a hell?

Physics and Causality

Realities aren’t merely world descriptions (those

are states); they also incorporate implemented,

physical rules that transform one state into

another. For a virtual world to be persuasive, not

only must its states appear realistic, but so must

its rules. Players can be jarred out of immersion

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just as much by something that behaves oddly as

by something that looks odd.

There is a caveat to this. Although thus far I’ve

been discussing Reality as being the fall-back

reference world (Juul, 2021), it could just be the last

of a series of fall-back positions. This is because

immersion is all about expectations.

Suppose a player character were to drop a ball

on the ground. What would the player expect to

happen? Well, for most players with some

experience of modern MMOs, the answer is that

they would expect the ball to disappear, destroyed.

They might expect to be asked to confirm that they

actually want to destroy it, but they won’t expect it

to do what Reality says it would do (that is, bounce

and roll until it finds a resting place).

The reason for this is that these players have

played enough MMOs to have changed their idea of

what the default behaviour should be. They expect

this MMO to behave like the previous MMOs they

have played, rather than like Reality. It’s not

difficult for them to discard this new default: if the

first ball they dropped did bounce and roll then

they’d certainly notice and lose immersion for a

moment or two, but they’d be able to readjust to

the new, closer-to-Reality default without

difficulty. Nevertheless, in the absence of evidence

they will expect a trope rather than a faithful

simulation of Reality’s physics (Bartle, 2011).

I did say that created realities may omit or

simplify aspects of the reality in which they are

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being created; this disappearing ball would be an

example of that

Some things simply can’t be changed, though,

no matter what you do. Primary among these is

the notion of causality.

Events happen because of antecedents;

conditions give rise to effects. The physical rules

that govern these transformations are subject to

godly alteration, but the principle that such rules

must exist in the first place is not. A world with no

causality is going to be static in one of two senses

of the word: either unchanging, like a movie of a

photograph; or random noise, like an untuned

analogue TV. You could visit such a reality from a

higher reality, but not make changes to it – it has

no rules of change. You’d have to cheat with your

interface even then, because the air of the world (if

it had air) wouldn’t move out of the way when your

character moved, and the light of the world (if it

had light) would not be streaming onto your

character’s equivalent of retinas.

These rules about what rules must exist also

apply to supernatural rules. The physics of the

supernatural may be different to the physics of the

In case you’re wondering, the reason that the ball

disappears is threefold: to stop the virtual world (and

specifically its database) becoming cluttered with rubbish; to

stop people from undetectably exchanging virtual goods for

real money; to stop people using artistically-arranged lines of

objects to draw a penis.

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natural, but supernatural rules are still rules that

have causal effects.

From the perspective of an inhabitant of a

reality (as opposed to a visitor from a different

reality), supernatural physics has discernible

effects but either no discernible cause or no

discernible connection between the cause and the

effect. A rabbit popping into existence out of

nowhere would be an example of the former; a

rabbit popping into existence out of nowhere when

I waved my magic wand would be an example of

the latter. Rabbits simply shouldn’t appear out of

nowhere under the everyday laws of physics.

If supernatural laws apply in general then

they’re not supernatural, they’re natural. They

have to apply only under certain conditions to

qualify as being supernatural. Traditionally, they

have been tied to particular objects (such as crystal

balls), places (such as fairy rings), beings (such as

ghosts) or times (such as Hallowe’en

Things can, of course, appear to be supernatural

without actually being so. For example, our

theories concerning the physics of Reality don’t

currently suppose faster-than-light travel to be

possible. If, therefore, we were to find evidence of

faster-than-light travel, we could surmise that one

of the following statements must be true:

This is how I was taught to spell it in the 1960s, and I’m not

about to bow to peer pressure to spell it any differently now.

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• The evidence is flawed in some way, and

faster-than-light travel has not been

demonstrated.

• Our theories are wrong, and we need to

rewrite them to accommodate this newly-

observed and reproducible phenomenon.

• Our theories are right in general, but don’t

apply to this particular object, place, being,

time or whatever.

• Our theories are (or at least were) right, but

a god changed the physics of Reality.

Of these, the first two are natural explanations

and the second two are supernatural explanations.

The notion of causality leads to the notion of

time. Alarmingly, both causality and time can work

backwards as well as forwards: is the ball rolling

because I struck it with a cue stick, or am I striking

it with a cue stick because it was rolling?

If this seems weird, consider that people reason

about cause and effect in both directions as a

matter of course. “I’m going to the charity shop

later this morning to drop off some old books. The

charity shop is ten kilometres away, so to get there

I need to drive. To drive, I need my car keys. Oh

This is one way of explaining a correct premonition in a

non-deterministic reality: you’re accessing an event that has

already happened. A second way suggests that you recognise

how the future will pan out from patterns you’ve observed

subconsciously. A third way has an ordering body (a god, say)

acting as guarantor of fate. A fourth way is that you make a

lucky guess.

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dear. My car keys are in the pocket of my black

jeans. My black jeans are in the basket where we

put clothes waiting to be washed. So are lots of

other clothing items. These items are on top of my

black jeans. So yes, the reason I am removing my

wife’s underwear from the clothes basket is that

I’m taking some books to the charity shop later

this morning. Why are you looking at me like

that?”.

In Artificial Intelligence research, the form of

reasoning illustrated above is called backward

chaining. It’s preferred in cases when it’s easier to

figure out what you need to do to achieve some

goal than it is to figure out what you can do and

whether doing that will lead to the goal’s being

achieved (which is forward chaining).

Causality can be represented as pairs of

statements called production rules. One statement

in each pair is the rule’s precondition (“if this is true

about the world …”) and the other is its effect (“…

then this becomes true about the world”). As for

which is which, well that’s for the designer to

decide. Almost invariably, though, for

implementing a virtual world the rules will be

constructed to match what we in Reality think of

as forward in time. That isn’t to say they can’t be

reasoned about in both directions by an NPC’s

artificial intelligence to plan how to do something,

but even then the NPC wouldn’t itself know which

way the causal chain was actually running, just

how it appeared to be running.

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If someone from a higher reality were to visit

Reality, Reality would have to run causality in the

same direction as in the higher reality for it to

make sense to the visitor. However, if there is no

higher reality, or no-one from it ever comes to see

us, then everything could be running backwards:

what we think of as our memories are actually our

unavoidable destiny, completely determined by

how the world is at this moment.

It’s also possible that the direction of the causal

rules sometimes flips and we’re stuck bouncing

between two potentially fixed points in (what we

perceive of as) time. That would be a bit of a let-

down with regards to free will, but on the bright

side at least we’d never know it.

Having said all this, I shall nevertheless assume

that causality works in the direction that we

perceive as forward in time: events in the present

cause effects in the future, not the past. It’s just

going to be so much simpler if I don’t have to

qualify every sentence with a mention that we

could have it backwards.

To a virtual world designer, connecting

causality to time (or time to causality) immediately

raises a number of questions with regard to

implementation. One of these stands out for the

way in which it captures the core issues clearly and

simply: could we have time travel in a virtual

world?

In its most basic sense, yes, we most certainly

could because it’s the default inherited from

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Reality: even if I do nothing, I’m travelling through

time (at a speed of one hour per hour). When

people normally think of “time travel”, though,

they mean travel either backwards, or forwards at

a rate in excess of that expected when considered

from the perspective of an external observer. It’s

also usually discontinuous (you disappear at one

time and reappear at another) rather than

continuous (you remain in situ while time-

travelling).

Travelling into a reality’s past plays merry hell

with its present, because the present is dependent

on the past (through that reality’s causal rules).

The easiest way to implement it is to fork a copy of

the reality at the point in the past when someone

arrives in it from the present, then let it continue

from there independently. If you want to allow

people who travel into the past to come back to the

present, you can either return them to a save of the

original reality at the point when they left it

(perhaps discarding the forked copy), or you can

run the forked copy until it reaches the

appropriate timestamp then drop them in. In the

former, no actions taken in the past will have had

any effect on the present except those that

modified the time-traveller directly; in the latter,

the present relative to the time-traveller will have

been changed by actions taken in the past.

Travelling to the future is much easier, because

you simply wait until the reality reaches the

appointed time and then materialise the time-

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traveller there and then. If you want the traveller

to be able to return to the present, you need to save

it at the initial point when the travelling took place,

but other than that you needn’t worry.

As a designer, you’re limited in whom you can

allow to travel in time. In a virtual world with no

players

, you can allow all NPCs to engage in time

travel if you want; yes, the more it happens, the

more resources you’ll need and the more copies of

the reality you’ll end up running, but I’m sure you

can afford that. If your virtual world has only one

player then you can’t allow NPCs to travel through

time but you can allow your player character to do

so. However, if you have more than one player then

you can’t let anyone time-travel except to possible

futures and irrelevant pasts. Special case: you can

have all PCs travel at once (as, for example, when

restoring a back-up following a disastrous patch).

The reason for this is that virtual worlds are

real-time with respect to players. You have no

control over the way time works in Reality, so you

have no control over how it works for players in

the virtual world. If I go a week into the virtual

world’s past, make an alteration then return to its

new present, the effects of that alteration would

have to ripple through to create this new present

(if what I did is to be meaningful). Should there just

This is a thing: they’re called zero-player games (Björk &

Juul, 2012). Conway’s game of Life is an example of a zero-

player game.

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be me playing, well that’s fine: I’d make the change,

wait as the virtual world ran for a week (which,

because it can be decoupled from real-time for this

exercise, could take far less than a week relative to

me) then I’d reappear in the now-modified present

and see how my modification worked out.

However, if you played yesterday then the forward

propagation can’t happen: your actions yesterday

wouldn’t necessarily have been the same in the

light of my alteration; come to that, they might not

have even been possible. Making you (and everyone

else who played in the past week) replay it for my

benefit isn’t a solution because you may well

decline to co-operate

The upshot of this analysis for you as an NPC of

Reality is that if you want both to go back in time

to change the past and to return to the (now

changed) present once you’ve done it, you’re

restricted. You can’t go back in time beyond the

point at which a player last interacted with Reality,

and if there are players currently in Reality then

you can’t go back in time at all while retaining any

memory of the present

When it comes to the detail of how time is

implemented, there’s a major difference between

Reality and the virtual worlds we create. In Reality,

Especially if you died this morning.

You and every other NPC could go back in time if there

were a system reboot from a saved state, but you wouldn’t

know this had happened unless perhaps it was only partial.

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time is (or at least gives a good impression of

being) continuous. In virtual worlds, it’s discrete. By

“continuous”, I mean that any two points of time

have an infinite number of points between them;

by “discrete”, I mean that any two points have a

finite (possibly zero) number of points between

them. It’s like the difference between integers

(discrete) and reals (continuous) in mathematics.

When time is discrete, points in time

correspond to indivisible ticks. Each tick, the

underlying physical system looks at the tasks it

has to do, does them, then exits so the next tick can

take its turn. For example, in terms of Conway’s

game of Life, each generation represents a point in

time; the transformation of one generation to the

next is a tick. It’s a bit more complicated when you

take parallel processing into account, but that’s

basically the story.

In Life, it doesn’t matter how long a tick takes to

compute: when one tick ends the next one starts

straight away. However, in most computer games

(virtual worlds included), ticks have to follow a

real-time clock so that players perceive time as

passing evenly.

NPCs don’t know this, because they have no

access to Reality’s time. Their own time is made up

of ticks, which they experience as being seamlessly

continuous because they can’t see the inter-tick

gaps – those only show from Reality. That said, if

the NPCs were sophisticated enough then they

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could perhaps perform experiments to find out

whether or not there were gaps.

Hey, just a moment! We’re sophisticated! We

perceive Reality to be continuous! Maybe it’s

actually discrete, though? Perhaps, if we look

closely enough, we’ll find evidence that time can’t

be subdivided beyond a certain amount – that it’s

somehow atomic?

Well, unless a major scientific breakthrough

occurs between my writing this and your reading

it, none of the features you might expect to see if

time (or space-time) in Reality was discrete have

been observed. For example, light travelling over

vast distances could be cumulatively distorted by

discrete time, but astronomers haven’t detected

this.

If experiments were to show that time in

Reality is discrete rather than continuous, expect

headlines proclaiming that we live in a digital

simulation. This would indeed be a possible

inference, but time’s being digital wouldn’t alone

imply that Reality is a computer simulation

Also, even if evidence of digital time is detected, it could

merely be the result of a resolution limit for foamy quantum

interactions that gives the appearance of time’s being

discrete but no, actually it’s continuous. There’s also the

problem that Reality has uncertainty at the functional level

which no algorithm can ever capture (Ringel & Kovrizhin,

2017). This is irrelevant to virtual worlds, but I spent half a

day reading up on it and am not about to let such effort go to

waste without at least granting it a footnote.

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(although its being continuous would imply it’s not

a computer simulation, or at least not a simulation

on a digital computer).

The reason I’ve spent this number of words

discussing how time is implemented in virtual

worlds and how it looks as if it’s implemented in

Reality is that there does appear to be a difference

between them that’s of some consequence. Time in

virtual worlds is definitely discrete; time in Reality

is probably continuous (but could yet be discrete).

As I hinted at the end of the paragraph-before-

last, we can actually make computers that use

continuous time. Analogue computers are just

such devices, and although it’s not obvious how

we’d implement a reality using one, that doesn’t

mean it’s impossible. Another approach would be

to use asynchronous logic circuits, which while

they are digital in terms of data are not in terms of

time (that is, they obey no system clock)

. The

main issue would be one of keying: if we wished to

visit a virtual world with continuous time then

that reality’s time would also equate to the time of

Reality, so would have to feel neither too fast nor

too slow to visitors from Reality.

The point is, though, that for a reality to have

continuous time there is a requirement that the

reality in which it is implemented also has

continuous time. If Reality has continuous time

Quantum computers are yet another example, but they’re

done after only one tick.

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then so must any and all the realities above it.

Furthermore, whatever realities the NPCs of our

virtual worlds may create in the distant future,

they’ll perforce use discrete time rather than

continuous time because we used discrete time to

actualise their host reality. The NPCs may not be

aware that their reality is using discrete time, but

in theory they could perform experiments that

would eventually reveal the truth.

How a god chooses to implement a reality

therefore has implications for all the realities

consequent on that reality. Chains of causality

continue through chains of realities.

There’s one more observation we can make

about this, though, which is something of a

bombshell. See, while it’s obvious that what

happens in Reality can have a colossal effect on a

virtual world, it’s less obvious that the connection

runs both ways: what happens in a virtual world

can – indeed will – have an effect in Reality. Sure,

it won’t be great, but at the very least some bits in

a computer’s memory will be flipped. Virtual

worlds can do nothing to Reality, but they can’t

avoid doing something in Reality. Thus, because all

realities consequent on Reality are ultimately

implemented in Reality, Reality itself is therefore

changed (measurably if not always perceptibly) by

the goings-on in its sub-realities.

The same can be said in turn of any reality of

which Reality is a sub-reality.

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Put more concisely, your every action on Earth

changes Heaven.

That’s if there is a reality higher than Reality, of

course, but if we accept there is then the fact that

it can be changed means that it isn’t perfect unless

Reality is also perfect – or unless changeability is

part of what it means to be perfect.

With that, we reach the end of Part 2 of this

book.

We've looked at the different ways of creating

realities and noticed how an understanding of

virtual worlds can modestly help clarify some

points of theology. We've considered what it means

to exist in a reality and formalised the different

ways that individuals can visit realities. We've

examined why sub-realities resemble those they

are consequent upon, and why everything in

them – including their NPCs – reflects aspects of

the reality of their designer.

In so doing, we’ve arrived at a turning point.

The preceding pages have been devoted to

thinking about what our knowledge of virtual

worlds in particular can tell us about the creation

of realities in general. They’ve said very little about

what actually comes with the creation of a reality.

Gods, you see, may turn out to have some

responsibilities.

309

Part 3

Realities as

Realities

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Chapter 6

SAPIENCE

Thus far, although I’ve occasionally referred to the

NPCs of our virtual worlds as if they were

intelligent, I’ve always diligently pointed out

that

of course they’re not.

Well, they’re not yet, anyway.

Obviously, the reason I’d ultimately want to do

this is so that I can equate the situation of NPCs in

sub-realities looked at from Reality with the

situation of us in Reality looked at from Reality’s

super-reality

. How we as gods treat NPCs tells us

something about how any gods of Reality might

treat us. Indeed, if we’re being observed, it might

inform those gods how they should treat us.

As an analogy, if a manager mistreats their

subordinates, they can hardly complain when they

in turn are mistreated by their own manager. Then

again, if they treat their subordinates leniently,

Well, always diligently meant to point out.

I’m assuming here that Reality has exactly one immediate

super-reality, but (as we’ll see in Chapter 7) that’s not

necessarily the case.

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their own manager could regard this as a sign of

weakness. It rather depends on the manager

We have now reached the stage where we can

start to think seriously about the conduct of gods.

Mobiles

Strictly speaking, NPCs are those characters in a

virtual world who (at least in theory can) share all

the features and abilities of player characters

except one: they’re not controlled by a player. In

general, player characters will actually have

abilities superior to those of NPCs, but this is a

design decision rather than an essential difference;

only the manner in which a character is controlled

is a necessary distinction.

Typically, NPCs will at least look similar to

player characters, and be relatively safe from

attack except as part of a set piece. Many will be

there simply to make the place look busy or to

guard something, but most will have been created

to act as an interface with a service (buying and

selling, dispensing quests, training, changing

player-characters’ looks, repairing items, giving

directions – that kind of thing).

I went with a business analogy here, but only because if I’d

gone with feudalism I’d have had to use the word “lord” a lot

and sounded unnecessarily Biblical.

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Some of the activities NPCs can do, player

characters can’t do; this is rarely the problem it

might be, because most players don’t want to do

those particular activities anyway. After standing

behind a counter in a shop all day in Reality, you

perhaps wouldn’t want to come home and log into

a virtual world to do the exact same thing but for

fun. NPCs with a narrative purpose may have

abilities player characters don’t that players wish

they did, but such characters are isolated one-offs

in a sea of mundanity.

Although not a formal requirement, it’s almost

invariably the case that NPCs are unable to

distinguish between themselves and player

characters. Indeed, in general they don’t even have

the concept of “player characters”. In other words,

if an NPC encounters a being that looks like them,

they’ll treat it as if it were another NPC regardless

of whether it really is or not.

So, NPCs think (inasmuch as they think at all)

that player characters are also NPCs. NPCs are not

the only kind of denizen of virtual worlds, though:

there are also monsters. Monsters do not usually

look or behave like player characters, and NPCs

know them to be different. Almost without

exception, monsters have but one purpose: to be

killed in combat. Yes, that giant bear may be a

loving father who is only out in the forest looking

for his young daughter’s lost elk-horn flute, but

you don’t care: he’s worth experience points dead,

so dead he shall shortly be.

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The umbrella term used to describe both NPCs

and monsters is mobiles, which is short for “mobile

objects”

. Nowadays, the word is unfailingly

abbreviated to mobs, in which context it almost

always means monsters and those NPCs who are

also fulfilling a please-kill-me role. A mob is

therefore an individual creature, not the group of

creatures that a non-MMO use of the word might

indicate. You could have a mob of mobs.

I should perhaps mention that despite their

being called “mobiles”, mobiles don’t have to be

mobile. Should you wish, you could endow some

form of thinking capacity to an object with no

inherent powers of locomotion, such as a rock or a

cave or a mirror, mirror, on the wall. A tree spirit

would count as a mobile even though it’s

essentially immobile

Mobs created to be fought in orchestrated

circumstances, such as instances, can be further

subdivided into bosses (high-powered, treasure-

laden single mobs with bespoke, often scripted

I can say this with some authority because I came up with

the term for MUD1. I was in urgent need of a designation for

objects that had a move (that is, a turn to do something); I

figured that these entities behaved in ways that looked

intelligent but were constrained – a bit like those hanging

ornaments called “mobiles” – so that’s what I called them. It

never occurred to me that the term would actually stick.

Given how sensationally boring such a life must be, there’s

little wonder that tree spirits always seem to be at least a

little bit weird.

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abilities) and trash (mobs with nothing worth

having that you kill on the way to the next boss). In

instances containing more than one mob, the boss

always comes after the trash except when there

are consecutive bosses; if you encounter trash after

a boss, it’s because there are more links in this

chain and you’ve now started on the next one. The

end-of-chain boss (or end boss) is always a proper

boss and is never followed by trash; whether a mid-

chain scripted mob (or one of a group of boss

mobs) is respected as a boss in its own right or

dismissed as a mini-boss depends on how much of a

fight it puts up. Figure 8 shows this graphically.

The huge physical power differential that exists

between bosses and trash (including adds, which

are trash that hang around with the boss) is not

evident between human beings in Reality.

Therefore, if we’ve been specifically created in

order to be destroyed then either we’re all bosses

Entrance

boss

trash

end boss

Exit

Figure 8 – Trash and Bosses.

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or we’re all trash. Either way, the rather more

challenging end boss is yet to appear.

In today’s MMOs, none of these mobs are

remotely intelligent. They don’t learn player

strategies, they don’t adapt, they don’t play tricks,

they don’t anticipate your actions, they don’t try to

parley. They’re basically invariant machines. If you

have enough firepower and can counter their

special abilities, you’re going to win: it’s simply a

case of remembering what they typically do and

then trying to mitigate it. For example, it might be

that when the boss shoots out an orange ray at

you, you are about to produce fire beneath your

feet and, unless you keep on the move until the

effect wears off, you’ll shortly be toast

. It’s as if

you’re learning to dance with an experienced

partner: you don’t want them to change their step

pattern, because if they do then you’ll have to learn

your own moves all over again

OK, so let’s suppose that mobs were more

intelligent: what would happen?

Well, it would depend on how much more

intelligent they were. In the 1990s, I put some basic

Yes, Iscariot from Secret World Legends, I am indeed calling

you out. You may be only a mini-boss, but that attack should

nevertheless be telegraphed more clearly.

I chose this rather clunky simile because players actually

call the series of actions they have to perform to beat a

complicated boss the dance for that boss.

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artificial intelligence

into some of the mobs in

MUD2 and swiftly had to dumb it down because

the majority of players were now getting thrashed

by said mobs.

At least those MUD2 players could have picked

up some tips from the mobs, though. When the

mobs pick up tips from you instead, it can change

the essence of the game. If they were actually to

learn from your actions, your best strategy would

be to play sub-optimally in order to train them to

expect only sub-optimal behaviour – so that when

you really did want to win, you could pull out your

optimal strategy and defeat them. You’d no longer

be playing a game if you did this, though: you’d be

playing the artificial intelligence behind the game.

Once you’d figured out how it worked, you’d be

back to dancing again (just more tiresomely).

That said, most players do like playing

alongside other players, most of whom are actually

capable of both thinking and learning. If mobs

could be made smarter without turning them into

relentless killing machines or data-driven

clairvoyants, there’s a fair chance that the player

experience would actually improve.

So, how might we make mobs smarter, then?

I realise it’s bad form to ask a rhetorical

question and then not answer it, but if I could

I did my PhD in AI specifically because I wanted to create

intelligent mobs in MUD.

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answer it I’d be up for a Nobel Prize

. So, let’s

suppose that it’s 50 years from now and we have

developed artificial intelligence to a level

comparable with that of human intelligence.

What’s that? 50 years isn’t enough? Take 500.

Take 5,000. Take 5,000,000. Take 5,000,000,000.

Take as long as you like – we have the rest of

eternity to do it. You want planet-sized computers:

you can have planet-sized computers. You just

have to wait long enough.

If you don’t think we’ll ever do it, you can skip

the rest of this chapter and scoff at much of the

rest of the book, too. Given that the heat death of

the universe is at least 10

100

years away

, though,

it’s not unreasonable to suppose that even if we

never create human-level intelligence ourselves,

there’s plenty of time left for a species to evolve

which will.

There is precedent for this. Gods have long been

able to create intelligent, human-like machines in

Reality. For example, Hephaestus

did it as

reported in Book XVIII of Homer’s Iliad:

For the AI work. There’s no Nobel Prize for game design.

That’s a googol years, and is roughly the time it takes for a

supermassive black hole to decay and so cease to provide

entropy.

The Romans called him Vulcan.

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318

There were golden handmaids also who worked

for him, and were like real young women, with

sense and reason, voice also and strength, and

all the learning of the immortals

(Butler, 1898)

Let’s suppose, then, for the remainder of what I

shall be discussing here, that we do have

artificially-intelligent NPCs (or mobs, but I’ll stick

with NPCs for clarity) in our virtual world.

The first question we need to answer is: where

is this intelligence situated?

Ah, now this is a rhetorical question I can have a

shot at answering! Judging by what we know of

how to control NPCs at the moment, there are

basically four places where intelligence can reside.

Firstly, the intelligence of the NPC can be

embedded in the world of the NPC as part of the

general physical make-up of that world. It emerges

from the same interactions using the same rules of

OK, so I also looked at translations by Pope, Cowper,

Buckley, Chapman and Edward, Earl of Derby, but went with

this one because Butler also created a paracosm, Erewhon

(Butler, 1872); we paracosmologists should stick together.

The fact that his translation best supports my argument is

pure coincidence.

Oh very well, if you prefer a more modern translation then

try this from (Johnston, 2010): “At once he was helped along

by female servants made of gold, who moved to him. They

look like living servant girls, possessing minds, hearts with

intelligence, vocal chords, and strength. They learned to work

from the immortal gods.”.

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physics that govern everything in that world. This

is how science suggests human intelligence

operates in Reality

. Put simply: actions are

bounded by physics; thinking is an action;

therefore, it makes sense to bound thinking by the

same physics as everything else.

Secondly, intelligence could be embedded in the

NPC’s world as a special, object-centred property

endowed only upon individuals of a certain class

(such as humanoids). This is how Prometheus did it

for the Ancient Greeks; it would be the natural way

to approach implementing intelligence if you

wanted a hard, mind-body duality. The mind still

has physics, but it’s a physics of the mind, which is

an adjunct to the physics of the rest of the reality.

This makes consciousness a supernatural

phenomenon, rather than the natural phenomenon

it is in the first method I described.

Thirdly, the intelligence of NPCs could be

implemented as detached from the world of the

NPC. This kind of intelligence would subsist in its

own pocket reality, running on different

computers and using a connection with the NPC’s

body as a conduit to interact with the NPC’s

reality. Each unit of intelligence would be linked to

One of the early objections to the feasibility of creating an

artificial intelligence was that a mind is limited without a

body (Dreyfus, 1972). If true, this suggests that should

humanity succeed in creating an artificially-intelligent being,

a virtual world – where a mind can have a body – may be

where it first happens.

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its own particular in-world body, but the link

would not be intrinsic to the implementation

(whereas in the first two methods it would be).

This means that the link can be cut without

destroying the intelligence in the process.

Adopting such an approach therefore opens up the

possibility of reincarnation

, because when the

NPC’s body dies its intelligence can persist. In

human terms, intelligence is not merely something

you have as a result of the way the neurones in

your brain (or thoughts in your mind) are

arranged, but something with a distinct existence

of its own.

Fourthly, the intelligence of the NPC can be

implemented in a system entirely separate from

that of the world of the NPC – and possibly at odds

with it. For virtual worlds, programs exist called

bots which log in as if they were human players.

They use the same interface that players do, and so

by definition have exactly the same powers in the

virtual world as player characters do, no more, no

less. They run on independent machines, so could

reincarnate as a new character should the

character they’re controlling be annihilated;

furthermore, they can select from a suite of

characters to play at any one moment, possibly

taking over from a differently-specialised bot mid-

A better word would be transmigration, as reincarnation

applies specifically to souls but transmigration can apply

more generally.

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play. In other words, one bot could possess an in-

game character being controlled by a different bot

on the same system and run it in its stead

I’ve assumed in all four of these cases that

intelligence is local to an individual, but in each of

them it’s possible for intelligence (or components

of it) to be collective: NPCs could share thoughts or

memories or even executive function with other

NPCs, if their designer so desired

. That being the

case, what would be the best way to achieve this

functionality if you, their designer, did indeed so

desire?

If you were intending to put this kind of group

intelligence into a reality, well you wouldn’t choose

the embedded, emergent option (that is, the first

one I listed). Any system sufficiently complex to

allow for telepathy and so on to emerge is going to

allow many other shared systems also to emerge,

some of which would undoubtedly be disastrous

(shared hearts, for example). You would, however,

choose to use this embedded, emergent form of

intelligence if you wanted all of your NPCs to be

free-thinkers whose only access to one another’s

thoughts came from observing what they did in

the shared environment.

Players can also do this, by pushing another player out of

their chair and taking control of their mouse and keyboard.

This would ruin the day of any philosopher who had made a

career of studying qualia (directly-experienced mental states

which can’t be compared interpersonally, or “how do I know

that I see green the same way you see green?”).

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You would use an object-specific way of

implementing communal intelligence (the second

method I described) if you wanted to share the

mechanism by which NPCs thought (that is, the

code that implements thinking). You’d also use it if

you wanted to allow for resurrection (in that the

mind can survive the temporary destruction of the

body – it’s not the same as reincarnation) or ghosts

(for when the body is permanently destroyed but

the mind is still operating). It would be possible to

implement mind-reading abilities, but they’d be

something of a hack as you’d most likely want to

keep thoughts personal to each NPC: that way, all

NPCs could be given default knowledge of how

things are, with this information overridden when

particular NPCs have different views. Such is one

of the main advantages of using this kind of

specialised-physics approach: if the majority of

NPCs know up from down, you don’t need

individualised processing for their thoughts on the

matter – you only need to do that for those who

don’t know up from down.

The problem here is that the default might be

wrong. For example, if most NPCs were to believe

that the Morning Star and the Evening Star were

different heavenly bodies, you would have to create

imaginary objects for each label to refer to, even

though (using Reality as a model) actually they

refer to the same physical object, Venus – which

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isn’t a star anyway

. While you could still

implement all this within the reality, you’d get

much better functionality if you moved the code

for intelligence to a separate machine so that the

NPCs’ shared views of their reality didn’t clash

with the actuality of that reality. You’d definitely

do it if you wanted reincarnation, because then

your NPCs’ collective intelligence could survive a

reboot of their reality.

The third regime I mentioned for implementing

intelligence involves moving the software of NPCs’

intelligence to separate hardware that is

sympathetic to but distinct from the software and

hardware of the virtual world. This allows aspects

of intelligence (from some to all) to be encapsulated

and saved independently of the NPC’s body. When

the body is destroyed, the encapsulated

intelligence can be linked to a new body at such

time that an appropriate one becomes available. I

hesitate to call the encapsulated intelligence a

“soul”, because your thoughts and memories aren’t

alone the sum total of who you are, but such a

bundle would certainly behave like one.

Reincarnation features in many religions, of

course, so it’s no surprise to see that it’s eminently

possible to implement it for NPCs in virtual

Remember Zorya, the Slavic two-gods-in-one I mentioned

back in Chapter 1? She’s both the Morning Star and the

Evening Star, and she’s also the planet Venus. That is indeed

why she’s two-gods-in-one.

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324

worlds. Interestingly, though, this technique also

opens the door for other possible activities that we

don’t hear about so often in Reality. Body swaps

are one example: if minds and bodies are

connected by a configurable communication

channel then it shouldn’t be too hard to switch two

connections so that mind A now controls body B

and mind B now controls body A. This kind of

thing happens regularly in fiction, but there’s no

evidence of its being a frequent occurrence in

Reality. The most we get are people giving up

temporary control of their own body so that a

disembodied spirit can speak through it (a process

known as channelling – how programmer-friendly

is that?).

We can take this further. If intelligence lives in

its own reality, separate from but connected to the

reality of the body, this suggests that it might be

possible to sense and act within that reality-of-

intelligence. If it’s a shared reality, some (or all)

minds could be given access to other minds in the

same space. This is less of a mess than it would be

if you tried it with embodied minds, as it would

follow naturally from whatever physics you

implemented in the world-of-minds. Thoughts and

emotions could be read, transmitted and planted in

the reality where the intelligences were

implemented which would have effects in the

physical reality; these would appear to an observer

in that reality to depend on senses that the reality

didn’t support: extra-sensory perception might be a

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good term for it. Note, though, that this would only

involve mind-related ESP abilities: you wouldn’t

get telekinesis or the gift of prophecy this way.

There’s another thing you can do by separating

controlling intelligences from the physical bodies

of the NPCs they control: have one intelligence

control multiple bodies simultaneously. In practice,

this actually amounts to one intelligence having a

single body that consists of multiple NPCs, in the

same way that you control your fingers as if they

were all part of you even though they have

separate motor controls

. In Artificial Intelligence

research (particularly that related to story-

creation), such a controlling entity is known as a

director, as it gives instructions to other entities

(long known as actors) that have the ability to make

changes to their world. You could create swarms of

co-ordinated NPCs this way; perhaps fortunately,

it’s not something that any god of Reality has

taken up as a good idea yet, except maybe with

bees.

Placing collective intelligence in bots (which

was my fourth possibility of where it could be

situated) is a whole different pan of piranhas. It

actually offers less potential functionality than the

world-of-minds approach, because it can request

no accommodation from the game world: it’s

basically a player character controlled by a

OK, so it helps that they are all part of you, but the analogy

still holds.

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326

computer rather than by a human being

, so

therefore isn’t really of much use for implementing

NPCs (which are, literally by definition, non-player

characters).

Although virtual world developers do

occasionally make use of bots to play their virtual

world when undertaking flood testing

, they don’t

use them in live games. They don’t use the world-

of-minds approach either, come to that, but if they

did want to hive their NPC controls off onto

separate computers they’d implement it that way

rather than use bots, simply because of the closer

symbiosis it affords.

Bots are used, though, and quite extensively –

just not by developers. They’re deployed largely by

people who want to make money by having the

bots collect goods in the game world that their

operators can sell to players in Reality

. This is

almost invariably against the rules of the End-User

Licence Agreement that most commercial virtual

world developers require their players to sign: it

Or, in old-style text worlds, by the cat that walked across

your keyboard at just the wrong moment and got you killed.

Yeah, sure it did….

This involves swamping their game with friendly players so

they can gauge how confident they should be that it’ll stand

up under the weight of newbies when the general public is let

loose in it.

Other popular uses are to grind experience points for

characters in MMORPGs and to be ruthless instruments of

death (aimbots) in first-person shooters.

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amounts to cheating. As a result, any accounts

being used by MMO-playing bots are likely to be

unceremoniously deleted the moment they’re

detected.

This leads to an interesting question which is

worth exploring: are there bots (or something like

them) playing Reality?

The Bots Among Us

If we were able to detect bots in Reality, this would

be strong evidence that Reality was basically a

virtual world with us as the NPCs.

Many bots created for virtual worlds have a

short life-expectancy: they log in, advertise some

product until an irritated player reports them,

whereupon they’re summarily removed by a weary

customer service representative. Because of this,

such bots are typically given randomly-generated

names. Players can therefore often tell a bot from

another player merely by noting that its name is

largely unpronounceable.

Names used by players are formal, in the sense

that they’re meaningful to the physics of the

reality the player is visiting

. NPCs have no

This maps neatly onto the philosophical concept of true

names. The true name of an object is identical to its nature,

and gives those who know it power over that object.

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328

automatic right of access to these names, though.

We NPCs of Reality name things ourselves – we

don’t use the identifiers that Reality uses. To a

player of Reality, your system identifier could be

showing above your head as GENIUS285714, you

wouldn’t know.

To us, then, a bot would look just like a regular

player of Reality (that is, a player character);

regular player characters look just like us, so we

couldn’t tell bot-run characters apart from us

judging merely by appearance. We’d have to

deduce their nature from their behaviour, or to

accept it based on the word of a trusted source

who knew the truth (so, someone from a higher

reality – a god, demigod or player character – who

unfortunately might themself be a bot).

It could be argued that we have been told that

some people are bots, in that several popular

religious writings specifically identify particular

behaviours as meriting a stern response. For

example, perhaps all murderers are not NPCs like

us, but rather are player characters controlled by

bots; if a god were to encourage us to take action

against murderers then that would be like using us

as anti-bot antibodies. Sadly, this suggestion isn’t

strong enough to validate the hypothesis that bots

walk (or at least have walked) among us.

So, are there any occasions in Reality when a

god has outright said that a character is not

playing by the rules and needs to be removed from

the database? There are plenty of examples of

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329

people jumping to conclusions derived from what

they think their god(s) must have said (well-

illustrated by witch trials), and there are also

examples of what look to be players or

administrators going rogue (fallen angels and the

like). Similarly, there are examples aplenty of gods

taking time to get a grip on Reality in the face of

difficult behaviour by other gods (the Ancient

Greek primal gods, Uranus and Gaia, were

overthrown by their children, the titans, who in

turn were overthrown by their children, the

Olympians, who are still in charge).

Are there examples, though, of a god who is

already in charge basically saying, “look, this

person here is out to cause trouble so I’m just

going to obliterate them”?

Unsurprisingly, yes, there are. Irritatingly,

however, we can’t easily tell whether the ensuing

acts of divine retribution were meted out on NPCs,

player characters controlled by players, or player

characters controlled by bots. They all look the

same to us. Sodom and Gomorrah could have been

populated by any group (or mix of groups) – we

just don’t know. All we do know is that those

particular individuals won’t be doing whatever

they were doing again, at least in Reality.

So, if we’re to look for evidence of bots playing

Reality, we not only need to see someone

obliterated discriminately, but we also need

evidence that the reason they were obliterated was

that they were a miscreant from the same

How to Be a God

330

transcendent realm as the god and were operating

in some way mechanistically (or at least

systematically).

Well there may be some examples of this kind of

activity, but I’m not sufficiently conversant with

enough religions to be able to bring any to mind.

There are definitely examples of fairly mechanistic

behaviour by animated beings (elementals, for

example), but those don’t look like us. Some forms

of undead, such as the thralls of vampires, might be

a better bet but the vampires themselves would

rather stand out as being different.

Given, then, that we have neither seen an

identifiable removal of a bot-operated character

nor been told explicitly that some people are

automatons from a higher reality

, we’re left with

the option of trying to figure out whether bots are

among us based on what bots do rather than how

they are individually dealt with for doing it.

In order to deduce whether a person is a bot or

not, we’d need to know how their behaviour would

differ from that of a non-bot. This would rather

depend on its operator’s motives, to which we are

not privy, but we can be confident that they are in

opposition to the motives of Reality’s gods:

whatever bots do, it’s something that the gods of

the reality they’re doing it in don’t want them to

do, but can’t stop them from doing because that

I guess you could secretly have been told one-on-one, but

it’s not information that has been widely broadcast.

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would prevent bona fide players from doing the

same thing but for legitimate reasons.

In MMOs, bots are almost always employed to

perform tasks that (at least some) players would

rather not have to do themselves. They will, for

example, move around an area in cycles attacking

mobs in order to collect the treasure they drop, the

most valuable of which will then be sold to NPCs

for in-game currency; this in turn will be sold for

real money to players who want the in-game

currency but don’t want to have to spend endless

hours killing the same mobs over and over in order

to get it.

It may be that bots in Reality would do the same

thing, in which case we probably would be able to

spot them; however, they wouldn’t do it if there

wasn’t a market in their higher reality for

whatever virtual (to them) goods their operators

were hoping to farm. Besides, the bots could be

being employed for any number of reasons that are

nothing to do with cheating. We don’t even know

that they’re not on our side, trying to save us from

the actions of wicked or capricious gods or players

by giving us information that will help us survive –

a bit like automated hunt saboteurs, with us as

what’s being hunted.

Detecting bots, then, is going to be very difficult

for us unless they behave so out-of-the-ordinary

that it’s clear something weird is definitely going

on.

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I did say “very difficult for us” there, though.

Bots would not necessarily be very difficult for

gods to spot. If they did spot them, they’d zap them

and ban them. This we could detect – especially as

bot-owners play a numbers game, running many

bots at the same time so that if one is caught then

there are still others out there doing whatever it is

they’ve been tasked to do. Developers may ban ten

thousand accounts at once, but if there are twenty

thousand bots out there that still leaves half of

them roaming free.

As I touched on earlier, evidence of the mere

wholesale elimination of populations tells us

nothing about possible bot activity; now, however,

we have a way of differentiating between bots (lots

of people with the same aberrant behaviour) and

players who are griefers (individuals with aberrant

behaviour). It doesn’t help us separate bots from

NPCs (who may also exhibit aberrant behaviour in

large numbers

), but if the suspects also

demonstrated supernatural powers that ordinary

NPCs like us don’t possess, such as apparent

telepathy, that would do it. Better still would be if

we had evidence of player characters identifying

themselves as player characters in order to escape

some awful fate intended for bots (which might

also be awful for NPCs, but they’re not paying

customers).

Evidence: any election.

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So, have we seen such mass annihilations in the

past?

Historically, we’d be looking at plagues, famines

and wars. Although millions have died to each of

these, they’ve done so indiscriminately. The guilty

may well have died, but many innocents died with

them. Gods generally don’t want to kill innocents

(at least not the characters of innocent players –

innocent NPCs are less of a problem), so it seems

unlikely that they’d wield their ban hammer in a

way that could count regular players among the

collateral damage.

If we consider at the actions of specific gods in

specific situations, though, we do see evidence of

what could be the removal of troublesome bots en

masse. For example, the Jewish holiday of Passover

commemorates the occasion when Yahweh freed

the Israelites from slavery by visiting ten plagues

on the Ancient Egyptians, the last of which

involved slaying the first-born son of everyone in

Egypt except for the ones whose families had

marked their house with lamb’s blood

. Naturally,

there are less dramatic interpretations than “so

those first-born were all bots!”, as I’m sure Jewish

theologians would be quick to point out, but if you

were searching for an occasion when players got to

flag themselves as being players before a trawl of

the database removed all the bots and a good many

Presumably, the ones with only daughters were spared. It’s

not recorded how Yahweh dealt with intersex first-borns.

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NPCs, well, it might look something like Yahweh’s

plague number ten.

While this is merely circumstantial evidence

that bots exist (or have existed)

, at least it leaves

open the possibility that bots walk (or have walked)

among us. “So where are the bots?” could not,

therefore, be used to challenge the suggestion that

Reality is a virtual world being run on hardware in

a higher reality; neither, however, could “These are

the bots!” be used to prove that it is.

Freeish Will

I’ve talked about “intelligence” as if we all know

what it is. I don’t believe this to be too outrageous

an assumption, on the grounds that we all possess

Dictionary definitions of intelligence usually

describe the notion in terms of what it enables: the

capacity to learn and adapt, to communicate, to

plan ahead, to use reason and logic, to apply

knowledge and skills, to understand, to be creative,

to solve problems, to imagine – you get the idea.

Assuming, as usual, that you are not of the opinion that

plague number ten is merely a mythologised interpretation

of an historical event that has a more rational explanation.

Maybe not so much the people who chose earlier to skip

this chapter.

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None of these are particularly controversial except

perhaps among those professionals whose job it is

to find them controversial (so, philosophers

Dictionary definitions are more divided over

whether self-awareness is a requirement for

intelligence. It is for human-level intelligence, but

perhaps not for herring-level intelligence. The

kinds of systems coming out of Artificial

Intelligence research at the moment may be

capable of achievements that humans consider to

be indicators of intelligence (beating the world’s

best Go player, for example), but said systems are

not self-aware.

Self-awareness is a prerequisite for sapience and

thence wisdom. As far as we know, human beings

are the only sapient creatures in Reality, which is

why we call ourselves Homo sapiens

. There may

be sapient beings on other planets, but if so we’ve

not encountered them yet (unless it turns out that

some of those conspiracy theorists are actually

correct

The concept of wisdom is woven into the

theology of many religions. In Christianity, for

example, wisdom is an aspect of God; humans

don’t have it to the degree God does, but can gain

wisdom through God. In Hinduism, wisdom is full

To be fair, philosophers find everything controversial, not

just definitions of intelligence.

Homo sapiens sapiens for anatomically modern humans.

Even so, I hope they’re wrong about the anal probes.

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336

self-awareness of one’s place in creation; again,

most people only have it in part, but those freed

from the cycle of life and death have it in full.

To be sapient, then, is to have some degree of

wisdom, but not necessarily as much as there is to

be had. It’s an important concept, because it

bestows upon individuals the property of

personhood. Personhood brings with it a full set of

rights; at the moment we call these “human

rights”, but if dolphins were to start demanding,

oh, freedom of conscience, we’d have to change it.

Some people argue that creatures such as

dolphins should already be considered to have

personhood. Instead of using sapience as the

qualification threshold, they go with sentience.

Sentience is the capacity to experience

subjectively; it doesn’t require the ability to reason

about that experience. Sentient beings can suffer,

and so (the argument goes) this bestows upon

them rights. Whether they’re the same rights as

those boasted by sapient beings or not is up for

debate; you might be fine with prohibitions on

torturing dolphins, but feel that giving them the

vote is a step too far.

Sentience, like sapience, features in many

religions. It plays a bigger part in some than in

others – Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism all

extend their teachings to sentient beings, for

example, and Jainism extends it to everything else

as well (albeit in a range of degrees: rocks may be

sentient, but they’re not as sentient as humans).

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In virtual world terms, how we treat NPCs who

have some form of intelligence therefore depends

on where we put the bar. Do we confer rights on

sentient mobs, or only sapient ones? Or are they all

just bits in a database so we don’t care anyway?

These are questions for later. For the moment,

I’m going to take the view that anything which

thinks of itself as being intelligent pretty well is

intelligent. This allows me to focus on the main

topic of this section: free will.

So, given that some time in the (perhaps

distant) future we’ll have NPCs who can think, how

much should we control how or what they think?

Earlier, I used the term “human-level

intelligence”. Although it’s possible to argue that

many creatures surpass human intelligence in

their different ways

, nevertheless it does seem

that in general there are quantitatively-different

levels of intelligence. Broadly speaking, cats are

smart but they’re manifestly not as smart as

humans. The thing is, when we create our NPCs,

we get to decide how smart they are. How

conscious of their environment are they? How

aware of this consciousness are they? How

conscious of their self-awareness are they? We get

to determine all these things. We get to decide

their general level of intelligence.

How do squirrels remember where they buried all those

nuts?!

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I’m not talking about how we initialise their

opinions here (as in, “Shall I make everyone hate

wasps? It’s for their own good”); rather, I’m

referring to how we initialise their ability to

reason. We can make them sapient but not as

clever as us; in time, we may also be able to make

them cleverer than us. Alongside this, we have the

ability to insert artificial barriers so that they can’t

think about things that we don’t want them to

think about, such as, say, crystal-clear evidence

that we’re their gods; we can also make them think

about things that we do want them to think about,

such as, say, making love not war

It’s actually quite hard to do this. As I said, self-

awareness is one of the necessary components of

sapience. If you were to stop people from thinking

about an idea, they’d notice there was something

odd and start thinking about why it seemed odd. If

you stopped them thinking that, they’d notice this

discrepancy, too, and so on. As an example,

suppose that on a whim you caused the entire

population to believe that the number four doesn’t

exist

. You’re a god: you can do that. The moment

anyone with ten fingers counted them and reached

eleven, though, they’d realise that something was

wrong. If you stopped that, they’d notice that

there’s this number 40 which ought to divide by

Or, for a combat-oriented game, making war not love.

This is a favourite of stage hypnotists, although they don’t

do it for the entire population.

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ten but doesn’t. If you stopped that, they’d invent

their own number to cover all the gaps they saw.

You pretty well can’t get rid of the number four

without blotting out the concept of numeracy –

which those affected would promptly re-invent.

You can certainly influence how people think in

Reality – propagandists and advertisers do it all

the time – but you can’t stop all of them from

thinking freely. If, despite all the evidence, some

people still believe that the Earth is flat, it’s a fair

bet that if everyone were to be taught at school

that the world is indeed flat there would still be

those who’d think hmm, maybe it’s not.

This is why free-thinking is a step change away

from merely thinking: the ability to reflect opens

up recursive doors you can’t keep closed.

Of course, you can still stop people thinking

things if you don’t mind their being aware of the

fact. This is how Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics

(Asimov, 1950) handle it.

I suppose I should actually list these laws:

• First Law: A robot may not injure a human

being or, through inaction, allow a human

being to come to harm.

• Second Law: A robot must obey the orders

given it by human beings except where

such orders would conflict with the First

Law.

Nowadays, these would be his Three Laws of AI.

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• Third Law: A robot must protect its own

existence as long as such protection does

not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

In this set-up, robots (or in our case, NPCs

) are

constrained to behave in certain ways, yes, but

they’re aware of this. It’s no secret that they can’t

injure humans (player characters), and knowing

they can’t won’t enable them to do so.

Asimov’s Laws aren’t all that wonderful except

as fodder for robot stories

, but they do illustrate a

point. The mind’s programmer can prevent the

mind from undertaking any actions which the

mind realises may lead to a certain proscribed

result. Thinking is a kind of action. Therefore, we

could stop people from thinking about the number

four if we didn’t mind them knowing that some

power was stopping them. Whether that would be

good for their mental health is another matter, of

course.

This isn’t the only way we could choose to

exercise the power we have over our NPCs’ minds.

We could, for example, give certain NPCs

information about what we have planned for the

future. We could do this directly, by speaking to

them in their heads, or indirectly through a

They could actually be both.

I never really saw the point of the Third Law myself, other

than to safeguard an investment.

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mechanism involving visions or dreams

or what-

have-you. What they did with this information

would be up to them, but they couldn’t simply

ignore what we’d implanted. The NPCs would still

have free will, but free will dominated by an idea

which did not come freely.

As for why we might want to give NPCs this

limited form of “freeish will”, well that rather

depends on why we created them in the first place.

That’s something we’ll be looking at later, though.

There is a small ethical point worth raising

here, by the way. Suppose that once DNA

manipulation becomes commonplace in Reality,

people start messing with their own genomes to

bestow upon themselves characteristics that they

lack but desire. In doing so, however, they wouldn’t

only be changing their own characteristics –

they’d also be changing those of their subsequent

descendants. This impacts on the free will of those

descendants, because they can’t wholly own who

they are: they’re the products of someone else’s

mind (Habermas, 2003).

NPCs are the products of our minds. The only

way that they can engage in the kind of retroactive

ethical self-reflection that self-understanding (and

In the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika school(s) of Indian philosophy,

dreams are perceptions of the mind (Wayman, 1967) and it

can therefore be argued that they are no less real than the

perceptions of any other sensory organ.

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thence free will) requires is if we don’t actually let

them know they’re the products of our minds.

There’s (much) more on ethics in Chapter 7.

While we’re on the topic, though, you may have

noticed that I’ve been assuming thus far that

you’re fine with experimenting on NPCs. This is

not, however, something that necessarily should be

assumed. Researchers who study the players of

virtual worlds are very careful about issues of

privacy, transparency, respecting social norms and

obtaining informed consent (McKee & Porter,

2009). If our NPCs are as smart as we are,

shouldn’t we accord them the same respect that

we accord our fellow sapient beings? Should we

even allow ourselves to look into their minds, let

alone make alterations to how they think?

Unsurprisingly, this is a bridge that the social

scientists who study virtual worlds have yet to

cross.

There’s one final point I’d like to make before

moving on. It concerns intelligence.

I casually mentioned earlier that, in time, we

may be able to make NPCs more intelligent than

we are. After all, some people are cleverer than

others, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable that

artificial intelligences could be made cleverer than

any of us. Furthermore, if they are cleverer than us,

they may in turn be able to create intelligences

cleverer than they are themselves, leading to a

snowball of increasingly-super intelligences – a

concept known as the singularity.

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The NPCs we created wouldn’t have to be

super-intelligences themselves, they’d just have to

be smarter than us for this to happen. They’d be

further along the journey to super-intelligence, but

not yet there themselves.

Perhaps that’s us, too. We’re the NPCs of

Reality. If Reality is a sub-reality of a higher reality

then could it be that we are a step closer towards

the singularity than those who created us? Rather

than being less wise than the gods of Reality, could

it be that in fact we’re more wise? If we can make

NPCs who are cleverer than us, could not the gods

of Reality make NPCs who are cleverer than they?

Theory of Mind

Do you have a young child to hand? Say, two or

three years old? If not, order one from the Internet,

I can wait.

There is a theory known as Roko’s basilisk which suggests

that super-intelligences yet to be brought into existence will

reward those who helped to create them and punish those

who didn’t – thereby increasing the pressure to create them

in the first place. Don’t look this up if you’re worried that

doing so will expose you to retribution from a future super-

intelligent AI.

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Got one? OK, have your young child observe the

following scene

Take a marble, a cup, a mug and two teddy

bears. Turn the cup and the mug upside-down.

Give one of the teddies the marble. While the other

teddy watches, have the first teddy put its marble

under the cup. Then, have this teddy go off for a

walk. While the first teddy is away on its walk, and

unable to see what’s going on, have the second

teddy take the marble out from under the cup.

Then, have that teddy place the marble under the

mug instead. Now, have the first teddy come back

and announce that it wants to play with its marble.

Ask your young child where the first teddy will

look for its marble. The chances are, your young

child will say to look under the mug.

OK, so the marble is under the mug, but the

first teddy doesn’t know that. The first teddy

thinks the marble is under the cup, because it

didn’t see the second teddy move it to under the

mug. Why, then, would your young child say that

the marble is under the mug?

Well, your young child would say this because

they’re two or three years old, and most children

are aged around four before they develop the

ability to attribute to others mental states that are

Technically, you should ask the young child’s parent or

guardian for permission first, as you’ll actually be performing

an experiment on the youngster.

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different from their own. In other words, they

don’t yet have a theory of mind.

Everyone has access to their own mind, but

they have no access to the minds of others

. They

don’t actually know for sure that other people do

have minds, come to that. However, from

observing other people’s actions and words, they

can theorise that these people do have minds, and

speculate what those minds might be thinking.

Those in possession of a theory of mind are able to

project onto others the thinking abilities that they

have observed of themselves, moderated by what

they know of the other person’s emotional state,

knowledge and CPU power.

The experiment described above is the Sally-

Anne test (Baron-Cohen, et al., 1985). OK, so in the

proper test the teddies are dolls called Sally and

Anne

, and the cup and mug are a basket and a

box, but it’s basically the same. One of its major

findings is that not only do two-year-olds have

trouble identifying where the returnee will look,

but so do people with autism (although not

necessarily for the same reasons); adults with

Down’s syndrome don’t have trouble with it,

though, therefore they do have a theory of mind.

In the words of E. M. Forster: “… mutual secrecy being one

of the conditions of life upon this globe” (Forster, 1927).

I went with teddies because you might not have dolls called

Sally and Anne.

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Other experiments show that mature

chimpanzees and orang utangs also have a theory

of mind. It’s therefore not something all humans

have, and not something all non-humans don’t

have.

Nevertheless, it’s an ability that most humans

have, so we’d probably want our NPCs to have it if

we wished them to behave in a manner that to

most of us appears authentic (even if we know

they’re just bits being manipulated in computer

memory). They will act in a seemingly more-

realistic way if we allow them to have a conception

of the minds of others.

In terms of implementation, it’s very tempting

to use a collective-intelligence model for a theory

of mind, because then all the information you need

is right there. This means that if one NPC wants to

know what another NPC is thinking, the software

controlling the former’s theory of mind can look at

the actual data set that comprises the latter’s

current beliefs and intentions. The first NPC

wouldn’t have to work out from environmental

cues what the second NPC was thinking (“hmm,

he’s picking up the custard pie; perhaps he’s going

to throw it?”), it would just know directly (“he’s

going to throw that custard pie”).

This looks clean, but when AI researchers tried

it back in the 1980s a number of problems were

identified: deception is impossible; you can’t have a

theory of mind for something that doesn’t exist (“if

someone really is out to get me, what will they try

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next?”); you can’t have a theory of mind for

something that does exist but doesn’t think using

the same software (such as NPCs with regard to

players); you get into loops when you try to model

other people’s models of you (“she knows that I

know that she knows that I know that …”); you get

into show-stopping loops when you try to model

your own state of mind.

This is why, when considering group

intelligence earlier, I said that you’d choose to use

an embedded, emergent form of intelligence if you

wanted all of your NPCs to be free-thinkers whose

only access to one another’s thoughts came from

observing what they did in the shared

environment

So, we basically need to do it the long way.

From observations of their environment as

presented to

their senses, every NPC has built up

an individualised model of the world in their mind.

This may or may not be accurate

; it merely needs

to be serviceable. The NPC has also built up a

model of their own mind, having observed over

time the kind of things it can do (such as

remembering things) and can’t do (such as

That is, literally, what I said (well, wrote). I can cut-and-

paste with the best.

Or by, if they’re hallucinating.

Being their designer, we get to decide whether an NPC’s

mental model of their reality (their phenomenal world) is

distinct from that reality as it truly is (their noumenal world),

which would doubtless please Kant.

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thinking two words at the same time

). Within the

NPC’s model of the world are a number of entities

that the NPC believes exhibit the same kind of

thinking skills that the NPC has. In order to

interact with these entities, the NPC applies a

theory of mind, based on the NPC’s theory of their

own mind.

This seems a lot to model, but in practice the

NPC only needs the one theory of mind, not one

per modelled entity. They can wheel it out as and

when it’s needed.

What’s happening here is a form of projection.

Human beings do it all the time. I know that I can

think; experience has taught me that as a good

working hypothesis I can treat you as if you can

think, too. We may not think the same things in the

same way, but I can nevertheless assume you’re

basically smart and rational then take it from

there.

We don’t have to stop at human beings, though.

Plenty of people interact with animals such as dogs

and horses as if these were sapient, despite the fact

that they’re incontestably not

In short, we can apply our personal theory of

mind to things that don’t have minds like ours.

Please don’t tell me you can do this, because I can’t.

I realise I’ve just lost all the dog-lovers who project

sapience onto their sentient pets, but I’m sorry, these

creatures really don’t have the degree of self-awareness with

which you credit them.

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We can also apply it to things that don’t have

minds at all

. It’s easy to ascribe intention to the

behaviour of trees, rivers and storms, so it’s not

surprising that without any better theories of what

was going on our ancestors did just that.

Suppose that we were to give our NPCs a theory

of mind much like ours, then. What could we

expect them to do with it? Well, they’d probably

hypothesise the existence of tree, river and storm

spirits just as our ancestors did

; if we were to

implement said spirits as supernatural beings, our

NPCs’ hypotheses would be correct, too.

That’s not all they might hypothesise, though. If

they were to pursue the same lines of reasoning

that we humans did, it would be only a matter of

time before they speculated as to whether their

reality had one or more creators

and, if so, what

these creators might be like

. They would use their

theory of mind to conjecture the existence of one

or more gods who played a part in the construction

of their reality; they would flesh this model out

based on the evidence of what they saw and on

what we or our players told them. As I inferred

“I know she’s only a character in a novel, but I still want to

marry her!”.

I suggest a mechanism for this in the next section.

Which, as I’ve pointed out already, it indeed will do: one or

more of us humans created their virtual world.

For an impressive catalogue of possibilities, take a peek at

(Thompson, 1958). It’s six volumes in length, but only part A

of the first volume is relevant here.

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350

when asking “Does Odin exist?”, the result is very,

very unlikely to be correct.

It’s worse than that, though. You may recall

(although it seems unlikely) that earlier I

mentioned “presence as parasociality” as a form of

presence in which an individual has a one-sided

relationship with someone who may not even be

aware that said individual exists

. This kind of

parasocial relationship can come about because it’s

possible to construct a mental model of another

person and overdo it. You may see someone

famous on TV, in movies or via streaming services

so often that you feel you know them; were you to

sit opposite them on a train, however, you would

be unwise to act as if they knew you

It seems a fairly good bet that, in using their

theory of mind to create a model of us, at least

some of our NPCs would develop a parasocial

relationship with it. To be clear: this relationship

would be with their model of us, not with us. These

NPCs might love the person the model

represented, or be afraid of them, or be in awe of

them, or be resentful of them – the relationship

I was going to say that in perusing this book, you’ll build up

a picture of me even though I won’t build up a picture of you;

however, this presupposes that anyone other than people I

know will actually read it.

This has happened to me on a number of occasions, but to

date I’ve escaped embarrassing myself because, my being

British, it’s bad form for me to make any eye contact with

anyone on a train under any circumstances, ever.

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could take many forms. The point is, though, that

because it’s a projection their model would almost

certainly be wrong. Projections extrapolate, and

even good extrapolations can easily be taken too

far. The basis of the NPCs’ model of us could

actually be correct, but the NPCs would

nevertheless endow it with characteristics that

rendered the result incorrect. They’d join the dots,

then colour in the picture to make it look like how

they needed it to look. Not only would this picture

of us be tragically wrong, but the pathos of the

NPCs’ situation would be compounded by their

each having invested in a parasocial relationship as

if it were joyfully right.

Our NPCs aren’t the only ones who could be

guilty of applying a theory of mind rather too

zealously, of course.

Whatever, in the virtual worlds of the present,

NPCs aren’t really all that clever. They may seem

clever at times, but in part that’s because we’re

projecting sapience onto them. They do something

that we recognise as being an action someone

intelligent would do, and we’re impressed; the

more mundane truth may be that they did it by

chance, but we’ve chosen to overlook this. OK, so

we do know we’re doing this, but it’s more fun and

immersive for us if we don’t treat them as the

simple, unthinking clockwork toys they are. Also,

it’s just easier to treat them as if they have smarts

than to treat them as if they don’t; it’s something

most of us can do automatically.

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That’s in the virtual worlds of the present. What

about the virtual worlds of the future?

Given that we, as players of virtual worlds,

already project some degree of sapience onto NPCs

even though we know they’re barely rational, it

seems likely that we’ll continue to treat NPCs this

way in the future. We’ll know they’re not

intelligent, but all the same we’ll interact with

them as if they were.

What if they actually were intelligent, though?

What if, over time, we were to put enough AI into

their implementation that they gained self-

awareness and human-level reasoning powers?

We’d still be treating them merely as if they were

sapient instead of treating them formally as

sapient.

That would be problematical. They’d be sapient,

but we wouldn’t be conducting ourselves in line

with that. Then again, would it matter? Should we

be treating them as we do people, or maybe as we

do dogs, ants, plants, rocks or something else?

Well surely, if our NPCs are sapient then they

are entitled to be accorded the same respect as

other sapient beings. We therefore ought to treat

them as we would our fellow human beings

I’ll be considering morality in Chapter 7, but for

the moment the more pressing question is: how do

we know when an NPC is actually sapient?

I realise this isn’t saying much, given how human beings

have treated each other throughout history.

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The traditional answer is to apply the Turing

Test (so called because it’s based on a suggestion

by the AI pioneer, Alan Turing (Turing, 1950)).

What this effectively says is that if we can’t tell

through conversation with an entity that it’s not

sapient, it’s sapient.

Of course, we may still be wrong.

In the 1978 movie Superman, the eponymous

hero goes to his secret ice palace and has a

conversation with a hologram of his mother. He

asks questions; she answers them. Later on, Lex

Luther goes to the same place and also has a

conversation with her. He asks questions and she

answers completely different questions. He makes

remarks, but she ignores them and carries on as if

she’d been asked the question that, had it been

Superman rather than Lex, he’d have asked.

Basically, she’s a mindless script. From Superman’s

perspective, she passes the Turing Test because he

seems to be having an intelligent conversation

with her; from Lex Luthor’s perspective, she fails

it.

Another way of being able to tell if an NPC is

sapient is to wait a few thousand years until we

All of Reality could be like this, by the way. You might think

that principles such as cause-and-effect pertain, but it may

be that you’re just being presented with one long series of

scripted or random sensory inputs that appear in order (or

disorder) regardless of your actions. You’ve just been

incredibly lucky that everything has made sense so farpkkf

nr hjkh iik pqww dnn nmzz.

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354

can construct its hardware using human brain

tissue. Indeed, we could potentially build an entire

virtual world in human brain tissue and make it

shareable

From a designer’s perspective, obsessing over

whether the NPCs you create “really are” sapient

or not is a red herring. If you create them to be

sapient then they must be sapient by your own

definition. You must therefore treat them as

sapient, regardless of what they might be under

anyone else’s definition.

To summarise, then: when something such as

an NPC, which doesn’t think using the same kind

of hardware that we do, appears to act

intelligently, we could either be: treating as non-

sapient something that genuinely isn’t sapient;

projecting sapience onto something that doesn’t

possess it; not projecting sapience onto something

that does possess it; or treating as sapient

something that genuinely is sapient.

Pushing this up a level: do the god(s) of Reality

recognise us humans as having free will? If not, are

they nevertheless treating us as if we did have it,

because it’s more convenient for them that way?

This is effectively what happens in Tad Williams’

monumental Science Fiction book series Otherland (Williams,

1998). I mention it principally because the first line of the

first book is: “It started in mud, as many things do”; it’s an

intentional reference to MUD – I asked, and the author

confirmed the fact.

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There’s one more point

I’d like to mention on

the topic of a theory of mind before I move on.

When you play a virtual world, you create a

character in that world. This is you, yet unless

you’re fully immersed in the world, it’s not you.

You may regard it as your representative, or as

your representation, but until you regard it as you,

yourself, there’s some distance between you both.

This means that you can build a model of your

character, and in so doing compare it to your

existing model of the person you think you are.

You can change your character to be more like you,

or change you to be more like your character

When they align and become one, you have

identity

This is, as I said at the beginning, ultimately

why people play virtual worlds for fun: they can

become and be themselves.

What if they succeed?

A Chinese theological position called immanent

transcendence suggests that Reality’s god is within

everyone and everything (and so is immanent), but

that until you fully understand your own self-

So many sections of this book end with “one more point”

that I’m seriously wondering if I watched too many episodes

of Columbo in my youth.

This is called the Proteus effect (Yee & Bailensen, 2007).

A character in a virtual world who is the player playing it is

called a persona. The term was used as such by Roy Trubshaw

in MUD; it’s therefore a concept that’s been around for a very

long time in virtual world history.

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nature said god will appear to be transcendent. Not

only do virtual worlds enable this self-

understanding, they were actually designed to do

so from their inception.

By understanding what it is to be a god of a

reality, you could come to understand what it

means to be a god of Reality

If people from a higher reality are playing

Reality, might they also be seeking to become and

to be themselves?

What if they succeed?

Speculation

I noted in the previous section that NPCs with a

theory of mind would likely speculate on whether

their reality might have a creator; I concluded that

they’d be both right (it does) and wrong (it’s not

the person they’d imagine

). The matter doesn’t

end there, however, because (being free-thinking

individuals) our intelligent NPCs are going to have

other questions they would like answered.

Furthermore, although we can’t stop free-thinking

NPCs from pondering on what to them are

This is one of the central themes of this book.

They may also conclude that they know nothing and accept

the fact. The Aztec god Tezcatlipoca (“smoking mirror”) is

acknowledged as being hard to pin down, for example.

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spiritual matters about a possible higher reality, it

turns out that we can nonetheless control the

scope of said pondering.

So, free-thinking individuals, whether in

possession of a theory of mind or not, will

inevitably turn their thoughts at some point to the

subject of their own existence. How they develop

those thoughts depends on what questions they

raise; what questions they raise in turn depends, at

least to some extent, on their environment. We, as

the gods of the NPCs’ reality, control their

environment; therefore, we have some say in what

they come to believe about the world beyond their

senses, even if we’d prefer that we didn’t.

For example, let’s suppose that we create a

virtual world that’s similar in nature to how Earth

was, say, 10,000 years ago. It doesn’t have to be

accurate

, it’s just inspired by what scientists,

archaeologists and historians have pieced together.

Most of the people of this world would be

hunter-gatherers. What would be their concerns?

As it happens, we know what their concerns

would be, because some hunter-gatherer societies

living in remote regions of our planet survived

until a period when their cultures could be studied.

They all had worries about healing the sick, finding

animals to hunt and improving the weather. In

This will doubtless come as a relief to Young Earth

Creationists, being as it’s up to 4,000 years before their

calculations show Earth was created.

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358

response to these concerns, they’d all formulated

theories about how the world worked which

incorporated if not solutions to their problems

then at least ways of dealing with them. What’s

more, these theories (well, hypotheses) all

developed along similar lines

Imagine that you’re a hunter, tracking prey.

Where is it likely to go? What is it likely to do?

How is it likely to react? To figure it out, you put

yourself in the prey’s position and imagine what

you, as one of these creatures, would do in that

situation. If you can see the world through the eyes

of an imagined boar or goat or buffalo, you can find

(and kill) the actual boar or goat or buffalo and

return home with food to feed your tribe. Your

having a theory of mind has paid off.

If you were to do this kind of thing many times,

it’s not hard to envisage how you might routinely

talk about seeing the world through an imagined

animal’s eyes. You could give these imagined

animals a name: spirits

Perhaps the gatherers notice that they, too, can

put themselves into the “minds” of plants, and

figure out where they would be growing. Perhaps if

they were nomads looking for water, they could

put themselves into the “mind” of a river and feel

As with all mentions of spirits and spirituality in this book,

unless the context suggests otherwise I use the terms in the

generic sense, rather than the specific senses employed by

some religions (for example Spiritualism).

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where it would flow. What began as a practical

method for hunting animals has become a way of

describing how to use the imagination. In teaching

succeeding generations how to hunt-and-gather,

the device of referring to spirits and their

behaviours could take shape

If communicating with spirits helped with one

of the tribe’s main concerns (finding food), might it

not also assist with the other two? Ah. It can work

for the weather, but not so much for healing the

sick. Clearly, the spirits that cause sickness are

wicked and more powerful than the other spirits.

As a hunter, your default setting is to hunt them,

but how can you do that?

Well, some members of your tribe are better at

communicating with spirits than are others. You

find your best such individual and send them into

the “spirit realm” to drive out the spirits causing

the sickness. Success is not guaranteed, as with

any hunt, but it’s better than if you don’t try at all.

The role of person-who-interacts-with-spirits

would perhaps become formalised over time; the

job title of shaman is usually used to describe it.

The means of getting into the spirit realm would

also become refined: the shaman would go into a

trance (the exact methods of achieving this

The programmers among you may find it useful to

compare the non-spirit version to programming in C and the

spirit version to programming in C++.

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360

condition could be tribe-dependent) in order to see

the world from a different, spiritual perspective.

We don’t know for certain if, in the hunter-

gather tribes of Reality, this is indeed how they

pretty well all came to be shamanistic in nature. It

does seem eminently plausible, though.

The way I’ve just described it, the world of

spirits for these primitive tribes is merely the

world of the imagination treated as if it were real

(or at least superimposed on what’s real).

Unfortunately, this runs counter to the convention

I use in this book that all Reality’s gods exist, which

by extension includes those on the way to

becoming gods (such as spirits). I shall therefore

add that these spirits do in fact exist and that you

can communicate with them yourself right now if

you know how to do it.

Whether or not in Reality’s case a shaman does

have access to supernatural powers isn’t the point

here, though. The point is that this happened time

and time again with hunter-gatherers. When you

are a small tribe

leading a nomadic existence and

your lifestyle revolves around animals, this is the

world view your members will develop. We could

expect the intelligent NPCs of our virtual worlds to

draw exactly these same conclusions if we created

for them these same circumstances.

Hunter-gatherers are few and far between

today. Once agriculture had been developed, tribes

Witness the power of personification!

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could settle down. Their populations grew (because

babies didn’t have to be carried everywhere), and

their needs changed. They began to store food and

create goods; they could trade these with other

tribes for the benefit of both. Although they were

still concerned with healing the sick and

improving the weather, they weren’t so worried

about finding animals to hunt. Instead, because

they were now tied to their lands, they were more

concerned with security.

In our ancestors’ new context, looking at the

world through the eyes of animal spirits declined

in relevance. The problems the tribes faced were

less to do with the absence of animals and more to

do with the presence of other humans. Their

theories about how the spirit world worked

developed accordingly: animal spirits became less

important and human-like spirits became more

important. In the same way that humans had

become more powerful, able and advanced than

animals, so human-like spirits – some of whom we

might call gods – existed that were more powerful,

able and advanced than animal spirits.

The way to deal with other humans at this time

was through trade. The people of the past reasoned

that the way to deal with supernatural humans

must be the same. To this end, they tried to bribe

or obligate these spirits – these gods – through

sacrifices of labour (building temples in their

honour) or of valuable things (food, goods, animals,

people, …). Particular gods would begin as

How to Be a God

362

specialists in areas that were previously the

province of types of spirit (such as the sea or the

forest), possibly taking on new roles to deal with

new features of life (such as crops or the hearth) or

its more abstract principles (such as love or

perception

In a virtual world, then, if we have a society that

is basically still tribal but has settled down, we

would expect our intelligent NPCs to follow the

same path that humans did in Reality. They would

speculate on the existence of a pantheon of gods

(some perhaps mapping onto earlier spirits, some

not), each of whom was responsible for a general

class of concerns.

What if we allowed our intelligent NPCs to

make further technical and societal advances?

Well, I’m not going to go into that. If you’re

interested in seeing how it progresses then there

are lengthy and credible analyses elsewhere

The point I wish to make is that, left to their

own devices, our intelligent NPCs will develop

systems of beliefs regarding their selves, their

reality and realities beyond. Unless we give them

Perception may sound unlikely to some, but it won’t if

you’re an Ancient Egyptian acquainted with the existence of

the god Sia.

I recommend An Atheist’s History of Belief (Kneale, 2013) and

especially The Evolution of God (Wright, 2009) as well-

researched yet accessible reads on this topic. Warning: as the

titles suggest, these aren’t necessarily going to please people

whose faith in their own religious truths is on the shaky side.

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total access to their own implementation, they will

speculate to fill in the gaps. What to them appears

chaotic, they will attempt to ascribe order to; from

this order, they will attempt to read meaning. They

will seek to know why they exist.

We, as their gods, can influence this: we can

supply them with the tools and the environment to

give them greater or lesser needs, leading to

correspondingly more or less speculation on their

part. We can do more than this though: we can

interfere.

Reality has more gods than it needs. Although

our intelligent NPCs may develop the concept of,

say, a single, almighty god, this is (as I’ve said)

almost certainly not going to resemble their

reality’s designer, who actually is their god; it’s

even less likely to resemble any designer of Reality.

We could help them in that regard, though.

Some players of virtual worlds would doubtless

proselytise religions from Reality to the NPCs of

virtual worlds, regardless of the objections of other

players, of designers and indeed of the NPCs

themselves. Such players could, of course, face a

ban if this became a problem (modulo laws about

religious expression).

More interestingly, designers of virtual worlds

could, if they wished, plant the seeds in their

virtual world of one or more of Reality’s religions.

If you, as a designer, are an adherent of one such

religion, should you do this for that religion? If you

did, your creations would follow your god(s) – or at

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364

least your conception of your god(s). If you didn’t,

they could worship anything – including imagined

deities with morals running completely counter to

your own.

Given this possibility, should we as designers

consciously introduce religious themes into our

virtual worlds? If so, for whose benefit? For the

benefit of the god(s) of Reality? For the benefit of

us ourselves? For the benefit of players (or indeed

non-players), who may be followers of particular

gods of Reality? For the benefit of our virtual

worlds’ sapient inhabitants, its NPCs?

If we decided that we did want our NPCs to

share in our wonderful and wondrous knowledge,

should we be overt about it (recruit players as

missionaries to convert NPCs to the one true faith)

or should we be covert (insinuate ideas into NPCs’

minds as they sleep)?

Alternatively, should we endeavour to keep

Reality’s religions out of our worlds and simply

leave our creations to form their own systems of

belief?

Keeping Up Appearances

There may well be some number between zero and

many-thousands of gods of Reality, but we’re the

gods of our virtual worlds. Let’s go for it and be

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those gods! Let’s show up in those worlds and act

like the gods we are!

Whoa! Is that actually a good idea?

Well, it depends. If we, as gods, represent in our

virtual worlds as gods, our reasons for doing so will

be largely conditional on what the NPCs know

about us. There are three main contexts, each of

which is going to take several paragraphs to

discuss, so buckle up.

In the first context, the NPCs before whom we

appear don’t know that we (their gods) exist. By

representing, we’re telling them that we do exist.

We may have something specific to relate to them

about the nature of their and our realities, but

before we get round to that we have to account for

the fact that merely by representing as gods we’re

announcing that gods exist.

The NPCs, being free-thinking, may not believe

us. We can perform physics-changing actions that

only those with supernatural powers can enact, but

the NPCs could still exercise their capacity for

independent thought to interpret it another way.

Perhaps we’re demons trying to trick them into

denying the bona fide gods?

We can program them to believe we are whom

we say we are, but then we’d be removing some

aspect of their free will

. That said, we’re already

The Qur’an (5:48) states that Allah could have chosen to

make everybody part of one nation (united in religion), but

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366

constraining it by situating them in a world that

we have created; why is making our existence

something their senses can feel to be “real” any

different from making colours or sounds or heat

feel “real”? If we choose not to use physics to

implement acceptance that we’re (relative to this

created reality) real, we’re basically demanding

that our NPCs accept our godly existence on trust.

OK, so why would we want them to accept our

existence on trust? Is it better for them that way,

or is it better for us that way?

It’s not for me to say whether you would feel

better about being accepted by your NPCs as a god

based on force of argument (as opposed to force of

physics, which smacks of cheating). Self-exaltation

is not the most glorious reason for wanting to be

accepted as a god, but hey, if it works for you,

embrace it.

What would be in it for the NPCs themselves,

though?

Well it’s fair to say that you never know anyone

fully (even yourself), so all relationships involve

some degree of trust. What you’re asking of your

NPCs is for them to trust that you are what you

say you are. They’re using their theory of mind to

infer things about you, just as they do about their

fellow NPCs, but they can never be sure they’re

correct in either case – they just have to trust that

didn’t because he wanted to test individuals in what he’d

given them.

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they are. This means that they will act using the

working hypothesis that they are correct, and

indeed they’d need to do that in order to function

socially, but they’d nevertheless be aware that they

could actually have it all wrong. They may suspect

that you’re presenting a false picture to them, too.

Trust can be broken by counter-evidence, of

course: if you trust that the ice you’re walking over

won’t break because you’ve walked over it every

winter for 20 years, that doesn’t mean it won’t

break. If it did, and you fell in, then your trust in

the ice would be as broken as the ice itself. It’s the

same for NPCs: their trust in their world view will

be very strong, but they’d have to keep updating

and revising it as more information about you

came to light.

In one sense, then, asking NPCs to trust you is

the default condition. You’d have to make an effort

to code them to detect you using a special god-

sensing ability, so it’s less work for you this way.

It’s still not obvious why you might consider it

better for them that they trust you, though, unless

you had it in mind to punish or reward your NPCs

based on whether they trusted you or not.

I’ve used the word “trust” rather than “belief”

here, by the way, as I didn’t want to conflate this

with religious beliefs (which, as they’re systems,

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368

are somewhat more complicated). I didn’t use

“faith” for similar reasons

So, to answer the question: the reason you

would want your NPCs to take your existence on

trust rather than from the irrefutable evidence of

their senses is either down to laziness on your part

or it’s some kind of test you’ve put in place to sort

your NPCs. As for why you’d want to use their

acceptance of your (one-step-removed) existence in

their reality as a basis to partition them, I have no

idea. It strikes me as an unnecessarily clumsy way

of deciding whether NPCs are worthy or not; if you

can look into their hearts and see who’s worthy

anyway, why disrupt your virtual world’s order

merely to confirm what you know already?

Perhaps the answer lies in the second of the

three contexts I mentioned: you might represent in

a virtual world as a god because its NPCs do know

you exist but have it wrong.

Suppose your virtual world is populated with

free-thinking NPCs. They look at your handiwork

and hypothesise that it was created by, well,

someone not you. It might be they think that it’s

the product of pure chance, or that it’s held

together by the will of the spirits who live in its

trees and rivers and storms, or that it came into

being from a titanic battle between ancient gods,

or that it was made by a team of gods always

Faith is like belief except that it isn’t changed by counter-

evidence.

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jockeying for supremacy, or that it was

constructed by one of your players who appeared

and brazenly told them “trust me, I’m your god”.

They may even have figured out it was created by

someone resembling you but lacking in one or

more important details. Your aim in representing

in your world under such circumstances would be

to correct the misapprehensions of your NPCs (or

at least to lessen any negative impact these might

be having on the world, its NPCs, its players or

you).

It could be that you’d really rather not interfere

in your world, but nevertheless adjudge the effects

of not doing so to be worse than those of doing so.

For example, if your NPCs came to believe that

they would gain eternal life by killing one another

(its being an act of kindness to speed someone else

on their journey to paradise), well you might want

to step in and put an end to this falsehood

before

you were all out of NPCs.

Here in Reality we’ve seen several ideologies

that, had they got more of a hold than they did,

may have led to there being rather fewer humans

around than there are today. For example, the

Brethren of the Free Spirit flourished in Northern

Europe in the 1400s and 1500s. One of their beliefs

was that it was possible to have a direct experience

of God that left an individual unable to commit sin.

I’m assuming here that you aren’t in fact offering eternal

life as a reward for murder.

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This was indeed as open to abuse as it sounds as if

it would be. Fortunately for us (if not for the

Brethren), they were persecuted away before doing

as much damage as they could have done

Whatever, you can be pretty certain that once

the concept of gods has been speculated upon by

your NPCs, some of them will make claims that

they personally are gods. It may therefore on

occasion be prudent for you to set the record

straight.

Even if you don’t want your NPCs to know your

exact nature, you may still wish to enlighten them

to the existence of higher realities. For example,

you might do this if they were close to creating

their own sub-realities, in order to impress upon

them the responsibility that comes with this

If you did decide that it would be better to

intervene than not to, there would of course be

consequences. As I mentioned earlier, some NPCs

will stick with their beliefs no matter what you do

to prove them wrong; worse, demonstrations of

Groups of people known collectively as Ranters took up the

idea again in England following our civil war in the 1600s,

but their griefing tended more towards public nudity than

random acts of violence.

I can assure you that this didn’t happen in Reality when

Roy Trubshaw started work on MUD. Given that he was

effectively creating competition for Reality (which isn’t

renowned for being big on responsibility), that’s hardly

surprising, though.

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your powers could even strengthen their resolve

Other NPCs could take your appearance in their

reality as evidence that you were about to destroy

; you might therefore consider giving them an

unambiguous trigger warning before doing

anything too flashy.

This second of the three contexts I mentioned

regarding representing in virtual worlds is

essentially to do with education. By appearing, you

are informing your NPCs of something to do with

either their reality, with you, with Reality, or (if you

wish to evangelise) with some higher reality. The

NPCs may believe you and reject their old beliefs,

or they may reject you and continue with their old

beliefs, or they may hedge their bets and do both

You’d probably intend for your representing in

their reality to benefit your NPCs in some way,

although the possibility remains that you might do

it simply to mess with them instead.

In the third context I mentioned, the NPCs

know that you (as a-or-the god of their reality)

exist in some sense, with which you’re OK. Their

views may be inaccurate, but you’re not

Applied to humans, this is known as the backfire effect. You

could choose not to implement it for your NPCs, of course.

The Muggletonians, who grew out of the Ranters, believed

that God ignores what happens in our world and will only

intervene when it’s time to end it.

There are two ways of looking at this: as multiple religious

belonging or as strategic religious participation (Hedges, 2017).

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372

representing to change what your NPCs think.

Rather, you’re doing so to … what?

Well one possibility is that you want to give

them an information update but they’re not going

to believe what you have to say unless they know

it’s you who’s saying it. “Sorry, folks, but the world

will end next Tuesday” would be an example of

this, but it doesn’t have to be quite that drastic.

Another possibility is that you want to hear

what they have to say to you (“We’re having

trouble arresting this global warming, can you

help?”) or to answer some of their questions (“So

why did you make the world flat?”). This does seem

to be the kind of conversation you could more

easily manage using a chat channel rather than in

person, though.

It’s also entirely plausible that you represent

merely so you can bask in the love or fear that your

NPCs feel towards you. As I said before, if that’s

what turns you on, hey, you’re the god.

What these three contexts show is that when

you represent in your virtual world, you would do

well to contemplate what the effect will be and

whether this will properly address your purpose

for visiting in the first place.

There is another aspect of representing in a

virtual world that’s worth discussing while we’re

on the subject. I touched on it in Chapter 4 but

didn’t expand upon it at the time. It concerns

information loss.

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Because the virtual worlds we create are

implemented as part of Reality, it seems obvious

that Reality must be the more detailed. After all, it

contains within it the makings of all of its sub-

realities; what they can do, it necessarily must also

be able to do.

This suggests that when we represent in a sub-

reality we are taking on a form less complex than

our true form: more information is required to

define us than the virtual world can accept. Our

NPCs can never fully comprehend us because there

are things about us that cannot be implemented in

their reality. Moving our focus up a level, an

argument equivalent to this can be used to explain

why we can never fully comprehend, say, God. God

is more sophisticated than anything Reality can

implement, so we only see part of the picture

There is another possibility, though:

information gain rather than information loss.

Virtual worlds are made out of 0s and 1s in

computer memory, but they’re not themselves 0s

and 1s – they’re more complex than that. We could

argue that Reality only needs to allow for 0s and 1s

plus the necessary basic hardware

to turn these

This doesn’t sit well with the argument that, because

Reality is too complex to have arisen by chance, a god must

have created it. If said god is necessarily more complex than

Reality then how did the god come about, and why couldn’t

Reality have come about using that same method?

This could be very basic indeed. A Turing machine, which

can read and write (but not overwrite) 0s and 1s from and to

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into physics; whatever we subsequently do with

those 0s and 1s could then exceed what can be

done in Reality. This is because we interpret the

choreographed interactions of those 0s and 1s to

have meaning. More to the point, with sufficiently

advanced AI those 0s and 1s can interpret

themselves to have meaning. They could become

very, very smart.

As I pointed out earlier, we already have

computer programs that can beat humans at a

number of games that we’ve traditionally

associated with intelligence, most notably Chess

and Go. We know the principles of how these

programs work because we wrote them, but we

don’t necessarily know the exact way that they’ll

behave in a given situation. It could therefore

happen that our AI-powered NPCs will in time

become too sophisticated for us humans to

understand. If they do then were we to represent

in their world, we’d suffer the consequences of

information gain, not information loss. Their world

could be too complicated for us.

We do have a defence, in that we can always

understand a virtual world if given sufficient time,

and we can find such time by pausing the world

and not restarting it until our analysis is complete.

This would rather undermine the real-time

an indefinitely-long tape has the same computational power

as any other computer. It may run somewhat slower than

most, though.

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criterion from the definition of what a virtual

world is, though.

The possibility that our creations could become

cleverer than us remains a little unnerving, but

while they’re trapped in their virtual world they

can’t really do much to harm Reality. They could

perhaps manipulate players to do things in Reality

for them, using cunning psychological methods,

but they can’t act in Reality directly.

Well, they can’t unless we help them to do so.

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Chapter 7

MORALITY

Ultimately, our actions within the game, as

members of a player community, are to be

interpreted under the light of our own

existence as moral beings in the world outside

the game. That world and our physical

presence in it are an important factor in the

configuration of the ethics of a computer

game. There are cultural taboos, and there are

firm beliefs that cannot be overruled by the

commitment to the game world. Being a player

is maintaining a part of what makes us moral

beings in the real world as a reference.

(Sicart, 2009)

What’s right? What’s wrong? How do you decide?

Our relationship with virtual worlds is already

complex. Through our designs, we speak to our

players; through our play, we speak to each other.

Through our actions, we shape, form and free our

NPCs; through their actions, they respond in ways

of which we may or may not approve.

What moral obligations do we have, if any, in all

of this? Does the frame of “it’s just a game” give us

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carte blanche? Plenty of games put killing central to

their gameplay – but plenty of films and entire

genres of TV shows place killing at the forefront,

too. Is there a difference between torturing a

character in a book and torturing an NPC in a

virtual world? On what grounds?

Clearly, because players of virtual worlds are of

Reality, we can judge much of their behaviour in

virtual worlds by the ethical standards of Reality

(Sparrow, et al., 2020) – but not quite all of it. We

have yet to develop a solid ethical basis for

assessing player behaviour in virtual worlds

(Reynolds, 2007), so discrepancies are sure to

exist

. In particular, it’s one thing to have a system

of ethics covering player behaviour with regard to

each other and to wider society, but another thing

entirely to develop one for player behaviour with

regard to the NPCs who inhabit virtual worlds.

The NPCs of virtual worlds are not of Reality.

Can we judge their behaviour by Reality’s ethical

standards? The realities you create will raise

questions that you, as their god, have to answer.

Some of these will not be questions you’ll have had

cause to consider before. Do you know how you’d

answer? Do you know why you’d answer that way?

The decisions you make as the god of a virtual

world are situated in a human world of shifting

Entire university courses are devoted to the ethics in and of

games and of those who develop and play them, for example

(Schrier, 2021) (Zagal, 2021).

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moralities. Behaviours may flip back and forth

between acceptability and unacceptability over the

course of decades and even centuries

. Are you sure

your decisions are morally defensible? What would

you do if you later changed your mind?

On what foundations, if any, do you base your

morality anyway?

Changing People

It’s possible that people can change by playing

virtual worlds. Indeed, this is how virtual worlds

are supposed to work: as a structured search for or

affirmation of identity. For role-playing games in

general, the influence on the player of the thoughts

and feelings of their character (and vice versa) even

has a name: bleed (Montola, 2010) (Bowman, 2013).

Could people change their ethical stances from

playing virtual worlds, though?

Well yes, they could do that. If the designer of a

virtual world continually presents a concept within

it as being reasonable or uncontentious, when it is

widely regarded with suspicion in Reality, then

players may nevertheless acknowledge it and

internalise it as acceptable – then take this

Societal approval or otherwise of homosexuality springs to

mind here.

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acceptance back with them to Reality

. Perhaps one

of the clearest examples of this happening came

from the creation of Polly in MUD1.

So, back in 1980, people weren’t playing MUD as

I had hoped. They were supposed to be using it to

free themselves from the constraints of Reality, but

they were sitting in the same computer lab as each

other and operating under the same peer pressures

that they did when they weren’t playing. I wanted

them to experiment with their identities – to role-

play – but they didn’t. They needed permission to

role-play. I decided to give them it.

I created a debug character called Polly. Polly is

the default name given to parrots in the UK

, and

Polly was a bit like a parrot, obeying my commands

without question or thought. Everyone knew that

Polly was me. Phase 1 of my not-exactly-elaborate

plan was complete.

When I had inherited MUD1 from Roy, it didn’t

have gender in it. This was nothing to do with the

fact that all our players were male, but rather

down to time: Roy had wanted to write as much of

It’s not just virtual worlds that can do this, either – so can

games in general (Earp, et al., 2018).

Playwright Ben Jonson’s comedy Volpone (Jonson, 1606)

associates its characters with animals. Sir Politic Would-Be

(“Pol”) and his wife visit Venice from England and repeat the

words of the locals without knowing what they’re saying.

Jonson describes them as parrots, and the name “Pol” for

parrots stuck, eventually becoming Polly for reasons of

cuteness.

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MUD1 as he could while he could, and gender was

easy to add later; communication and other

functionality had priority. Gender was only a

linguistic construct anyway, forced on us by the

English language; Roy had used female pronouns

in his design documentation, so used male

pronouns in the game for balance.

With Polly established, I implemented gender.

Naturally, I used Polly to test my new code. Polly is

a female name, so I answered the question “What

sex do you wish to be?” with an f.

Polly was no longer a parrot. Polly was a

cheerful, somewhat feisty young woman who liked

to help people but got cross if they acted all

superior.

This completed phase two of my plan (and

therefore my plan as a whole, as it only had two

phases). People knew I was Polly, but they also

knew I wasn’t Polly. No-one was going to see Polly

as a sexual object, because I’d designed her more

like a younger sister. My aim was to show that it

was perfectly fine to play MUD as a person you

manifestly were not in Reality. I succeeded, too:

players got the idea, saw that they were protected

by the contextual frame

of the game, and also

began to play as not-themselves. In so doing, they

came to understand in small, incremental ways

more about who their “self” actually was.

This means what it looks as if it should mean, but formally

it’s a technical term (Fine, 1983) (Goffman, 1961).

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To be honest, it was probably too late for most

of the people who were playing when I did this.

Others who played MUD and its descendants did

and still do benefit, though.

The reason I’ve mentioned Polly is that I was

running something of a risk by doing what I did.

Back in 1980, there was strong cultural opposition

to men presenting as women in public, and I’d

effectively done just that. I could have been

accused

of being gay and shunned by my peers as

a result. I had the advantage, though, of not

actually caring what people thought; peer pressure

doesn’t work on me

As a result of Polly, it became commonplace in

virtual worlds for male players to play as female

characters (and, later, females as males) with no

stigma attached. This wasn’t my intention when I

created Polly – she was all about role-playing

–

but it was a welcome side-effect. Misgivings that

people may have had about crossing genders in

Reality were painlessly addressed in virtual worlds;

this in-character adjustment to one particular

I use this word deliberately: the age of consent for

homosexuality in the UK was 21, and I was 20. For young men

my age, being gay was still a crime.

This is why I’m not even going to say here whether I am gay

or not, even though by convention I should at this point be

confirming or denying it to reassure you.

Well, almost all about role-playing. I did actually want to

make the point that gendered pronouns are a monumental

annoyance, too.

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aspect of their moral judgement, they then took

back with them to Reality.

Of course, times change and cultures differ.

Currently, identity markers such as race, disability

and sexuality are not on the whole regarded as

something people ought to role-play

, and the

same sense of taboo could easily be extended to

cross-gender play as well. In conversations at

academic conferences, I’ve experienced gentle

pushback regarding cross-gender play on the

grounds that it’s yet another example of the

patriarchy attempting to colonise a space into

which it has not been invited. Cross-gender play

has even been banned in some mainstream

MMORPGs: in September 2007, Chinese developer

Aurora Technology froze the accounts of male

players who had female characters in King of the

World

. However, given that the rationale for this

was so that the other male players could safely hit

on female characters without the worry that they

might be being played by male players, it’s unlikely

that the patriarchy was weakened by this

endeavour.

How this all plays out as the debate on identity

politics runs its course is, while important, not

why I mentioned Polly. I mentioned her to

A light-skinned human can play as a dark-skinned elf if all

the elves are dark-skinned, but playing as a dark-skinned

human is another matter.

Female players had to prove they were female via webcam.

Pro-tip: this is a great way to lose female players.

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demonstrate that virtual worlds can be used to

influence the moral attitudes of their players.

Because you control your virtual world, you can

to some extent control the experiences players

have in that world. Showing through playing isn’t

the only way to affect a player’s morality, but it’s a

significant one. It’s basically cultural: by setting up

norms of behaviour within the virtual world that

may be different to those the player follows in

Reality, a conversation between the real and the

virtual is established and the player can decide

which makes the most sense to them; this will then

influence their opinion in both worlds

People take their morals with them wherever

they go

and in the case of virtual worlds will often

stress-test them there. Unfortunately, although it

may well help individual players to work through

the consequences of being a jerk in the relatively

safe environment of a game, it’s not necessarily

appreciated by people whose morals have already

been stressed quite enough, thank you. Because of

this, commercial virtual world developers will

usually provide a formal Terms of Service document

(part of the End-User Licence Agreement) to which

their players must adhere

; this prescribes

Indeed, virtual worlds have been set up in the past

specifically to promote such conversations, so as to help

children with their moral development (Bers, 2001).

Exception: politics.

We never bothered with these in the early days. If anyone

did anything we didn’t like, we hit their character with a

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384

sanctions for behaviours that are deemed

unacceptable by the virtual world’s operators.

Another, potentially more important way of

influencing players through the design of a virtual

world is via its gameplay. Gameplay, particularly

systems content, is how games convey their

artistic payload to their players

. The expression

of ideas persuasively through processes in this

manner is called procedural rhetoric (Bogost, 2007),

and it’s very powerful. The way we choose to

implement our systems in virtual worlds defines

what we say to our players. In short, physics is our

mode of communication.

When I say that this is a powerful approach, I

mean it. In 2016, I attended the Project Horseshoe

conference

for game designers, at which the

discussion group I joined spent a pleasant few days

discussing how to weaponise games. It’s

remarkably easy. Indeed, it’s frighteningly easy. It’s

so easy, that we didn’t publish our report

informing the world how to

: blind players; make

Finger of Death spell. As gods, we were perhaps a little more

Old Testament than New Testament in our outlook.

Let’s put it this way: the art in games has to be in the

gameplay, because gameplay is the only thing games have

that nothing else has. If you put the art in the story or the

graphics or the music, you may as well write a book, paint a

picture or compose a rhapsody.

Sadly, this remarkable, invitation-only annual event didn’t

make it through the COVID-19 era.

Warning: impending list of massively-split infinitives.

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them go mad; break up their relationships; empty

their bank accounts in our favour; cause them

physical injuries; and change their political views

It’s only because game designers tend to be decent

people that no-one is doing this right now for

kicks, although some of the more ruthless

commercially-minded game developers may be

doing some of it for profit (Zagal, et al., 2013).

I could at this juncture delve into the ways that

designers can, do and (perhaps) should influence

players both positively and negatively, but it’s a

topic that has already been covered better by

others

. Besides, it’s not actually what I want to

discuss here. The thing is, you and your players are

of Reality, and in Reality you’re not a god.

Virtual worlds allow us to look at something

different entirely: the morality of gods.

Mortality

One of the features our ancestors identified that

distinguishes gods from humans is that gods are

immortal and humans aren’t. Indeed, from one

The fact that the conference took place directly after the

results of the 2016 US presidential election were announced

was not a factor in this.

For example (Sicart, 2009), from which the opening

quotation of this chapter comes.

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perspective, mortality is a gift granted by gods to

humans – a gift, rather than a punishment,

because without mortality life has no meaning

Our ancestors also used mortality to distinguish

humans from animals: both humans and animals

die, but only humans know that they, personally,

are going to die

Gods are indeed immortal with respect to the

worlds they have created. If, as a god of a reality,

the character I’m playing in that reality dies, well

I’ll still carry on living in Reality so haven’t really

“died” at all. I can return to my created world any

time I like resurrected as my old character or

reincarnated as a new one; I control the physics, so

even if returning is impossible, it’s only impossible

while I deem it to be impossible.

This doesn’t mean I’m immortal in Reality, sad

to say. I don’t wish to test this experimentally, but

it’s my understanding that when I die in Reality, I’ll

no longer be able to visit any of my virtual worlds.

Not only from the point of view of the rest of you in

Reality, but also from the point of view of the NPCs

in my virtual worlds, I’ll cease to exist. Needless to

say, the NPCs will have no way of knowing that I’m

dead in Reality; all they’ll have is a growing lack of

evidence that I’m intervening in their affairs (that’s

This does suggest that any post-death, eternal-afterlife

existence might need work, but we can ignore that for now.

Philosophers use the term dasein to describe the

experience of being that is particular to humans. You can

blame (Heidegger, 1927) for this, too.

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if they ever had any such evidence in the first

place).

Non-player characters in a virtual world are

usually mortal, but they don’t have to be that way.

A god of their world may not be of the opinion that

mortality is a gift and could easily make all NPCs

immortal – it’s not hard to do. However, said god

could still change their mind at any moment. Even

immortal NPCs are only potentially immortal.

Most modern MMOs do have some NPCs who

are largely immortal (because they’re shopkeepers

or quest-dispensers that it would be inconvenient

to lose), but for the majority of mobs the very point

of their existence is to be killed. They tend to come

back to life a short while afterwards (that is, they

respawn) for the very purpose of being killed anew.

Being killed is their job.

It may be that they don’t respawn individually,

but all respawn at once when the zone or instance

they inhabit resets. Nevertheless, they will pretty

well always return

. NPCs in MMOs are therefore

mortal in the sense that they can be killed, but for

them the consequences of being killed are much

less drastic than they are for those of us who live in

Reality.

So, non-player characters that die in virtual

worlds normally get better after a while and return

to life. What about player characters, though?

It may be that they won’t under very specific conditions,

such as one-off story events, but these are exceptionally rare.

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388

What happens when they (the characters, not the

players) die?

This brings us to the topic of permadeath

Permadeath is the situation in which, when a

character dies, that character is annihilated. In a

virtual world, this means deleting its record from

the database. It’s possible to have permadeath for

NPCs, but few if any MMOs do this routinely.

Mostly, therefore, the term “permadeath” is used

exclusively with reference to player characters.

So, to repeat the question: if your character dies

in a virtual world, what happens to it?

In modern MMOs, it comes back to life. There

will usually be a small penalty, such as having your

“spirit” need to return to your “body” from a

respawn point

, and it’s also possible that your

character may under-perform for a while until

some negative after-effect of death or resurrection

wears off. There could even be a material loss in

terms of damage to or destruction of your

equipment. It’s very unlikely that your character

will lose progression, though.

What almost certainly won’t happen is that your

character will be obliterated and you’ll have to

start a new one: permadeath.

Permadeath is prevalent in many games; it’s a

major feature of most arcade games, for example.

My fear of stating the obvious notwithstanding: it’s a

portmanteau word coming from “permanent”+”death”.

Such a return is known as a corpse run.

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It’s a very seldom-seen mechanic in virtual worlds,

though. This is because players really, really don’t

like it when it happens to them. The longer you

play a character, the more you accept said

character as being a part of your identity; losing a

character is therefore like losing a piece of who you

are. People don’t enjoy that one jot.

I know this, because MUD had permadeath. If

your character was killed in combat, it stayed

killed. Once you’d mastered some basic skills

though, such a fate was relatively easy to avoid: it

pretty well only ever happened if you took a risk

and it didn’t come off. People could play for months

without seeing their character killed, whereas in

today’s MMOs player characters can happily be

slaughtered dozens of times a session.

Nevertheless, enough people didn’t like

permadeath that the penalty for being killed was

gradually watered down in successive generations

of MUDs until we got to the anodyne wrist-slap we

have in MMOs today. Death in modern virtual

worlds is less “the making of a hero” and more

“part of the grind” (Klastrup, 2007).

Reality does have permadeath.

Unlike with virtual worlds, when you die in

Reality, that’s it. You may well live on in a higher

reality (say, Heaven), but you’re not going to come

back to life in Reality because no-one like you ever

Principally, remembering to type FLEE (or F for short)

when you looked like losing.

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has done ever ever. A demigod, or an aspect of a

god, might have done so in the past; you’re not one

of those, though. Insofar as Reality is concerned,

you’re an NPC. Death for you means deletion from

Reality’s database. The best you can hope for is

that you’ll be respawned as a reinitialised baby

with no recollection of your previous existence nor

any prospect of gaining it.

You can see why people playing virtual worlds

for fun might gravitate to ones where this doesn’t

happen.

To summarise, then: gods basically don’t die, or

if they do

then they can come back whenever.

NPCs are either effectively immortal (when their

unavailability would be bothersome for players) or

they’re killable (except during those short periods

in which they’re recovering from being killed the

previous time). The question of permadeath asks

only whether, when player characters die, they

should be expunged or not, and the answer in

almost all cases these days is that no, they

shouldn’t be.

All the above is correct in today’s MMOs, but

today’s NPCs aren’t sapient whereas tomorrow’s

will be. Would having sapient NPCs alter our

thinking in any way?

This famously happened to the designer Richard Garriott

on 8

August 1997, when his character, Lord British, was

killed while making an appearance to mark the end of the

beta-test for Ultima Online (Garriott & Fisher, 2017).

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Let’s start by considering whether we should

make all our NPCs just flat out immortal. It’s

straightforward to implement, so should we do it?

It would make for a less entertaining game if

player characters couldn’t kill NPCs, but that’s not

in itself a reason to allow such deaths to happen.

Combat appears in virtual worlds because it adds

conflict, which adds drama, which leads to story.

There are other ways to add drama, though, and

it’s debatable whether combat adds much drama

anyway in a virtual world without permadeath (so,

almost all of them).

From the perspective of NPCs, if they were

immortal then they’d be living a life with no

consequences and therefore no meaning. They

could do whatever they liked and they wouldn’t

die. What’s the worst that could happen to them?

Incarceration? For someone who can’t die, all of

their reality is a prison.

Actually, worse things could happen if we gods

allowed them to happen. For example, we could

have it that NPCs didn’t regrow their heads

following decapitation. If we did choose not to

allow the regeneration of detached or damaged

body parts, though, then after a while the whole

NPC population would be invalided through

accidents. Besides, it rather runs counter to the

spirit of immortality if you have to spend the rest

of eternity in a bowl because you were run over by

a steamroller; were we to implement immortality,

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392

then, we’d probably want to have invulnerability

come with it

So, we should give them immortality (plus

invulnerability) by default but let them die if they

want to escape this fate?

Well, we could certainly contemplate allowing

them to decide for themselves when to die,

permitting suicide but no other form of death.

They’d still have a life of no consequences, though.

They could behave in as ghastly a way as they

desired to other NPCs; the worst repercussions

would involve being locked away for a few years. A

few years is nothing if you live forever, and neither

is a hefty fine.

Perhaps, then, we should allow them to live

forever but be killable. They don’t age or die of

disease, but now decapitation has a similar effect

on them as it does on us. This would make them

have to get along with one another. Their actions

would have consequences; their lives would have

meaning.

We could still grant some of them full

immortality, of course. Reality’s gods can lead

meaningful lives and yet remain immortal. Zeus

and the other Olympians may not themselves ever

die, but we do; by interacting with mortals,

immortals can experience some of the effects of

Not if we didn’t care, of course, or if we did care but rather

liked the idea of subjecting our NPCs to torment in

perpetuity.

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mortality. If you can’t die but your child can then

looking after your child gives your own life

meaning, regardless.

We could do this for some subset of our NPCs if

we wished. We’d let these lucky ones live forever

and the rest not. We couldn’t allow them all to live

forever, though: someone has to be able to die, or

that whole death-brings-meaning vibe wouldn’t

apply.

Another consequence of giving all NPCs

immortality is that if we were to let them breed

then we’d have an ever-growing number of them.

Where would they all live? They’d expand until

they filled the universe, like tribbles out of Star

Trek.

Oh, wait, no they wouldn’t. We can enlarge their

universe as much as we like. If it looks close to

getting full, we can just add some more of it –

doing so automatically if we coded it right.

Eventually, we may approach a hardware limit, but

even that would merely imply that the world

would run slower and slower (looked at from

Reality; its NPCs wouldn’t notice any difference).

Suppose that we did decide to allow our NPCs

to die by a hand other than their own, or even by

the environment (if they accidentally fall down a

mine shaft, they’re gone). Do we still make them

live forever otherwise, or do we time-limit their

lifespans so they’re going to die when they reach

the age cap no matter how careful they’ve been? If

we did decide to give them finite lifespans, we

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394

could zap them dead instantly when the time

came. That would be clean and entirely painless.

Alternatively, we could gradually degrade their

systems until a major one failed, whereupon death

would occur; we’d ensure that this was pretty well

guaranteed to happen before the NPC reached the

age of, oh, let’s go with 140. We could make the

process come with so many inconveniences that

eventually death was a welcome release.

Of course, if having them welcome death is

what we want then we can do better than this. We

can introduce diseases, parasites, icky fungal

infections and all manner of other conditions that

will finish someone off well before their theoretical

maximum age. We can even have them spawn dead

if we want.

So, which of these possibilities are we going to

go for?

Remember, we’re assuming that these NPCs are

sapient. What I’m asking you is whether you want

to murder them or not.

If you do then as a bonus you get to decide how

much you want to torture them first.

Now if you don’t actually care about your NPCs,

you can make your decision objectively. You’d

probably want them to die, because then the

players who play your virtual world will find it

more realistic and perhaps more fun. Sure, the

NPCs may be sapient, but they’re sapient bits in a

database and it’s your database so tra-la-la, they’re

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not real people and you can do with them (or their

bits) whatever you fancy.

If you do care about your NPCs, you have a

tough decision to make. Are the consequences of

not having them die worse (for them) than the

consequences of having them die?

You can’t get around the problem by

retroactively removing sapience from your NPCs,

because the effect of this is pretty much the same

as killing them anyway (the independent-thinking

individuals they were no longer exist).

Furthermore, because your NPCs are sapient

they’ll have free will; with free will comes the

capacity to be a jerk. Some will be bigger jerks than

others, causing their fellow NPCs suffering and

torment. You can’t stop them from being jerks

without removing their free will, but to do that

would (as I’ve just mentioned) effectively kill them.

Should death be the penalty for being a jerk?

It seems a bit disproportionate, given that

jerkness is a spectrum.

Should death be the penalty for encountering a

jerk?

This also sounds a tad unfair, but if your world

allows for NPC deaths and your NPCs have free

will then some NPCs will be big enough jerks that

they’ll kill others.

We could, if we wished, have it that if an NPC

misuses their free will and kills another NPC, it’s

the one doing the killing who dies; the other, we

can patch up good as new. After all, it could be

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argued that it’s a little excessive for an innocent

NPC to have to die so that their loved ones,

through grief, can grow as people and their killer

can develop a conscience.

These questions aren’t merely rhetorical.

They’re actual, legitimate questions that someone,

at some point in the future, is going to have to

answer. If your virtual world has intelligent NPCs

then you, as the god of that reality, will be that

person.

Would your answers be the same as the ones a

god of Reality might give, or has given, with regard

to dealing with free will and jerkness?

For the past few pages, I’ve talked about death

as if it were absolute, but in today’s virtual worlds

it’s not. Dead NPCs don’t stay dead, they respawn.

Perhaps respawning, rather than oblivion, is a

more reasonable way to deal with the aftermath of

a future, sapient NPC’s death?

Well, it does still mean that your NPCs will live

forever, albeit possibly in patches. The efficacy of

respawning depends on how long they’re out of it

before you bring them back

. Even short delays

could give this kind of death meaningful

consequences: the NPC concerned could miss an

event to which they were looking forward. Then

again, smart NPCs might choose death-with-

Increasing this period is a neat way of avoiding

overcrowding.

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respawn as a way of missing an event that they

were dreading.

If you determine that your dead NPCs will

respawn, you then have to decide what of them

respawns. Do they get the same body, or a new one

that doesn’t have a spear through its heart? If they

do get a new one, does it look the same as the old

one or could it be radically different

? Also, do

they retain any of their old memories post-

respawn? If they don’t then are they really the

same person or a different one inhabiting the dead

one’s (possibly new) body?

Plenty of accounts of what happens when you

die in Reality have you being reborn and starting

from scratch again with no memories of your

previous existence. Would you want that for your

NPCs? If so, why? All that the new character would

share with the old one would be the use of the

same bits in the database; is that really enough

that you can legitimately say it’s the same person?

If I close my word processor and open my

spreadsheet, the latter could happen to be loaded

into the same PC memory locations as the former

was; is this a basis for saying they share an

identity?

We can be selective about all of this. You could

make it that NPCs who respawned got their old

“Hmm, I don’t think I had this many Y chromosomes before

that bungee rope snapped. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t a

porpoise, too.”.

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memories back when they reached the age of 21.

You could phase or instance their reality, so that in

one copy of it a killed NPC lives on and in another

they cease to be; that way, you’d obtain whatever

benefits you saw in having them die, but without

having to bother your conscience excessively. You

could implement unprecedented ideas, such as

making it that they respawn in two bodies as the

same person simultaneously. We’re gods, we can

do whatever we like!

Why would we want to do any of this, though?

Why would we not want to do it?

I have my own opinions – of course I do – but

this isn’t about my opinions: it’s about yours. In

dealing with the mortality or otherwise of free-

thinking, intelligent NPCs, you could decree any of

these solutions (and many more besides).

How would you handle the deaths of those to

whom you had given life? More to the point, why

would you do it that way as opposed to some other

way?

Would you even have death?

The Soul of an NPC

The fundamental question of morality for gods is

how to treat their creations.

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Although “creations” here formally includes

everything from gold dust to interstellar voids, the

biggest issues concern those creations that are

sapient beings. For virtual worlds, I’ll therefore be

continuing my assumption that it’s the future and

your NPCs are sapient in some way, although for

many people the more easily-satisfied condition of

sentience is enough to bring issues of morality to

bear

. Also, although I’ll perhaps be pushing at

your moral boundaries by asking awkward

questions, I won’t be prescribing any answers. It’s

up to you, not me, to decide how you’d treat your

intelligent NPCs. I may have my own ideas on what

I’d do, but I’m not you; I’ve merely thought about

this for longer than you have.

Let’s start with a question that isn’t awkward

though: will your NPCs have souls?

There are two ways to look at this. The first is

to ask whether they have souls at the level of

Reality (that is, some means by which you as a

human being have a soul also works for them). If,

say, God gave you your soul then presumably God

could give your NPCs souls, too; you could well

meet them in your shared afterlife.

We haven’t had virtual worlds for long enough

to discern if NPCs have actual Reality-level souls or

Killing animals is cruel because they may get anxious

immediately before you put a bolt through their brains, but

plants and fungi, well, they deserve it.

Its answer certainly is, but the question itself isn’t.

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not, but as they’re pretty mindless at the moment

we’re probably safe in supposing that they don’t.

This may change should they acquire free will. If it

does then whether it’s a good idea or not is really

dependent on the source of the souls; a progressive

god might be pleased to dish them out; a

reactionary god could take a rather more hard-line

view. We, as the NPCs’ gods, would only get to

delimit what could carry such a Reality-level soul.

The second way to look at the question of

whether NPCs have souls is at the level of the

virtual world. Will you, as the designer of the

virtual world, be giving each of your NPCs a soul?

It doesn’t matter for now how you’d implement

the concept – as an entry in a database, or a

random-number seed for procedural generation, or

a bot attached to a character, whatever – it’s just a

general question. Would you incorporate an

immortal element into your NPCs’ make-up such

that either it affected their actions, their actions

affected it, or both?

You might decide that no, you don’t want your

NPCs to have souls. They in turn might decide that

they do have them, though, and act accordingly.

For the purpose of this observation, we’re temporarily not

in the future.

Arguments can be made that you have to do so, because

souls are necessary for life. Plato outlines four such positions

in Phaedo (Plato, trans. 1892), but as each one took me a page

to describe and (for virtual worlds) to dismiss, I decided to

spare you the tedium of the discussion by cutting it.

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Are they somehow giving themselves souls if they

do that? Or does a soul have to be more concrete in

programming terms to qualify?

Let’s say you do decide that your NPCs have

souls. You either generate a new soul when a new

NPC appears, or you take one from stock (possibly

one that’s already been used, reincarnation-style).

If you don’t reincarnate then once they’ve been

used

you either have to preserve the souls of the

deceased somewhere

or to obliterate them

entirely. The dead vastly outnumber the living in

Reality, so you could expect the same thing to

happen with your virtual world after a while, too.

Nevertheless, given how inexpensive hard drives

are these days, and the rate at which capacity is

increasing over time, you’re probably OK storage-

wise for a while yet.

Taking a soul from stock assumes a stock of

souls. Reincarnation has a bit of a numbers

problem in Reality, because the living population is

constantly growing; therefore, it’s not the case that

the moment one body stops working another body

immediately becomes available – bodies are being

produced faster than souls are becoming reusable.

You can address that in your virtual world, of

This is a euphemism for “once you’ve killed the NPC”,

which you’re perfectly within your rights never to do. For the

sake of the argument, though, let’s say that after reading the

previous section of this book you decided that NPC mortality

was nevertheless the way to go.

Please don’t suggest a blockchain.

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course, simply by not allowing births until

someone dies to free up a soul. If you don’t do this,

however, you’ll need to have a vast reserve of souls

(at least equal to the number of NPCs who can

possibly exist at once) queueing

patiently to be

reincarnated; either that, or when you want a soul

and your reserve is empty, that’s the point at

which you create a new soul to use.

So, you have either a recycled soul or a freshly-

made soul, and you need to attach it to a body in

your virtual world. When will you do that?

If your NPCs are born fully-formed, it’s not

really a problem: the body appears out of nowhere,

you attach the soul to it and off it goes. If NPCs are

born using a similar kind of process to that which

humans use in Reality, though, you’ll need to invest

some thought in it.

The first point at which you could associate a

soul with an NPC is at conception. Now if your

virtual world is anything like Reality, roughly one

pregnancy in eight will end in miscarriage

(National Health Service, 2018) – more if you count

the ones that happen before the pregnancy is

noticed. Are you going to fix that in your virtual

world? If not, will you simply obliterate the

miscarried soul, or put it back in the queue for

rebirth (possibly at the front), or send it to an

afterlife? If it’s an afterlife, would that be a pleasant

I do enjoy the fact that this word has five consecutive

vowels.

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one (the soul has done nothing wrong) or an

unpleasant one (the soul has done nothing right)?

You might decide to wait until the unborn

virtual foetus develops enough of a mind to be able

to make decisions before you allocate it a soul.

However, depending on what your criteria for

judging free will are, this stage could still be

arrived at before the NPC is miscarried. OK, well in

that case perhaps you should wait until the NPC is

capable of surviving birth and attach a soul then?

Or wait until the child is actually born?

That would at least give the soul a shot at

independent life, but unless you did something

about it you’d still end up attaching souls to some

bodies that are born so severely disabled that they

don’t have and never will have the capacity to

support any sense of self, let alone a decent quality

of existence. If you give those bodies a soul, why

wouldn’t you also give a soul to very clever

animals? Maybe you do. What’s the cut-off point in

intelligence for soul or no soul then? If you recycle

souls, is this your way of keeping ones that are

problematic in some fashion out of circulation?

Perhaps you wait for a while after a baby has

been born, attaching a soul discreetly when it

starts to communicate. You could even let other

NPCs determine when a soul is attached, through a

process such as baptism. That way, souls wouldn’t

be disadvantaged by being attached to a body that

lacks the hardware to execute free will. They would

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404

merely be disadvantaged (or advantaged) by the

situation of the parents you gave them.

There is a way out of having to make these

tricky decisions, by the way. You’re a god: you can

make the act of giving an NPC a soul (at

conception) itself guarantee that the NPC will

develop into a fully-formed being with free will.

Basically, you make the ones you give souls to

invulnerable until they’re capable of making their

own decisions concerning their destiny. This does

mean that you have to decide what to do with

those soulless individuals who somehow manage

to survive for as long as those to whom you give

souls. Your choices are: arrange for them to die

(“they have no souls, so it’s not really murder”);

allow them to live on without a soul (“no-one will

notice, least of all them”); or recognise their

persistence by giving them a soul (“they’ve earned

their freedom”).

Also, remember that as a god you get to decide

not only when to attach a soul, but when to detach

it. Even if you go with the fully-born-as-an-adult

approach, does it remain the case that some NPCs

will die within a day yet others will be rewarded (or

punished) with a long, long life? You have to

determine what solution you’d find morally

acceptable.

Maybe you’ll decide it’s not worth the effort and

resolve not to implement souls at all.

Now, I’ve asked a lot of questions here. These

are questions for you to answer, in readiness for

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when you’re a god of a virtual world with sapient

NPCs. Note that I’m not asking what [insert name

of a god of Reality here] would do – you don’t get to

pass the buck. I’m asking what you would do

regarding the question of whether you’d give your

NPCs souls. Your virtual world is not Reality, and

any decisions made about why souls may or may

not exist in Reality can’t be assumed to apply to

your virtual world. You have to determine whether

to have souls in your world, and if so then who gets

one and when.

In practice, how you would answer these

questions really depends on what you want your

NPCs to have a soul for. Why would you give them

one? What kind of information would it contain?

Do you want a full personality inventory or would

a conception number suffice?

Why would you want to record a soul anyway,

for that matter?

The most common reason among gods for

giving their creations souls is, in a word, metrics.

One of the jobs of Anubis, the jackal-headed

Ancient Egyptian god, is to weigh the heart of a

dead person

against the feather of the god Ma’at.

The heart is where the soul

can be found, and

Ma’at embodies truth, order, law, justice, balance

It’s impractical for living people.

Souls are made up of many components, but these stick

together while you’re alive and for long enough afterwards

that Anubis can weigh them.

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and morality

. Souls that are lighter than Ma’at’s

feather ascend to the Field of Reeds (desirable);

souls that are heavier are eaten by the crocodile-

lion-hippopotamus god, Ammit (undesirable)

. The

Book of the Dead is silent on what happens if your

soul weighs exactly the same as Ma’at’s feather, so

probably wasn’t written by a programmer.

Implementing Anubis’s scales is fairly easy: for

each new soul, you just have to initialise a counter

with a number of penalty points (possibly zero, but

more if you like the idea of original sin)

representing the amount more than Ma’at’s

feather that the soul weighs. You add points for

bad deeds and subtract points for good deeds

. If

the running total of penalty points is negative

when the character dies, their heart weighs less

than Ma’at’s feather so off they go to the Field of

Reeds. Otherwise, it’s feeding time for Ammit.

Many virtual worlds already do something like

this for player characters, most obviously with the

light-side, dark-side mechanic of Star Wars: the Old

Republic. Indeed, so often does this kind of in-game

Ancient Egyptians can correct me if I’m wrong, but I

suspect it may actually be more accurate to say that truth,

order, law, justice, balance and morality embody Ma’at.

Reminder: I use the term god in a gender-inclusive fashion

throughout this book, so don’t write to tell me that Ma’at and

Ammit are both female, please – I do know this.

A similar tallying approach is employed at Christmas with

regard to whether children have been naughty or nice.

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action-based marking take place for assorted

purposes, it has a name: it’s a reputation system

Today’s reputation systems apply to player

characters only. They don’t apply to NPCs, because

NPCs don’t have enough free will to merit one. If

they did, though?

Well, you could use a mechanism like this to

decide which of your NPCs deserved something

pleasant after they died and which of them

deserved something less-than-pleasant. A soul

arrives, you look at its weight, and determine on

that basis whether it’s going to the good place or

the bad place

. If you’re forgiving, you could send

someone to the good place even when their

scorecard says the bad place

As it happens, the weighing isn’t the hard part.

The hard part is the adding and removing of points

every time someone does something bad or good.

That’s a value judgement. Would you do it

personally, deciding for each NPC on a case-by-

case basis whether their actions were legitimate or

illegitimate? Or would you automate it instead

These are also sometimes known as karma systems (Knoll,

2018) or morality meters (Formosa, et al., 2022).

Ancient Mesopotamians will be smiling here, as they know

there isn’t a good place, just a bad place – Kur.

Sending people to the bad place when their scorecard says

the good place is also an option.

There are already classic role-playing games that simulate

this for player characters, if not non-player characters

(Casas-Roma, et al., 2019).

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There could be millions of NPCs, and reputation

systems are notoriously exploitable (Farmer, 2012).

You could always have the NPCs judge themselves

(so if one does something that it knows it

shouldn’t, that’s a mark against it), but your

difficulty there is that they may be mistaken. They

may think a mercy killing is good but you may

think it isn’t, or the other way round; unless you

explicitly tell them, they’re not going to know –

and if you do explicitly tell them, well they’re now

grounding their actions in their fear of retribution

rather than as a consequence of their own

righteousness.

Let’s say you do want to tell them whether an

action is good or not. You can achieve this by

sending its rating to the mind of the NPC in

question as a kind of sensory input: in the same

way that they can tell hot from cold, they can tell

right from wrong. That might make it a little too

easy, though, leaving little need for reflection on

their part and no need for metrics on yours.

If you want to tell the NPCs how to behave, but

in such a way that they have to make continual

interpretative appraisals of their actions that you

can subsequently measure, you basically have four

ways of doing so.

Firstly, you could appear at regular intervals

and repeat your message. Every year, say, you’d

show up and state the rules. You wouldn’t have to

have a Q&A (you’re a god, after all), you’d just tell

everyone the rules directly. You may wish to send a

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demigod or other supernatural being to read the

rules for you if your majesty is too great for your

NPCs to comprehend, but this would be easy to

arrange. That said, making regular, scheduled

appearances to deliver a message is an option that

has never been exercised in Reality (as far as I can

ascertain), so it may come with subtle

disadvantages of which I’m unaware; there’s no

obvious reason it wouldn’t work for a virtual world,

though.

Secondly, you could appear just once to deliver

your message. You’d make sure that your words

were recorded verbatim, to reduce the room for

misinterpretation. Later generations of NPCs, who

have missed your appearance, will still be able to

access your message through the recording (or a

certified transcription of it). In Reality, this is what

the god of Islam did: he arranged for the angel

Gabriel to recite the content of The Qur’an to the

prophet Muhammad, who wrote it all down. This

approach works fine, but you are somewhat reliant

on a single person to disseminate your words;

unless you choose that person wisely

, you might

have to keep repeating the exercise until you find

someone capable enough to carry it through.

Thirdly, you could appear for an extended

period, during which time you’d recite your

message a bit at a time. If your NPCs didn’t seem

to get it, you could repeat it in different forms until

Muhammad was clearly a good choice.

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they did. You wouldn’t have your words recorded

directly-as-spoken, but instead would encourage

literate individuals to write down later what they

remembered. This would ensure that the rules

most important to them were the ones they

highlighted. The result would be a set of

regulations that largely reflected your views but

which were subject to reinterpretation if the

virtual world’s society moved on. In Reality, this is

what the god of Christianity did: he appeared as

Jesus but never wrote anything down himself,

leaving the writers of the gospels to put their own

particular spin on events.

Fourthly, you could go open source. You’d

maybe set the ball rolling by introducing ideas, but

you’d do so to NPCs with no recording ability (so

that they couldn’t write the ideas down and

thereby ossify them); generations of NPCs could

then work through the ideas, adding their own

interpretations and metaphorical restatements.

After a while, there’d be a whole morass of

different perspectives through which your NPCs

would have to navigate in order to figure out how

they should behave. This very act of navigating

would then itself become a path to understanding.

In Reality, this is what seems to have happened

with Hinduism: eternal truths were revealed to

sages thousands of years ago, and analyses of these

truths in the intervening millennia have offered up

myriad ways to think about them.

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For your virtual world, these are all decent

templates; you can, of course, decide on some other

way to convey your message, but given that the

second, third and fourth of those I listed are tried

and tested, they’d obviously be among the front-

runners. I’d nevertheless recommend the first way

myself, because it reduces the chance that some

rogue NPC just makes up a god and promulgates

an unhelpful message supposedly emanating from

this figure. If you, or one of your agents, can be

relied upon to appear periodically and explain the

true rules of behaviour, this would prevent such

invented messages from accruing credibility. You

can then judge souls in the knowledge that the

NPCs in recent possession of them were fully

appraised of the correct parameters of evaluation.

You can side-step this whole question, by the

way, simply by preordaining at birth whether an

individual is good or evil. Then, when they die, you

can reward the former and punish the latter

without having to bother examining how they

conducted their life. This does have an aroma of

unfairness about it, but no-one said gods had to be

fair.

As for why you might want to judge souls in the

first place, well as I said, the majority of publicised

reasons involve some kind of assessment. Most of

the gods who favour such judging in Reality seem

to want to do so to encourage moral behaviour, but

that doesn’t mean that we have to use the metrics

we gather for similar purposes. If we so chose, we

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could allow NPCs to enter paradise based on how

well they looked after their teeth, as some kind of

advertisement for dental health products in

Reality. We don’t have to reference their morals in

our filtering metric at all – we can use any of an

NPC’s properties. If you find a particular NPC

interesting or entertaining, you may want to give

it another opportunity to live so that you can see

what further madcap adventures it has. You might

even want to ascend it to Reality, so you can meet

it and hang out together. Perhaps NPCs are more

intelligent than we are, and you’re judging which

to bring to Reality to solve some important issue of

the day. There are many possibilities.

If you don’t plan on judging your NPCs, there

are few compelling reasons for giving them souls.

The main one would be for back-up purposes, so

you can restore the being of an NPC in the event of

an error (say, death by programming mistake).

This would suggest that souls can be copied,

implying that in theory you could, if you wanted,

have duplicated souls be present in the same

virtual world at once. This would certainly help if

the number of souls in your pool was less than the

number of bodies that needed them. There are no

claims that this happens in Reality, though, so if we

human beings do have souls then either they’re so

woven into the fabric of Reality as to be

inseparable from it or there’s no god that wants

individual souls to exist as multiple copies.

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Before I leave the subject of souls, I’ll mention

another way of having them which side-steps the

problematic possibilities introduced by a soul-

copying solution. It could be that players act as

souls. NPCs don’t have souls, but player characters

do. If you think about it, what happens to a player

character is very similar to reincarnation

(Mukherjee, 2009). The player logs in, the character

blinks into existence, the character exists until the

player logs off, whereupon it blinks out of

existence until the cycle repeats.

If this is how souls work in Reality then we

human beings could actually be player characters

rather than NPCs – we just don’t know that we are.

That said, in Reality we don’t remember any

existence we might have beyond it

, whereas in

virtual worlds we are fully aware of our existence

in Reality, so such an account seems unlikely.

That’s today, though. The issue will doubtless

be easy to remedy using the memory-suppression

technology that we’ll have invented by the time we

have sapient NPCs. We could turn players’

memories of Reality off while they were playing,

then turn them on again when they stopped

There are many examples of people who claim to

remember past lives in Reality, but hardly any who claim to

remember past lives in a higher reality. Although the former

could in theory provide evidence for the correctness of their

memories by referring to as-yet-unknown information that is

subsequently uncovered, the latter could only hope to do so

by corroborating one another’s testimonies.

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playing. Worryingly for this proposal, it’s not

immediately obvious why we wouldn’t want to

retain our higher-reality memories. Might we

perhaps be being judged by others in Reality in a

manner which would be compromised if we

remembered the fact? Could we perhaps be

judging ourselves in Reality?

One way to examine your own morality is to see

how nice you are to people you don’t know. If the

person you don’t know is yourself, that’s going to

accelerate your process of moral development

more than somewhat.

Being Moral Beings

A moral being is one who is capable of

comparing his past and future actions and

motives,— of approving of some and

disapproving of others.

(Darwin, 1871)

Are your NPCs moral beings?

Come to that, are you a moral being?

This is from the 1871 first edition. The 1874 second edition

puts it slightly differently: “A moral being is one who is

capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives,

and of approving or disapproving of them.”. You could say

that Darwin’s views evolved in the interim.

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Ethics are rules of moral behaviour defined

externally, such as codes of conduct in business or

the workplace. Morals are your own, personal

principles regarding what’s right and wrong

Morals are often informed by ethics: your view

of what’s right may come from the ethics espoused

by a political manifesto, say, or from the principles

of a religion laid down in one or more sacred texts.

A clear explanation of the distinction between

morals and ethics was given by Cynthia Payne,

who became a cause célèbre in 1980s Britain after

being imprisoned for “keeping a disorderly house”

(that is, a brothel). Her establishment was

frequented by pillars of society such as members of

parliament, lawyers, company directors, clergymen

and at least one peer of the realm. When asked on

the BBC’s Newsnight why she wouldn’t name any of

her famous clients, she replied, “Well my morals is

low, but my ethics is high”.

Ultimately, your morals are your own. Whether

other people believe that you’re moral or immoral

depends on their own morals. Nevertheless,

common approaches to thinking about morality do

exist, which can be collected and aggregated to

create independent, self-consistent theories of

ethics. These theories may then be applied

In many traditions of south Asia, the ability to distinguish

right from wrong and to act in line with this is what

separates humans from (other) animals. It’s a key component

of the concept of dharma.

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(possibly by a god) to determine if an action is or

isn’t ethical. This approach is called normative

ethics.

There are several such normative theories, the

four main ones being:

• Virtue ethics. This system rates certain

character traits as being positive (say,

courage, prudence, justice and

temperance

) and their opposites as being

negative. Its main problem is that people

may disagree over what’s positive and

what’s negative.

• Consequentialism. This system rates actions

as being moral or not depending on what

happens as a result of doing them (say,

leading to the most happiness for the most

people

). Its main problem is that people

may have different priorities in assessing

result desirability.

• Deontology. This system bases morality in

following rules out of duty. Your actions are

more important than their consequences.

The rules capture ideas that are intrinsically

good whatever (say, doing what a god tells

These particular four were the cardinal virtues of Greco-

Roman antiquity, which later fed into Christian theology.

This particular example is called utilitarianism. Maximising

your own happiness is egoism.

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you to do

). Its main problem is in deciding

what’s intrinsically good.

• Social contract theory. This system bases

morality in the rules that people will follow

on condition that other people will also

follow them. Its main problem is that other

people may not follow them

All of these approaches basically push the

problem of morality one step back. They still

require the morals of individuals to guide the

criteria that the theories employ. People can and

do have different ways of looking at things; the

feminist-formulated ethics of care emphasises

interpersonal relationships as virtues, for example,

rather than traditional male-oriented virtues such

as ambition and magnanimity. Entire cultures can

judge actions in different ways: in some parts of

the world, bribery is acceptable because it’s the

only way some people can afford to live; in others,

bribery is unacceptable because it’s the only way

some people can afford to live.

Note that if you have a theory of mind, you will

benefit from an understanding of the ethics and

morals of others even should you have neither

This is divine command theory. Not killing someone because

your god told you not to is moral; not killing someone

because you simply can’t be bothered is not moral. For virtual

worlds, of course, we’re the gods.

In games, the magic circle is a form of social contract.

Those who aim to satisfy the win condition without following

the rules are cheats (Suits, 1978).

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yourself. You can’t simply ignore them as being

someone else’s problem

So, let’s suppose that you do have a sense of

right and wrong (that is, you’re not amoral). Your

standards may not be in keeping with those of the

majority (that is, you could be immoral in the

majority’s opinion), but you nevertheless have

them.

Your moral code will affect how you behave in

Reality. It may, for example, influence whether you

play computer games or not (Reynolds, 2002). That

isn’t what concerns us here, though. What you do

in Reality is your own business; we’re interested in

what you do in and (especially) to virtual worlds.

There is a lot of ongoing work on the subject of

the ethics of Artificial Intelligence, almost all of

which concerns artificially-intelligent entities

situated in Reality. Are they safe? To what rights

are they entitled? Do they threaten human

dignity? What moral agency do they have? Are

they biased? Who is accountable if Things Go

Terribly Wrong?

Example: suppose that your friend is hiding you from your

enemies, One such enemy asks your friend where you are. If

your friend lies, you live; if your friend tells the truth, you die.

You really would want to know if your friend subscribed to

the ethics of deontology at this point (“I cannot tell a lie”),

regardless of your own views on the subject.

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Much of this work is relevant to virtual

worlds

, but practically none of it considers the

peculiarities of virtual worlds. In particular, it’s one

thing to look at your moral obligations towards

artificial intelligences in a world you didn’t

manufacture, but another thing entirely to look at

them in a world you did manufacture.

This is what we’re going to look at now.

So, the first item on the agenda is to ask

whether we have any moral obligations to our

artificial intelligences (that is, our NPCs) at all.

Suppose you were to stand on a sandy beach. Is

that an OK thing to do? Although I’m sure that

there are some people out there who would find

such an act morally reprehensible, most people

would be fine with it. It’s quite innocuous, and

there’s no harm done.

So, that’s standing on sand. Suppose you were

to crush a piece of sandstone beneath your foot

and make some more sand. Would that be OK?

Again, that’s probably going to be fine in most

people’s book.

What about crushing an acorn? Would that be

fine? What about crushing a hen’s egg? An ant? A

spider? A frog? A mouse? A mouse you’d given a

If you want to pursue it, (Nevejans, 2016) does a good job of

outlining the various issues.

I apologise to people who are physically unable to do this

for implying that it’s something everyone can do, but this is

only a thought experiment.

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420

name to? What about crushing a baby? Or an

adult’s head?

Somewhere in there, you would probably at

least pause for thought. You might be fine with

killing random ants but not random frogs. You

could be extremely reluctant to kill a baby, but

nevertheless do it under the right circumstances

The entities to which your morals apply are said

to be morally considerable

. In general, all moral

beings are morally considerable, but whether

specific kinds of being that lack morals of their

own are morally considerable depends on your

morality. Babies, for example, have insufficient

mental advancement to be able to compare their

past and future actions or to approve or to

disapprove of them; nevertheless, despite babies’

clear absence of morals, most people would regard

them as morally considerable. After all, if humans

are the only entities that we know for sure can be

moral beings, it makes sense to treat all humans as

morally considerable lest we’re wrong in individual

cases. This is known as the argument from species

normality.

Opposing it, the argument from marginal cases

contends that if certain humans

who have no

I’m sure a good many babies died when the Sumerian god

Enlil flooded the whole planet.

That’s as in “able to be considered”, not “sizeable”.

These are the marginal cases. Babies are an example of a

marginal case, along with people who have advanced

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mental capacities beyond those of animals are

nevertheless morally considerable then the

animals should also be morally considerable. The

problem here is that animals have marginal cases,

too, so an independent termination condition is

required or everything ends up being morally

considerable and therefore all deliberate acts

become inherently immoral.

If you draw your line of moral considerability at

personhood then animals other than human beings

are not morally considerable – they lack sapience.

In the era of slavery, even some humans were

considered no better than animals, therefore they

were not accorded personhood and the moral

consideration that goes with it.

Other people regard sentience as their red line.

If a creature can suffer then that makes it morally

considerable: it’s wrong to crush a mouse

underfoot because it would feel pain

. Jain

ascetics famously sweep the ground before them

as they walk, so as to avoid the careless killing of

insects and even smaller organisms, reasoning that

to hurt others is to hurt oneself.

Alzheimer’s disease, profound autism, or certain other

conditions.

Or are, as slavery does still exist.

Smashing it briskly with a sledgehammer would end the

mouse’s life before the pain receptors had time to send

signals to what used to be the mouse’s brain, but this is also

generally frowned-upon.

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There’s also a commonly-held view that a

hierarchy is involved in moral considerability. It

accepts that sentient beings are morally

considerable, but holds sapient beings to be more

important. This would indicate that given a

straight choice between saving a toddler or saving

a dog, you should save the toddler. Extending this

hierarchy downwards to include inanimate objects

is how those ideologies such as environmentalism,

that do regard everything as being morally

considerable, are able to avoid the stifling

constraints on action that would otherwise be

implied.

I’m not going to discuss the “right” way to look

at moral considerability here. After all, it’s been

debated for thousands of years and has yet to be

resolved; adding my own drop of moral opinion

isn’t going to make any difference. For the

purposes of this book, whether acorns or frogs or

named mice or babies are morally considerable

isn’t the issue.

For virtual worlds, the question we need to ask

is whether NPCs are morally considerable

If (according to your moral code) they are then

this gives you responsibilities. If they’re not then

This is a question that is indeed asked in the film Free Guy.

If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favour and watch it: it

raises a lot of the issues I cover in this book, and in a far more

entertaining manner, too.

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they’re mere grains of sand that you can do with

whatever you please.

At the moment, NPCs in virtual worlds are not

all that intelligent. There are far more

sophisticated pieces of software around, and it

would be hard to argue that NPCs are morally

considerable unless you’re also willing to concede

that, say, air traffic control systems are also

morally considerable

However, as we’ve been looking to a future in

which we’ll have NPCs who are at least as clever as

we are, the question becomes significant. It’s

highly advisable that we sort out our position

before this future arrives, rather than wait until it

does and then be caught on the hop.

If intelligent NPCs are morally considerable

then we, as moral beings, have to make sure we do

them no wrong. Furthermore, if intelligent NPCs

are moral beings themselves, our response must be

even stronger: we have to protect the intrinsic

rights they possess for being moral beings.

If, however, NPCs (no matter how smart they

seem to be) are merely pieces of software just like

any other, it could be argued that they are not

morally considerable.

Bear in mind that if your NPCs perceive

themselves to be moral beings but you don’t

perceive them as such, they’re going to think

you’re a jerk. As Alphinaud Leveilleur, an NPC in

That said, a fair case can indeed be made (Tomasik, 2014).

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Final Fantasy XIV, neatly puts it (spoiler: having

just discovered that his world was created by the

actions of beings who as a consequence don’t

regard him as properly alive): “We define our

worth, not the circumstances of our creation!”.

Supposing that you accept that your NPCs are

moral beings, where would you put them in a

hierarchy of importance? For example, are sapient

NPCs in a virtual world more or less important

than merely sentient critters in Reality? Given a

straight choice between saving a real dog or a

virtual saint, to which would you give priority?

What I’ve said so far applies to people playing

virtual worlds as much as it applies to people

designing them. How a player reacts to an

intelligent NPC depends on the extent to which

that player regards said NPC as being morally

considerable. Gods, though, have a further

problem.

One of the reasons that some people in Reality

believe it’s wrong to be unkind to animals is that

animals can suffer (that is, they’re sentient).

Monkeys are not indifferent if you kill their infants.

Tying a firecracker to the tail of a cat is not the

same as tying one to a fence. A sheep will get upset

if you stub out a cigarette on its nose. Because

animals can suffer, the argument goes, it’s not

morally right to mistreat them.

Can NPCs suffer?

Ah, well that’s the thing: as a god of a virtual

world, you get to decide if they can or not.

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As a god, it’s possible to stop all suffering very

easily: you simply don’t implement the concept.

Whatever happens to your NPCs, they bear it

stoically. You can give them an awareness that

things aren’t going well, so that if they break a

bone they can seek treatment. It doesn’t have to

hurt, though; it doesn’t have to cause them

distress. It can look as though it does, but acting as

if in pain isn’t the same as actually being in pain.

In Reality, pain is useful because it can dissuade

you from doing something stupid such as picking

up a red-hot coal. If we didn’t have pain, we

probably wouldn’t have extended the evolutionary

tree quite as far as we’ve managed. Our NPCs don’t

have to have evolved, though: as certain gods seem

to have done in Reality, we can create our NPCs

from nothing. That being the case, why would we

make them suffer? If making morally considerable

creatures suffer is a bad thing then we’re doing a

bad thing merely by implementing the concept of

suffering for them!

Why, then, would you make intelligent NPCs

suffer?

Note that it takes more effort on your part to

make your NPCs suffer than it does to make them

not suffer. If, for you, NPCs are not morally

considerable in the first place, they’re just soulless

bits in a database that people are projecting

emotions onto as they might characters in a book,

then you wouldn’t bother to add suffering: from

your perspective, there’s nothing there that can

How to Be a God

426

suffer. Sure, they may have the empirical

appearance of being intelligent, but they’re merely

the emergent consequences of interacting

software processes. You’d no more make them

suffer than you’d make water suffer by having it

fall off a cliff in a waterfall.

If you do adopt this position, by the way, bear in

mind that you yourself are an NPC of Reality. By

your own argument, you yourself aren’t morally

considerable. This means that no-one has to pay

any attention to your opinions whatsoever. Enjoy!

Assuming that you are a moral being, then, let’s

try to think of some possible justifications (or at

least explanations) for your implementing

suffering in your virtual world.

Well it could be that you’ve put it in entirely by

accident. Virtual worlds are complicated systems,

and you didn’t foresee that one of the

consequences of something you did over here

would have such a profound effect over there.

Before you knew it, your NPCs had the capacity to

suffer

. Perhaps it’s debug code that you intend to

take out but haven’t got around to yet. It’s top of

your to-do list, though – honest!

More plausibly, you could implement suffering

on purpose so as to help your NPCs learn and

adapt. They have free will: unless bad things

happen, they can’t reflect on what’s right and

It’s just as likely that instead it could be fences that

acquired the capacity to suffer, of course.

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what’s wrong, so can’t hit the morality targets

they’ll need to hit if they’re to enjoy the pleasant

afterlife you have planned for them. Thus, you have

to grit your teeth and make your NPCs capable of

suffering, knowing that they’ll thank you for it in

the end

You could decide to implement suffering as a

teaching exercise for your players. If your virtual

world was created to illustrate what life was like in

Nazi death camps, the message might not get

across very well if all the NPC prisoners were

cheerful and happy despite the privations they

were enduring. Yes, you’d have to think long and

hard about deliberately setting them up to suffer

the torments that you’ve specifically arranged for

them to undergo, but perhaps if you were to send

them to an eternity of bliss once they’ve died of

starvation or worse, that would balance it out a bit.

Related to this, you could be running an

experiment. You initialised the virtual world

knowing that suffering could appear, but that it

wasn’t guaranteed to do so, then you let the dice

roll how they may. Yes, your creatures are

suffering now, but leave it for a few more iterations

and perhaps they’ll evolve out of it. You may learn

something important along the way. Then again,

This does assume that they live long enough to make such

judgements. You wouldn’t want the suffering to be so bad as

to lead to anyone’s death, for example; that would be self-

defeating.

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perhaps you’ve already learned it and have

abandoned the experiment because you now have

the result; the NPCs will cease to suffer once you

get around to taking the server down.

To be honest, all these examples of reasons why

a virtual world might incorporate suffering are

secondary. The main, overwhelming reason to

implement suffering is, as with so much else in

virtual worlds, verisimilitude. Your players can

suffer in Reality (indeed, they may be playing to

escape this); if they go to a world which knows no

suffering, it won’t seem real to them. How can

anyone be the good guy if there’s no suffering to

end? How can a player try

to overcome adversity

if there’s no adversity? Therefore, with a heavy

heart, you create NPCs who can experience

suffering, because if you didn’t then no-one would

play and the NPCs wouldn’t exist in the first place.

A crummy life is better than no life at all.

These are merely some of the possibilities.

There are plenty of others. You may be a sadist,

doing it for personal gratification, for example.

The point is, if you’re making a virtual world

then either suffering is some accidental or

unavoidable consequence of the design, or you’re

putting it in deliberately for a particular reason. If

“Whoever ‘tries’ is in fact the one who is tried” (Gadamer,

trans. 2013). This quote comes from a chapter in which it is

argued that the existence of art can best be understood

through an appreciation of play (although you have to read a

chapter on the history of German philosophy to get that far).

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you do put it in deliberately, you’d better examine

your morals to make damned sure you’re doing the

right thing.

In the modern societies we have in Reality, the

default position is that it’s immoral to make

morally considerable individuals suffer unless

either: they agree to it; or it’s to save them or

someone else from something worse. Our NPCs

can’t consent to be born into a world of suffering,

because they don’t exist at the time when they’d

need to be asked. If we’re to have a moral

justification for implementing suffering, it would

have to be that not implementing it would lead to

something worse.

What could that “something worse” be?

Well, death (if it were permanent) would be the

obvious candidate. As a corollary, so would

removing free will from a sapient individual,

because (as I’ve pointed out already) such an act is

tantamount to killing them. This leads to the

interesting possibility that suffering is necessary

for a being to have free will. The line of argument

to show this would proceed something like as

follows:

1. Unless bad things happen, you can’t reflect

on what’s right or wrong.

2. You can’t as a result develop morals.

3. You are not, therefore, a moral being.

4. However, all sapient beings can reflect on

what’s right or wrong.

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5. Therefore, all sapient beings are moral

beings.

6. Free will and sapience are mutually

dependent.

7. If you have free will, you must therefore be

sapient, so must therefore be a moral being,

so must therefore have developed morals, so

it must be possible for bad things to happen

to you.

8. Hence, unless bad things can happen to you,

you can’t have free will.

Step 5 is the weak point, because (thanks to free

will) although all sapient beings can reflect on

what’s right or wrong, that doesn’t mean they all

will.

It’s worth noting that if it’s OK for you to make

morally considerable beings suffer, you’re basically

greenlighting the possibility that it could be OK for

them to do it, too. You may have had very good

reasons to design a microscopic worm that

burrows into the eyes of small children and makes

them blind, but would you be happy if your NPCs

calculated that because it’s clearly your will for

these worms to exist, they ought to breed billions

of them and release them into city water supplies?

You could actually stop them: would you? Is it only

you who has final arbitration on what’s right and

what’s wrong in the realities you create, or is it a

case of “it’s the NPCs’ world now, not mine”?

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This brings us neatly to the Epicurean paradox

You, as god of your virtual world, either can or

can’t remove its evils (of which suffering would be

an example). Furthermore, you either want to

remove them or you don’t want to remove them.

We therefore have four possible cases:

• You can’t remove its evils but you don’t

want to do so anyway. This means you’re

both weak and malicious.

• You can’t remove its evils and you do want

to do so. This just means you’re weak.

• You can remove its evils but you don’t want

to do so. This means you’re powerful but

malicious.

• You can remove its evils and you do want to

do so. This means you’re both powerful and

benevolent. However, we know you’re not,

because the evils haven’t been removed

The first two cases aren’t really compatible with

the notion of being a god as they imply that you

can’t change your created reality’s physics. It

depends what’s meant by “can”, though: it may be

that you are able to remove an evil, but that in so

doing too much good would be lost as a

So called because the early Christian author, Lactantius,

attributed it to the Ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus.

It’s assumed that you’re not merely lazy.

How to Be a God

432

consequence

; you therefore leave the evil in so as

not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The third case is a possibility but the fourth

case is the most likely. You’re perfectly capable of

removing the evils, but to do so would cause even

worse evils so you leave them in. Just make very,

very sure there’s no other way to achieve your

ends that doesn’t involve leaving the evils in.

I have one final point on this topic. If your NPCs

are moral beings (whether by your definition, their

definition or both), this implies they’ll need to

develop moral codes of their own that are

appropriate for their world. Are you going to let

them do so? I’m supposing here that you do want

them to have free will; if you don’t, you can simply

hardwire in any system of ethics you please and

the little automatons will act accordingly.

If you do want them to have free will, though,

your NPCs will either lean towards amorality or

towards morality. The latter is the one you’re more

likely to encourage – unless you yourself are

amoral or capricious, anticipating with relish the

chaos and carnage that will ensue from creating

free-thinking individuals who don’t consider the

effects that their actions will have on others (or

indeed on themselves).

For example, in Reality we can stop so many people from

dying in car accidents simply by banning cars. However, the

negative economic consequences of doing this are such that

we’re prepared to take the hit for road deaths over the hit for

having to walk everywhere.

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Let’s go with having NPCs who lean towards

having morals, then.

When I was talking about souls, I discussed

ways by which you might tip NPCs off as to the

kind of behaviour that would score well when it

came to their post-death judgement. You can

certainly do this if you’re of the opinion that you

know what system of morality will work best for

the reality you’ve created. There is another

possibility, though: you don’t give them any hints

whatsoever, and have them work out for

themselves what’s good and what’s bad.

If you did this, what would happen?

Well without knowing what would reward them

in an afterlife, your NPCs would favour what

rewards them while they live. This would create a

kind of evolutionary pressure: those groups of

NPCs who came up with and enforced a workable

ethical code would thrive; those groups that didn’t

would eventually disappear. This is because if

everyone does what the group determines is right,

and it actually is right for advancing the interests

of the group, then the group will flourish; if it’s not

right, the group will wither and have either to

change or to perish. In other words, whatever rules

of behaviour repeatedly work will become

established as part of the group’s ethical system

This doesn’t mean that your NPCs’ ethics will

necessarily be in accordance with yours. At the

This line of reasoning led to Social Contract theory.

How to Be a God

434

level of populations, for example, it could be that in

a tribal society, keeping women at home as baby-

making machines works better than allowing them

rich, independent lives, because the more babies a

population has then the faster it grows and the

better able it is to conquer and subjugate its

socially-liberal neighbours.

It’s also worth noting that unless you were to

interfere, your NPCs would almost certainly evolve

different systems of ethics to yours if their reality

and Reality had major dissimilarities. For example,

if their world had no death, or if its inanimate

objects could feel pain, this would impact on their

understanding of what it is and isn’t OK to do.

Environment affects ethics.

As it happens, the ethics of humans in Reality

have overall tended to align after a time, despite

widely-different starting conditions. This may be

because all gods have similar ideas for how they

want us to behave, or it may be that societies that

don’t align tend not to last very long

. Even if your

created reality is weirdly different to Reality, you

could therefore at least expect its NPCs to develop

something along the lines of the Golden Rule,

which, depending on the direction you come at it

from, can be paraphrased as either “treat others as

“There are some moral rules that all societies must

embrace, because those rules are necessary for society to

exist.” (Rachels & Rachels, 2019)

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you would want to be treated” or “don’t treat

others as you wouldn’t want to be treated”.

Neither formulation of the Golden Rule is

perfect at face value. The first one seems to

suggest that someone who enjoys, say, being

kissed is right to kiss you regardless of whether

you yourself want to be kissed. The second one

seems to suggest that self-defence is a bad thing,

because if you yourself don’t want to be hit, you

shouldn’t hit anyone else even if they’re coming at

you with a dagger. Either formulation can be made

to work if applied at the meta-level, though

Will you be treating your NPCs as you yourself

would want to be treated? Or at least not treating

them as you yourself wouldn’t want to be treated?

With such an asymmetric power difference, does

the question even make sense?

Also, are you basically saying to any gods of

Reality that whatever you do to your NPCs, it’s

morally OK for these gods to do to you?

The ethicist Margaret Somerville has written

extensively about the development of a common,

shared system of ethics (Somerville, 2006). She

concludes that if it is to be acceptable both to

spiritual and to scientific perspectives, such a

system must place its foundations in nature and

You’d want other people to take your preferences into

account, therefore you should take theirs into account, too.

Also, you wouldn’t want others to let you do something

wrong, therefore you shouldn’t let them do something

wrong, either.

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the natural, this being the one area that each

unequivocally respects

. Whether ethics are

extrinsic, coming from a god, or are intrinsic to

human beings as part of who we are, they are

ultimately informed by a presumption that the

natural world is by default how things ought to

. If a particular action is proposed which entails

the overriding of said default, it can only be

justified if the harm done by such an intervention

is outweighed by the harm undone by it.

For example, if people have no access to clean

water then they will suffer; providing them with

clean water runs counter to what would happen if

nature were left to run its course, but it removes

the suffering. Having people suffer is worse for the

natural world than is providing clean water,

therefore cleaning up their dirty water is ethically

justified

This observation has implications for virtual

worlds.

When you create a reality, you, as its god, have

to decide how to express your own ethics through

the design of that reality. You can’t avoid this,

because even if you go hands-off and leave it all to

She calls this intersection the secular sacred.

This embraces Hume’s is-ought problem (Hume, 1739): it’s

not clear how to make claims about what ought to be true

based solely on what is true. In other words, you can’t derive

morals purely from facts.

How quite we ascertain which effect is better for the

natural world is, of course, a problem in itself.

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the NPCs themselves, the very nature of the reality

that you have created will determine what ethical

systems the NPCs subsequently develop. You

specified your reality’s nature, so like it or not

you’ve influenced your NPCs’ thinking on this from

the very beginning.

In the same way that the ethics of your NPCs

are rooted in the nature of the world in which you

place them, so your own ethics can be seen as

rooted in the natural world – that is, in Reality.

This suggests that whatever ethics you code into

the virtual world (implicitly or explicitly) are

unavoidably shaped by the way Reality works

because that’s the ultimate source of your own

ethics.

The thing is, the reality you create need not

operate the same way as Reality. As I mentioned

earlier, there could be major differences that affect

what NPCs perceive to be right and wrong. For

example, people in a reality with no permadeath

might treat murder less seriously than we do in

Reality

. Would it therefore still make sense to

insist that your NPCs operate under the same

system of Reality-based ethics that you do?

Or, if you’re a proponent of divine command theory, by the

way the reality above Reality works.

In a 2015 episode of the TV series Dr Who, the famously

anti-gun central character shot and killed another Time Lord,

the General. “We're on Gallifrey. Death is Time Lord for man

flu.”

How to Be a God

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If so then ethical systems are transitive. This

would suggest that it’s unethical to create a reality

that is different enough from Reality that ethics

founded on the nature of Reality don’t apply. It

would also imply that the ethics encoded in the

nature of Reality are themselves representative of

those encoded in the nature of any (and every)

super-reality of which Reality is a sub-reality.

If your NPCs don’t operate under the same

system of ethics that you do then ethical systems

are intransitive. On what basis, then, are you going

to decide what’s right and wrong for your created

reality? Do we need a system of meta-ethics to

direct what systems of ethics we ought to embed

in our designs?

The morals of gods are not necessarily those of

the beings they create.

Religious Places

So far in this book, I’ve avoided discussing religions

as religions, because I’m primarily concerned with

gods rather than with particular systems of

organised beliefs about gods. I have touched on

some ideas as characterised by identified religions,

such as Catholicism’s views on transubstantiation,

but only to illustrate specific points. This, I shall

continue to do. However, because so many people

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derive their ethics (and thence their morals) from

religions, it’s appropriate at this juncture to look at

how virtual worlds might accommodate religions

as a general concept (and vice versa). My purpose

here is not to examine the ethical systems of

religions; rather, it’s to examine how religions

might feature in virtual worlds such that their

ethical systems can come into play.

I’ll start by considering virtual worlds as places.

This is first and foremost what they are;

everything else flows from that.

OK, so they’re places. Are they spiritual

places?

The reason I ask is that virtual worlds are set

apart from Reality, which makes them particularly

amenable to being spiritual places. As a very loose

analogy, places exist materially and spaces exist

conceptually: spaces provide the context for places,

but particular places give meaning to spaces

(Relph, 1976). For the people who play virtual

worlds, can this meaning be somehow spiritual?

Well, the short answer is that for players at

least, it’s not for the designer of a virtual world to

decide whether or not that world is (or contains) a

spiritual place: designers are the gods of their

I’m assuming here that if they’re religious then they’re also

spiritual, but that if they’re spiritual they’re not necessarily

religious. “Spiritual”, just to clarify, means to do with the

spirit, rather than with the tangible or material. It does

presuppose that people have spirits (which could be

detachable souls), needless to say.

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440

worlds but not of their players. Players can and will

choose for themselves to regard (or to disregard)

virtual worlds as spiritual places, irrespective of

what the designers of those worlds might wish.

Spaces become places when they have meaning,

but the meaning of a virtual place is subjective

(Salazar, 2005). Such realities can certainly be

venues for players from Reality to have spiritual

experiences (Nagasiva, 1992), but that doesn’t make

them spiritual places in and of themselves.

We can nevertheless invite players to treat our

created realities as spiritual places, and we can

include tools to help any players who actively want

to see them that way

. For example, the virtual

world Church of Fools, which ran as a three-month

experiment in 2004 (Kluver, 2008), was set up for

this. It didn’t say it was a sacred or spiritual place,

but it had the appearance of a church and included

many of the symbolic trappings of a church, and

players who wanted to treat it as a church were

welcome to do so; those who didn’t were welcome

not to do so, too

A poll reported in the now defunct MUD Journal (Allen,

1999) asked readers: “What kind of MUD would you like more

of?”. Of the 362 responses, 35 went with “religious theme”.

Just because it was a virtual church, that didn’t mean it

didn’t attract griefers. Within 15 minutes of opening, one

player character was on her knees praying and another stood

in front of her so it looked as if she was performing fellatio on

him. Praying characters got a social-distancing collision box

around them soon after that.

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It’s possible that players of virtual worlds

ascribe spiritual aspects to them even without

deliberation. A famous (secular) definition provided

by anthropologist Clifford Geertz states that a

religion is:

(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2)

establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting

moods and motivations in men by (3)

formulating conceptions of a general order of

existence and (4) clothing these conceptions

with such an aura of factuality that (5) the

moods and motivations seem uniquely

realistic.

(Geertz, 1966)

Applying Geertz’s definition to the virtual world

DragonMUD, anthropologist Jen Clodius found that

it did indeed have a religious aspect to it (Clodius,

1995)

. This is despite the fact that the virtual

world was not conceived by its designers as such

and few players had thought of it in these terms

either.

Note that Geertz’s definition of what a religion

is doesn’t insist there be a spiritual basis to it, and

that Clodius rigorously applied the definition as

such

. Nevertheless, the players with whom she

discussed the topic sensed that Geertz’s definition

A similar approach is applied to WoW in (Vallikat, 2014).

You could say that she applied it religiously.

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was missing any reference to an “ineffability, a

certain transcendence” and she concluded that for

some, DragonMUD had this aspect to it, too.

So for individual players, virtual worlds can

definitely be spiritual or religious places, either as

adjuncts to Reality (as in the Church of Fools

example) or in their own right (as in the

DragonMUD example). This is Reality-level

spirituality, though: players may develop a feel for

the non-material nature of the spirit (or soul), but

it’s relative to Reality, not to the virtual world; the

virtual world merely helps these players come to

understand their sense of self as being

independent

It’s fair to say that most players will not

experience virtual worlds in this way. For theme

park worlds in particular, places are experienced

superficially: they have been designed specifically

to be other-directed (Relph, 1976), privileging appeal

to visitors ahead of authenticity. If we want

spirituality at the level of the virtual world, we

need to have our NPCs (rather than our players)

experience it.

This shouldn’t actually be hard, assuming that

the NPCs are free-thinking (although that is hard).

If they think in much the same way that we

humans think then some of them will naturally

Or even as being-independent.

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develop spiritual feelings the same way that some

of us do

Such feelings would, of course, be subjective.

From the point of view of those of us in Reality,

they could additionally be objective: we could

implement an actual spirit realm or some other

mechanism for maintaining the essence of an NPC

separate from its physical existence. We could also

program our NPCs to feel that a particular location

in a virtual world was “spiritual”, although we’d be

messing with their free will if we did that.

In general, it depends on the individual NPC as

to whether or not a place in a virtual world is

spiritual, then. OK, so what about sacred places?

A sacred place is a place associated with the

divine

. In Reality, natural, awe-inspiring wonders

are often sacred, such as Uluru in central Australia

and the Ganges in south Asia. Sites where

important religious events took place are also

usually sacred, for example Mount Sinai (where

Moses received the Ten Commandments) and

Bodh Gaya (where Siddhārtha Gautama gained

enlightenment). In addition, places of worship can

be made into sacred places by those people who

If our NPCs aren’t free-thinking, which is indeed the case

for those of the present rather than those of the future, it’s

even easier: the spirituality of an object just becomes another

physical property of the world that influences NPC

behaviour.

Or, for those who hold that all of existence is associated

with the divine: more associated with the divine.

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444

possess the necessary qualifications to perform the

dedication ceremony.

Could a virtual world be considered sacred to

someone in Reality?

The facetious answer is yes, because anyone can

start a religion and decide what is and isn’t sacred

to it

. If we consider religions with adherents

numbering in the millions, though, there has to be

an actual reason that a place would be considered

sacred.

Because many things other than places can be

sacred, such as art and music, there’s no

theoretical objection to adding suitable virtual

worlds to the list. However, as virtual worlds are

places, it’s in accordance with the rules for sacred

places that candidates should be assessed.

They certainly wouldn’t qualify under the

criterion of being natural wonders, because they’re

artificial. If a miracle or other major divine event

were to take place in one (the Second Coming in

Second Life, for example) then that would work;

none has been forthcoming yet, however, and it’ll

be years before we know if a saint or other holy

figure has changed the nature of Reality from

within World of Warcraft.

Religions have been set up for players within virtual

worlds. One of the early ones, the Order of the Holy Walnut,

was opened in Habitat by a Greek Orthodox minister; its

adherents were forbidden to steal, to carry weapons and to

engage in violence (Farmer, 1993).

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The best way for getting a virtual world to be

considered a place sacred to a large number of

people in Reality would be if an archbishop or

similar were to consecrate it (or preferably some

place within it). While in principle possible, this

could in practice be quite tricky, as the necessary

rituals aren’t really set up for such an eventuality.

For example, dedicating a church in the Church of

England’s Diocese of London involves starting at

the west door and … well, we’re in trouble right

there, as virtual worlds don’t have an actual west,

just some direction that their designer has labelled

west

There’s nothing to prevent even long-

established religions from changing their rules, of

course

, so rituals might in time be developed

specifically for making particular places in virtual

worlds sacred. There would have to be an appetite

for it, though, and as yet there isn’t. If anything,

religions tend to have a less-than-favourable

attitude to computer games (of which virtual

worlds are considered an example), so it may be a

while yet before we see virtual cathedrals

appearing in them which are every bit as sacred as

the ones in Reality. That said, I’m sure there are

already evangelical churches out there that have

Usually, towards negative infinity along the x-axis.

After centuries of saying that babies who died unbaptised

entered a state of limbo rather than going to Heaven, in 2007

the Roman Catholic church decided that actually they could

go to Heaven (International Theological Commission, 2007).

How to Be a God

446

virtual offshoots, so it’s definitely possible (if not

necessarily backed by any substantial theological

argument

The more interesting question from our

perspective is whether we can create virtual places

that are sacred not to us but to our NPCs.

We can make natural wonders that inspire a

sense of awe, that’s relatively easy. We can also

give certain NPCs occasional supernatural powers

that enable them to perform miracles in particular

places. The NPCs themselves will decide whether

to make buildings or other objects of their own

creation sacred or not.

Let’s say there are some sacred places in our

virtual world. What would such a designation

mean?

The place would be associated with the divine,

which in this case is us. Should we actually mark it

out as physically different to regular places? We

can, but should we? We could make visiting the

place increase an NPC’s lifespan, or cure an

ailment, or have them feel happier, or boost their

intelligence, or fill them with such emotion that it

will lead them to perform wondrous acts of

kindness for the remainder of their existence. We

can do any of this.

Why would we? Why wouldn’t we?

Are sacred places only meaningful in the

context of the beliefs of the NPCs, and therefore

Commercial argument, on the other hand….

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possibly irrelevant to us – the very gods with

whom the places are associated? The NPCs

themselves would think not: to them, these (to us,

ordinary) places are closer to us than are other

places. Should we humour or reward them,

perhaps implementing some positive

consequences of this supposed proximity to us? If

we don’t, wouldn’t the NPCs be largely wasting

their time?

You have to decide which it is: are the holy sites

in virtual worlds special to the gods of those

worlds or only to the mortals?

Are the holy sites in Reality any different?

To end this section, it’s worth asking (as some

non-players do) if virtual worlds are themselves

religions

. This question stops regarding virtual

worlds as being places and instead looks on them

as being constructs of the mind (which is fair

enough, they’re that too).

Perhaps surprisingly, virtual worlds do share

many of the characteristics of religions (Wagner,

2012), including rules, rituals, liturgies, ceremonies,

lore and moral compass. This doesn’t make them

religions, though. Sure, they may satisfy some of

You could also ask (although I won’t be doing this) whether

religions are virtual worlds. “The vistas it [every living and

healthy religion] opens and the mysteries it propounds are

another world to live in; and another world to live in –

whether we expect ever to pass wholly into it or no – is what

we mean by having a religion.” (Santayana, 1905).

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the religious needs of players, but they’re founded

on a different basis.

The fourth and fifth points in Geertz’s

definition

suggest that followers of a religion

accept as fact statements that can’t be proven true.

Virtual worlds require the opposite: the acceptance

as fact statements that can be proven false. You

may not be able to prove that Zeus exists as a

material being but have faith that he does; you

definitely can prove that Elune from World of

Warcraft doesn’t exist as a material being, but

choose to put your denial on hold while playing the

game (Dyck, 2008).

The answer, then, is no: virtual worlds are not

religions to us. As with the previous examples in

this section, though, having asked the question for

players we can ask it again for NPCs. Can the NPCs

of a virtual world regard that world as a religion?

Well, for the NPCs to view their reality as a

religion would be like for us to view Reality as a

religion. Most of us do have faith that Reality

exists, so that’s definitely a plus. Applying Geertz’s

full definition somewhat generously, we could say

that: we interpret what our senses tell us as

symbols; these symbols do seem to establish

powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods in us;

we build models in our heads that are formulations

“(4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of

factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely

realistic”.

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of conceptions of a general order of existence; we

clothe these conceptions with an aura of factuality;

in so doing, our moods and motivations seem

uniquely realistic.

Applying Geertz less generously: our senses are

raw, not symbolic; our moods and motivations

mainly come from sources internal to the mind

rather than external to it; we take our own

existence as fact, rather than as a conception; we

don’t clothe our conceptions of perceived objects

with an aura of factuality, we use them to define

what factuality is; saying that Reality is realistic is

mere tautology.

So yes, for our NPCs their virtual world could be

seen as a religion, but if it is then it’s a somewhat

reductive one.

Creation Destruction

Is it OK to switch off your virtual world?

As I noted waaay back in Chapter 2, by doing so

you’d obliterate hundreds, thousands, millions of

sapient beings

. Sure, they’re beings who wouldn’t

have existed in the first place without your

As is the norm for this book now, I’m assuming this is at

some point in the future when your NPCs are more

intellectually advanced than at present.

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largesse, but the same could be said of your

children and you don’t get to kill those for free.

The death you’d unleash by switching off a

virtual world would be painless for the NPCs

concerned, so wouldn’t cause them suffering.

They’d simply cease to exist. More than that:

because the context in which they existed will also

have ceased to exist, it would be as if they’d never

existed in the first place (except in the minds of

those players who still remember them).

Devoid of direct hurt though it may be,

nevertheless, switching off a reality and

condemning its free-thinking inhabitants to non-

existence really does look a lot like mass murder

Even so, if you couldn’t keep the server running

(perhaps because of the expense) then it might be

unavoidable.

Idea! What if you were to take a dump of the

virtual world at the point when it was switched

off? At some later date, once you’ve sorted out your

finances, you could reload the universe from this

saved state and set it running again. To the NPCs,

the downtime would be imperceptible; from their

perspective, the pre-save and post-save worlds join

seamlessly.

Of course, if your finances didn’t improve, the

virtual world might never actually be reloaded.

Expect those of your players who have fallen in love with

NPCs to assert this rather forcibly.

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Even so, does having the potential to reload a

reality mitigate the act of switching it off?

At the other extreme, how about if you were to

win the lottery and find that you can now afford to

reload the saved reality multiple times on different

systems? Is that OK, or is forking copies of a reality

somehow not doing right by the NPCs who will

thus have been unknowingly duplicated?

So far, I’ve been talking about NPCs as NPCs.

You could make some of them gods. You could

create a virtual world that came with its own sub-

reality. Some or all NPCs of the virtual world could

be made the gods of that sub-reality. You could

allow them to ascend and to descend between the

two realities. You, of course, could represent in

either the virtual world itself or in the world

beneath it, or even in the former representing from

there in the latter. The NPCs of both would remain

ignorant of Reality, unless someone from Reality

told them about it.

Would this be a reasonable thing to do? We’d be

creating NPCs with literal godly powers over the

NPCs in the reality below them. Is that morally

acceptable? The NPCs we godify may not behave in

an entirely benign way (the Ancient Egyptian god

Apep, for example, is completely up front about

personifying everything that’s evil); do we

ourselves have any responsibility for the

consequences of their actions? Sure, after the fact

we can punish our NPC gods of war for consigning

countless of their own NPCs to oblivion;

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452

nevertheless, that won’t bring these NPCs back –

NPCs who wouldn’t have died prematurely if we’d

not put a wrathful god in charge of their reality. It

would be as if we’d presented a loaded machine-

gun to someone who promptly used it to shoot up

a shopping mall: ultimately, aren’t we in some way

culpable for not being more careful about choosing

to whom we give the power of dealing death? Or is

it entirely their fault on the grounds that they have

free will?

If we do decide it’s wrong to create gods who

rule over sub-realities, well that would be

uncomfortable. It’s exactly what we’re doing

ourselves when we make virtual worlds: we’re

creating gods (in this case, us) who rule over the

creatures of a sub-reality.

OK, so we’re thinking about this well in

advance; we can be assured that when we finally do

have the capacity to make intelligent NPCs, we’ll

have a system of ethics in place to guarantee we

don’t treat them badly (or to excuse us for doing

so). There is, however, a position that asserts we

have no right to create morally considerable

creatures for our own purposes anyway. Whether

we’re making them for fun, for money, for science

or for any other reason, it’s exploitation and is

therefore just plain wrong.

Now the obvious counter to this, which I’ve

touched on once or twice already, is that the NPCs

Or, if you prefer, “For Science!”.

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wouldn’t even exist if we didn’t create them. If an

imagined future NPC has meaningful rights in the

present, surely primary among those must be the

right to come into being. Denying that right is

effectively murder before the fact.

This does seem a fair point. For some people,

though, it isn’t going to wash any more than the

“those bulls in the bullring wouldn’t exist if we

hadn’t bred them for fighting” argument washes: if

you’re creating creatures in order to be cruel to

them or to experiment on them or even to leave

them to their own devices

, you’re nevertheless in

some way using them

. It’s better that you don’t

create them in the first place than you create them

so they can be slaughtered for experience points.

From some perspectives, even creating them out of

love is no excuse, because it’s selfish – and

therefore a morally reprehensible act

If creating NPCs is immoral in and of itself then

clearly we shouldn’t create them. Were you to

create a bunch anyway, expect members of People

Although this sounds benign, it leads to a situation similar

to that of post-colonialism (Mukherjee, 2017), only potentially

worse.

In opposition to this, some understandings of the concept

of divine providence assert that everything in nature has been

provided for humanity’s benefit, so although it may be sad to

kill whales for oil lamp fuel, humanity is well within its rights

to do so. This argument doesn’t apply to NPCs, however,

because NPCs don’t appear in nature.

Note that this would mean having children in Reality was

also a morally reprehensible act.

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for the Ethical Treatment of NPCs to be protesting

outside your house and launching legal

proceedings to stop you under, oh, let’s say human

rights legislation.

This view that it’s better for NPCs not be born

than to be born and exploited has parallels in

Reality. The way that many domesticated animals

have been bred (or, worse, inbred), they don’t have

much of a quality of life and wouldn’t survive if

released into the wild; causing their breed to die

out could therefore be seen as a kindness. You

don’t have to kill them to do this: simply keeping

apart the male and female would-be parents ought

to do it. All those animals that would have been

born will not be, so you’ll have basically wiped

them out over the course of a generation

; at least

they won’t have suffered, though.

If you take this view then the question of

whether it’s morally acceptable to switch a virtual

world off never arises, because it’s never morally

acceptable to switch it on in the first place. OK, so

by holding this view you’re implicitly accusing the

gods of Reality of being immoral for having created

us, but being moral is not a precondition for being

a god anyway. If they’re immoral immortals,

there’s not a lot you can do about it.

This isn’t the only objection to allowing the

creation of virtual worlds that house morally

“Meat is murder. Vegetarianism is genocide.” (Weinersmith,

2013).

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considerable creatures. There’s another, rather

more theological one.

OK, so this mainly applies to the Abrahamic

God, but it may resonate with other gods, too. It

boils down to this: is creating virtual worlds

sacrilege or is it sacred? There’s no middle ground:

it has to be one or the other

The argument that it’s sacrilege is easy to make.

The designer of a virtual world is aspiring to be a

god, so is exhibiting hubris. Such arrogance and

false pride is a wanton and blasphemous affront to

the divine, and as such is sacrilege

The argument that it’s sacred is also easy to

make. According to the concept of imago dei,

humans are made in the image of their creator

100

but aren’t themselves their creator. Humans are

not gods. By creating virtual worlds, however, they

become gods, thus fulfilling their creator’s plans –

a sacred act. As Tolkien succinctly

101

put it: “We

I first came across this discussion in (Kelly, 1994).

Amazingly, I do remember a few of the things that I read in

early books about the Internet.

As an example of this view, I am indebted to respondent

#47 from pick4u.com, who in response to my question

“Would you buy a book with this cover?” answered: “No, I

would not. It just seems like a wrong book to buy. Maybe

because I am a Christian and learning how to be a God is a

sin.”.

100

This is foundational in Judaism and Christianity, and is

also important to some branches of Sufism in Islam.

101

Actually, not quite as succinctly as this suggests – it’s the

last line of a sonnet.

How to Be a God

456

may make still by the law in which we’re made”

(Tolkien, 1964).

Here’s a rather fuller statement of the logic

involved:

Differing as it does from ex nihilo creation,

subcreation is not a usurping of the Creator’s

role, but rather cooperation with it, and

acknowledgement of it. The subcreative desire

is a part of human nature that precedes our

fallen state, and the action and contemplation

that accompanies it are both a gift and part of

a divinely-mandated vocation calling us to

carry out the work that God has begun.

(Wolf, 2012)

Hermeticism goes one step further, saying that

only by making yourself equal to the transcendent

god can you apprehend that god. In other words, if

you want to understand God you have to be a god

yourself.

This is all good news if you were worried about

going to Hell for creating a virtual world.

You could nevertheless decide that if your NPCs

were to create a sub-world of their own then you

would send the perpetrators to whatever

unpleasant place you’ve reserved for blasphemers.

Being a god is not incompatible with being a

hypocrite.

457

Part 4

Realities as

Virtual

Worlds

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458

Chapter 8

CONNECTIONS

As some psychiatrist once put it, we all build

castles in the air. The problems come when we

try to live in them.

(Postman, 1985)

Early on in this book, as part of my strategy for not

getting lynched for referring to myself as a god, I

introduced the idea of a reality and stated what I

meant by the term: it’s a self-contained space of

existence that’s defined, maintained and

continually modified by its own physics. This is

actually a surprisingly broad definition – it admits

most computer programs, for example.

Another concept I’ve used a lot is that of a world,

but I haven’t defined it in this context; I’ll therefore

do that now. So: whereas a reality is a self-

contained space, a world is an environment that its

inhabitants regard as being self-contained. We can

talk of “the world of the Hittites” or “the fashion

world”, for example. Such worlds can be

imagined – “the world of Harry Potter” and “the

Sadly, (Postman, 1985) does not cite the psychiatrist.

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459

world of Star Trek” exhibit perfectly acceptable

usage – and indeed we can even talk about “the

world of the imagination” in abstract

. This means

that in theory, a world can be larger than a reality

if the inhabitants of that reality so regard it.

The kinds of worlds that this book concerns are

those which are also realities. One such world is

Reality, and most of the others are virtual worlds;

I’ve also mentioned the possibility that virtual

worlds could have their own sub-realities, and that

Reality could be a sub-reality of one or more higher

realities.

Although I’ve been talking as if these realities

are also worlds, they don’t have to be. For a reality

also to be a world, someone of that reality has to

perceive it as a world. It’s conceivable, for example,

that a reality above Reality might be uninhabited;

this would make it a reality but not a world

. It

could nevertheless become a world if someone

from Reality were to spend some time there and

come to regard it as a self-contained environment.

As indeed I did earlier, when I was discussing what NPCs

with a theory of mind might speculate.

We can imagine it to be a world, but then what we imagined

wouldn’t be a reality.

The distinction between realities and worlds is apparent in

the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The

idea here is that Reality branches with every quantum event,

but we perceive only the ongoing branch that got us to where

we are (that is, a world). Operating under the same laws of

physics, there are unimaginably more other ongoing

branches of the same event tree. In virtual world terms, it’s

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460

This brings us to the topic of the relationships

that realities have (or can have) with one another.

Consequent Realities

Back in Chapter 4, I casually introduced the

concept of a consequent reality. I didn’t formally

define it because its meaning is fairly obvious

, but

I’m now going to examine its implications a little

more closely.

Our experience is that each sub-reality is the

immediate sub-reality of exactly one reality, but

that a single reality can have any number of sub-

realities. This is clearly the case with Reality, which

boasts multiple virtual worlds as sub-realities.

According to Norse cosmology, it’s also the case

that Reality itself is but one of several sub-realities

of a higher reality. In this account, a rather large

ash tree called Yggdrasil links together nine

separate worlds, including Alfheim (where the

elves live), Myrkheim (where the dwarfs live) and

Midgard, (where we live – Reality). The gods live in

like forking a new, never-closing instance for every possible

outcome of the random-number generator each use.

OK, for the benefit of those who don’t find it obvious: a

reality S is consequent on a reality R if either S is an

immediate sub-reality of R or S is an immediate sub-reality of

a reality that’s consequent on R.

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Asgard, but regularly visit Yggdrasil as it’s where

their things

are held.

There are other links between the nine worlds,

that bypass Yggdrasil. For example, Midgard and

Asgard are directly connected by a bridge called

Bifrost made from a burning rainbow; Jotunheim

(where the giants live) is immediately east of

Midgard and separated from Asgard by a river,

Ifing. The giants can’t cross the river so try to get

into Asgard over Bifrost via Midgard.

Yggdrasil is the highest reality, with the others

all sub-realities of it. Some of the sub-realities are

interconnected; whether they’re the same reality

or separate ones depends on whether their physics

are the same

The gods, because they can operate in both

Yggdrasil and Asgard, must be from Yggdrasil and

merely represent in Asgard. Of course, for gods to

qualify as gods they are required to be able to

control the physics of a reality. This would imply

that they are each able to control the physics of at

least one of the nine worlds that are sub-worlds of

Yggdrasil, and that the physics of each sub-world

A “thing” is a governing assembly. The parliament of the

Isle of Man is called the “Tynwald” in English and “Tinvaal” in

Manx: the “tin” part derives from “thing” (Tinvaal is Manx for

“assembly meeting-place”).

Humans supposedly have trouble seeing the worlds beyond

Midgard, so this suggests that Jotunheim and Asgard do

indeed have different physics. That would explain the

burning rainbow, too.

How to Be a God

462

is controlled by at least one god. That being the

case, though, they shouldn’t be experiencing any

grief from the giants of Jotunheim (at least not

unless they, the gods, had messed up somehow

We can ignore this minor irritation, though,

because all the Norse gods are definitely gods with

respect to Midgard (that is, Reality). Given that

nowadays Reality also has sub-realities, it’s

therefore possible for a Norse god to show up in a

virtual world, either as:

• a god of Reality;

• a player (or god) from Reality;

• an NPC of the virtual world;

• something else entirely (a raindrop, say

The Norse gods can do this because if you

control the physics of a reality, you control the

physics of all its sub-realities as well. We can

represent in virtual worlds; if our NPCs created

their own virtual worlds then we could represent

in those, too, and so on through any consequent

realities created by our NPCs’ NPCs.

This chaining together of consequent realities

is not uncommon. The Aztecs, for example, have

thirteen heavens above Reality, all but the

The Norse gods don’t seem to be noted for flawlessness, so

this is a possibility.

To be honest, it’s more likely to be a creature of some sort.

Loki famously shape-shifted into a mare, got pregnant in this

form, then gave birth to an eight-legged horse called Sleipnir.

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uppermost being consequent on the heavens above

them

If you were to map out the relationship between

realities and their sub-realities, you’d produce a

tree-like structure (formally known in graph

theory as an arborescence

). The one with Yggdrasil

at its root would look as shown in Figure 9.

The second-highest heaven, Ilhuicatl-Teteocan, is where

the gods become other people in other places while

remaining themselves in Ilhuicatl-Teteocan (so, basically,

where they go when they want to play in other realities).

An arborescence is a form of directed acyclic graph that has

exactly one, directed path from any node (vertex) to the root.

Nilfheim

Vanaheim

Muspelheim

Midgard

Ultima

Online

MUD

RuneScape

World of

Warcraft

Guild

Wars 2

(more)

Myrkheim

Asgard

Alfheim

Hel

Jotunheim

Yggdrasil

Figure 9 – Yggdrasil and its Consequent Realities.

How to Be a God

464

It doesn’t have to be this way, though. As I

hinted a while back, we can connect any realities

consequent on Reality together.

The easiest way to do this would be if we

opened a teleport between two sub-realities of

Reality

, allowing NPCs from one virtual world to

visit another. When it comes to virtual worlds, this

has been proposed (and even attempted) several

times in the past, but the idea has always come to

nothing. The problem is that connecting realities

like this effectively turns two realities into one, but

if they have different physics – or even the same

physics but different content – then it leads to an

almighty mess. A tauren

from World of Warcraft

moving to the science fiction world of EVE Online

would materialise as, well, what?

Suppose, though, that NPCs in two realities

consequent on Reality were to create their own

sub-realities: we could arrange matters such that

these were actually the same sub-reality. Their

creators’ realities could have different physics, but

this wouldn’t be important: so long as individuals

from both realities could represent in the shared

sub-reality, there would be no need to design any

protocol to convert between the (potentially-

incompatible) physics of the creators’ realities.

This is the principle behind the concept of the Metaverse.

Cow person.

If you asked EVE Online players, the answer would probably

be “a burger”.

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If we so chose, we wouldn’t have to rely on the

NPCs to do this. We ourselves could create and

connect the sub-realities right from the outset.

Either way, we’d end up with a single, lower reality

that is a sub-reality of two (or perhaps more)

higher realities

. This is a much cleaner way to

link together two or more realities, as it doesn’t

involve arguments over the prevailing physics. It

does get tricky if both the sharing realities have

gods of the shared sub-reality, though, because

they can (accidentally or otherwise) try to change

the same physics at the same time. Then again,

having more than one god of a non-shared sub-

reality also has this problem.

Such a multi-parent arrangement of sub-sub-

realities could present something of a surprise to

the NPCs of the realities so connected. Imagine you

were playing World of Warcraft and you came

across another player who was from a different

reality to Reality (say, Alfheim): it would be like

that. You’d be able to communicate with people

from this different reality, using Azeroth as the

shared sub-reality in which you both represent, but

your respective realities would remain out of

bounds

This would mean that the overall structure was no longer a

strict arborescence, however it would remain a directed

acyclic graph.

It would be even worse for the programmers at Blizzard

(WoW’s developer) if programmers in the other reality could

mess with the shared/duplicated program code.

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466

As far as I can tell, there are no examples of this

kind of thing involving Reality as a sub-reality

We don’t seem to have people from other realities

showing up in our virtual worlds, and there are no

accounts of the creation of Reality that involve its

being constructed from or within two

higher

realities both of which are consequent on a third.

The third reality is necessary, by the way, so

that Reality can run on hardware that’s common to

both its immediate super-realities. This doesn’t

mean that there has to be a god of that reality to

build the interconnections, though – the whole set-

up could arise as an artefact of its physics.

We can try other configurations, too.

Suppose that we were to create a finite set of

three or more virtual worlds, all independent of

each other but running on shared hardware. We

could connect them in a circular fashion

, such

that each virtual world was the sub-world of

exactly one other world and had exactly one sub-

world itself

. We wouldn’t give the NPCs of these

I’d say there were none involving Reality as a super-reality,

either, but then someone would go and implement two toy

virtual worlds with a mutual sub-reality just to prove me

wrong.

Or more than two.

I mean a single circle here, not several circles.

I was introduced to this idea by the professor who (many

years earlier) supervised my PhD, Jim Doran. He called it

Gillian’s Hoop; it was proposed to him by his daughter, Gillian,

shortly before she died.

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worlds god-like powers, but we would allow them

some freedom of movement. We might, for

example, allow them to represent in or descend to

their immediate sub-reality, or to absent in or

ascend to their immediate super-reality. If they did

this enough times, they could wind up back in their

original reality. This is because every virtual world

in this system is consequent on every other virtual

world plus itself

Such a circular hierarchy of worlds would not

necessarily need to have a holding reality to

provide the common hardware upon which the

component realities ran, but there would be far

fewer dangers if it did have one. If Reality were

part of such an arrangement, it would therefore be

a sub-world of at least one reality outside the

circle, which is where the god or gods of the

realities in the circle would best exist

We don’t have any examples supporting the

idea that Reality is a component of such a circular

chain, but there are some established phenomena

that would fit it well. The main one is that of

reincarnation: following death, you would ascend

to the reality preceding the one you died in, there

to be reborn with no knowledge of your previous

existence. Having gone round the circle a few

This changes the structure to that of a directed cyclic graph.

“Best” because they could exist within the realities of the

circle, although this would ultimately lead to their being the

gods of their own realities and so introduce all the Ptah-like

problems associated with this condition.

How to Be a God

468

times

, you could eventually be ascended to the

reality outside of the circle itself, so ending your

cycle of death and rebirth.

To summarise, then:

we can make fairly

arbitrarily-connected sub-worlds if they’re all

consequent on Reality. We haven’t yet found a

reason to do so, but we could do it. It would appear

that no god of Reality has found a reason to do so,

either.

There’s a kicker, though. Remember the

philosophical position of idealism, which says that

only thought exists? This posits that all of Reality

is a manifestation of your imagination. Put another

way, you are a reality unto yourself and Reality is

consequent on you.

Well, the same could be said of me, or of anyone

else. We could all be our own self-contained

realities, representing in our own concocted sub-

realities. To each of us, that sub-reality would be

Reality. The thing is, all those independent

versions of Reality could be the same reality. One

reality can, as I’ve just explained, be consequent on

multiple realities.

So yes, perhaps the material world is a

construction of the mind. That doesn’t mean it

can’t be a construction of multiple minds, though.

This may take awhile if the circle has an infinite number of

realities in it, which is why I said it should be finite when I

initially described the arrangement.

I need to widen my vocabulary: this is the fifth sentence in

this book that I’ve begun with “To summarise, then:”.

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If it were then would it still be the case that this

construction could be said to be illusory?

Gods and Governments

The last line and rallying call of the Metaverse

Manifesto reads thus:

REALITY CREATORS OF ALL PLATFORMS –

CREATE!

(Montagne, 2007)

The premise of this short tract, which is based

on the Communist Manifesto (Marx & Engels, 1848),

is that reality is the only commodity. Through the

creation of realities, those who control Reality are

rendered irrelevant.

So who controls the created realities?

I’ve already stated several times in this book

that the goings-on in a reality are governed by its

physics. This is indeed correct. There are other

forms of governance involved too, however, that

rest on said physics.

In theory, you can do anything that the physics

of the reality you inhabit allows. Feeling hungry?

Just wrench the chocolate bar from the hands of

that small child. Like fire? The roof of that thatched

cottage should go up a treat! Have a petty

How to Be a God

470

grievance with a neighbour? A few nails

hammered into the tyres of their car should teach

them a lesson.

In practice, although you can do anything that

the physics of (in our case) Reality deems possible,

you won’t. Sure, your morals may get in the way,

but if they don’t then you’re still not going to do as

you might wish. This is because there are

predictable consequences to your actions. Other

people can also use the physics of Reality, and

there are more of them than there are of you.

Supernatural entities aside, these other people

can’t use physical abilities beyond those that you

can, but they can organise to bring these abilities

to bear in a concerted manner.

The way this has played out in Reality

is that

populations are grouped by geographical region;

each such region is subject to the rule of a local

administration that enjoys within that region a

monopoly on the legitimate use of force (Weber,

1919). Having a monopoly on the legitimate use of

force is what makes a state a state. The ruling

administration of a state is that state’s government;

governments regulate the behaviour of those they

govern by enacting laws and (legitimately) using

force to compel people to comply with them.

As I mentioned back in Chapter 1, individuals in

a reality are therefore subject to two sets of laws:

the physical laws that govern what they could do;

On Earth, anyway. It may be different on other planets.

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the within-the-physical laws that govern what

they can do. It’s impossible for non-gods to change

or to break the former (the laws of nature) but

possible for them to break or to change the latter

(the laws of the land).

An important concept in governance is that of

consent. In most developed states, the government

rules by the consent of the governed: the governed

may not always like the particular government of

the day, but they do accept that the system by

which it came into power gives it the right to

govern, and thus consent to being governed by

whichever batch of power-hungry outliers said

system delivered this time round. If the

government does not have the consent of those

whom it governs, it’s known as a tyranny.

When it comes to states, consent makes a

difference. It’s eminently possible that a popular

despot is not regarded as being a tyrant yet that

the leader of a badly-constructed democracy is.

When it comes to physics, however, consent makes

no difference at all. You may well feel that Reality

is a wonderful place and so be happy to have your

behaviour moderated by the laws of nature

instituted by one or more gods; this means nothing

when you yourself are the product of said gods,

though.

The thing is, as I touched on earlier, you can’t be

asked to consent to being brought into existence;

this is because until you are brought into existence

there’s no “you” to be asked, let alone to consent.

How to Be a God

472

Once you have been brought into existence, you

become part of the fabric of the reality in which

you now exist; if you don’t consent to being

regulated by its physics, you’re effectively not

consenting to exist; if you don’t consent to

existing, well it’s rather too late to do anything

about that

The people of a reality have no say in

determining the laws of nature that govern them,

because these laws are part of who they are. Their

consent, whether given or not, is therefore utterly

immaterial (in both senses of the word). This

means that those who made the laws of nature –

the gods of the reality – are tyrants. They may be

popular, but they’re still tyrants.

As it happens, at least some gods of virtual

worlds have historically been aware of this and

have endeavoured to cede control of their worlds

to others.

Some time ago, when discussing pandeism, I

mentioned LambdaMOO. The god of this social

world, Pavel Curtis, was uncomfortable in his role

precisely because he felt he was effectively a

tyrant. He therefore sought to relinquish control to

the world’s players

Depending on the reality, there may be options available to

you to cease to exist. It would literally be suicidal to take

them, though.

Not to its NPCs, because these weren’t sapient. Note that

this neatly avoids the problems you get when individuals, in

changing the physics of their reality, thereby change

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Similar approaches have been attempted since

then, most notably with EVE Online. All have

broken down. The fact is that any power given to

the players is merely illusory. In LambdaMOO’s

case, the players couldn’t agree on a form of

government to be implemented, and when Pavel

sought to impose one there were complaints that

he was “dictatorially imposing universal suffrage

on an unconsulted populace” (Dibbell, 1993). In EVE

Online’s case, it became clear that although the

gods may wish to act merely as coders

implementing the will of the players, sooner or

later the players will request something that the

gods can – but don’t want to – give to them

. Such

a request could be a change that undermines the

system of government, say, or that completely

alters the balance or character of the world, or that

will haemorrhage players. Whatever it is, the gods

will feel that the consequences are too drastic to

contemplate and therefore will decline to

implement the required modification. At this point,

the veneer of player control cracks and it’s clear

once again that the gods really are gods.

As a compromise, it’s possible to give players a

fair degree of control over the governance of their

game while nevertheless making it crystal clear

themselves: the physics of a player’s own existence wasn’t

challenged by changes to the physics of their character’s

existence.

This is known as asking for a pony.

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474

that the gods have a veto. This is how EVE Online’s

Council of Stellar Management now works, and

how A Tale in the Desert’s Pharaoh has always

worked. Players have a voice, but ultimately don’t

have a say.

This kind of system, while being more open to

player involvement, nevertheless falls well short of

what early academic opinion advocated as the

ideal

. The reason it falls short is that two

principles pertain which together mean gods and

governments can never be fully reconciled when it

comes to the rulership of a virtual world:

1. Governments can be deposed by those they

govern; gods can’t.

2. Governments can relinquish their powers;

gods can’t.

The first rule says that the gods of a reality can

do whatever they like in and to it. The second rule

says that the first rule is true regardless of

whether said gods wish it to be true

Now that we’ve clarified the two types of

governance at work here, it’s possible to consider

the power hierarchy that this implies. Starting at

For example (Humphreys, 2005) (Taylor, 2006).

The gods of LambdaMOO didn’t wish it to be true, and on

December, 1992, handed power to their players. This

didn’t work out, because even minor changes to the physics

often had social consequences (Hess, 2003). On 16

May,

1996, they took back power by fiat – which, given that they

were able to do this, verified that they’d never truly given up

power in the first place.

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the level of virtual worlds and going up from there,

we have the following laws in play for (potentially)

sapient beings:

• Laws of the land of the virtual world, set by

NPCs in the virtual world, applied to NPCs.

• Laws of nature of the virtual world, set by

the gods of the virtual world, applied to its

NPCs.

• Laws of the land of Reality, set by human

beings in Reality, applied to human beings

in Reality (including those who are gods of

virtual worlds).

• Laws of nature of Reality, set by the gods of

Reality

, applied to human beings in Reality

(including those who are gods of virtual

worlds).

• Laws of the land of the super-reality that’s

inhabited by the gods of Reality, set by the

inhabitants of this super-reality, applied to

the inhabitants of this super-reality

(including those who are gods of Reality).

• Laws of nature of the super-reality that’s

inhabited by the gods of Reality, set by the

gods of this super-reality

, applied to the

inhabitants of this super-reality (including

those who are gods of Reality).

These may number from zero, through one, to many. For

clarity of writing, in this exercise I’ll go with many.

So as not to provoke an infinite series, I’ll assume these to

number zero.

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If you’re an NPC in a virtual world and

something bad happens that you wish to be

redressed, this gives you a surprisingly large range

of options. You can appeal to the government of

your part of the virtual world; if that fails, you can

appeal to the gods of the virtual world (its

designers); if that fails, you can appeal to the

relevant jurisdiction in Reality that covers where

the gods live (assuming an open communication

channel); if that fails, you can appeal to a god of

Reality (praying is the favoured method from

Reality, so hey, why wouldn’t it work from a virtual

world?); if that fails, you can appeal to the

government of the transcendent reality in which

the gods of Reality live (should there be one). If that

fails, OK, only then are you properly stuffed.

If a virtual world’s NPCs are permitted to

absent in Reality, this raises the possibility that

they could take a god of their world to court to

address the NPCs’ grievances. How would such a

court handle, say, a complaint that the way a

designer implemented death and aging meant that

NPCs were effectively being slowly and painfully

executed over time?

Oh, and by the way, law-makers, be careful that

you don’t tie designers’ hands too much: if your

directives remove a designer’s ability to act as the

god of a reality, you become the gods of that reality

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yourselves. You do know how to design realities,

yes?

This raises the issue of whether Reality’s laws of

the land should apply to sub-realities or not.

Reality forbids theft: should theft in virtual worlds

be forbidden? If so, well Reality also forbids

murder, but given that death in virtual worlds is

rarely as fatal as it is here, is the mapping still

good? How different would a world have to be

before a law of Reality could be said not to apply to

it?

If we wish, we as gods can make a sub-reality’s

laws of the land become laws of nature. Reality’s

physics may not code-in the concept of democracy,

but that doesn’t mean a virtual world’s physics

can’t. We could enfranchise every adult NPC and

make elections impossible to corrupt: “who the

president is” could be determined by a law of

nature rather than by a law of the land. This isn’t

far-fetched: medieval monarchs ruled by divine

right, which is a law of nature rather than a law of

the land – although armies did tend to be used to

verify that the law of nature was being applied to

the correct people. Somewhat ironically, if we as

gods didn’t approve of the notion of rule by divine

right then we could use our godly powers to

In my book Designing Virtual Worlds, I asked the question

“Should those lacking a god’s motivation assume a god’s

powers?” (Bartle, 2003). I didn’t answer it.

How to Be a God

478

ensure that all the governments in our virtual

worlds were secular

The same applies to ethical values, by the way.

Just because these “are not objective, are not part

of the fabric of the world” (Mackie, 1977), that

doesn’t mean we can’t weave them into the fabric

of a world we have created.

Lest you think this is all well-trodden ground,

it’s not. Religious Studies currently uses three

methodologies to provide structure for the

analysis of religions:

• Phenomenology – founded on the observable

characteristics of a religion (sacrifice, ritual,

sacred places and so on) and how they fit

together.

• Lived Religion – using principles of

ethnography to observe what the followers

of a religion believe and do.

• Functionalism – examining how the

practical aspects of a religion work (not

eating pork in a hot country reduces the

incidence of food poisoning).

To these, we can now add a fourth:

• Inductivism – if you were creating a reality,

how and why would you create it, and what

religions would arise as a result?

There are many varieties of secularism (Copson, 2017), but

all have the overall aim of protecting the state and religion

from each other.

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This last one is actually used by designers (if

not theologians) as a matter of course

I’ll end this chapter with two questions that I’m

not going to answer: they’re just for you.

Firstly, suppose you created a virtual world

with sapient NPCs: would you want to code-in a

divine right of NPC monarchs to rule?

Secondly, how would you feel about being told

by a government in Reality that you had to code-in

democracy regardless?

See (Garriott & Fisher, 2017) for a description of how the

religions of the Ultima universe were designed.

In 2008, I asked this at a workshop attended by indie

designers of virtual worlds. So as not to prejudice your own

response, I won’t discuss here how they answered; I will,

however, reveal that they all answered the same way.

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Chapter 9

POINT OF YOU

Recently, a friend of mine was rushed to hospital

complaining of chest pains. Worried that he might

die, his wife asked us to pray that it wasn’t a heart

attack.

How would that have worked, then? Prayers in

the present can influence events of the past? Is

that even implementable? The past has a very long

reach; the effects of events ripple out for all

eternity. Undoing an event undoes all the events

that follow from it; the present would therefore

play out differently, and this would be noticeable.

Consider, for example, the case of a missing

child. It’s not uncommon to hear of parents

praying that their loved one will be found alive,

even though the child might well already be dead.

If the child is indeed dead, how would a god grant

the prayer without changing the past? Yet if the

past is changed, so is the present. Suppose

someone had killed the child and cremated the

body, yet now suddenly the child is shown on TV

being reunited with grateful family members; the

murderer would know that something

supernatural was going on, yet we never hear

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481

reports (or even rumours) alleging this. Another

way the prayer could be answered is to prevent the

murderer from killing the child in the first place;

this sounds easy enough to arrange, but then every

action the murderer performed afterwards would

have to be unwound too – all of which would also

have consequences. The now-unkilled child could

well arrive home safe and sound when they were

expected to do so, meaning the very prayer that

saved them wouldn’t itself ever have been issued

I’m not saying that this can’t be worked

around

. What I am saying is that if we wanted to

be able to do this kind of thing in answer to the

prayers of NPCs in our virtual worlds it would be

extremely non-trivial and possibly even

paradoxical. Furthermore, these same issues

necessarily dog whoever is tasked with responding

to prayers in Reality (if anyone).

At this point, you’ve read enough of this book to

know where I’ve been going with it. It’s now time

to look at the implications.

Note that this is theoretically possible to arrange through

closed time-like curves (basically time travel), but the

recalibration of events that would be necessary to preserve

the causal chain may well lead to a worse outcome (Tobar &

Costa, 2020).

You might be able to do it by reloading a saved state and

changing just the right variables to achieve the desired effect

while containing the spread of undesired effects. For some

(possibly most) requests, though, that could prove to be

logically impossible.

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482

Oh, my friend hadn’t had a heart attack, by the

way. That’s the power of either prayer or

serendipity for you.

Motivation

May we not conceive each of us living beings

to be a puppet of the Gods, either their

plaything only, or created with a purpose –

which of the two we cannot certainly know?

(Plato, trans. 1892)

I’ve answered the question of how gods create

realities, but what I haven’t done is answer the

question of why they create them

. Most creator

gods of Reality are surprisingly coy about why they

did what they did, but fortunately for us most

creators of virtual worlds are not.

I know why I created my own reality, MUD: I

didn’t like Reality. Constructing a heaven so as to

escape from a hell isn’t the only reason that people

There is a philosophical argument (Suits, 1978) that without

play there can be no ideal of existence – that thing, the only

justification for which is that it justifies everything else.

Furthermore, games are precisely what distinguish an ideal

of existence from said everything else. This is therefore not

quite as rhetorical a question as it might at first appear to be.

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483

create realities, though

. If we use paracosms as

our starting point, there’s quite a range:

Why did authors find it necessary to invent

other worlds? Usually, the answer lies in

changing Primary World defaults, to amaze,

entertain, satirize, propose possibilities, or

simply make an audience more aware of

defaults they take for granted.

(Wolf, 2012)

The first thing to note when it comes to

thinking about why anyone would create a reality

is that there are different extents of creation. A god

can:

• Create all of the physics and the content,

building the reality from scratch. This is

what Roy Trubshaw and I did with MUD.

• Add to and improve existing physics and

content, by taking the code for a working

reality and modifying it. LegendMUD, for

example, started out as a modified version

of the Merc 2.0b codebase, which itself was

derived from DikuMUD (Koster, 2018)

Readers who were alarmed at my suggestion in Chapter 5

that Heaven could be a hell can therefore breathe easy.

The lead designer of LegendMUD, Raph Koster, is one of the

pre-eminent figures in virtual world thinking, having also

been the lead designer of Ultima Online and creative director

of Star Wars Galaxies. If you’re even remotely interested in

How to Be a God

484

• Take an existing reality and run it with no

changes. This is what most of the (several

thousand) people who ran copies of

DikuMUD or TinyMUD

in the 1990s did.

I mention this because different extents of

creation have different motivations. Someone who

simply wanted to play with their friends in their

own, personal reality would only need to obtain the

code for an existing reality and boot it up on a new

server. Someone who saw creative opportunities in

an existing world might take the code and modify

it, better to suit their aesthetics of play. Someone

who wanted to create an original world with

original content to make an original statement

would have to construct their reality lock, stock

and barrel. It’s probable that anyone who did the

latter would previously have done one or both of

the former, thereby migrating from player to

player-as-designer to designer.

External factors can also have influence:

someone without programming skills (nor access

to enough money to pay someone who does have

programming skills

) couldn’t easily create a

the kind of things designers think about when they create

and run virtual worlds, read (Koster, 2018).

TinyMUD was a social world, all about building your own

content as a player.

Games programmers are paid less than non-games

programmers. In 2021, for example, the median salary for a

programmer in the UK was £31,087 (Payscale, 2021); the

Chapter 9 Point of You

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virtual world from first principles. Nevertheless,

the possible extents of creation still hold true.

Thus, if we detect among the god(s) of Reality a

desire to potter around making changes to an

earlier version, we can be quietly confident that

Reality is the equivalent of a stock MUD.

As an illustration, consider the gods of Ancient

Greece (Zeus and the gang). They don’t seem to

have made many changes to Reality themselves,

but rather to have wrested the running of it from

the titans, who in turn got it from the set of

primordial gods who actually created it in the first

place. In virtual world terms, the primordial gods

(Gaia, Tartarus, Eros and possibly Erebus

) coded

Reality from scratch, then the titans booted up a

copy and modded it by adding concepts such as

mortality, then the current gods took over its

operation and only made minor updates to address

player guile

It’s tempting at this point to brainstorm a

bunch of primary and secondary reasons that

people might have for creating a reality, then just

list them and say “voilà!”. You can start with

median salary for a games programmer was £26,954

(Payscale, 2021).

Also possibly Hemera and Nyx; it depends on which account

you find the most credible.

For example, in a move that seems to be wearily popular

among gods, Zeus flooded the entire planet and killed all

humans except Deucalion and Pyrrha. This would be called a

server wipe if applied to a virtual world.

How to Be a God

486

accounts of the creation of Reality, bolster these

with statements from the designers both of

paracosms and of virtual worlds, then add in a few

more that seem plausible and you’re done. I have

indeed conducted this exercise (revealed anon).

The thing is, though, that if you pay attention to

what you’re doing when you engage in such an

analysis, you’ll notice that the motivations for

creating realities depend to a large extent on the

reality’s target audience.

See, when you create a reality as a deliberate act

(as opposed to: by accident

; as the outcome of

pursuing a higher purpose

; or as a consequence of

your own existence

) and do create it to be a

reality (as opposed to a purely objective scientific

object

or as an adjunct to Reality

), you’re

creating it for someone. Now to some extent, every

deliberate act is ultimately done for personal

reasons, because your own mind is all you truly

know. Nevertheless, reality-creating is often (but

“Oh no, my cat brushed up against the screen and touched

the ‘big bang’ icon!”.

The Hindu concept of Lila suggests that Reality was created

through the higher purpose of divine play.

In the same way that my being dashingly handsome is a

passive trait.

Just as we don’t think of Conway’s game of Life as

implementing significant realities, a god in a higher reality

could consider Reality as merely a cellular automaton for

computing the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Meeting venues such as Gather usually fit this criterion.

Chapter 9 Point of You

487

not always) for the perceived greater benefit of

someone else.

As for whom this target “someone else” might

be, there are four general categories into which

they fall; I’ve labelled these relative to your role as

the designer:

• Divine. You’re creating a reality for the

benefit of the sapient beings who will be

native to it.

• Personal. There is no “someone else”: you’re

creating a reality for your own benefit.

• Social. You’re creating a reality for the

benefit of other sapient beings of your own

reality.

• Spiritual. You’re creating a reality for the

benefit of the god(s) of your own reality.

It’s also possible that you could be creating for

one or more specific beings from these categories.

This is obviously the case with the personal

category because the specific being is you yourself,

but it also applies to the other categories. You

could, for example, be creating for a particular god

among many

, or for close family members, or for

a favoured NPC

. I’ll nevertheless absorb these

Note that the NPCs themselves will nevertheless owe you

nothing whatsoever. For an explanation as to why, see

Stanisław Lem’s short story Non Serviam (Lem, 1979).

“This one’s for you, Thor!”.

There is some suggestion in books of hadith that Allah

wouldn’t have created the world but for Muhammad,

How to Be a God

488

into the general categories, because otherwise this

section is going to pan out at twice its current

length; keep in mind that there could be subtleties

involved, though.

The above general categories are vaguely

ordered in ascending levels of consequence. In

practice, however, most virtual world designers

seem to create for either a personal or social

motivation, whereas most gods of Reality seem to

create for either a personal or divine motivation.

Because of this, a more accessible ordering of the

target audience categories is: personal, social,

divine, spiritual.

I shall shortly be presenting a list of

motivations for creating realities. This list is

organised in part by the above target audience

categories (in order of accessibility) and in part by

the reality’s intended purpose. I obtained the list

by enumerating all the plausible reasons for

creating realities that I could find or think of (as

described earlier), then grouping them by purpose,

then within each purpose associating the collected

motivations with one of the four audience

categories. I merged some similar entries together

and the result, while not exhaustive

, is still fairly

thorough.

however scholars of Islam disagree over the reliability and

interpretation of this assertion.

It doesn’t encompass “creating a reality for revenge”, for

example.

Chapter 9 Point of You

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When a purpose was missing an obvious entry

for a category, I speculated on what that entry

might look like. This issue only really arose for

entries in the divine and spiritual categories, as our

NPCs aren’t yet clever enough to take advantage of

everything offered them (so we don’t create for

them), and gods of Reality are resolute that there’s

no reality above their own (so never themselves

create for higher gods).

If my past experience is anything to go by, as

soon as people see a list they want to add to it

; in

this particular case they’re welcome to do so. My

intention is not to construct a definitive set of

motivations for creating realities, but rather to

construct a reasonably representative one that will

catch the majority of them.

What follows, then, are the purposes I’ve

identified for which realities are created (there are

eight of them), each broken down into the four

categories of beneficiary, with examples of the

associated motivations:

I wrote one of the foundational academic papers of Game

Studies, (Bartle, 1996), in which I explained why people

playing virtual worlds for fun find them fun. The paper

regularly saw attacks along the lines of “but you missed out

this kind of player” which, as the player types were intended

to be exhaustive, constituted a problem. I duly modified the

theory, but it wasn’t until I wrote (Bartle, 2009), addressing

its misuses, that the criticism abated.

How to Be a God

490

To prototype.

• For You (Personal). You create a reality to

test out some ideas or to assuage your

curiosity before designing the full-blown

reality you really want to make. One of my

PhD students did this; fortunately (for his

thesis), he determined that following it up

with a large-scale world was unnecessary.

• For Others (Social). You create a reality for

your players to playtest, so as to propose

and identify possibilities. This is the beta

test stage that most commercial MMORPGs

go through

. Some players are serial beta-

testers for successive virtual worlds, rarely

playing released versions.

• For your NPCs (Divine). You create a reality

for its creatures to try out. If they’re lucky,

you might even change the world for them,

based on their suggestions. We don’t do this

for virtual worlds as yet, because our NPCs

aren’t smart enough to have opinions. Few

of Reality’s gods seem to regard Reality as

being in a test-edit cycle, either, although it

could be argued that the Hindu gods’

Sometimes it’s called an alpha test to give the players the

impression they’re getting in really early, but it’s still a beta

test….

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system of successive creation of and

destruction of the universe allows for this

• For a Higher Being (Spiritual). You create a

reality for the god or gods of your own

reality to approve or disapprove of. As far as

I know, no creator of a virtual world has

ever had this reason for building a

prototype; however, given how tetchy some

gods can be if they sense false gods on the

horizon, I suppose a developer could think it

prudent to get their world rubber-stamped

first. If the gods like it, you make the full

version. If they don’t like it, expect either a

supernatural sign informing you of the fact

or, upon your death, an eternity in a

disagreeable place.

To profit.

• For You (Personal). You create a reality to

make money. You might have gone in with

noble intentions, but now it’s just a job. You

create realities because if you don’t then

your children will have no shoes. There is a

surfeit of people in the MMORPG industry

creating realities primarily to earn a wage.

We’re at present in Kali Yuga, the fourth and last epoch of

the current kalpa (cycle). This suggests that if you’re planning

to do anything 432,000 or more years from now, you can

forget it.

How to Be a God

492

• For Others (Social). You create a reality so

that your players can make money. OK, so

this is properly a secondary reason (in

general, those who want their players to

make money are calculating that they in

turn can make more money), but some

virtual worlds are specifically built around

the concept of a player economy that

redeems fiat currencies such as dollars;

Entropia Universe is probably the best-

known.

• For your NPCs (Divine). You create a reality

so that its inhabitants can serve you. The

Babylonian god Marduk seems to have

created human beings to fulfil this

ambition

so that he and the other gods

could live lives of ease while we were

bearing all the burdens. Thus, although

Reality was created “for” us humans, we

weren’t actually expected to gain from it

• For a Higher Being (Spiritual). You create a

reality to provide value to the creator of

your own reality. No god of Reality

currently appears to be part of such a

supply chain, but if the NPCs of our virtual

worlds are ever inventive enough to create

It’s not clear whether he created Reality in order that he

could create human beings to live there, but I bet he did….

If you’re into enslaving entire populations of NPCs, Marduk

is the role-model god for you.

Chapter 9 Point of You

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their own consequent realities then we

could easily sell our players access to these

(and perhaps reward the NPCs in their own

context to encourage them to make some

more).

To learn.

• For You (Personal). You create a reality to

learn how to do so, or to speculate how

other realities might be, or to grasp the

utility of a new interface, or simply because

it’s fun

. My students who create virtual

worlds as projects slot right in here.

• For Others (Social). You create a reality to

simulate some aspect of your own reality

through the behaviour of its players

, in

order to predict possible outcomes. The

virtual world Arden was explicitly designed

as a petri dish to test economic theories

(Castronova, 2008).

• For your NPCs (Divine). You create a reality

so that the creatures of that reality can

improve their character. The Yoruba god

Olodumare breathed life into the first

people for this reason.

The relationship between learning and fun is well-

established for games and play (Koster, 2013).

It’s therefore designed “for” the players, but not necessarily

for their immediate benefit.

The general validity of such virtual-to-real mappings is

discussed at length in (Williams, 2010).

How to Be a God

494

• For a Higher Being (Spiritual). You create a

reality in order discover more about and to

honour the creator of your own reality. This

seems to have been part of the motivation

behind the short-lived 2010 MMO, The Bible

Online.

To teach.

• For You (Personal). You create a reality in

order to teach yourself something else in

the process. I know a former MUD player

who did exactly this to teach himself

programming

• For Others (Social). You create a reality as a

serious game, to teach its players skills or to

alert them to the defaults of your own

reality. There are several educational virtual

worlds; CMX, for example, teaches its

players how to program in C

(Malliarakis,

et al., 2017).

• For your NPCs (Divine). You create a reality

so that the beings of that reality can be

taught. The Incan god Viracocha really

takes this to heart, walking Reality

disguised as a beggar so as to teach us the

basics of civilisation

Perhaps unsurprisingly, programming and virtual worlds

are good pedagogical bedfellows.

See?

He clearly hasn’t finished yet.

Chapter 9 Point of You

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• For a Higher Being (Spiritual). You create a

reality in order to preserve and honour

those who have lived and died in your own

reality. This is the idea behind ancestor-

simulation

To help personal growth.

• For You (Personal). You create a reality to

expand yourself (Newsome-Ward & Ng,

2021) or to make yourself manifest.

Jonathan Edwards, the foremost Puritan-

era theologian of America, argued that this

is the ultimate end goal God had when

creating Reality (Edwards, 1765); other goals

(such as being glorified) derive from it.

• For Others (Social). You create a reality so

that players from your own reality can

positively transform themselves. This was

the core motivation behind Second Life

(Rosedale, 2009)

, and virtual worlds have

There’s a hypothesis, by the way, that unless we ourselves

are living in an ancestor-simulation, our descendants will

almost certainly never run one (Bostrom, 2003). A competing

hypothesis says that if we ourselves create a simulated

reality, the probability that we are living in one is almost zero

(Kipping, 2020).

“… my best definition of our mission is that we are working

to create an online world having the exceptional property

that it advances the capabilities of the many people that use

it, and by doing so affects and transforms them in a positive

way.” Philip Rosedale, writing as Philip Linden.

How to Be a God

496

long acted as rites of passage (Schaap,

2002). Additionally, they can serve

therapeutic purposes: JennyMUSH was

created as a virtual crisis centre for people

subjected to sexual abuse in Reality (Reid,

1996)

• For your NPCs (Divine). You create a reality

in order to allow the best creatures of that

reality to be rewarded

. Unfortunately,

although judging souls is fabulously popular

among the gods of Reality, I can find none

that created Reality first and foremost so

that they could perform such judging

However, having seen how people use

genetic algorithms in Artificial Intelligence,

it’s only a matter of time before someone

tries this for a virtual world.

• For a Higher Being (Spiritual). You create a

reality in order to extend your creator (or

your creator’s creation). The logic here is

that by creating realities consequent on

your own, you are instantiating more of

JennyMUSH was itself griefed by an individual who snuck

in and carried on the sexual abuse virtually (Reid, 1994). You

really do have to worry about the minds of some people.

The worst creatures may not fare so well.

It may be a secondary motivation derived from a primary

motivation, though. For example, The Qur’an (67:2) suggests

that Allah created death and life to test as to which of us is

best in conduct, but this doesn’t imply that that’s why he

created all of Reality.

Chapter 9 Point of You

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your creator (or of your creator’s creation). I

don’t see this idea gaining traction any time

soon, but it would make a decent science

fiction story

To be enjoyed.

• For You (Personal). You create a reality that

you yourself want to play (or to play with

for fun). This is typical of players rather

than of designers. Example: unmodified

stock MUDs in the 1990s.

• For Others (Social). You create a reality for

others to play so as to entertain or to

engage them. Genuinely free

game worlds

such as DikuMUD were built for this

purpose.

• For your NPCs (Divine). You create a reality

to give the gift of life to your creations. This

is reportedly why Odin did it.

• For a Higher Being (Spiritual). You create a

reality as an offering to your own reality’s

creator, who can play it (or at least be

present in it) and so give it their blessing.

Some of the church worlds, such as Church

Probably one in which some evangelical church raises vast

amounts of money to run more and more virtual world

servers, only for it to transpire that the whole exercise is a

front for a cryptocurrency-mining operation.

“The creative mind plays with the objects it loves” (Jung,

1923).

As opposed to free-to-play, which equates to profit-seeking.

How to Be a God

498

of Fools, seem to have been set up with this

at least partly in mind.

To make an artistic point.

• For You (Personal). You create a reality to

express and behold some aspect of yourself

that you can only explicate through this

medium. The phenomenon can be observed

playing out between virtual world designers

in the form of artistic dialectics, such as the

one twixt sandbox worlds and theme park

worlds.

• For Others (Social). You create a reality to

satirise, allegorise or otherwise comment

upon the reality in which you live. This is

the objective behind many early paracosms,

such as Thomas More’s Utopia (More, trans.

1901), and it features in some text MUDs

• For your NPCs (Divine). You create a reality

to be glorified by the creatures of that

reality, so they may know you. According to

Roman Catholic doctrine, this is God’s

motivation for creating Reality.

• For a Higher Being (Spiritual). You create a

reality to demonstrate (if there’s a higher

reality) or disclose (if there isn’t) your

sovereignty

. This is in line with most

Satire provides the context for one of the three kingdoms

in the MUD 3Kingdoms, for example.

In the sense of having supremacy over your own life.

Chapter 9 Point of You

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monotheist theology, because if a god is the

only entity in or of their own reality,

everything they do must be such an act of

sovereignty-disclosure by definition.

To become a creator.

• For You (Personal). You create a reality to

prove to yourself or to showcase to others

that you are someone who can create in this

medium. The Mayan gods Kukulkán and

Tepeu created Reality (or at least the

humans in it) specifically to preserve their

legacy.

• For Others (Social). You create a reality so

that those who play it can create and shape

their own realities within it or become

otherwise inspired. This is the goal of social

virtual worlds such as the MOOs, MUSHes

and MUCKs of the 1990s

• For your NPCs (Divine). You create a reality

so that the creatures of that reality may

worship you. This is for their benefit, not for

yours: unless you’re exceptionally vain you

To spare your happiness, I didn’t go into the history of

virtual worlds earlier in quite as much tedious detail as I

could have done. If you nevertheless want the tedious detail,

see Chapter 1 of (Bartle, 2016). Briefly, MOOs, MUSHes and

MUCKs were TinyMUD descendants and as such had no

gameplay to them; this allowed their designers to furnish

their players with supernatural abilities powerful enough for

them to sub-create worlds if they so desired.

How to Be a God

500

don’t actually need to be worshipped, but

through worshipping you your creations

can achieve a sense of peace and purpose.

This seems to be the reason that Allah

created Reality

• For a Higher Being (Spiritual). You create a

reality so as to impress upon your creator

that you, too, are a creator. For example,

were you to create a reality explicitly to

fulfil your creator’s dictum that you were

created in their image (imago dei), you

would fit right here. As far as I can tell,

though, nothing like this has yet happened.

I’d certainly be impressed if my own NPCs

somehow managed it, though.

In the event that you lost track of all these lists

of bullet points and would really like to see a

condensed version, Figure 10 provides an overall

summary of the motivations (badly).

It’s definitely why he created human beings (and jinn); as to

whether it’s why he created the entire universe, well most of

what I’ve read on the subject suggests that it is but I’m happy

to defer to actual experts if it turns out I’ve got it wrong.

Chapter 9 Point of You

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For You

For Others

For your

NPCs

For a

Higher

Being

Prototype

To test

out your

ideas.

To let

playtesters

identify

options.

To find out

if your

NPCs like

it.

To see if the

gods of your

own reality

approve.

Profit

To make

money

yourself.

So your

players

can make

money.

So your

NPCs can

serve you.

To provide

value to the

god(s) of

your reality.

Learn

To learn

how to

create a

reality.

simulate

your own

reality.

So your

NPCs can

improve

themselves.

To honour

your own

reality’s

creator(s).

Teach

To teach

yourself

different

thing.

As a

serious

game.

To instruct

your NPCs.

To honour

the dead of

your own

reality.

Growth

expand

yourself.

So that

players

can

transform.

To reward

the best of

your NPCs.

To extend

your creator

or their

creation.

Enjoy

So you

can play

it for fun.

entertain

your

players.

To give the

gift of life.

As an

offering to a

higher

being.

Art

express

yourself.

To satirise

your own

reality.

To be

glorified by

your

creations.

demonstrate

your own

sovereignty.

Creat

To prove

that you

can make

realities.

So others

can create

sub-

realities.

To be

worshipped

by your

creations.

To show

your creator

that you are

a creator.

How to Be a God

502

Here begins an aside.

It’s not important to what I want to say, but

these eight motivations pair up with each other:

• Realities as product.

To prototype.

To profit.

• Realities as tools.

To learn.

To teach.

• Realities as destination.

To help personal growth.

To be enjoyed.

• Realities as communication.

To make an artistic point.

To become a creator.

Realities as product objectifies both players and

content.

Realities as tools objectifies players and

subjectifies content.

Realities as destination subjectifies players and

objectifies content.

Realities as communication subjectifies both

players and content.

You can draw these pairings as a 2D graph if

you want, but I’ll leave that as an exercise

. At the

level of individual pairs of motivations, you could

I don’t want to give the impression that I see such graphs

wherever I look. That said, the Well How About That section

of this chapter perhaps exposes the sad truth.

Figure 10 – Motivations Summarised (Badly).

Chapter 9 Point of You

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further create a 3D graph by adding an

input/output axis (prototyping, learning, personal

growth and artistic points are input; the rest are

output).

Weirdly, these pairings map directly onto the

virtual world interface conventions I described in

Chapter 5: non-diegetic, spatial, meta and diegetic

respectively. That’s rather cool

Here ends an aside.

One of the contributing reasons I’ve left it late

to discuss motivations is that they draw on so

many concepts that it’s taken the bulk of this book

to cover them all. The main reason, though, is that

I wanted to make a point that I couldn’t make until

now.

The thing is, the motivations we have for

creating virtual worlds are equally applicable to

any god or gods who may or may not have created

Reality. We can choose to believe that Reality was

created for our pleasure, or our torment, or our

spiritual development, but we could actually be

living in a student project or a serious game or a

commercial product. As the opening quote from

Plato suggested, we don’t know – how could we?

Of course, some fortunate few of us may have

been addressed by a god directly, but any being

with godly powers could tell us anything at all and

we’d have no way of discerning whether or not

Inexplicable, but cool.

How to Be a God

504

they were being truthful. If you were making a

virtual world just for you and your friends to play

for fun, you could hoodwink the NPCs by making

up all kinds of sincere nonsense about your

motivation – they’d have absolutely no way to

gainsay it

. Even if you didn’t tell them a thing, the

chances are they’d make something up themselves.

It’s like this with Reality: whatever its creator (if it

has one) may tell us about why they created it need

have no basis in truth. I’m not saying it doesn’t; I’m

merely pointing out that it’s not a given.

I have two more points to make before moving

on.

Firstly, motivations for creating a reality are

not necessarily motivations for continuing to run

it. Reality could be a failed or botched experiment

that will shortly be terminated. It could be a work

in progress that will be patched at a future date. It

could be a prototype or A/B test that is scheduled

to be closed down at a certain date when sufficient

information has been gathered. It could be a legacy

project that’s receiving no updates but the servers

are kept running because it would be morally

wrong to kill us all by switching them off. Just

because Reality may have been created to

determine which 144,000 of us gets to live on in a

“My studies in old books in the priest salon at Silvermoon

had uncovered a legend that some gifted people could

communicate indirectly, via a being called a ‘player’ and a

channel called ‘Internet’.” (Bainbridge, 2010).

Chapter 9 Point of You

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wondrous afterlife

, that doesn’t mean that this is

still why Reality exists.

My second point is that it’s possible to have

several motivations for making a reality, perhaps

with different target audiences. These may work

with, for or against each other in the service of a

greater, overarching motivation. With MUD, for

example, I did want players to find the virtual

world fun (enjoy: for others), but this was because I

wanted them to be free to become themselves

(growth: for others). That’s not the end of the story,

either.

Unfortunately, because my teenaged self didn’t

engage in much analysis of why I was doing what I

was doing, I’m having to reflect today on what my

thoughts were at the time and so construct a post

hoc explanation; it’s therefore susceptible to

inadvertent manipulation by my current self to fit

my agenda. That said, it seems to me that I wanted

to make MUD as an act of rebellion: I was telling

Reality to fuck off. I could make a better, fairer,

more just reality than the one I was living in, so I

did. This would suggest that my ultimate goal was

one of asserting sovereignty over my own life (art:

for a higher being). I wasn’t aiming to change

Reality (although if I did, so much the better); if I

had been then my motivation would have been to

The figure of 144,000 comes courtesy of Jehovah’s

Witnesses, based on their understanding of Revelation 7:4,

14:1 and 14:3 in The Bible.

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influence society (art: for others). No, I was instead

aiming to bypass Reality and its insidious, mean

little ways. Speaking as I was to an inert

audience

, I couldn’t simply make my statement

and await a response – I had to enact it. Creating

an imagined reality through the medium of a

paracosm wasn’t good enough: I needed to create

an actual, working, visitable reality. My ideal was

one of freedom – freedom to be.

You may note (with some irony, given the title

of this book) that at no stage in my creation of

MUD did I consider what the effect would be on the

non-player characters (mobiles) with which I

populated it.

I’ve made a point of saying that the motivations

listed in this section are not exhaustive. People

create realities for all kinds of reasons. It may be

that Roy Trubshaw and I are the only people ever

to have made a reality for the reasons we did. Then

again, it may be that every god of Reality created it

because their own reality was worse.

As for what I think of Reality today, ha! In my

opinion, it had it coming

Reality was unlikely to pass judgement on my work.

Hmm, “creating a reality for revenge” doesn’t seem all that

weird a motivation now.

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A Lens

Let’s talk about religion.

It may come as a surprise to learn that there are

academics who study games and religion. They

even study how to study games and religion. When

it comes to video games, it would seem that there

are basically five levels at which religion occurs

(Bosman, 2016):

• Material. Religion, whether fictional or of

Reality, occurs within the game itself.

• Referential. The game refers, either

implicitly or explicitly, to one or more

existing religions of Reality.

• Reflexive. The game reflects on existential

concepts that are traditionally the province

of religion.

• Ritual. Players in the game behave in ways

that are traditionally associated with

religion.

• Meta-level. Players or scholars identify the

experience of playing the game itself as

being religious.

Which one of these covers virtual worlds?

Well, actually they all do.

Material. Many virtual worlds do have a religion

built into them. World of Warcraft has “priest” as a

character class, for example, and a cathedral

dominates the skyline of Stormwind. The Bible

Online was somewhat more gung-ho and used the

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world of the Old Testament as its actual setting

Adding religion to a game world can make it more

immersive, more culturally relevant and more

meaningful to the players (Geraci, 2020), so it’s no

surprise that designers would do this.

Referential. It can be argued with some

justification that most current virtual worlds

implicitly embody religious themes from Reality,

as can be shown by tracing their heritage back

through Tolkien to Catholicism and ideas of

Natural Law

(Castronova, 2012). Explicit

references to the religions of Reality are rather

more hard to come by, but they do exist. As it

happens, virtual worlds are packed with non-

diegetic references to aspects of Reality, usually at

the expense of immersion; these are often referred

to as Easter eggs, and serve to give players

something to feel clever about for having noticed

(although, very occasionally, an Easter egg may

make an artistic point). References in this context

to the religions of Reality do occur, which is why I

mentioned it, but they’re relatively few in number.

You’ll see quests and NPCs with names that allude

to Dr Who or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Friends, but

Sadly, because of fairly strict limits on the numbers of

popes allowed at once, the game Pope Simulator is not an

MMO.

This is a system of laws that claims its authority from

values deemed (by logical, spiritual or natural reasoning) to

be inherent in everyone. In the modern era, it’s closely related

to the concept of human rights.

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very rarely ones that mention even religions with

no present-day followers, let alone ones with

millions. It does happen occasionally – there’s a

quest in Rift called “An Eye for an Eye”

, for

example, and both Secret World Legends and Final

Fantasy XIV have one called “A Time to Every

Purpose”

– but the practice is uncommon.

Nevertheless, it’s not unprecedented; we can,

therefore, still check this checkbox.

Reflexive. Religious themes such as sacrifice,

salvation, life and death abound in virtual worlds.

In Secret World Legends, for example, both the

Emma Smith and Sarah storylines are about

exactly these issues. Pretty well every virtual world

with some kind of narrative element to it is going

to touch on these themes at some point.

Ritual. Surprisingly, ritual has always been a

part of virtual worlds

. In MUD1, when players

reached the highest level and were elevated to

demigodhood, they were accorded a memorial

stone in the game’s graveyard. When Star Wars

Galaxies introduced its infamous New Game

Exodus 21:24.

Ecclesiastes 3:1.

Or perhaps not surprisingly, as some scholars have argued

that play is ritual and ritual is play (Copier, 2005). That said, it

may depend on what you mean by “ritual”; anthropologists,

for example, can use it to refer to “practices through which

the game is enriched with new meanings that go beyond its

ludic instrumentality” (Zabet, 2012), which isn’t what

scholars of Religious Studies mean by the term.

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510

Experience, players built mass graveyards for their

characters before quitting (Koster, 2018). A more

substantial example comes from EVE Online, which

avoids permadeath through the fiction of clones

called capsuleers: when one clone dies, its

consciousness is awakened in another. The Molea

Cemetery was created by players to preserve the

bodies of dead capsuleers, which would otherwise

lie where they’d fallen until deleted 30 days later.

Players have since added memorials there for

people they’ve lost in Reality.

Meta-level. Whether the experience of playing a

virtual world is religious or not is a matter for the

individual. There have certainly been virtual

worlds intended to be used directly for religious

purposes: Church of Fools was an early one,

although it couldn’t really be described as a game.

That said, players and academics have long been

aware that playing a virtual world can be a

religious or religious-like experience, even back in

the days of text MUDs (recall Jen Clodius’s work on

DragonMUD; for more modern takes, see (Aupers,

et al., 2018) (Geraci, 2019)).

In virtual worlds, then, religion occurs at all five

of the levels where it could occur. This is a book

Developers also do this kind of thing. World of Warcraft

features several examples (Gibbs, et al., 2012), including an

NPC genie called Robin who lives in an Aladdin’s lamp – a

tribute to the late comedian, Robin Williams (who was

reportedly a fan of the virtual world).

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about virtual worlds, so at which level or levels

does what I’m saying fit?

It fits none of them.

I’m not looking at video games through the lens

of religion; I’m looking at religion through the lens

of video games (specifically, virtual worlds).

That’s the thing about lenses: they’re two-way.

Having a lens to look at the realities we create as

virtual worlds gives us a reciprocal lens to look at

our world, Reality, as a virtual world. There is a

symmetry between us-as-gods and us-as-NPCs.

This book is part observation, part thought

experiment. We don’t yet have good enough

artificial intelligence systems to create morally

considerable virtual creatures; when we do, that’s

when Theology can become an experimental

subject. For the moment, it’s merely the case that

we should think about these topics in advance so

that we’re prepared for the day when they are

realised.

Doing this is useful for spiritual and non-

spiritual people alike. For the spiritual, knowing

what we have to decide when we create worlds

casts a light on what a creator of Reality would

have (had) to decide back in the day. For the non-

spiritual, we must ask ourselves how we want our

creations to be, and why.

Before looking through a lens, though, it’s wise

to contemplate the potential cost. We might not be

happy with what we see. If there’s one thing I’ve

learned from playing Call of Cthulhu, it’s don’t read

How to Be a God

512

the books: they only ever summon demons. What

demons might be summoned by looking at the real

as if it were virtual?

One of my MUD2 players, Lexley Vaughan

once wrote a critique of the way that the game

handled religion, arguing that by treating

spiritually-significant objects as if they had no

spiritual significance, I (as MUD2’s designer) was

saying something about religion in general:

By consistently treating religion as nothing

more than the sum of its physical building

blocks, consciously disregarding any hint at

any greater spiritual aspect, he promotes the

idea that this is all there is to it – that people

with faith are, in some sense, deluding

themselves.

(Vaughan, 2003)

While not entirely correct regarding my

motivation (I wasn’t so much commenting on

religion as commenting on the structures of

Reality as a whole – although I did want to equate

religion with fantasy), this does nevertheless bring

up an interesting point. If we ourselves become

gods of realities, does that lessen our connection

with whatever gods there may be of Reality? After

I’m certain this wasn’t her real name but, hey, it’s how she

wanted to be known.

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all, what once seemed awesome and miraculous, to

gamers might now seem mundane.

After three days, Jesus respawned, took his

place as Administrator, and redefined the way

the game is played.

(Detweiler, 2010)

Is looking at virtual worlds a way to get people

into religion through games, or to get people out of

religion through games? Could it be that both

occur at times, or indeed that neither does? In the

two articles from which the above quotations

appear, Detweiler ultimately sides with “people

into religion” and Vaughan ultimately sides with

“people out of religion”. What do you think?

Well, if it turns out that you’re Pope Benedict

XVI, I already know what you think: that images

can “become independent of reality” and can “give

life to a virtual world, with several consequences,

the first of which is the risk of indifference to

truth” (Zenit, 2010). In other words, there’s a risk

that the virtual can undermine the real – more

“people out of religion” than “people into religion”,

then.

Further slivers of evidence

in favour of

“people out of religion” rather than “people into

I say “slivers” rather than “pieces” because when it comes

to matters of faith, evidence rarely enters into it; that’s kind

of the point.

How to Be a God

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religion” come from research showing that games

can act as a placeholder for religion (Boren, 2016)

and that playing them reduces the propensity for

spiritual experience (Burris & Dow, 2015). It’s also

possible that although virtual worlds could be a

way to get people into religion per se, the religion

in question is not necessarily one that has a

presence outside the virtual world (Bainbridge &

Bainbridge, 2007). Academics have of course

suggested using video games as tools for religious

education (Waltemathe, 2015); being academics,

however, whether this is to educate people for or

against religion rather depends on the academic

Compounding all this, there’s a strong

argument that the cause of the 1980s moral panic

over Dungeons & Dragons was rooted in the fact

that religions and role-playing games both utilise

the same imaginative faculties, and therefore

access to the latter as clear-cut fantasies raises in

proponents of the former uncomfortable questions

about their personal beliefs (Laycock, 2015). The

qualitative research that has been done in this area

(Schaap & Aupers, 2017) does support this

suggestion to some extent, but also indicates that

the tenets of virtual worlds’ artificial religions can

provoke in some players a desire to seek living-

religion answers to the existential questions

raised. The same research also suggests that over

DragonRaid is a fantasy RPG used to help Christians apply

Biblical principles, for example.

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time, players become less dogmatic in their

religious views and more tolerant of those held by

others. In some cases, then, it may not be so much

“people out of religion” as “people out of their

starting religion” (De Wildt, 2020).

If you’re a spiritual person

, then, you might

want to avoid spending too much time playing or

analysing virtual worlds. It’s not so much that

you’ll have a crisis of faith, but you could have a

leakage of it that you don’t notice until the tank is

approaching empty.

So, bearing that warning

in mind….

We know things now that we didn’t know in the

years before MUD was written. Some of what was

theory pre-1978 is practice now; much practice was

never even in the theory. We’ve learned lessons

from being gods which we can apply to our own

condition as creatures of a reality.

I’ve broached many of these observations in this

book. Here’s one of the more obvious and

important among them.

Imagine that our NPCs are contemplating their

existence. They conjecture that their world must

Or indeed a non-spiritual person: “Hardboiled atheist

players express more understanding and openness for the

religious Other and, in general, the universal longing for

ultimate meaning” (Schaap & Aupers, 2017).

It’s not the only warning, by the way, but it’s the most

pertinent to the discussion here. For other traps awaiting

those who hope to bring aspects of a religion from the real to

the virtual, see (Dawson, 2001).

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have a creator – correct! They deduce that this

creator exists in a higher reality – correct! They

calculate that they themselves must be modelled

on the creator – correct! They imagine what their

creator must be like – incorrect!

Even assuming they’re sapient, the characters

of my created realities know nothing about me. Any

concept they have of what I’m like is pure

supposition. They don’t know why I made their

world, why I made it the way I did, why I made

they themselves; they don’t even know that there’s

actually two of me, as I made their world with a

friend. All they have to go on is what they think I

must have thought when I did whatever it was I

did.

Put bluntly, they’re right that there’s a god but

wrong in every respect as to what I’m like as an

individual. As I noted in Chapter 6, even were I to

try to tell them what I’m like, they’d still be wrong.

I’d have to represent in their reality the whole

time, visible and interacting with it in godlike

ways, to be enough of a part of their existence for

them to get a decent understanding of who I am –

and even that would depend on there being little

information loss. Otherwise, they’re just filling in

major gaps in their knowledge with wishful

thinking.

That’s my NPCs looking at me. It’s also human

beings looking at the god or gods of Reality. No

matter how much you may think you know them,

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no matter how much you want what you think to

be true, the fact is that you’re largely speculating.

On the plus side, my NPC atheists are yet more

wrong: they don’t even think I exist. Relative to

their world, they may be correct; relative to mine,

though, they’re not

. What, then, am I going to do

to them when it comes to judgement day?

This isn’t actually a facetious question. It links

to Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma, in which Socrates

asks whether the pious individual is loved by the

gods because that individual is pious, or whether

that individual is pious because they’re loved by

the gods. In both cases, piety is approved of by the

gods, but in the former it isn’t defined by the gods

whereas in the latter it is

What it comes down to is whether it’s the gods

who decide what goodness is or whether goodness

is a concept independent of the gods. In our terms:

if we like NPCs who are good, is the mere fact that

we like an NPC itself sufficient to deem their

actions as good, or does our liking them derive

from the independent goodness of their actions?

Rephrasing Socrates’ question for virtual

worlds, then: do we like NPCs because they do

what we approve of, or do they do what we

approve of because we like them?

They will become correct when I die, which at the time of

writing has yet to occur. I expect it’s a couple of hundred

years away at the very least.

We came across this divine command theory when

discussing deontology earlier.

How to Be a God

518

In my experience, game designers do like NPCs

to do what they (the designers) approve of, but

what they approve of is for the NPCs to be free-

thinking individuals. I remember a discussion with

Roy Trubshaw on this very topic back in about

1980: sure, atheist NPCs would be wrong about

there not being a creator, but as a creator you’d be

quite pleased that they’d managed to work out

there wasn’t one, given the complete lack of

supporting evidence. Atheist NPCs would

therefore gain a kind of redemption through

smartness

That’s my NPC atheists looking at me. It’s also

human atheists looking at the gods of Reality.

Note that although the NPC atheists are wrong,

that doesn’t mean human atheists are also wrong.

Likewise, the NPCs with spiritual tendencies may

be right, but that doesn’t mean that spiritual

humans are right. What this is telling us isn’t

what’s right or wrong about Reality: what it’s

telling us is what would have to be true for it to be

right or wrong – and what the implications of that

would be.

It’s easy to fall into the groove of believing that

this is all an analogy. It’s not an analogy. We really

are the gods of the worlds we create, and we really

do have to think of ourselves as the gods of those

worlds if we’re to understand them. This in turn

They’d still be somewhat embarrassed to find themselves

in NPC heaven, though.

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gives us insights regarding whatever god or gods

there may or may not be of Reality. We, as gods,

have no say in this: we get the insights whether we

want them or not. An architect who spends ten

years designing buildings cannot prevent themself

from coming to a subsequent understanding of the

process of designing buildings: it arrives as an

unbidden consequence of their art. So it is with

gods of virtual worlds.

You don’t have to accept any of what I describe

in this book. Whether you’re right or I’m right or

we’re both right – or both wrong – to a greater or

lesser degree is immaterial. The doors to new

realities have been flung open, and neither you nor

I can influence who’ll be going through them a

thousand years hence. The feel of Reality itself will

alter in ways as yet undreamt of; all we know for

sure is that there will be change:

Ever larger numbers of people will spend many

hours inside online games. To the rest of us,

these choices will feel like an exodus from our

reality. Our reality will be changed.

(Castronova, 2007)

As for why people will choose to represent in

these worlds rather than to engage with Reality,

game designer Jane McGonigal sums it up

concisely in the title of her book, Reality is Broken,

and its first line:

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520

Gamers have had enough of reality.

(McGonigal, 2011)

Nothing short of extinction will stop humanity

from creating and living in realities other than

Reality. The most we can do from our vantage

point today is to strive to ensure that the realities

we do create are places worthy of us.

Answers and Unanswers

I’ve asked a lot of questions in this book, some of

which are answered and some of which are

unanswered. Whether or not you find the

questions, answers or unanswers comfortable or

uncomfortable depends on your personal

philosophy.

For example: the Holy Trinity makes a lot more

sense when examined from an implementational

point of view, but whether you’re happy with that

may depend on whether you’re a Christian or not

Likewise, the rather neat explanation of how

transubstantiation works may please Roman

Catholics but be received with less enthusiasm by

others

. Reincarnation is perhaps the biggest

Christian technophobes will have a dilemma.

Technopagans, for example, treat real and virtual candles

as being equally meaningful in their rituals (O'Leary, 1996).

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overall winner, with virtual worlds offering several

mechanisms for it; whether you fall on the “that

clinches it” or “an explanation isn’t a proof” side of

the argument is contingent on your world view.

As another example, this time of a suggestion

that’s likely to be more widely vexatious: I raised

the possibility that our gods could well be duffers.

We may actually be smarter than our gods, or, if

we’re not, in the coming decades, centuries,

millennia or whatever we’ll create NPCs in our

virtual worlds who are smarter than our gods.

Worse, the easy defensive position – that our gods

are of never-to-be-equalled, supra-genius level

intelligence – means it’s even more certain that

you have no idea what they’re really like, and that

any and all glimpses you perceive of them are

wholly and reliably uninterpretable. That may sit

well with you or it may not; there may be a

felicitous way of accepting it or there may not. It

depends on how you come at it.

I’ve done my best to be accommodating in this

book, treating all religions past and present as

equally valid. A consequence of this is that I’ve

been able to call on evidence (or if you prefer,

“evidence”) from many cultures of varied parts of

the world when discussing both natural and

supernatural occurrences. This has been of use in

two ways: to see if we can implement in virtual

worlds what has been reported in Reality; to see if

there are reports in Reality of what we can

implement in virtual worlds.

How to Be a God

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Now as I said back in Chapter 1

, adopting this

impartiality could be taken as offensive. Usually, it

isn’t – Japanese role-playing games routinely mix

figures and themes from assorted religions (De

Wildt & Aupers, 2020) and no-one raises an

eyebrow. That said, context is important. Smite, a

multi-player online battle arena, features gods

from the pantheons of Ancient Greece, Ancient

Rome, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, Ancient

Japan, Ancient Polynesia, the Norse, the Slavs, the

Celts, the Mayans, Vodou and Hinduism. Now even

though Hinduism is older than any of the other

religions referenced by Smite, it’s still widely

practised whereas the rest (Vodou perhaps

excepted) are not. Prior to Smite’s launch, there

was some pushback from Hindu leaders who felt

that the presence of Hindu gods in the game

trivialised them, and as such was offensive to the

devoted (Eurasia Review, 2012). Much of this was

because of the art style

, but the more general

point was that by situating the world’s third-

largest religion

alongside a bunch of largely dead

ones, it was placing it in the same category.

Although such a comparison-of-unequals

appears rather low down on the list of significant

offences that this book is likely to cause, I could

It was right there in the footnotes.

Kali in particular was singled out, as she was depicted

wearing what was basically a bikini.

Fourth-largest if you include “no religion” as a religion.

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nevertheless have avoided it by concentrating only

on “dead” religions or only on “live” ones. I didn’t,

though, because who am I to judge whether a

religion is worthy of inclusion or exclusion? I’m

just a jumped-up computer programmer.

Furthermore, had I taken either of these

approaches, the result would have been even more

unsatisfactory.

The thing is, most of the evidence concerning

what gods did or didn’t do comes from a time

when people had neither the ability to record

supernatural phenomena nor the methodology to

test the veracity of reports. Even “modern” ideas

such as monotheism are several millennia old.

Although there are religions that have developed

more recently – Scientology, Falun Gong,

Rastafarianism, many hundreds more – these don’t

tend to come with attendant miracles or other

supernatural claims (indeed, some of them don’t

even have gods). If they did, cynics would ask to see

the evidence and feel justified in their cynicism

when it was not forthcoming to even half-way

credible standards. It would therefore seem that

modern gods are more reticent to perform acts of

physics-changing than were those of yesteryear.

This means that had I not included gods with

no present-day followers alongside gods with

millions of them, I would have been short of

examples of the kind of things gods can do.

However, had I only included them, I couldn’t have

said much of relevance to the modern reader. My

How to Be a God

524

decision to treat all gods as if they existed thus

addressed both issues, while allowing me to

remain relatively impartial.

I bring this up because of what it says about the

incidence of supernatural activity. Basically, the

closer we are to the present, the less of it there is.

No gods seem to visit Reality any more (if indeed

they ever did).

Why is this?

Well there could be many reasons. Perhaps

Reality is undergoing a denial-of-service attack by

hackers in the reality of the gods. Perhaps there’s a

new law in the gods’ reality that prohibits their

access to Reality at certain times. Perhaps the gods

have lost the password to Reality and can’t log in.

Assuming that there’s an open communication

channel between the gods and Reality, though, if

you hope to understand why no gods visit Reality

then you have to assign motivations to gods –

about whom, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, you

know nothing. All you can do is speculate – “he’s

busy”, “it’s part of their plan”, “she’s about to rain

death and destruction on us all” – but in so doing

you open yourself up to further questioning. Busy

doing what? What plan? Why destroy all of us? In

answering those questions, you expose yourself

further, until you wind up with either a huge web

of secrets and suppositions, conspiracy-theory

style, or you have to say you don’t know (which you

probably should have done in the first place).

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As the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes put

it:

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one

has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts

to suit theories, instead of theories to suit

facts.

(Doyle, 1891)

You may find it problematic that no gods visit

Reality today, or you may not

; either way, you

would be wise to examine why you think what you

think. I may not be able to furnish an answer that

will suit you, but you should at least have an

answer yourself that makes some progress

towards that end.

A related point that you need to consider (if you

haven’t considered it before) is that existence is a

reality-relative concept. To say, from Reality, that

one or more gods “exist” means that they exist in

Reality. This is clearly true of some gods – the gods

of virtual worlds – who do indeed exist in Reality.

What about gods of Reality, though? Well the same

rule applies: for them to exist from our perspective,

they too have to exist in Reality, the here and now.

Awkwardly, there’s nothing to indicate that

they do exist either here or now: they don’t interact

with Reality in any measurable way. If they did

This from an author who believed in fairies.

You certainly won’t if you advocate pandeism.

How to Be a God

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interact, there’d be repercussions which today

would be easily noticed – changes to the principle

of conservation of energy would have quite violent

side effects, for example. Perhaps they used to

interact, but have shied away now that we’re able

to detect the fact.

Of course, any god of Reality can by definition

control its physics, so could stop any detectable

effects of their actions by attaching functionality

to symbolic objects. For example, to create a

material object out of nothing should be impossible

and to create it out of energy should require

phenomenal temperatures – 10,000,000,000,000

degrees or more. However, if you were to specify

that for a particular, symbolic interpretation of

matter (that is, matter you identify as being a

coherent object), regular physics was overridden

by a different physics, you could indeed do

something like create manna and rain it from the

skies to prevent the Israelites from starving. This

is the kind of miracle that our modern instruments

would not be able to detect (although obviously the

resulting manna would be detectable).

That said, this same active use of physics could

be employed in other situations, such as stopping

good people from being struck by lightning

. We

never see this, though: we never see physics

selectively overridden anywhere, ever. It’s not as if

Did you know lightning is sexist? 80% of fatalities are male

(Jensenius, 2018).

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there’s a need to hide it: if it were an everyday

occurrence, we wouldn’t even suspect anything

was untoward, it would seem to be part of the

nature of things (which it would indeed be).

No gods appear to be interacting with Reality. A

god of Reality who is present in Reality but never

interacts with it is effectively absent from it; a god

who never visits it at all is de facto absent from it.

In either case, the god concerned does not exist

relative to us.

This rather pedantic “definition of existence”

argument doesn’t say that gods can’t come to

Reality, it merely says that they don’t. Because it

admits the possibility that, say, Dionysus might

show up tomorrow and so would exist, it’s not an

argument against the existence of gods in absolute.

Nevertheless, it is an argument against the

existence of gods until they deign to show up or to

do something. Whether this is worrisome to you or

not I don’t know; if you haven’t already, you do

need to give some thought as to what you mean

when you say that you believe a particular god

“exists” or not, though.

Oh, speaking of beliefs….

I spent a section of this book talking about the

fiction of virtual worlds: that which you have to

buy into to accept the virtual as real. As it happens,

it’s not abnormal for an MMO to have religions for

its NPCs built into its fiction; this is usually to add

depth to the virtual world (thereby helping with

immersion), but it can also be for story purposes.

How to Be a God

528

In practical terms, what’s happening here is that

the actual gods of the reality in question are

thoughtfully providing it with in-fiction gods

whom the NPCs behave as if they believe exist.

Sometimes, these gods

don’t make an

appearance (you never see Elune in World of

Warcraft, she just speaks through people) but quite

often they do (you encounter Hydaelyn several

times in Final Fantasy XIV cut scenes). In the latter

case, an NPC’s “belief” in the existence of the god is

no more problematical than their belief in the

existence of other NPCs – unsurprisingly, because

the god is an NPC (albeit one with supernatural

powers). This means that this particular aspect of

the virtual world’s fiction is objective truth from

the NPC’s perspective, somewhat undermining any

claims that their religion is indeed a religion

(Lefebvre, 2019).

The possibility that Reality’s apparent gods

could, like us, be mere NPCs created by its genuine

gods, I leave open as a topic for your consideration.

One of the problems religions have in general is

that they try to use persuasive logic to explain

themselves both to followers and to prospective

followers, but eventually they hit a wall –

something that doesn’t follow logically from the

available facts but isn’t contradicted by them

either. They draw a line here and call it “faith”.

However, when new information arrives courtesy

Formally, they’re demigods.

Chapter 9 Point of You

529

of science, they then have to decide whether what

they previously asserted with unshakable

conviction is:

• wrong, because the facts can’t be made to fit

(so, what about everything that suggested it

was right, or that followed from this?);

• right, because the facts can be made to fit

(suggesting that the religion lacks detail);

• right, because the facts are simply flat-out

denied (therefore the use of evidence to

support the religion’s tenets is selective).

Virtual world religions are no different from

those of Reality in this regard, except that their

gods are more open to changing the physics (and

therefore the science) so as to maintain the

integrity of the account they wish to promulgate.

As an example of how new information (in this

case from software engineering) can challenge an

older idea, consider the notion of consciousness.

From our understanding of virtual worlds, it’s

clear that we humans have an embedded,

emergent form of intelligence, from which derives

our sapience and thence consciousness. We’re

independent thinkers, whose only access to one

another’s thoughts comes from observing one

another’s behaviour in the environment that we

share, Reality. Any other form of implementing

intelligence would encourage additional

phenomena.

For example, if consciousness worked by using

rules of physics specific to consciousness (and so

How to Be a God

530

was supernatural) which had effects that were

physical (such as those that result from actions

consciously taken) then from those same

supernatural rules would emerge other

phenomena that would also have physical impact,

such as telepathy, body swaps and ESP

If consciousness were a supernatural

phenomenon, then, there would be natural

consequences; these consequences are not

observed, therefore consciousness is not a

supernatural phenomenon. Nevertheless, some

accounts of human consciousness routinely assert

that it has spiritual, even transcendent qualities.

Likewise, they explain what a soul is and why we

all have one, but not why some of the things that

would happen if we did have one don’t happen.

This isn’t to say there isn’t a perfectly

reasonable explanation (some god could be

effortlessly dealing with the consequences, for

example); it’s just to say that those who think

consciousness is a separate and separable entity

should ponder what this entails, knowing what we

know about how it would have to be implemented.

They can then either incorporate this into their

account, ignore it, or argue against it.

It’s possible to take this further, and use what we know

about consciousness to understand what constraints this

imposes on how Reality works. This is the aim of integrated

information theory (Tononi, 2004).

Chapter 9 Point of You

531

Again, whether the results of this analysis are

comfortable or uncomfortable for you isn’t for me

to judge. I can point out some of what follows

logically from what we know about virtual worlds,

but that doesn’t mean I can answer the questions

so raised to everyone’s (or indeed anyone’s)

satisfaction.

These are unanswered questions. It’s for you to

turn those unanswers into answers, bespoke to

you.

Well How About That

Human culture knows four major ways of thinking.

Western philosophy emphasises logic and

reason. Its aim is to establish objective facts.

Although it has its sages – Aristotle, Newton,

Einstein – it does not take their words as inviolate.

It seeks truth for its own sake. That which can be

deduced from established mathematics using

established mathematics is accepted as true. That

which can be observed is provisionally accepted as

true, unless and until evidence to the contrary is

presented.

The philosophy of east Asia is not preoccupied

with the world as it appears to be. Rather, it is

concerned with how to chart a path through life.

The wisdom accumulated by sages since antiquity

How to Be a God

532

is used as a guide. The means by which the words

of the sages may be understood are themselves

revealed by the words of those sages who have

since followed, even up until the present day.

The philosophy of south Asia lies in between.

The words of the sages tell us how we might live

well, and their wisdom has stood the test of

millennia. New discoveries about the world as it

appears to be are welcomed because they cast

additional light on what we know from the sages to

be true, adding to our understanding of their

words.

The philosophy of the Islamic world also lies in

between that of east Asia and the west. Unlike the

philosophy of south Asia, however, it uses the

wisdom revealed by the sages

to explain the

phenomena observed in the natural world, rather

than the reverse. Indisputable words describe how

to behave such that the wonders of creation may

be revealed.

These summaries are just that – summaries.

Furthermore, they’re summaries by me, a non-

philosopher

. Every one of them can be attacked

rightly and justifiably by philosophers of any of the

Primarily just the one sage, but with interpretations by

others.

Unless purveyors of pseudophilosophy (Moberger, 2021)

count as philosophers.

Chapter 9 Point of You

533

traditions outlined. I happily defer to them,

because this is their area of expertise, not mine

That said, I do believe that, at least in the

abstract, my summaries are serviceable.

This being so, it would seem that we can think

of philosophers as having a concept they want to

understand and a preferred method for pursuing

this understanding.

• Western philosophers contend that the

world in which we live can be used to help

us understand the world in which we live.

The world explains the world.

• South-Asian philosophers contend that the

world in which we live can be used to help

us understand the way we should live. The

world explains the words.

• East-Asian philosophers contend that the

way we should live can be used to help us

understand the way we should live. The

words explain the words.

• Islamic-world philosophers contend that

the way we should live can be used to help

us understand the world in which we live.

The words explain the world.

We can illustrate this as a graph, as shown in

Figure 11.

Just as I’m rather hoping they’ll defer to my expertise in

reality-creation over theirs.

How to Be a God

534

This graph can be augmented by two diagonal

lines, which I haven’t shown because it’s enough of

a mess as it is. One line, from east Asian to

western, is well-established in Comparative

Philosophy: it’s from “way-seeking” to “truth-

seeking” (Hall & Ames, 1998). The other line, from

south Asian to Islamic world is, as far as I can tell,

not something to which comparative philosophers

have given much thought – mainly, I suspect,

because they haven’t constructed the graph. My

first shot at labelling the line is “identity-seeking”

What you want

to understand

Figure 11 – Philosophical Traditions.

How you want

to understand it

The world in which we live

The way we should live

In terms of

the world in

which we live

In terms of

the way we

should live

Islamic

world

western

south

Asian

east

Asian

Chapter 9 Point of You

535

to “conformity-seeking”, but I’m sure there are

better ways of putting it.

Given what I’ve written elsewhere in this book,

“the world in which we live” would seem to

correspond to Reality. It depends on which

direction you come at it, though. For example, in

south Asian philosophy, the world as we perceive it

isn’t the world as it truly is. It has the form of it,

but isn’t itself it. That would make it a virtual

world, then? Well yes, if you’re looking subjectively

at Reality, but if you’re looking objectively as

Reality then the world described

by the sages of

antiquity is the one that’s virtual.

Because these two different views are in

practice simply two sides of the same coin, we only

need to consider one to understand both. Being

humans, let’s take the human-centric one and look

at Reality, rather than as Reality. This enables us to

use the terminology of virtual worlds to

characterise the different philosophical traditions

as follows:

• Virtual Worlds as Virtual Worlds

Western philosophy

The world as it appears illuminates itself.

• Virtual Worlds as Realities

Islamic world philosophy

The world as it appears is illuminated by the

world as it truly is.

Or imagined, if you take a strongly realist perspective.

How to Be a God

536

• Realities as Realities

East Asian philosophy

The world as it truly is illuminates itself.

• Realities as Virtual Worlds

South Asian philosophy

The world as it truly is is illuminated by the

world as it appears.

This book is divided into four sections. Their

titles are those of the bullet-point headers above.

This late revelation makes it look as if I was

being rather clever in my choice of partitions. As

such, I could stop at this juncture and leave you

with a favourable impression of my intellect (if not

my character).

I would be misinforming you if I did so, though.

In the first draft of this text, I adopted what

computer scientists call a depth-first approach. I

took each of my central themes in turn and

followed their individual lines of argument until

they reached their conclusions. When one branch

terminated, I backed up and followed the next

branch. Although this form of investigation is

systematic in its coverage of content, at the level of

discourse it bounces around between multiple

topics with little demarcation. The draft ended up

reading like a collection of independent

discussions with no overall structure to it.

After this effect was pointed out to me (see the

Acknowledgements), I rewrote the book using a

breadth-first approach. I formulated a narrative

thread which (see the Prologue) went something

Chapter 9 Point of You

537

like this: explain what realities are; describe how

we create realities; discuss what responsibilities

those who create realities have; assess whether any

creator of Reality lives up to these responsibilities.

I changed focus between each step, and figured

that I should indicate this to the reader by

partitioning the chapters accordingly.

The steps didn’t originally have names, just part

numbers. This didn’t convey much information to

the reader, so I decided they needed titles. I went

through several iterations, mainly involving

different permutations of “looking up” and

“looking down”, until I settled on what was being

looked upon and what it was being looked upon as.

It was only several months later that, in an

effort to see how my thesis might fit into the wider

philosophical landscape

, I drew up the graph

depicted in Figure 11 and realised that there was a

connection with how I’d organised my book’s

parts.

It was, in other words, mere accident

I present this anecdote as evidence that virtual

worlds are opening new philosophical and

theological doors. They serve to reveal wondrous,

unmapped territories of thought and experience. If

I, a mere game designer, can stumble across a

I still don’t know the answer.

Those of you who drew the graph I left as an exercise in the

aside of this chapter’s Motivation section will note a second

curious accidental connection.

How to Be a God

538

previously unnoticed way of characterising what

different philosophical traditions offer their

proponents, what marvels might you uncover if

you put your mind to it?

Reflections

In northern Europe, around one woman in 30,000

will die of childbirth, whereas in the poorest parts

of the world it’s one woman in six (Ronsmans &

Graham, 2006). In 16

- to 18

-century England, it

was somewhere between one woman in 34 and one

woman in 41 (Wilmott Dobbie, 1982).

If you were a god of Reality, how would you

explain these statistics? Are modern-day women in

one society somehow more worthy than those in

another? Are they more or less worthy than those

of the past? Has death, in your view, got nothing to

do with the character of the individual? If so,

what’s wrong with murder? Why is what you, as a

god, are doing to these women not itself a form of

murder?

This is the kind of question that we can ask of

gods of Reality, because we know that soon we will

have to ask it of ourselves as gods of virtual worlds.

If our NPCs have babies, will we make some of

those NPCs die as a result? We can stop it. Would

we? Why would we? Why wouldn’t we?

Chapter 9 Point of You

539

Any gods of Reality must work to a very

different ethical system to us for Reality to be as it

is, because our own situation is unethical by our

standards. Will we have to do likewise for our own

created realities? Might our own ethical codes

perhaps prevent us from creating populated-by-

sapients realities from the outset?

It is said that we cannot know the mind of

God

. That’s correct, especially if there is no God,

but we can know the minds of gods – we have

some among us right now. These gods rule

realities that are consequent on Reality. As a result

of their experience, we know what gods in general

need to think about and to do. We know what

problems they can expect to encounter and we

know many of the solutions on offer. We know

some of what works and some of what doesn’t

work. Crucially, we know enough to make

deductions about how our own reality – Reality –

must be.

If you were to go outside right now and take a

photograph of something – anything at all – then

obviously I wouldn’t know what was in the

resulting image. I would, however, know some of

what certainly wasn’t in it. It wouldn’t show a

flashdark, because those things are impossible. It

wouldn’t show my paternal grandfather, because

he died in 1982. It wouldn’t show a vampire,

The original phraseology is rather more convoluted in

Corinthians 1:2 of The Bible, but this is the gist of it.

How to Be a God

540

because they’re only the stuff of folk tales

. If I saw

any of these things in your photograph, I’d know

that the image had been manipulated.

So it is with Reality. I don’t know much of

what’s in it, but I do know some of what’s not in

it – of what can’t be in it. I also know some of what

must be in it for it to be consistent. There must be

light, there must be gravity, there must be me

. If

someone were to posit an idea that could be true

but would have implications that are false, or that

could be false but would be implied by something

that’s true, then I know the truth value of the idea

itself. If you were to tell me that at night the sun

didn’t exist, I’d know that this couldn’t be true –

because if it were true then too many other things

that we know to be true would have to be false

(such as the existence of moonlight).

For me, knowing what I know about the design

of virtual worlds, I can see what would have to

follow if Reality were a conscious creation. These

consequences have not arisen. I can also see what

states of affairs we currently have that we

wouldn’t if Reality had been a conscious creation.

Even if it were an accidental creation ruled over by

an uncaring or capricious god, it would be different

Also, they don’t show up in single-lens reflex cameras

because these use mirrors and vampires have no reflection

(at least if the mirror is silvered, anyway).

For you, there must be you.

Chapter 9 Point of You

541

to how it is now. Time and dimensionality would

not behave as they do, for example.

That’s just my view, though. Other gods of

virtual worlds (there aren’t many of us at present –

a few thousand at most) may well see things

differently. Everyone has their own take on life,

and how each of us accounts in our philosophy for

the lessons we’ve learned from being a god is

always going to depend on what our philosophy

was in the first place. My hope is merely that

people dwell on these experiences for long enough

to understand them.

The point is, when we create realities we have

to make decisions regarding how those realities

must be. If Reality is also created then those same

decisions must have been made for us. Your

experience, you can translate upwards.

Gods are gods: what one of them does reflects

on what others must do – or must have done.

We – you – have godly power over entire

realities. Sure, they’re not much now, but given

computers the size of planets they will be. It

behoves us to use this power thoughtfully and

responsibly – just as it would have done any

creator of Reality.

I am a god. It’s great! I love being a god!

Our realities don’t need gods, though. No reality

needs a god.

Let’s give our realities what they do need,

instead: humanity.

How to Be a God

542

“You know that question about whether if a

tree falls in a forest and no-one hears it, does it

make a sound? It does in MUD – I’ve just

implemented it.”

Roy Trubshaw, 1978

PS: ).

Epilogue

543

Epilogue

Except for one unsubtle hint in the final few

paragraphs of Chapter 9, I’ve avoided in this text

taking any position myself on how things “really”

are with regard to the nature of Reality. It would be

strange indeed if I didn’t have opinions of my own,

though, and you could justifiably feel cheated if I

ducked out of telling you what these are. I shall

therefore bite the bullet and explain my own

thoughts on the matter. You can skip what follows

if you like, it adds nothing to the discussion: I

merely present it so that you can moderate your

view of this book’s content accordingly.

Important: this is just how I see it. You can, and

probably will, see it a different way. In matters of

faith (or lack thereof)

, it’s invariably the case that

more people think you’re wrong than think you’re

right; this is true for all instantiations of “you”,

including “you” = “me”. All I ask is that if you do

read on and find yourself disagreeing, don’t get too

cross over it. It’s not my intention to upset anyone,

“Faith is that quality by which we believe what we should

otherwise think to be false” (Richmond, 1934).

How to Be a God

544

so if you catch yourself becoming hot under the

collar, that’s the time to put the book down.

Right, then! You’ve probably figured out by now

that I’m at least agnostic and quite probably

atheist. I’m actually the latter. This admission will

immediately put some readers on the alert, as

atheists have a reputation second only to that of

vegans for being smug, sanctimonious, self-

righteous prigs

. As I’ve said, though, my hope here

isn’t to persuade people to renounce their god(s),

nor indeed to embrace ones they may have

previously dismissed; rather, it’s to help further

the reader’s understanding of the nature of Reality,

regardless of whether this understanding aligns

with mine. I don’t mind if what I write actually

entrenches your faith in some deity, so long as

you’ve digested and assimilated what virtual

worlds have taught us about being a god that we

didn’t know before we created them.

With this in mind, then, here’s my own

interpretation.

Some reality has to be at the bottom. Modulo

what programmers on other planets might have

done, until 1978 Reality was at the bottom. Today,

virtual worlds or other worlds-within-worlds

are

at the bottom.

No, I’m not vegan. Vega is over 25 light years away.

It’s possible to play Skyrim on the in-world, wrist-mounted

personal information processor (pip-boy) your character can

wear in Fallout 4.

Epilogue

545

Some reality has to be at the top. For atheists,

it’s Reality. For some theists, it’s a heaven (in one

guise or another), possibly paired with a hell. For

other theists, it’s a ladder or tree of heavens,

possibly infinite in extent (meaning there is no

“top”).

My view, based on what I know of virtual world

design, is that there are no realities above Reality.

Not one, not two, not dozens, not an indefinite

number. This is because, if there were, Reality

would be different.

Robyn and Rand Miller, the designers of Myst,

were once asked the following question in an

interview for Wired: “How has designing a whole

world changed your idea of God?”. Rand replied: “I

guess the simple way is to say that we know how

much work it took to create Myst, and how puny

and unreal it is compared to the real world, and

therefore how miraculous all of creation is.

Matching our experience … it just makes us realise

how great God is.” (Carroll, 1994).

This isn’t how I see the situation at all.

We know how to make realities. We know how

to design realities. The thing is, Reality’s design

sucks.

The usual teleological argument is that the

world is so well-constructed that it must have been

designed. Its mere existence tips you off that

How to Be a God

546

there’s a god about

. Remarkably, even some

players in game worlds can feel the presence of

God in those worlds, despite the fact that God

didn’t write them (White Hodge, 2010). Whatever,

how could there not be a creator behind all these

wonders?

This is fair enough, but once you’ve made a

world yourself you can see that Reality isn’t

actually designed very well. If it’s designed at all,

it’s incompetent design, not intelligent design. For

me, the teleological argument leads to the opposite

conclusion: the way the world is tells us that it’s

not designed, not that it is designed.

If it’s not designed, it doesn’t have a designer;

this means that it wasn’t created by a god.

Reality’s procedural content-generation is

pretty robust, I’ll certainly concede that. It may

even have procedurally-generated procedural

generation rules, which would be quite impressive.

There’s a lot of it, too, although sheer size isn’t

really a factor when automatic processes are doing

all the work.

Where Reality falls down is in its content. This

is dreadful – full of newbie mistakes. If Reality is so

beautiful and perfect, why do we humans spend

most of our time and effort trying to improve what

The technical term for this is numinous. It’s not related to

the term noumenal (meaning a reality as it truly is) that I

mentioned in an earlier footnote, notwithstanding its looking

as if it really should be.

Epilogue

547

it has to offer? Shouldn’t we still be enjoying living

in caves? Why would we be trying to rid ourselves

of disease, pain and suffering if those were good

things? They’re not good things! Reality is not a

good place.

Another problem is that even at the level of

individual humans, Reality isn’t fair. It’s not a level

playing field. We, the sapient creatures of Reality

are not meaningful to it. When asked what his

secret to longevity was, the philosopher Bertrand

Russell quipped “Choose your parents wisely”

(Ross, 1957)

. I’d go somewhat further: your

starting conditions impact practically every aspect

of your progress through life. I know the precise

minute when it was determined that I would never

become a High Court Judge: 11:15am on 10

January, 1960 – the very moment I was born. At

least I didn’t make the mistake of being born

female – I’d have been placed even further to the

back of the starting grid of life had I done so.

This kind of thing simply isn’t right. How could

any god justify such inequality? Each of us became

who we are at some point between being conceived

and being born (possibly later but certainly not

earlier); when we came into being as people, we

were in no position to do wrong. Why, then, would

Given that he was from one of the most notable families in

the British aristocracy (his grandfather was Prime Minister

twice), let it not be said that the third Earl Russell didn’t

practise what he preached.

How to Be a God

548

a god treat some of us better than others? Whether

a poor start in life is explained away by some

concept of reincarnation or of original sin, if it’s

intentional then we’re essentially being punished

for something we, as the people we know ourselves

to be, didn’t do. That takes bearing a grudge to a

whole different level. Even if Reality were designed

by a committee, we wouldn’t have such blatant

examples of negligence

Realities that are designed are designed to say

something. All design decisions are informed by

the overall message that the designer wishes to

convey. Reality, though, doesn’t say anything. The

reason some people are born into want and some

are born into luxury is simply that this is how the

dice fell. No god set up this ghastly inequity, we did

all that ourselves.

A god could stop it, though. Unfortunately, this

would necessitate changes to the way that Reality

works – changes that would have been there from

the beginning had Reality been properly designed.

The thing is, Reality’s implementation leans

entirely on procedural generation. Everything is

emergent; there’s no special-case physics to lock

out unpleasantness. Virtual worlds can and do

attach functionality to symbolic objects – that is,

to things made up of fundamental particles, rather

“Committees are good for generating red tape, deferring

decisions, and shirking responsibility, but they are useless

when it comes to creative efforts.” (Crawford, 1984).

Epilogue

549

than only to the fundamental particles themselves.

It’s not hard to implement this for patterns,

either – I showed how to do it using that paragon

of emergent content, Conway’s game of Life.

Symbolic objects are the very bedrock of

exception-based physics: they’re what allow a

reality to work differently for different kinds of

objects.

Reality doesn’t have symbolic objects, though.

The sad consequence of this is that what we think

of as objects aren’t remotely regarded as such by

Reality. If they were then terrible injustices such as

stillbirths could easily be rectified by gods or

demigods. They continue to happen, though.

Symbolic object representation, a core tool of all

gods, has not been implemented for Reality. All we

have are fundamental particles arranged in

piecemeal-decomposable clumps, some of which

are common enough that the clumps that form us

ourselves assign meaning to them.

Symbolic representations are also required for

supernatural functionality, in order that such

physics-bending capabilities can be attached to the

objects that bear the requisite permissions. If you

can’t point at something in an ostensive fashion

and identify it as being an angel, you can’t give it

angelic powers. Were Reality to have supernatural

functionality, then, it must also have symbolic

representations of objects. If it did have such

representations, though, the fact would be evident.

The fact is not evident.

How to Be a God

550

It could be that the reason Reality lacks

symbolic representations is that they turn out to

be impossible for reasons to do with assembly

(remember Andy and Boudicca?); if so, then that

would explain it. Nothing requiring symbolic

representations could be implemented – including

supernatural functionality. A god might therefore

wish to stop human beings from suffering, but be

unable to do so without changing Reality so much

that this would alter what it meant to be human in

the first place.

Whatever, regardless of why we have no

symbolic representation built into Reality’s

physics, the end result is the same either way:

there is no supernatural involvement in Reality.

We’re on our own, kids.

The resolutely impassive nature of Reality with

regard to us humans raises issues of morality. See,

when you build a world, you have to decide

whether to consider some or all of its creatures to

be moral beings. No, really, you have to do this. If

they’re nothing but bits in a database to you, you

can be uncaring. If they’re morally considerable,

though, you must treat them as such – and that

means all of them, not just some favoured tribe or

gender (what’s with that, by the way?) or

occupation. When bad things happen that are the

fault of individual moral beings, OK, you can run

with that. When bad things happen that aren’t

their fault – such as plagues that wipe out millions

Epilogue

551

of people indiscriminately

– well frankly you can

and should stop these; it’s simply bad management

not to do so. Worse, though, you should have

designed your reality so that such events couldn’t

happen in the first place.

We, mere human beings, can do this right now,

today, with our virtual worlds. We can design

around these problems. Why isn’t Reality designed

around them?

It’s because Reality isn’t designed, that’s why.

Reality could be so much better! It has

permadeath, pain, suffering; it has no shape-

changing, no teleportation, no mental projection;

most of it is empty space (quite literally). Creating

content is the fun part of design, yet Reality has

nothing except what flows from the interactions

between fundamental forces and particles. It’s like

Conway’s game of Life played out on a multi-

dimensional canvas so immense that in occasional

small, random patches of matter, something

happens by complete chance to come together in a

fiendishly complex way. We are merely one such

small, random patch of matter.

Pause for breath.

OK, so it’s possible that this is all relative. For

example, perhaps a god of Reality gave us death

because in their view that’s better than the eternal

Or, in the case of COVID-19, discriminately based largely on

age.

How to Be a God

552

life that they have in their own reality

. This

nevertheless doesn’t alter the fact that there isn’t a

single piece of Reality that can’t be explained by

appealing to a universal physics. There’s no game-

mastered content, no hand-crafted content, no

user-created or user-generated content, just

systems content deriving from the single instance

of procedurally-generated content that is Reality.

Overall, in terms of content, most of Reality is

(literally, again) vacuous.

Now I do admit that saying Reality is nothing

more than a vast, vast state machine, repeatedly

running in perpetuity from arbitrary beginnings,

does sound rather implausible. How could

something as complex as us come to be unless by

the hand of something even more complex

Well, at random would do it.

Suppose I told you that a record of your life

from cradle to grave is already extant, even though

you haven’t lived it yet, and even if the universe is

non-deterministic. This seems a little improbable.

The human eye can distinguish between about a

million different colours. Let’s say 10 million, to be

“A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an

infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”; “The

finite player aims to win eternal life; the infinite player aims

for eternal birth.” (Carse, 1986).

Who in turn, by the same reasoning, must have come to be

by the hand of someone even more complex, and so on until

you run out of complex. Or, if created by someone less

complex than us, until you run out of someone.

Epilogue

553

on the safe side. A single pixel in your field of

vision would therefore need seven decimal digits

to store it (because 10 million is 10

; put another

way, 0 to 9,999,999 inclusive is 10 million

numbers).

At a conservative estimate, the human eye has a

resolution of about 576 megapixels (Clark, 2017),

but let’s go with a thousand megapixels so we

don’t underestimate. In fact, because most of us

have two eyes, let’s make it two thousand

megapixels. A megapixel is a million pixels, so if

one pixel needs seven digits to store it then two

thousand megapixels would need 2,000,000,000×7

decimal digits, which is 14×10

. This means that to

store the image that you can see right now would

need 14,000,000,000 digits to write down.

The human eye can interpret something like a

thousand frames a second. There are around

365.25×24×60×60 = 31,557,600 seconds in a year.

How long do you want to live? Would 120 years be

enough? That would make your life be around

3,786,912,000 seconds long. Let’s make it

5,000,000,000, or 5×10

seconds long, in case life

expectancy suddenly shoots up.

At a thousand frames a second, you would see

5×10

frames in your lifetime. If each frame needs

14×10

digits then to store a stereoscopic motion

picture of your life would need 7×10

digits.

That’s 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 digits.

Reminder: this is not the number that

encapsulates everything you’ve ever seen and ever

How to Be a God

554

will see: it’s the number of digits that are in that

number.

It’s a big number.

Now consider the mathematical quantity π (pi).

It has an infinite number of decimal places.

Somewhere in its decimal part is at least one

sequence of 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

consecutive digits that correspond exactly to the

motion picture of your life. Indeed, there are an

infinite number of these sequences

Things which seem impossibly improbable can

actually be a hundred percent certain.

Do not underestimate the power of random in

the context of infinity.

These are my reasons for rejecting the

existence of one or more gods of Reality, even

though I myself am a god of a reality. They’re not

my only reasons

, but they’re the ones drawn from

my experience with virtual worlds. I owed it to you

to explain my take, but you don’t owe it to anyone

to accept my line of argument.

That’s the point of being a free-thinker: you get

to think freely.

Strictly speaking it’s only conjectured that this is the case

for pi. It’s definitely true for the Copeland–Erdős constant,

but fewer people have heard of that than they have of pi.

We know the way that supernatural views of Reality came

about, and they didn’t involve any supernatural elements. If

you are apprised of how a story was constructed, and this

construction makes it clear that the story is a fiction, well

that means the story is indeed a fiction.

Epilogue

555

Whatever the natures of Reality and the human

condition may be, our understanding can only be

improved by thinking about them.

I therefore invite you to do so.

Glossary

Artificial Intelligence

CSR

Customer Service Representative

D&D

Dungeons & Dragons

ESO

Elder Scrolls Online

ESP

Extra-Sensory Perception

GMC

Game-Mastered Content

GOFAI

Good Old-Fashioned Artificial

Intelligence

HCC

Hand-Crafted Content

LARP

Live-Action Role-Playing

MMO

Massively-Multiplayer Online

MMORPG

Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-

Playing Game

MUD

Multi-User Dungeon

NPC

Non-Player Character

OED

Oxford English Dictionary

Player Character

PCG

Procedural Content Generation

PGC

Procedurally-Generated Content

PvP

Player versus Player

RNG

Random-Number Generator

RPG

Role-Playing Game

SoG

Sceptre of Goth

SWL

Secret World Legends

TSW

The Secret World

UCC

User-Created Content

UGC

User-Generated Content

How to Be a God

Virtual Reality

WoW

World of Warcraft

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Index

xli

Index

∃ ................................................ See existential quantifier

π ..................................................................................... See pi

360° illusion..................................................................... 141

3Kingdoms ....................................................................... 498

Abraham .................................................................... 14, 102

Abrahamic religions ........... See religions: Abrahamic

absenting .............. 230–31, 235–37, 246, 254, 467, 476

Absolute, the.................................................................... 172

accounts........................................................ 13, 17, 94, 284

Achaea ................................................................................. 79

actors ................................................................................ 325

Adam........................................................................ 259, 275

Addams, Wednesday ......................................................43

addons ............................................................................... 281

adds .................................................................................... 314

agnosticism ..................................................................... 241

AI .............................................. See Artificial Intelligence

aimbots ............................................................................ 326

Albion Online ..................................................................... 84

Alfheim ....................................................................460, 465

Allah .............................................. 170, 365, 487, 496, 500

alpha testing................................................................... 490

American Football .......................................................... 268

Ammit .............................................................................. 406

amorality ........................................................... See morals

Amphitryon ...................................................................... 96

Amun ................................................................................. 153

How to Be a God

xlii

Amun-Ra ...........................................................................153

An Atheist’s History of Belief ....................................... 362

ancestor-simulations ................................................... 495

Ancient Africans .............................................................. 49

Ancient Chinese ..................................................... 49, 522

Ancient Egyptians ....153, 157, 194, 333, 362, 405, 451,

522

Ancient Greeks . 13, 18, 49, 95, 148, 173, 222, 259, 319,

329, 431, 485, 522

Ancient Indians ............................................................... 49

Ancient Japanese .......................................................... 522

Ancient Mesopotamians ................................... 248, 407

Ancient Polynesians ..................................................... 522

Ancient Romans ........................... 95, 209, 259, 317, 522

Ancient Slavs ............................................................ 13, 522

Angrathar the Wrathgate ............................................ 88

Anthropology ........................................................ 441, 509

Anubis .............................................................................. 405

Apep .................................................................................. 451

Apollo ................................................................................... 13

Aquinas, Saint Thomas................................................ 182

arborescence .................................................................. 463

Arden ................................................................................. 493

argument from marginal cases ............................... 420

argument from species normality .......................... 420

Aristotle ...........................................................................202

Artificial Intelligence22, 206, 299, 325, 335, 346, 496

ethics of ........... See ethics: of Artificial Intelligence

Good Old-Fashioned ................................................ 207

artists .................................................................. 56–57, 201

medieval ............................................................... 257–58

Index

xliii

ascending ... ...... 152, 229, 235, 237, 246, 406, 412, 451,

467

Asgard ......................................................................245, 461

asiety ................................................................................ 150

Asimov, Isaac ................................................................. 339

asking for a pony .......................................................... 473

Association Football ...................................................... 268

atheism .................................................... 241, 517–18, 545

Athena .......................................................................... 57, 62

attaching ................................................ 232–33, 236, 249

Atum .................................................................................. 153

Atum-Ra ........................................................................... 153

Auden, Wystan H. .......................................................... 136

augmented reality ......................................................... 145

Aurora Technology ...................................................... 382

Avatar .................................................................... 31–33, 59

avatars ......................................................................... 59, 171

Azeroth ............................................................................ 465

Aztecs ...................................................................... 356, 462

Babbage, Charles .............................................................. 51

Babylonians .................................................................... 492

backfire effect ................................................................. 371

back-ups .................................................................. 123, 130

backward chaining ....................................................... 299

Barker, Muhammad A. R. ............................................ 138

Bartle, Richard .................................................................. 31

Batman .............................................................................. 170

BCPL .................................................................................... 21

beehives ............................................................................ 162

beetle in a box ................................................................. 136

beings

How to Be a God

xliv

moral ................................................... See moral beings

morally considerable ..... See morally considerable

beings

supernatural ...................... See supernatural: beings

Benedict XVI, Pope ............................................... 125, 513

beta testing .................................................................... 490

Bible Online, The ................................................... 494, 507

Bible, The ............... 94, 102, 113, 150, 190, 259, 505, 539

Big Bang, the........................................................... 128, 152

bits ................................................................... 198, 307, 346

in a database . 196, 210, 226, 337, 394, 397, 425, 550

Black Desert Online ...........................................37, 84, 282

bleed .................................................................................. 378

blinkers............................................................................. 162

Blizzard Entertainment .............................................. 465

Bodh Gaya ....................................................................... 443

Book of the Dead, The ................................................... 406

bosses................................................................................. 313

bots ................................................................... 320, 325–34

Boudicca and Andy ................................................208–15

Brahma ............................................................................. 105

brains ..................................... 135, 180, 238, 240–41, 354

branching factor ............................................................ 159

Brethren of the Free Spirit ......................................... 369

British, Lord ....................................................................390

Brontë sisters .................................................................. 137

Buckley, Theodore A. ................................................... 318

Buddhism ............................................................... 148, 336

Buffy the Vampire Slayer ............................................. 508

Buffyverse ....................................................................... 139

bugs ................................................................................... 120

Index

xlv

Burning Crusade, The ......... See World of Warcraft:The

Burning Crusade

Butler, Samuel ................................................................ 318

C … ...................................................................... 21, 359, 494

C++ ............................................................................... 93, 359

Call of Cthulhu ................................................................. 511

Campbell, Joseph .......................................................... 266

capsuleers ....................................................................... 510

cardinal virtues ..............................................................416

Cataclysm ................ See World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

causa sui ............................................................................ 153

causality....................... 164, 168, 184, 187, 296–301, 307

cells .................................................................. 160–62, 200

cellular automata ................................................. 164, 486

Celts .................................................................................. 522

channelling ..................................................................... 324

Chaos .................................................................................149

Chapman, George .......................................................... 318

characters

non-player........................ See non-player characters

player .......................................... See player characters

cheats ................................................................................ 417

Cheondoism.................................................................... 246

Chess ........................................................... 42, 157–59, 374

chosen one ......................................................................... 14

Christ

body and blood of ..................................................... 250

real presence of ......................................................... 252

Christianity 95, 150, 170, 183, 229, 252, 257, 259, 335,

410, 416, 431, 455, 520

Church of England ....................................................... 445

How to Be a God

xlvi

Church of Fools ...................................... 440–42, 498, 510

Civilization V ................................................................... 286

clients ................................................................................. 90

Clodius, Jen .............................................................441, 510

CMX ...................................................................................494

code ................. 63, 66, 181, 195, 202, 226, 235, 465, 483

executable ....................................................... 64, 71, 131

self-modifying ............................. 67, 176, 184, 188–90

source ......................................................... 32–33, 64, 71

codebases .................................................................. 74, 483

cogito, ergo sum ..............................................................220

Columbo ............................................................................ 355

Communist Manifesto, The ..........................................469

compilers ........................................................................... 64

completeness ........................................................... 192–93

Computer Science .................................. 23–25, 160, 222

computers ........................................................ 63, 195, 234

analogue................................................................ 68, 306

quantum ......................................................................306

consciousness .............................. 207, 319, 337, 529–30

consent .................................................... 342, 429, 471–72

consequent realities ............ See realities: consequent

consequentialism .......................................................... 416

consistency ..................................................................... 192

content 20, 75–84, 87, 94–98, 102, 104, 116, 127, 464,

483, 502, 546, 551

contextual ..................................................................... 82

designed ......................................................................... 82

direct ............................................................................... 82

emergent ...................................................... 82–84, 549

explicit ............................................................................ 78

Index

xlvii

freeform ................................................................ 82, 100

game-mastered .................................... 79, 96–98, 552

hand-crafted......................... 80, 96–98, 101, 103, 552

implicit ............................................................................ 78

procedurally-generated ... . 81, 96, 99, 101, 103, 546,

552

systems .......................................... 81, 98, 103, 384, 552

user-created ......................................... 80, 97, 100, 552

user-generated ............................................ 80, 99, 552

contextual content ................. See content: contextual

continuous time .......................... See time: continuous

Conway, John H. .......................................... 160, 164, 486

Conway’s Game of Life .........................................See Life

Copeland–Erdős constant ......................................... 554

corpse runs ..................................................................... 388

cosmic egg .......................................................................149

cosmic inflation .............................................................. 153

covenant, the .................................................................. 276

covertness ........................................................ 173–75, 364

Cowper, William............................................................. 318

creatio ex deo .................................................... 150–52, 155

creatio ex materia ........................................... 149–50, 155

creatio ex nihilo ....................................... 149–50, 154, 156

Crowfall .............................................................................. 84

CSRs ............... See customer services representatives

Curtis, Pavel ............................................. 177–79, 472–73

customer service representatives .............................. 57

D&D ........................................... See Dungeons & Dragons

da Vinci, Leonardo ......................................................... 129

dancing ............................................................................. 315

Darwin, Charles..............................................................414

How to Be a God

xlviii

dasein ................................................................................ 386

data ..... 63, 65–67, 103, 113, 123–26, 180, 184, 195, 226

hard-coded .................................. 66, 70–71, 74, 103–4

interpreted ............................................. 67, 70–72, 104

soft-coded ............................................... 66, 70–72, 104

database, bits in a .......................See bits: in a database

databases ............................................... 113, 296, 388, 390

declarative representations ....................................... 222

deflationism ............................................................ 210, 221

deism ........................................................... 171–74, 176–78

demigods ............................................. 17, 57, 173–74, 528

demiurges........................................................................ 149

deontology....................................................................... 416

Descartes, René ....................................................... 44, 179

descending .......... 148, 229, 236–37, 245, 253, 451, 467

design team ............................................................... 55–57

designed content ........................ See content: designed

designers ...... 19, 53, 55–57, 73, 181–82, 276, 281, 363,

384, 439, 476, 487

lead ................................................................... 55, 57, 483

detaching ......................................................................... 232

deterministic realities .... See realities: deterministic

deterministic Reality ........ See Reality: deterministic

Detweiler, Craig..............................................................513

Deucalion ......................................................................... 485

dharma ............................................................................. 415

digital simulations ........................................................ 305

DikuMUD ......................................................... 483–84, 497

DikuMUDs ......................................................................... 75

Dionysus .......................................................................... 527

direct content .................................... See content: direct

Index

xlix

directors .......................................................................... 325

discrete time ...................................... See time: discrete

divine command theory ............................. 417, 437, 517

divine providence ......................................................... 453

Doran, James.................................................................. 466

Doyle, Arthur C. ............................................................ 286

Dr Who ..................................................................... 437, 508

DragonMUD ............................................................ 441, 510

DragonRaid ....................................................................... 514

dreams ..................................................................... 134, 144

lucid ............................................................................... 134

Duchamp, Marcel.......................................................... 201

dumps ...................................................... 123, 164, 167, 450

Dungeons & Dragons ................. 25, 58, 79, 139–40, 514

Earth ............................................... 101, 128, 257, 308, 357

Earth-divers ........................................................... 148, 155

Easter eggs ..................................................................... 508

Edwards, Jonathan ....................................................... 495

effects ............................................................................... 299

egoism ...............................................................................416

Elder Scrolls Online, The ................................................. 58

Elune ................................................................................. 528

Elysian Fields, the ......................................................... 220

emergent content .....................See content: emergent

Empire of the Petal Throne ............................................ 138

end boss ............................................................................ 314

endurantism .................................................................... 162

End-User Licence Agreement.......................... 326, 383

engagement ....................................................................... 41

engines, game ..................................... See game engines

Enlil ................................................................................... 420

How to Be a God

Entropia Universe ........................................................... 492

environmentalism ........................................................ 422

Epicurean paradox........................................................ 431

Epicurus ........................................................................... 431

Erebus ............................................................................... 485

Eros.................................................................................... 485

escape rooms .................................................................. 142

Esege Malan ....................................................................... 17

ESO .......................................See Elder Scrolls Online, The

ESP ................................... See extra-sensory perception

Essex University...................... See University of Essex

ethics ....................................................... 341, 378, 415, 439

normative .................................................................... 416

of Artificial Intelligence .......................................... 418

of care ........................................................................... 417

systems of ................................. 377, 433–38, 452, 539

systems of meta- ....................................................... 438

virtue ............................................................................ 416

Eucharist................................................................. 249, 252

EULA ....................... See End-User Licence Agreement

Euthyphro dilemma ...................................................... 517

Eve ..................................................................................... 275

EVE Online ................................. 59, 81, 464, 473–74, 510

Evening Star, the ........................................................... 322

evidence .............................................................................. 14

executable code ............................ See code: executable

existence

abstract ..............................See existence: conceptual

conceptual ................................................. 221, 224, 252

equivocal interpretation of .................................... 224

ideal of ..........................................................................482

Index

material .................................. See existence: physical

modes of ..................................................... 221, 224, 242

nature of ....................................................................... 219

partial ....................................................................243–45

physical ............................221, 224, 226, 228, 252, 443

relative .............................. 119, 205, 244, 246–47, 525

to bring into ......... 11, 99, 107, 110, 223, 297, 413, 471

to will oneself into .............................................153, 183

univocal interpretation of...................................... 224

existential quantifier ................................................... 222

expansions ................................................. 84, 88, 128–29

expectations ................................................................... 295

explicit content ............................. See content: explicit

exploits ...................................................................... 73, 408

extensional definitions .......................................201, 222

extra-sensory perception ........................................... 324

Fallout 4 ............................................................................ 544

Falun Gong ..................................................................... 523

Farmer, Randy .................................................................. 31

Fiasco ................................................................................ 140

Fiction Theory ............................................................... 260

fiction, the .......... 41, 59, 82, 272–80, 283–92, 510, 527

Field of Reeds ................................................................. 406

Final Fantasy XIV .................................. 37, 424, 509, 528

Finger of Death.............................................................. 384

first cause argument ................................................... 150

flashdarks ................................................................ 186, 539

Flinn, Kelton ...................................................................... 31

forking

realities .........................................See realities:forking

servers........................................... See servers: forking

How to Be a God

lii

formal logic ..................................................................... 221

Forster, Edward M. .............................................. 275, 345

forward chaining........................................................... 299

Fountain ............................................................................ 201

frames ...................................................................... 376, 380

Free Guy ............................................................................ 422

free will165, 168–69, 337, 341–42, 354, 365, 395, 400,

403, 426, 429, 432

freeform content ........................ See content: freeform

freeish will ....................................................................... 341

Friends .............................................................................. 508

full resets ............................................. See resets:sudden

fun ..................... 41, 97, 158, 167, 276, 355, 489, 493, 551

functionalism ................................................................. 478

Gabriel ............................................................................. 409

Gaea .......................................................................... See Gaia

Gaia ........................................................................... 329, 485

game directors ................................................................. 55

game engines ....................................... 32, 73–74, 79, 155

Game of Thrones ..................................................... 290–92

Beyond the Wall .......................................................... 291

Game Studies .................................................... 41, 82, 489

game-mastered content ............... See content: game-

mastered

gameplay .......................... 76, 81, 85, 272, 286, 384, 499

games .......................... 32, 73, 158, 278, 316, 507, 513–14

multi-player .................................................................. 28

serious ..........................................................................494

Ganges, River.................................................................. 443

Garriott, Richard ...........................................................390

Gather ................................................................................486

Index

liii

Gautama, Siddhārtha................................................... 443

Geertz, Clifford ..............................................441, 448–49

gender ................................................................. 12, 379–82

General, the .................................................................... 437

generations ........................................... 160–63, 200, 304

ghosts ................................................................ 18, 297, 322

Gillian’s Hoop ................................................................. 466

gliders................................................................................ 162

GMC .................................. See content: game-mastered

Go ............................................................................... 335, 374

God ... ...6, 14–15, 150–51, 170, 259, 335, 369, 373, 399,

455–56, 495, 498, 545–46

Gödel, Kurt ................................................................ 191–93

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems .......................... See

Incompleteness Theorems

gods ... ....... 6, 10–17, 47, 56–57, 102, 172, 177, 194, 218,

235, 241, 259, 310, 328, 361–64, 385, 431, 447, 451,

455, 461–62, 472–77, 482, 485, 491, 517–18, 521,

523–28, 538, 541

belief in ......................................................................... 218

creator ........ 17, 149–50, 171, 183, 275, 349, 455, 496,

499, 516

definition of ..................................................................... 7

personal ...................... 169–71, 173, 177, 195, 242, 292

Gods ... .................................................. See Lap of the Gods

Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes ........................................ 58

GOFAI ............... See Artificial Intelligence: Good Old-

Fashioned

Golden Rule .................................................................... 434

Goliath .............................................................................. 209

Gomorrah ........................................................................ 329

How to Be a God

liv

governments .......................................................... 470–76

graceful resets..................................See resets: graceful

graphical MUDs............................See MUDs: graphical

Greek Orthodoxy ......................................................... 444

Groundhog Day ................................................................ 121

Groundhog Day resets ................... See resets: sudden

Guild Wars 2 ............................................................. 230–31

gunk .................................................................................. 198

Habitat .......................................................... 31–33, 59, 444

hacker culture .................................................................. 25

hadith, books of..................................................... 259, 487

hand-crafted content ........ See content: hand-crafted

hard-coded data........................... See data: hard-coded

hardware..................................................................... 63, 68

of Reality .............................. See Reality: hardware of

Harington, Kit ................................................................ 291

Hasbro .............................................................................. 140

HCC ........................................ See content: hand-crafted

Heaven .................229, 231, 246, 257–58, 308, 389, 445

heavens......................................... 149, 294, 462, 482, 545

Hegel, Georg W. F. ........................................................... 19

Heliopolis ..........................................................................153

Hell .................................................................................... 456

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice .......................................... 146

hells ................................................................ 294, 482, 545

Hemera ............................................................................. 485

Henry V ..............................................................................176

Hephaestus ............................................................... 57, 317

Heracles ...................................................................... 62, 95

Hercules ......................................................... See Heracles

Hermes ......................................................................... 18, 62

Index

Hermeticism ..........................................................261, 456

heroes ..........................................................................58, 114

heroine's journey, the .................................................. 267

hero's journey, the ........................................................ 266

higher realities ............................... See realities: super-

Hinduism 59, 105, 118, 151, 171, 175, 335–36, 410, 486,

490, 522

Hittites ............................................................................. 458

Holmes, Sherlock ................................................. 285, 525

Holy Ghost ................................................ See Holy Spirit

Holy Spirit ............................................................... 170, 183

Holy Trinity ........................................................... 182, 520

Homer .........................................................................97, 317

Hounds and Jackals ........................................................ 157

Huizinga, Johan .............................................................. 42

human rights ............................................... 336, 454, 508

Hume, David ................................................................... 436

Hydaelyn ......................................................................... 528

ideal of existence........................ See existence: ideal of

idealism ............................................. 180–81, 204–8, 468

Ilhuicatl-Teteocan ........................................................ 463

Iliad, The ......................................................................97, 317

Ilm al-Kalām .................................................................... 150

imagination .............................................. 43, 134–35, 144

imago dei .................................................................455, 500

immanence .................................... 153, 184, 228–29, 355

immanent transcendence .......................................... 355

immersion ...................... 265–71, 276–79, 281, 285, 295

identity ............................................................... 266, 268

presence as ................... See presence: as immersion

sensory ........................................................ 265, 268–69

How to Be a God

lvi

system .......................................................................... 270

immortality .................................................. See mortality

immortals ................................................................. 58, 392

immutability ................................................................... 195

impassibility ................................................................... 195

implicit content ............................ See content: implicit

Incans ...............................................................................494

inclusive position ......................................................36, 38

Incompleteness Theorems .......................... 191–93, 235

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull ............................ 276

inductivism ..................................................................... 478

information gain ........................................................... 373

information loss ............................................ 372–73, 516

initial states .......................................... See states: initial

instances .. 87–89, 106–10, 115–19, 250, 387, 398, 552

integrated information theory ................................. 530

intelligence ...............................................................334–35

artificial .............................. See Artificial Intelligence

group .................................................................... 321, 347

human-level ................................................................ 337

of non-player characters ............... 318–25, 342, 419

super- ............................................................................ 343

intensional definitions ................................................ 201

interfaces .......................145–46, 262, 269–71, 282, 503

diegetic ......................................................... 279, 281–82

meta .............................................................................. 279

non-diegetic............................................................... 280

spatial ........................................................................... 279

interpreted data .......................... See data: interpreted

interpreters......................................................... 67–68, 72

Isaac................................................................................... 102

Index

lvii

Iscariot .............................................................................. 315

Ishmael ............................................................................. 102

Islam ............................ 102, 150, 170, 259, 409, 455, 488

Island of Kesmai ......................................................... 31–33

Islandia .............................................................................. 138

is-ought problem .......................................................... 436

Israelites ................................................................. 333, 526

Jainism ..................................................................... 148, 336

Jehovah’s Witness ........................................................ 505

JennyMUSH .................................................................... 496

Jesus ................................................................ 249, 410, 513

John Paul II, Pope .......................................................... 125

Jonson, Ben ..................................................................... 379

Jotunheim ................................................................ 461–62

Judaism .................................................. 150, 170, 333, 455

just-in-time evaluation ................................................. 99

Kali .................................................................................... 522

Kali Yuga ..........................................................................491

Kane ................................................................................... 152

Kant, Immanuel ............................................................. 347

Kaplan, Jeffery .................................................................. 78

karma systems .............................................................. 407

keying ............................................................................... 306

King of the World ............................................................ 382

Klietz, Alan ......................................................................... 31

Koster, Raph ................................................................... 483

Krishna ...............................................................................171

Ku ........................................................................................ 152

Kuba ................................................................................... 151

Kukulkán ......................................................................... 499

Kur ..................................................................................... 407

How to Be a God

lviii

Kurma ................................................................................ 171

Lactantius ........................................................................ 431

LambdaMOO ............................. 38, 177–78, 182, 472–73

land, laws of the ............................. See laws: of the land

Lap of the Gods.................................................................. 59

LARPs .................... See live-action role-playing games

Las Vegas .......................................................................... 118

laws

of nature ........................................ 11, 185, 471–72, 475

of physics ...... 70, 103–4, 185, 188, 207, 215, 294–96

of robotics, Asimov's three .................................... 339

of the land............................................... 11, 471, 475–77

layers .............................................................. 91, 106–7, 116

lead designers .................................. See designers: lead

LegendMUD ..................................................................... 483

legitimate use of force ................................................. 470

Lego bricks ...................................................196–200, 206

Lem, Stanisław ............................................................... 487

Leveilleur, Alphinaud ................................................... 423

Lewis, Clive S. ................................................................. 138

Life........................ 160–64, 200, 302, 304, 486, 549, 551

Lila .....................................................................................486

limbo ................................................................................. 445

live-action role-playing games ......... 141–43, 145, 146

lived religion ................................................................... 478

logical atomism ............................................................ 200

Loki .................................................................................... 462

Lono ................................................................................... 152

Lord of the Rings, The .................................................... 289

lore ....................................................................... 55, 273–75

lower realities...................................... See realities: sub-

Index

lix

lucid dreams ........................................ See dreams: lucid

Lumpl ............................................................................... 209

lusory attitude .................................................................. 41

Luther, Lex ...................................................................... 353

Ma’at ............................................................................405–6

Maggs, Bruce..................................................................... 31

magic circle, the ...................................... 42–43, 144, 417

magic cities ...................................................................... 138

Maia .................................................................................... 62

Malachy, Saint ................................................................ 125

Mandela Effect, the ....................................................... 145

many-worlds interpretation ..................................... 459

Marduk............................................................................. 492

marginal cases ............................................................... 420

Mars ................................................................................... 176

Marvel cinematic universe ......................................... 139

Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

..............................................34, 37, 79, 85, 295, 387–89

Mathematics .................................................................... 50

Matrix, The................................................................. 14, 201

Mayans .................................................................... 499, 522

Mbombo ............................................................................ 151

McGonigal, Jane ............................................................. 519

men, angry young ........................................................... 26

mereological nihilism ................................................... 197

Mereology ........................................................................198

Meretzky, Steve .............................................................. 158

merging servers ............................See servers:merging

Meridian 59 ........................................................................ 24

Metaphysics ................................201, 203, 209, 221, 242

Metaverse Manifesto, The ............................................ 469

How to Be a God

Metaverse, the ................................................................464

metrics ............................................................................ 405

Microsoft Word ............................................................... 65

Middle Earth ................................................................... 289

Midgaard ........................................................................... 75

Midgard........................................................... 245, 460–62

Miller, Rand ..................................................................... 545

Miller, Robyn .................................................................. 545

mind

physics of ..................................................................... 319

theory of.................... 345–50, 355–56, 358, 366, 417

mind uploading ............................................................. 241

mind-body dualism .............................................. 179, 319

mind-body problem...................................................... 180

Minecraft ................................................................. 100, 199

mini-boss ......................................................................... 314

mîs-pî ................................................................................248

mixed reality................................................................... 146

MMORPGs. See Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-

Playing Games

MMOs ......... See Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-

Playing Games

mobiles .............................................. 61, 232, 313–16, 506

mobs .................................................................. See mobiles

modal realism .................................... See realism: modal

Molea Cemetery ............................................................ 510

Mondain ............................................................................. 90

monism ............................................................................ 180

monomyth .................................. See hero's journey, the

Monopoly ............................................................................ 28

monotheism ........................................................... 499, 523

Index

lxi

Monster ................................................................................ 31

monsters.............................................................. 61, 85, 312

moral beings................................ 414, 420, 423–24, 550

morality meters ............................................................ 407

morally considerable beings ........... 420–26, 429, 452

morals........... 376, 383, 398, 411, 415–17, 429, 439, 454

systems of ..................................................418, 422, 432

More, Saint Thomas ..................................................... 498

Mormonism .................................................................... 150

Morning Star, the ......................................................... 322

Morningstar, Chip ........................................................... 31

mortality.......................................... 385–87, 391–93, 401

mortals ..............................................................58, 392, 447

Moses ................................................................................ 443

MUD ... 20–23, 25–34, 56, 155, 173, 184, 202, 293, 355,

370, 389, 482–83, 505–6, 542

MUD1 ..........................................22, 32, 231, 313, 379, 509

MUD2 ................................. 22, 89, 155, 232, 253, 316, 512

MUDs ............................. 32–34, 37, 79, 89, 199, 389, 498

graphical ........................................................................34

stock .............................................................. 75, 485, 497

Muggletonians................................................................ 371

Muhammad .................................................. 259, 409, 487

multi-boxing .................................................................. 233

multi-player online battle arena .............................. 522

multiple religious belonging ...................................... 371

Multi-User Dungeon ............................................ See MUD

Mutt, Richard ................................................................. 201

Myrkheim ........................................................................ 460

Myst ................................................................................... 545

myths ................................................................................... 13

How to Be a God

lxii

Native Americans ................................................. 148, 152

Natural Law ................................................................... 508

nature

laws of.............................................. See laws: of nature

of realities ................................ See realities: nature of

of Reality .................................... See Reality: nature of

Neo ........................................................................................ 14

Nergal .............................................................. 248–49, 252

Nesbit, Edith ................................................................... 138

New Game Experience ................................................ 510

Newsnight ........................................................................ 415

Newton, Isaac ................................................................. 243

nihilism .............................................................................197

Nomic ................................................................................ 190

nominalism ................................................. 203–4, 206–7

Non Serviam..................................................................... 487

non-player characters ........ 94, 311, 341, 354, 412, 435,

442, 475, 528

abilities of ...........................312, 346–48, 446, 451–52

bodies of ............................................................... 234–36

copying .................................................................. 237–38

death of ........................................ 130–31, 387, 394–98

fictional integrity of ................................. 115, 282–84

in our image.............. 258, 261, 311, 349–51, 356, 362

intelligence of .......... See intelligence:of non-player

characters

morally considerable ....................................... 422–24

of Reality ...... See Reality: non-player characters of

perspective of .. 182, 204, 253–56, 365–69, 391, 515

souls of ............................................................... 399–407

Norse ..................................................... 259, 460, 462, 522

Index

lxiii

noumenal......................................................................... 347

NPCs ..................................... See characters: non-player

numinous ........................................................................ 546

Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika ............................................................. 341

Nyx .................................................................................... 485

occasionalism.................................................................. 175

Odin ..................................... 225, 245, 252, 256, 350, 497

OED ................................... See Oxford English Dictionary

Olodumare ...................................................................... 493

Olympians .............................................................. 329, 392

Olympus ............................................................................. 97

omnipotence ................................................................... 193

omniscience ............................................................ 168, 193

ontology ............................................................................ 219

operation phase ................................................................ 53

optimistic-exclusive position ........................ 36–37, 41

Order of the Holy Walnut, the .................................. 444

Orion .................................................................................... 18

Otherland ......................................................................... 354

overtness .......................................................... 173–75, 364

Oxford English Dictionary ................................................. 7

pandeism .......................................... 171, 177–79, 182, 183

panentheism ................................................................... 151

pantheism ........................................ 151, 171–72, 176, 246

paracosms ................... 137–38, 318, 483, 486, 498, 506

paramount realities ............. See realities: paramount

partial existence .......................... See existence: partial

partial realities ............................... See realities: partial

patches ............................................... 84, 89, 127–29, 504

Payne, Cynthia ................................................................ 415

PCG .................... See content:procedurally-generated

How to Be a God

lxiv

PCs ................................................. See characters: player

perdurantism ................................................................. 162

permadeath .................................................... 388–90, 551

persistence ............................................................... 29, 205

personae ........................................................................... 355

personal gods .................................... See gods: personal

personhood ............................................................ 336, 421

personification .......................................................227, 451

persuasiveness ................... 260, 263, 268–69, 271, 294

pessimistic-exclusive position ............... 36, 38–39, 43

PGC ..................... See content:procedurally-generated

Phaedo .............................................................................. 400

phases ......................... 88, 91, 106, 109, 114–16, 251, 398

phenomenal .................................................................... 347

phenomenology ............................................................. 478

Philosophy ......................................................... 41, 110, 198

phlogiston theory.......................................................... 243

physicalism .............................................................. 180–81

physics

laws of............................................ See laws: of physics

of realities .............................. See realities: physics of

of Reality .................................. See Reality: physics of

of the supernatural ... See supernatural: physics of

the

pi…. .............................................................................. 66, 554

places ...................................................... 265–66, 297, 439

other-directed ............................................................442

sacred .......................................................... 443–44, 446

spiritual ................................................................ 439–40

Planetfall ........................................................................... 158

Plato ....................................................... 202, 400, 503, 517

Index

lxv

player characters ... 29, 42, 58–59, 90, 182, 253, 276–

78, 325, 378, 406, 413

abilities of ................................................... 284, 311, 320

bodies of ............................................. 180, 232–33, 262

death of ................................................ See permadeath

fictional integrity of.................................. 279–81, 312

identifying with .............................. 231, 266, 355, 389

of Reality .............. See Reality: player characters of

player-versus-player.................................................78, 80

playtesters ........................................................................ 58

Pleiades, the ...................................................................... 62

Plutarch ............................................................................ 216

Polly ........................................................................... 379–82

Pope Simulator ................................................................ 508

Pope, Alexander .............................................................. 318

Poseidon ............................................................................. 18

possessing ............................................................... 233, 321

possible worlds ........................................................ 111, 116

post-colonialism............................................................ 453

Potter, Harry .................................................................. 458

powers, supernatural ........ See supernatural: powers

prayers ............................................................. 175, 480–81

preconditions ................................................................. 299

predicate calculus ......................................................... 222

premonitions.................................................................. 298

pre-production phase .....................................................52

presence.................................................................. 230, 263

as active medium ...................................................... 264

as immersion ..................................................... 264–65

as parasociality................................................. 264, 350

as realism .................................................................... 263

How to Be a God

lxvi

as social richness ...................................................... 263

as transportation .............................................. 264–65

presenting ..................................................... 230, 270, 277

primary worlds .............................. See worlds: primary

principle of minimal departure ............................... 260

problem of universals .................................... 202–5, 227

procedural content-generation ................................ See

content:procedurally-generated

procedural representations ....................................... 222

procedural rhetoric ...................................................... 384

procedurally-generated content ............. See content:

procedurally-generated

producers........................................................................... 57

production phase .............................................. 52–53, 55

production rules ............................................................ 299

programmers ...... 29, 56–57, 64, 89, 121, 166, 177, 188,

210, 212, 465

Project Horseshoe ......................................................... 384

projection ...................................... 345, 348, 351–52, 354

Prometheus ..................................................................... 319

properties ........ 201–6, 212, 216, 222–23, 239, 319, 412

of virtual worlds .......................................................... 28

physical .......................................................................... 45

property dualism ................................................... 180–81

prophecy ..................................................................125, 325

Proteus effect ................................................................. 355

pseudophilosophy ......................................................... 532

Ptah .................. 45, 153, 156, 183–88, 193–94, 235, 467

PvP ............................................. See player-versus-player

Pyrrha ............................................................................... 485

qualia ..................................................................................321

Index

lxvii

quests ................................... 58, 78, 85, 88, 266, 311, 509

Qur’an, The ......................... 102, 190, 259, 365, 409, 496

Ra ........................................................................................ 153

Rama ...................................................................................171

random-number generator ............... 116, 166, 168, 174

Ranters ............................................................................. 370

Rastafarianism .............................................................. 523

real time ........................................................ See time: real

realism ........................................................................ 202–7

modal .............................................................................. 111

presence as ......................... See presence: as realism

realisticness .................................. 288–91, 294, 346, 394

realities

as communication .................................................... 502

as destination ............................................................ 502

as product ................................................................... 502

as tools ......................................................................... 502

consequent .... 226, 235–36, 245, 307, 460–69, 493,

496, 539

definition of ............................................................ 460

deterministic ... 155–57, 159, 163, 166–67, 188, 298,

552

forking ................................................................. 301, 451

higher ............................................ See realities: super-

nature of ........................................................... 9–10, 437

paramount ............................................................. 44, 46

partial ............................................................................ 142

physics of .......................... 9–12, 15, 185, 191, 461, 472

self-modifying ............................................................ 192

sub- .. 51, 154, 218, 229, 231, 235, 245, 251, 260, 307,

310, 370, 373, 438, 451–52, 460–67, 477

How to Be a God

lxviii

sub-sub- .............................................................. 235, 465

subtle .............................................................................135

super- ..... 51, 97, 100, 108, 111, 118, 148, 153, 164, 170,

172, 186, 218, 228–29, 231, 236, 245–46, 251,

292–94, 300, 310, 334, 438, 466–67, 475

Reality ............................................................ 29, 36–40, 45

bugs in ........................................................... 121–22, 126

content of ........................................... 98–101, 104, 546

death in ............................................................... 389, 551

definition of .................................................................... 8

design of ...................................................... 545–48, 551

deterministic .............................................. 164–65, 187

existence of ................................... 8, 180, 245–46, 254

hardware of ........................................ 95, 270, 373, 466

implementation of ... .... 103–8, 111, 114, 120, 303–5,

413, 546–49

nature of ............................................................. 438, 543

non-player characters of ... .....95, 108, 118, 125–26,

239, 303, 327–28, 332, 343, 390, 528

origins of............................................... 148–53, 171, 183

physics of .......... 68, 180, 185–88, 193, 260, 297, 470

player characters of . 95–97, 112, 114, 168, 328, 332,

413

self-modifying ............................................................ 194

visiting .......................... 95, 99, 113, 234, 300, 524–25

Reality is Broken .............................................................. 519

reattaching ............................................................. 232, 249

reference worlds ........................ See worlds: reference

reincarnation .....110, 320, 323, 386, 401, 413, 467, 520

relative existence ...................... See existence: relative

religion ......................... 289, 441, 478, 507, 510–14, 528

Index

lxix

religions .. 363, 438, 447–48, 507–8, 514, 521–23, 528

Abrahamic ................................................. 150, 169, 455

Religious Studies ................................................. 478, 509

representing .......230, 234, 237, 244–45, 249, 251–54,

269–70, 277, 365, 368–74, 451, 461–62, 464, 467,

516, 519

reputation systems ................................................. 407–8

resets

full ...................................................... See resets:sudden

graceful ......................................................................... 124

Groundhog Day ............................. See resets: sudden

respawning ...................................... See resets: rolling

rolling ...................................................... 85, 88–89, 120

sudden ......................................................85, 88–89, 122

respawning ..................... 86, 387–88, 390, 396–97, 513

respawning resets ............................. See resets: rolling

resurrection........................................................... 322, 386

Rift ..................................................................................... 509

RNG .............................. See random-number generator

RNGesus ........................................................................... 174

robots .............................................................. 234, 241, 339

Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster ................................................... 106

Roko’s basilisk ................................................................ 343

role-playing .................................................... 139, 379, 381

role-playing games............................................... 378, 514

Japanese ...................................................................... 522

live-action ........See live-action role-playing games

massively-multiplayer online .......... See Massively-

Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

tabletop .................................................. 79, 139–40, 144

rolling resets ....................................... See resets: rolling

How to Be a God

lxx

roll-out phase ................................................................... 52

Roman Catholicism ......... 249–50, 438, 498, 508, 520

Rosedale, Philip .............................................................. 495

RPGs ............................................ See role-playing games

rules ...................................................................................... 41

of Life..................................................................... 160, 163

sets of ..................................................................... 191–92

Russell, Bertrand ........................................................... 547

sacred places ...................................... See places: sacred

Salen, Katie ........................................................................ 42

Saler, Michael ................................................................. 139

Sally-Anne test ............................................................... 345

sandboxes ........................................................... 79, 81, 498

Sansar .................................................................................. 37

sapience...... 335–38, 351–54, 390, 395, 399, 422, 424,

429, 475, 487

Sceptre of Goth ............................................................31–33

Schrödinger’s cat .......................................................... 242

Scientology...................................................................... 523

scripts ................................................................. 67–68, 353

Second Life ........................................ 37, 79, 155, 444, 495

secondary worlds ...................... See worlds: secondary

Secret World Legends .......................... 272, 277, 315, 509

Secret World, The ..................................................... 58, 272

secular sacred................................................................. 436

self-awareness ............................................... 335–37, 352

self-modifying code .............. See code: self-modifying

self-modifying systems See systems: self-modifying

Sellers, Mike ...................................................................... 24

sentience ........................................ 336, 399, 421–22, 424

servers ........................................... 90, 428, 450, 484, 504

Index

lxxi

forking ............................................................ 90, 112–14

merging .......................................................... 90, 112–14

wipes............................................................................. 485

Shakespeare, William ................................................... 176

shamans ........................................................................... 359

Shapira, Andrew............................................................... 31

shards ...................................... 90–91, 106–7, 111–14, 130

Sherlock............................................................................. 287

Ship of Theseus .............................................................. 216

Shiva ................................................................................. 105

Sia ...................................................................................... 362

Sides, David ....................................................................... 31

Sikhism ............................................................................ 336

Simargl ................................................................................ 13

simples ...................................................................... 196, 211

Sinai, Mount ................................................................... 443

singularity, the .............................................................. 342

Skrenta, Rich ..................................................................... 31

SkyForge ............................................................................. 59

Skyrim ...................................................................... 140, 544

SkySaga ............................................................................. 199

Sleipnir ............................................................................. 462

Smite ................................................................................. 522

Smith-Stanley, Edward G. G. ...................................... 318

Snow Crash ........................................................................ 59

Snow, Jon ......................................................................... 291

social contract theory ......................................... 417, 433

Socrates ............................................................................ 517

Sodom............................................................................... 329

soft-coded data .............................. See data: soft-coded

software ..................................... 62–69, 73, 108, 323, 346

How to Be a God

lxxii

multi-user ..................................................................... 28

SoG ........................................................ See Sceptre of Goth

Somerville, Margaret ................................................... 435

Sosaria ................................................................................ 90

souls 111, 180–81, 205–6, 257–58, 320, 323, 399–407,

411–13, 442, 496, 530

source code ............................................ See code: source

spaces......................................................................... 45, 439

Spinoza, Baruch ............................................................. 165

spirit worlds ................................................................... 359

spirits ............................................................... 349, 358–62

spiritual places ................................ See places: spiritual

spiritual worlds ............................. See worlds:spiritual

Spiritualism .................................................................... 358

spirituality....................................... 439–43, 511–12, 530

Star Trek .................................................................. 393, 459

Star Wars Galaxies ............................................... 483, 509

Star Wars: the Old Republic ........................................ 406

stasis ................................................................................. 130

states ...... 70, 123, 125, 130, 158–61, 164, 166, 294, 303,

450, 481, 552

initial ............................................................. 159, 161, 163

transformation .......................................................... 158

Stevenson, Robert L...................................................... 138

stock MUDs .......................................... See MUDs: stock

Stoicism ........................................................................... 246

Stormwind ...................................................................... 507

strategic religious participation ............................... 371

Suber, Peter..................................................................... 190

sub-realities ......................................... See realities: sub-

substance dualism ............................................... 179, 205

Index

lxxiii

sub-sub-realities ........................ See realities: sub-sub-

subtle realities ................................. See realities: subtle

sudden resets ..................................... See resets: sudden

suffering ........................................ 421, 424–28, 431, 550

Sufism ...................................................................... 135, 455

Sumerians ....................................................................... 420

Summerland, the .......................................................... 246

sunset phase ...................................................................... 53

Superman ................................................................. 227, 353

supernatural

beings ...................................... 17–18, 57, 126, 284, 349

physics of the ............................................................. 296

powers...................................71, 173–74, 365, 446, 528

super-realities ................................. See realities: super-

supervention .................................................................. 180

SWL ........................................... See Secret World Legends

symbolic interpretation............................ See symbolic

representation

symbolic objects ............ See symbolic representation

symbolic representation ....... 196–200, 207, 211, 526,

548–50

systems

content ........................................See content: systems

self-modifying ............................ 184–85, 188, 191–92

tabletop RPGs ........ See role-playing games: tabletop

Tale in the Desert, A ....................................................... 474

Talmud, The ..................................................................... 190

Taoism.............................................................................. 246

Targaryen, Daenerys ................................................... 292

Tartarus ........................................................................... 485

Taylor, John ....................................................................... 31

How to Be a God

lxxiv

Technopaganism ...........................................................520

Tékumel ........................................................................... 138

telekinesis ........................................................................ 325

teleology ...................................................................172, 545

telepathy ...........................................................................321

telepresence .............. See presence: as transportation

Tepeu ................................................................................499

text ....................................................... 33, 74, 262, 268–69

Tezcatlipoca .................................................................... 356

The Evolution of God ...................................................... 362

theism ............................................................................... 545

theme parks .................................................... 79, 442, 498

Theology .................................................................... 50, 511

theory of mind ................................ See mind: theory of

Theseus ............................................................................ 216

threads ............................................................................. 122

ticks ...................................................................................304

time .............................. 121, 124, 128, 298, 300–306, 541

continuous .............................................................304–7

discrete....................................................................304–7

real ................................................................. 29, 302, 374

travel .......................................................... 300–303, 481

Time Lords ...................................................................... 437

TinyMUD ................................................................ 484, 499

Tolkien, John R. R. ....................... 44, 137, 260, 455, 508

transcendence ..................... 153, 171, 184, 228, 356, 456

transhumanism ............................................................. 241

transmigration .............................................................. 320

transubstantiation....................................... 249–52, 520

trash .................................................................................. 314

Index

lxxv

Trubshaw, Roy ....... 20–21, 25–26, 28–32, 34, 56, 105,

184, 293, 355, 370, 379, 483, 506, 518, 542

true names ...................................................................... 327

trust ......................................... 276, 287–88, 291, 366–69

TSW .................................................. See Secret World, The

Turing machine .............................................................. 373

Turing Test ..................................................................... 353

Turing, Alan.................................................................... 353

tutorials ...................................................................... 80, 98

typists ................................................................................. 60

tyrannies .......................................................................... 471

UCC ......................................... See content: user-created

UGC .................................... See content: user-generated

Ultima Online ................................................... 91, 390, 483

Ultima universe ............................................................. 479

ultimate end ................................................................... 495

ultraphysics .................................................................... 272

Uluru ................................................................................. 443

uncertainty ..................................................... 160, 166–67

universal sets ................................................................. 247

Universal Turing Machine .......................................... 163

universals ................................................................... 202–3

problem of ........................ See problem of universals

University of Essex ................................................. 20, 24

unmoved mover paradox ........................................... 150

unrealisticness ..................................... See realisticness

updates...................................................... 72, 85, 485, 504

Uranus.............................................................................. 329

user-created content ......... See content: user-created

user-generated content .................. See content: user-

generated

How to Be a God

lxxvi

utilitarianism ................................................................. 416

Utopia ................................................................................498

Valhalla ............................................................................. 246

Vaughan, Lexley ...................................................... 512–13

Venus ........................................................................ 101, 322

verisimilitude ....................................................... 288, 428

via negativa ...................................................................... 182

Victoria, Queen .............................................................. 286

Viracocha .........................................................................494

virtual reality................................... 26, 33, 146, 262, 265

virtual worlds

definition of .................................................................. 28

game.............................. 37, 39, 123, 183, 260, 497, 546

history of ....................................................................... 30

original ............................................................................ 31

physics of .................................................. 29, 61, 70, 177

principals of .................................................................. 54

separate from Reality ................................ 36–38, 439

social ....... 37–38, 59, 79, 123, 155, 177, 472, 484, 499

switching off....................130, 226, 449–51, 454, 504

Vishnu........................................................................105, 171

Vodou ................................................................................ 522

voxels ................................................................................ 199

VR ............................................................See virtual reality

Vulcan ................................................................................ 317

Watson, John H. ............................................................ 286

whales ..................................................................................77

Whiro-te-tipua .................................................................. 16

whole brain emulation ................................................ 241

Whoniverse ..................................................................... 139

Wicca.................................................................................. 141

Index

lxxvii

Williams, Robin ............................................................. 510

Williams, Tad ................................................................. 354

Wired ................................................................................. 545

wisdom ...................................................................... 335–36

Wittgenstein, Ludwig................................................... 136

Wizards of the Coast ................................................... 140

wizzes ................................................................................ 173

World of Tanks .................................................................146

World of Warcraft .. 34, 37, 40, 58, 78, 85, 88, 199, 268,

273, 441, 444, 448, 464–65, 507, 510, 528

Cataclysm ...................................................................... 85

The Burning Crusade .................................................... 78

Wrath of the Lich King .......................................... 78, 88

worlds ............................................................................... 458

primary .................................................................. 44, 137

reference ..................................................................... 295

secondary ..................................................................... 137

spiritual ................................................................ 257–58

virtual ............................................... See virtual worlds

Would-Be, Politic .......................................................... 379

WoW ................................................ See World of Warcraft

Wrath of the Lich King .. See World of Warcraft: Wrath

of the Lich King

Wright, Austin T. ........................................................... 138

Yahweh .................................................................... 170, 333

Yggdrasil ......................................................... 460–61, 463

Yoruba .............................................................................. 493

Young Earth Creationism .................................. 124, 357

zero-player games ........................................................ 302

Zeus ............................................. 57, 62, 96, 392, 448, 485

Zimmerman, Eric ............................................................ 42

How to Be a God

lxxviii

Zorya .................................................................... 13–14, 323

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Credits

lxxix

Cover by Sir John Tenniel

from Punch 19

May, 1883

public domain.

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