We want as many people as possible to be able to play without difficulty and feel comfortable in our multiplayer worlds. VirtualSociety is designed so that everyone can be themselves without fear or problems.

VirtualSociety characters are non-gendered, and allow to choose different morphologies without any gender notion.

The appearance editor allows you to freely choose the morphology and skin tone of your avatar in order to create a character that matches your image (or not). The same goes for eye color and heterochromia.

Characters can be in wheelchairs, on crutches, or using a cane. This experience allows us to better represent the diversity of individuals, as well as to make players aware of the difficulties that it can involve.

VirtualSociety offers accessibility features to adapt the game with a font that makes reading easier for people with dyslexia, as well as color choices and contrasts that make reading in-game easier.

The colors of the interface adapt to simplify the game for people with dyschromatopsia (color blindness).

The VirtualSociety project was created by two PhDs (Jimmy and Nicolas) and a PhD student (Clélie) in computer science, who have previous experiences in education, dissemination and scientific mediation.

Education is part of our values, and our experience in the domain helps us design a game that is both fun and educational to make learning fun for our players.

After several years in research and education, pursuing these fields through video games is an essential goal for us. Beyond the game itself, we regularly take part in scientific mediation events. In particular, we participate in the "Féru des sciences" to introduce young people to the code and the backstage of video game studios.

VirtualSociety is designed to be creative and promote positive and caring social interactions. We are strongly convinced that being creative, communicating and helping each other are essential elements to make playing an enriching and useful activity.

VirtualSociety is a game open to all, in which all profiles are welcome. We are aware that the youngest ones need special attention in order to guarantee them a safe and caring place.

Leaving a child socializing with strangers online is dangerous. To prevent this situation, the accounts of players under the age of 16 are limited to a set of predefined interactions, and are not allowed to engage in direct dialogue (text or voice messages) with unknown players. These measures prevent unsafe or inappropriate social interaction and effectively protect younger players while providing a safe and rewarding social experience.

Content (items, characters, and worlds) is carefully checked to ensure that younger players are never exposed to sensitive or inappropriate content, and to promote the worlds and stories that they will enjoy most.

Aware that screen time is an increasing problem in our society, VirtualSociety warns players when the time spent playing becomes significant. In addition, the accounts of underage players are equipped with parental control options to allow parents to supervise their children's activity, by limiting the amount of time they can play, and by requiring a parent's approval for any in-game chat or friendship request.

Over the last few years, many games, often called metavers, have emerged that focus on cryptocurrencies and NFTs. These sales spaces generally propose to buy virtual lands or objects to own a part of the world they create.
This is the opposite of what we want to provide for many reasons.

Our goal is to create a game with an enjoyable creative and social experience. For us, video games are an art class with infinite possibilities. We are concerned about the direction that most so-called metaverse games are taking, as they are essentially money-making tools, built by financiers who are not really interested in the experience they are offering to their players.

We therefore refuse to include any cryptocurrency or to offer NFTs in our games, because our main objective remains to entertain, in no way to sell land or virtual objects in a world where everything can be bought.

Many supporters of blockchain claim that it gives back control to users, with a decentralized and open system. We believe that, on the contrary, this poses many problems.

Indeed, if the blockchain is decentralized, the functioning of these games will necessarily remain centralized (servers, need for moderation, etc.). Of course, their cryptocurrencies and NFTs exist in an open way outside their game, but this is not an additional security or a gain for the players:

• The collapse or removal of the game will render the relevant NFTs worthless.
• In case of theft, even the administrators and founders of the game will not be able to do anything to help the robbed player
• In case of loss of credentials, again, no one will be able to help a player find his wallet

We therefore commit ourselves not to include NFTs or cryptocurrencies in our games.