Cultural Formations in Text-Based Virtual Realties
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-- CULTURAL FORMATIONS IN TEXT-BASED VIRTUAL REALITIES --
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By
ELIZABETH REID
emr@ee.mu.oz.au
emr@rmit.edu.au
A thesis submitted
in fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of Arts
Cultural Studies Program
Department of English
University of Melbourne
January 1994
Copyright (C) 1994 by Elizabeth Reid, all rights reserved. This text
may be freely redistributed among individuals in any medium so long as
it remains unedited and appears with this notice. Any commercial use
or republication requires the written permission of the author.
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ABSTRACT
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Beginning with an understanding of virtual reality as an imaginative
experience and thus a cultural construct rather than a technical
construction, this thesis discusses cultural and social issues raised
by interaction on 'MUDs', which are text-based virtual reality
systems run on the international computer network known as the
Internet. MUD usage forces users to deconstruct many of the cultural
tools and understandings that form the basis of more conventional
systems of interaction. Unable to rely on physical cues as a channel
of meaning, users of MUDs have developed ways of substituting for or
by-passing them, resulting in novel methods of textualising the non-
verbal. The nature of the body and sexuality are problematised in
these virtual environments, since the physical is never fixed and
gender is a self-selected attribute. In coming to terms with these
aspects of virtual interaction, new systems of significance have been
developed by users, along with methods of enforcing that cultural
hegemony through power structures dependant upon manipulation of the
virtual environment. These new systems of meaning and social control
define those who use MUDs as constituting a distinct cultural group.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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First and foremost, my thanks go to Chris Healy, my supervisor, for
his support, encouragement and advice, all of which have been
invaluable. Secondly, I would like to thank the English Department
for sponsoring my use of the University of Melbourne's computing and
network facilities, which enabled me to undertake this research. I
would also like to thank Richard Oxbrow of the Department of
Electrical and Electronic Engineering for allowing me to use the
computing facilities of that department, and Lochard Environment
Systems Pty. Ltd. for providing the printer used to produce the final
version of this thesis. To Pavel Curtis and Kerstin Carosone go my
thanks for help with proof-reading and 'beta-testing', and to Daniel
Carosone goes my especial thanks for emotional, technical and culinary
support. Lastly, I should like thank all the people who have made
this thesis possible by allowing me to join them in their virtual play
and especially for allowing me to quote from examples of this play and
from their reflections upon it.
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PREFACE
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Parts of this thesis have been published in "Electronic Chat:
Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat" in _Media_
_Information_Australia_ No. 67 (February 1993) 61-70. The previously
published excerpts are spread throughout this thesis, and amount in
total to approximately 2000 words.
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CONTENTS
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Introduction: Virtual Reality--Imagined Space
Background: A History of Interactive and Networked Computing and the
Evolution of MUDs
Interactive Computing
Networked Computing
Interactive Networking
MUDs: Networked, Interactive Virtual Realities
Chapter One: Communication and Cultural Context
Making Sense of the World
Making Sense of Each Other
Disinhibition and Social Experience
Chapter Two: Power, Social Structure and Social Cohesion
Hierarchies of Power on MUDs
Adventure MUDs: Survival of the Fittest
Social MUDs: Cooperative Appreciation
Social Cohesion on MUDs
Chapter Three: Identity and the Cyborg Body
Self-Made People
Ungrounding Gender
Cyborg Sexuality
The Cyborg Self
Conclusion: Cultural Formations in Text-Based Virtual Realities
Bibliography
Appendices
Appendix One: The Vanishing Room
Appendix Two: The Double Bluff
Appendix Three: The First Case of Cross-Gendered MUD Playing
Appendix Four: The Evolution of Communication
... Amongst Players
... and Wizards
Appendix Five: The Expression of Feelings on 'Nemesis'
Appendix Six: The LambdaMOO Player Survey
Appendix Seven: Character Generation...
...Complex
...Or Simple
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INTRODUCTION: VIRTUAL REALITY--IMAGINED SPACE
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Cyberspace.... A graphic representation of data
abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human
system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged
in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations
of data. Like city lights, receding...[1]
Virtual Reality, or "cyberspace"... takes alternate
reality a step further [beyond books and movies] by
introducing a computer as mediator, or imagination
enhancer.[2]
Cyberspace: A new universe, a parallel universe created
and sustained by the world's computers and communication
lines... a new stage, a new and irresistible development
in the elaboration of human culture and business under
the sign of technology.[3]
Since William Gibson coined the term in his best-selling novel
Neuromancer, cyberspace' and virtual reality have been part of late
twentieth century culture, and have been infused with a variety of
cultural and emotional meanings. Gibson himself envisaged a direct
neural connection between humans and computers against a background of
urban decay and personal alienation. The film The Lawnmower Man
depicted a meld of mind-altering drugs and computer-controlled sensory
stimulation which offered a new stage for the evolution of mankind,
either toward godlike wisdom or satanic evil. The popular media have
posed cyberspace as the new frontier and the new promise of the
twentieth century. Gibson's 'console cowboys'--virtuoso cyberspace
users hacking at the edges of the law--have been incarnated in media
coverage of groups such as the infamous 'Legion of Doom'. Arcade
games incorporating datagloves and headsets have become the latest fad
in entertainment. Business Week filled its October 5 '92 issue with
special features introducing virtual reality technologies and
applications to its readers. Clifford Stoll's best-seller
_The_Cuckoo's_Egg_ promoted cyberspace as the site of new levels of
international espionage, betrayal and tyranny, inhabited by glamorous
foreign spies and dedicated heroes.
Technically speaking, the term 'virtual reality' is most commonly
used to refer to systems that offer users visual, auditory and tactile
information about an environment which exists as data in a computer
system rather than as physical objects and locations. This is the
virtual reality depicted in "The Lawnmower Man" and approximated
by the 'Virtuality' arcade games marketed by Horizon Entertainment.
This thesis is not about these kinds of virtual reality. I do not
wish to talk about cyberspace or virtual reality as technological
constructions but as cultural constructs. In common with Howard
Rheingold I do not see virtual reality as a set of technologies, but
as an experience.[4] More than that, I believe that it is primarily
an imaginative rather than a sensory experience. I wish to shift the
focus of attention away from the gadgets used to represent a virtual
world, and concentrate on the nature of the user's experience of such
worlds. I contend that technical definitions of VR beg the question
of what it is about such systems that sustains the illusion of reality
in the mind of the user. A list of technical components does not
explain why it is that users are prepared to accept a simulated world
as a valid site for emotional and social response.
The systems that I will describe in examining virtual reality as a
cultural environment are technically simple. I have chosen to refer
to a family of computer programs known as MUDs. MUDs are networked,
multi-participant, user-extensible systems which are most commonly
found on the Internet, the international network that connects many
thousands of educational, research and commercial institutions. Using
a MUD does not require any of the paraphernalia commonly associated
with virtual reality. There is no special hardware to sense the
position and orientation of the user's real-world body, and no
special clothes allowing users to see the virtual world through
goggles and touch it through 'datagloves'. The MUD interface is
entirely textual; all commands are typed in by the user and all
feedback is displayed as text on a monitor. A simple PC can act as a
gateway into this kind of virtual world.
Instead of using sophisticated tools to see, touch and hear the
virtual environment, users of MUD systems are presented with textual
descriptions of virtual locations. Technically, a MUD software
program consists of a database of 'rooms', 'exits', and other
objects. The program accepts connections from users on a computer
network, and provides each user with access to that database. As
Pavel Curtis describes, users are presented with textual information
describing them as being situated in an artificially constructed place
which also contains those other participants who are connected to the
MUD program.[5] There are many hundreds of MUD programs running on
the Internet, each with its own unique database of descriptions of
localities and objects. Within each of these systems users can
interact with each other and with the virtual environment which the
MUD presents to them.
As Curtis has commented, the virtual worlds within MUD systems have
many of the social attributes of physical places, and many of the
usual social mechanisms apply.[6] Users treat the worlds depicted by
MUD programs as if they were real. However, it is not the
technological interface itself that sustains the willingness of users
to treat this simulated environment as if it were real. Rather it is
the degree to which MUDs act not only as a tool for the expression of
each user's imagination, but mediate between the users' imagination
and their communication to others of what they have imagined.
Cyberspace--the realm of electronic impulses and high-speed data
highways where MUDs exist--may be a technological artefact, but
virtual reality is a construct within the mind of a human being.
Within this construct a representation of a person can be manipulated
within a representation of a real or imagined environment, both of
which can be manifested through the use of various technologies,
including computers. Virtual worlds exist not in the technology used
to represent them, nor purely in the mind of the user, but in the
relationship between internal mental constructs and technologically
generated representations of these constructs. The illusion of
reality lies not in the machinery itself, but in the users'
willingness to treat the manifestation of their imaginings as if they
were real.
The technical attributes of these virtual places, comments Curtis,
have significant effects on social phenomena, leading to new modes of
interaction and new cultural formations.[7] The lack of actual
physical presence, indeed the great physical distances between
individual participants, demands that a new set of behavioural codes
be invented if the participants in such systems are to make sense to
one another. The problems posed by the lack of cultural cues which
physical presence carries influence behaviour in virtual environments.
The solutions to these problems which participants devise constitute
the culture of the virtual world in which they are played out. It is
the tension between the manifestation of conventional social and
cultural patterns, the invention of new patterns, and the imaginative
experience of these phenomena as taking part in a virtual world that
is the subject of my thesis.
My primary sources in this work fall into three categories. Firstly,
I will quote from logs taken of sessions on MUDs. Secondly, I will
quote from electronic mail, or email, sent to me by MUD players in
which they discuss such usage. Lastly, I will be using articles from
the USENET newsgroups devoted to discussion of MUD and MUD playing.
These groups include alt.mud, rec.games.mud, rec.games.mud.admin,
rec.games.mud.announce, rec.games.mud.diku, rec.games.mud.lp,
rec.games.mud.misc and rec.games.mud.tiny. I have been monitoring
these groups since December 1991, during which time these groups have
seen an average traffic of approximately fifty articles each day. In
all quoted extracts the original (sometimes very original) grammar and
spelling have been preserved, and in all cases I have secured
permission to quote from the individuals concerned. In some cases I
have been asked to withhold identifying information, and where this is
the case I have indicated in the footnotes that the item of mail or
the news article is from "anonymous". However, in most cases the
names of players and characters as well as the names of the MUDs
themselves have been preserved. The most important exception is the
case of 'JennyMUSH', which is an alias. For reasons that will be
made clear in the body of this thesis, the unique nature of this
system and the experiences of its users have led to a great concern
with the issue of privacy. The administrator of the MUD has asked me
not to reveal any information that might identify the location of the
system, and has suggested 'JennyMUSH' as a pseudonym which retains
the flavour of its actual name.
This thesis will be divided into three chapters, preceded by a section
detailing the historical background to and context of the evolution of
MUD systems. The subject of the first and second chapters is the
nature of the social changes that these forms of virtual reality
engender. I will examine the impact of MUDs on the practices of
interpersonal communication and interaction, and on community
formation and social cohesion. The third chapter will describe how
the nature of human existence is altered by entrance or translation
into virtual reality. In this last chapter I will explore the nature
of social identity, sexuality and the body in the virtual environment.
---FOOTNOTES TO INTRODUCTION---
[1] William Gibson, _Neuromancer_ (London: Grafton Books, 1989) 67.
[2] Nicholas Lavroff, _Virtual_Reality_Playhouse_ (Corte Madera CA:
Waite Group Press, 1992) 7.
[3] Michael, Benedikt, _Cyberspace:_First_Steps_ Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1991) 1.
[4] Howard Rheingold, _Virtual_Reality_, (London: Mandarin, 1992) 46.
[5] Pavel Curtis, "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual
Realities," _Intertek_ Vol. 3.3 (Winter, 1992) 26.
[6] Curtis, 26.
[7] Curtis, 26.
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Background: A History of Interactive and Networked Computing
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and the Evolution of MUDs
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---INTERACTIVE COMPUTING[1]---
Personal computers are a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only
within the last ten to twenty years that such machines have become
common in the work place, let alone the home. The pre-history of
computing was largely the domain of educational, governmental or
commercial organisations which owned large mainframe computer systems.
These huge old systems were jealousy protected; computer time was
heavily booked and access available only to the privileged few. These
computers of the past generation would hardly be recognisable to the
present generation of Mac and PC users. The old beasts of the '50s
and '60s took up literally rooms of space. Their computing power was
measured not in millions of instructions per second--MIPS--but in
hundreds of instructions. The multiple megabytes of random access
memory we now take for granted in even the most humble of desktop
systems were then only a fantastic dream. The greatest and most
costly super-computers of the sixties counted their memory in
kilobytes, hard and floppy disks were yet to be invented, monitors and
keyboards were only in the experimental stages, and most computers
received instructions and gave back results on long spools of punched
paper tape.
Still, archaic as these clumping monsters now appear to be, they were
the gleaming prize of their age. Mathematicians, statisticians,
physicists, military engineers and government agencies all fought for
the funding to acquire one of these miraculous new machines. They
also attracted the interest of a new breed of young inquiring minds.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the few
educational institutions to invest large sums in the new computing
technology, the members of the Tech Model Railroad Club switched their
interest from the construction of intricate train tracks to the
manipulation of complex computer circuits.[2] Of course these young
students, most of them undergraduates, were not able to get direct
access to the new machines. Instead they took to hanging around the
computer rooms at midnight and the small hours of the mornings,
begging computer time from the nightwatchmen on the few occasions when
these least attractive hours had not been booked by others.
Most of the computers of the time relied on punched paper both to
receive instructions and to communicate results. This forced computer
programmers and users to divide the giving and receiving of data into
discrete blocks. Instructions would be transcribed into the punched
code useable by the computer, the instructions would be acted on by
the computer and the results of its computations spat back on punched
tape. These results would then have to be decoded before any further
work could be done. MIT's academics--physicists and statisticians
and mathematicians--relied on and accepted this paradigm of computer
use. Not so the members of the Tech Model Railroad Club. Their
interest quickly centred on an experimental computer which the Digital
Equipment Corporation had loaned to the Institute. This computer was
much less powerful than its hulking IBM cousins, and so was virtually
ignored by the academics to whom it had been lent. It was adopted by
the TMRC students because it offered a new paradigm of computing.
DEC's Programmed Data Processor was among the first to incorporate a
screen and a keyboard.
The TMRC members had no complex scientific problems to solve. Instead
they spent their time simply exploring the capabilities of the PDP
machine. They programmed to demonstrate their skill in understanding
how the machine 'thought'. Staying up all night, and functioning,
so the story goes, on a diet of coke and burgers, these young
'hackers' set out to colonise the unexplored territory of the
computer. One of their most famous endeavours was the invention of
the first computer game. By modern standards it was uncomplicated. A
simple figure of a spaceship appeared on the screen, to be shot down
by the player. At the time, however, it was a marvellous feat of
computer graphics, a miracle of programming. Copies of 'Spacewar',
in punched paper form, were passed around to computer enthusiasts at
other institutions, and began a small revolution in computer use.[3]
The game of Spacewar depended on human/computer interactivity. It
relied on the human user being able to monitor the computer's actions
and modify and correct for them while the machine was actually
operating. The concept of human/computer interaction did not begin
with this invention of the computer game, but the game made a small
instance of this interactivity available to a rapidly expanding number
of computer users and demonstrated that such concepts could be
realised in a simple and 'user-friendly' fashion. It brought new
programming ideas--new algorithms--to the computing world. It also
changed the way that the academy thought about computers. The leap
between the idea of computers as awesome inhabitants of super-cooled
rooms, tended by white-coated engineers, to the idea of the computer
as toy and expressive tool, was made when that first spaceship was
shot down. Spacewar made tangible the idea of the computer as a
medium for human expression.
---NETWORKED COMPUTING[4]---
The computing expertise of the TMRC members soon came to the attention
of MIT's authorities. Wishing to harness this obvious talent, MIT
gave the students legitimate access to the computers, and legitimate
work to perform on them. One of the first jobs they were assigned was
to solve the problem of the costs involved in buying enough computers
to cater for the increasing numbers of people who wished to use them.
MIT was considering investing in a new form of operating system, known
as the Compatible Time-Sharing System, which would allow more than one
person to use a computer at once. Instead, in a cost-saving move,
they set the TMRC students to designing their own multi-user operating
system. The multi-user computer system relied on a different hardware
to the single user system. If more than one were to be accommodated,
there needed to be more than one set of input and output devices
connected to the computer. From each of these multiple terminals,
different users could share the same computer resources. The system
that they designed, and named the Incompatible Timesharing System, was
one of the first of this new breed of operating system. ITS and other
systems like it quickly supplanted the old single-user systems.
Today, the most popular multi-user operating systems are part of the
UNIX family, descendants of a system which Bell Laboratories began to
develop in 1969.
The multi-user paradigm quickly became popular, as its cost-
effectiveness became apparent, and was followed by the idea of the
computer network. Programmers in the United States Department of
Defence built the first network. In 1969 the DoD began work on a
'long-haul' network of computers at dispersed sites. This project
was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research arm of
the DoD. The original purpose of the ARPANET project was to design a
system for use by military control and intelligence. The network was
designed to enable authorities to communicate and weapons to be
controlled remotely in the event of a nuclear war. The problem with
which the engineers who designed the system were faced was that during
a war any central control point would most likely be the target of
enemy missiles. The solution was a network structure that had no
central point and which was designed from the beginning to withstand
physical attack. Each node of the network could operate as a central
point, and there would be no 'right' way for a message to be
directed from one node to another. Messages could follow any route,
and should one node be taken out of operation, messages would simply
skirt around it. This rather haphazard delivery system would be
extremely resilient--even with large portions of the network knocked
out, information could still be transmitted.[5]
In 1969 ARPA set about installing the first node of the network at the
Los Angeles campus of the University of California. Shortly afterward
nodes were installed at the Santa Barbara campus of the same
university, at the University of Utah, and at the Stanford Research
Institute. Once the system was up and running, these universities
were given leave to use it for research purposes. They jumped to do
so, planning to exploit the network's ability to give users of the
computers at each of these sites access to the resources held by all
three. At the same time, DARPA encouraged other institutions to set
up their own network nodes, each of which could be commandeered in
time of war. By 1972 thirty-seven universities and government
research organisations were on ARPANET, and as the network grew these
institutions began to demand autonomy from the military. In 1983
ARPANET was divided into two networks, known as ARPANET (for research
use) and MILNET (for military use). The ARPANET arm continued to
expand, with local area networks at various government, educational
and commercial sites being added to the system. Other nations also
adopted the technology, and with the advent of satellite
communications, it became possible for all these computer networks to
be linked together as one super network. This new international
entity became known as the Internet.
---INTERACTIVE NETWORKING[6]---
In its original design, ARPANET was intended to facilitate the use of
remote computers, and the transfer of computer programs and data
between remote computers. As something of an afterthought, a tool for
interpersonal communication was provided--electronic mail. By the
second year of operation, it became clear to ARPANET's designers
that, despite their expectations, most of the network's users were
not using it to share facilities but to share information. File
transfers took up a much greater portion of network traffic than did
remote computing, and although it accounted for only a small amount of
network traffic, writing and reading electronic mail took up most of
the time which users spent on the network. People were using the
network to collaborate on projects, to trade notes, and just to chat
and keep in touch. Less than a year after ARPANET became operational,
the mailing list was invented. This allowed people to send messages
to a single site, where a program would then forward that message on
to every person on a list, so facilitating communication between a
large group of people. One of the earliest and most popular mailing
lists was named SF-LOVERS, and was used by science-fiction fans.
Since then, many more communications facilities have become available
on the network which ARPANET became: the Internet. The most popular
of these is USENET, which came into being in 1979, the invention of
three students at the University of North Carolina who wanted to
design a better system for disseminating information between multiple
people than email and mailing lists provided. USENET software enabled
people to read messages stored in a network distributed database of
messages divided by subject, and to add their own articles to the
database. In its original incarnation, the USENET software was
designed to handle a few articles per day from each of a handful of
subject divisions, or, as they came to be known, 'newsgroups'. In
the last fourteen years, USENET has come to encompass over two
thousand newsgroups, with many of those groups seeing several hundreds
of articles each day. Today's USENET software relies on a
hierarchical arrangement of newsgroups. The 'top-level' hierarchies
have such names as 'comp', 'talk' and 'rec' (the latter being
for recreational topics). Beneath these blanket divisions are such
groups as comp.os.msdos, comp.os.unix, rec.fishing, sci.anthropology,
sci.electronics, rec.juggling and rec.food.vegetarian. Almost every
site on the Internet allows its users to access USENET, and the
articles that each user posts are very quickly sent on to other sites.
Where once it might have taken days for messages to be propagated, it
now takes only minutes.
Despite this speed of transmission, electronic mail, mailing lists and
USENET are nevertheless asynchronous methods of communication.
Messages are read and responded to in discrete blocks, in a
communicative paradigm similar to that on which the earliest computers
were based. Early on in the Internet's life, a simple synchronous
method of communication was developed. Variously known as 'phone'
or 'talk', this facility allowed a user to 'call' another user.
If that user decided to accept the call, the two users could type
directly to each other's screens, allowing a far faster and more
interactive form of communication than that allowed by email or
newsgroups. 'Talk' programs suggested a new way of figuring
computer-mediated communication. Where asynchronous methods of CMC
such as email or USENET tend to rely on the idea of a computer as a
tool, as a means for communication, synchronous methods rely on the
idea of the computer as providing a space for communication. The talk
program took the ideas begun by Spacewar further. Talk presented
computers, and computer networks, not only as a medium for activity,
but as the site of it. Synchronous forms of CMC began to bring the
cyberspace of the Internet into the realms of virtual reality.
Nominally, all datapaths can be called cyberspaces. Telephone lines,
hard disks, fibre optic cables and satellite links are all parts of
the global cyberspace that is the Internet. Where that cyberspace
becomes most tangible to the user, and where it becomes a form of
virtual reality, is where the users of those networks can
imaginatively enter into them. It was this imagined entrance into
virtual space that was to be developed in MUDs.
---MUDS: NETWORKED, INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL REALITIES[7]---
The computer aficionados at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory of the early 1970s were well known for being fantasy fans.
Rooms in the AI Lab were named after locations described in J.R.R.
Tolkien's _Lord_of_the_Rings_, and the printer in the lab was rigged
so that it could print in three different Elven fonts. It was one of
these fantasy fans who wrote the first virtual reality computer game.
Donald Woods, a veteran of MIT's Spacewar, discovered a quite
different kind of game being run on a computer at the Xerox
corporation's Palo Alto Research Centre. The program depicted an
explorer seeking treasure in a network of caverns. It was an entirely
text-based game. There were no spaceships to be shot, no graphics at
all, just descriptions of localities and prompts asking players where
they wished to go or what they wanted to do next. Woods was entranced
by the game. He contacted the programmer, Will Crowther, talked to
him about it, and decided to expand Crowther's program into a more
complex adventure game. What he wrote was ADVENT, more commonly
referred to as Adventure, in which a player assumed the role of a
traveller in a Tolkienesque setting, fighting off enemies, overcoming
obstacles through clever tricks, and eventually discovering treasure.
Adventure players were presented with text describing scenes such as
the following:
You are standing at the end of a road before a
small building. Around you is a forest. A small
stream flows out of the building and down a
gully. There is a sword beneath a tree next to
the stream.[8]
Simple commands, such as 'get sword', 'look tree' and 'go
north', allowed the player to navigate and interact with the
Adventure universe, with each input item eliciting a new description
of the player's environment or of the results of his or her actions.
Crowther and Woods were the inventors of the very first computerised
virtual reality game. Crowther's caves, and Woods' more complex
fantasy world, were figured by players as places which they could
enter through the computer.[9]
Simple though it may seem, Adventure quickly became extremely popular,
and a host of similar games began to appear. Copies of these games
spread through the international tendrils of the Internet, where they
can be found today, played by countless numbers of computer users.
The charm of the game lay in the illusion it gave players of being
inside the game universe. It engaged the imagination in a way that no
game had done before. Unlike the commercial computer games which were
then starting to be written, the game had no definite aim. Players
were not called upon to solve specific problems, or defeat specific
enemies. There were no Pacmen or spaceships, no laser weapons or
gobbling globs. Instead players were free simply to explore the game
universe. They could do whatever they liked. Users could in their
imagination enter into the game universe, and do in it exactly what
they would do were the virtual reality an actuality. Adventure
offered a form of escapism that no computer game previously had by
allowing the user to enter the game universe and plot the form the
game would take.
Adventure and its cousins did not run on computer networks. They were
single player games. However, at the same time as they were being
written, most US universities were, as I have described, joining the
ARPANET. By the late 1970s most research institutions in the United
States had joined the ARPANET. In 1977 the interests of networking,
interactivity, and virtual reality games met to produce the first
networked, multi-user game. Mazewar, written by Jim Guyton, involved
the extremely simple scenario of multiple participants wandering
around a maze, trying to shoot one another--a kind of multi-
participant Spacewar. Mazewar was soon followed by a more complex
multi-user game which owed its setting to that depicted in Adventure.
WIZARD featured a dungeon, and puzzles and monsters. Players roamed
the WIZARD universe killing dragons and collecting gold. Moreover,
they could do it in teams. WIZARD introduced the concept of player
interaction beyond the level of aggression. Players of WIZARD could
communicate with one another, and could share information and objects
they had accumulated in their exploration of the dungeon. Teams of
players could collaborate on adventures which were often lifted
wholesale from the pages of pulp fantasy novels, if not from
_The_Lord_of_the_Rings_.
In 1979 Alan Klietz, inspired by Adventure and WIZARD, began writing
E*M*P*I*R*E, which later came to be known as Scepter. Klietz was
associated with the Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium, a group
which from 1976 to 1983 made use the of the new multi-user 'time-
sharing' computer operating systems to provide computer access to
schoolchildren. One of the most popular programs on the system was
Adventure, and Klietz wrote Scepter as a multi-user alternative to
Adventure. Scepter allowed players, as WIZARD had, to communicate,
and it also adopted that feature of Mazewar that was to become one of
the major features of this genre of game. Scepter allowed players to
play against each other as well as with each other. Player to player
combat introduced a new level of complexity into the game, which
quickly became so popular that Klietz set about writing a commercial
version, known as Screenplay, under the ownership of his employers,
Gambit Incorporated.
Scepter was the first game to depart from the fantasy genre that had
dominated previous games. Alan Klietz's game universe featured
various themes including areas emulating the wild west, and science
fiction and detective stories, as well as the more familiar
Tolkienesque areas. The latter remained popular, and the science
fiction areas quickly collected an avid group of fans. To this day
the fantasy and science fiction genres dominate these games, just as
in the forms of Spacewar and Adventure they had inspired their birth.
Unfortunately, Klietz was eventually forced to abandon his work. The
company that originally owned the rights to Screenplay, Gambit, was
subsumed into a larger company, Interplay. Interplay later filed for
bankruptcy and its owner was sent to jail on eighteen counts including
tax evasion and running a false church out of his home.[10]
Screenplay left the market under a cloud.
The name 'MUD' first appeared in 1978 when Roy Trubshaw, then a
student at the University of Essex, England, wrote what he called a
Multi-User Dungeon. The name itself was a tribute to an earlier
single-user Adventure-style game named DUNGEN.[11] In 1979, Richard
Bartle joined Trubshaw in working on MUD. MUD contained many of the
features which others, such as Alan Klietz, had developed
independently. It was a networked multi-user game which allowed users
to communicate with one another, to cooperate on adventures together,
or to fight against each other. In an early version of the game,
players were also given the option of extending the game world by
creating new objects and places within it. However, in the end, the
option of user-extensibility was taken out, partly as a result of the
lack of computing resources available to run the game, and partly
because Bartle felt that the hodge-podge of items created by players
detracted from rather than enhanced the game.
The first MUD universe was a fantasy-style one that encouraged players
to compete with each other for points. Player went on quests to kill
monsters or find treasure. Killing monsters--or other players--was a
source of points, but more were to be gained by finding treasure and
bringing it back to a swamp located at a shifting point in the game
universe. On throwing treasure into the swamp, players would be
rewarded with points which, once they had collected enough, would
enable them to gain new and greater powers. Although this original
MUD game did not ever gain a high level of popularity, it nevertheless
has had great influence on those who were to develop later games. The
number of people who played Bartle and Trubshaw's MUD was small, but
many of them went on to design the systems that are popular today.
The original MUD game can still be played. Richard Bartle was asked
to design a version for the CompuServe computer facility, and that
version is still in existence. Called British Legends, players
compete to collect enough points, by solving puzzles, killing monsters
and finding treasure, to become a 'Wizard', a title recognising the
player's mastery over the British Legends universe, and giving him or
her special powers within that universe.
Alan Cox was one of those who spent a lot of time playing the original
MUD game, and in 1987 he decided to design his own. AberMUD, named
for the town of Aberystwyth in which Cox lived, has evolved through
numerous versions and is still played today. Jim Aspnes of Carnegie-
Mellon University was another fan of Bartle and Trubshaw's MUD. In
1989 he began work on TinyMUD, which was to introduce a whole new
flavour of game to the genre. TinyMUD was designed to run on
computers running the UNIX operating system, and the growing
popularity of UNIX made possible the popularity of Aspnes' creation.
TinyMUD was the first of what were to come to be called 'social'
MUDs. Aspnes deliberately set out to get away from the notion that
these games had to be played with the idea of gaining points, or
killing things--let alone that players should be given the option of
killing each other. Instead of being given access to commands such as
'kill', TinyMUD players were encouraged to centre their play around
communication and world creation. Although none of the features of
TinyMUD were new to the growing MUD genre, it was the first system to
combine them in a fashion that stressed cooperation and interaction
rather than competition and mastery.
>From 1990 onward the number of MUD programs in circulation increased
rapidly. There are, among others, COOLMUDs, ColdMUDs, DikuMUDs, DUMs,
LP-MUDs, MAGEs, MOOs, MUCKs, MUSEs, MUSHes, TeenyMUDs, TinyMUDs,
UberMUDs, UnterMUDs, UriMUDs and YAMUDs (the latter being an acronym
for 'yet another MUD'). Each program offers its own technical
advantages and disadvantages, such as the amount of computer hard disk
space or memory needed to run the program. The environments portrayed
on MUDs have become far more varied. The Tolkienesque fantasy worlds
are still the most common, closely followed by science fiction worlds,
but MUD environments based on actual or historical places--such as
Moscow, the ante-bellum South, the Wild West, the prehistoric era, or
a medieval village--have appeared. The meaning of the term 'MUD'
has changed to reflect this. The original acronym 'Multi-User
Dungeon' has been joined by 'Multi-User Dimension' and 'Multi-User
Domain', and the term has come to refer not to the original program
written by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw but to the entire program
genre.[12] Many of today's MUD systems are not games, but are being
used for academic purposes. The first of these academic systems was
MediaMOO, run by Amy Bruckman of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, which provides a virtual meeting place for students and
academics working in the area of media and communications. Several
more such systems have followed in MediaMOO's steps, including
PMCMOO, which serves literary and cultural theorists, and BioMOO,
which serves biologists.[13] These systems use the virtual
environments created by MUD programs to collapse the distances between
academics from around the world, and to provide materials such as
course outlines, papers and conference information in an easily
accessed form.
Nevertheless, the majority of MUD systems run on the Internet are
intended to be used for social or entertainment purposes, and it is
these systems with which I am concerned. These MUDs tend to fall into
one of two categories, commonly referred to by MUD players as
'adventure' and 'social' MUDs. The first category--the adventure-
style MUDs--refers to MUD programs that descended directly from Bartle
and Trubshaw's MUD; the second--the social MUDs--refers to systems
that were inspired by TinyMUD. Whether a particular MUD program
belongs in either category is dependant not purely on any technical
considerations of its programming or implementation, but on the style
of play which it encourages.
On adventure-style MUDs, such as those based on the LPMUD and DikuMUD
programs, there exists a strict hierarchy of privileges. The person
with the most control over the system is the one running the MUD
program. He, or she, has access to every computer file in the
program, and can modify any of them. This person is commonly known as
the God of the MUD, and he or she has complete control over the
elements of the virtual world. Gods may create or destroy virtual
areas and objects, and destroy or protect players' characters. The
players, on the other hand, have very little control over the system.
They cannot cannot build new objects or areas, and have no power over
those that already exist. They can only interact with the MUD
environment. They can kill monsters, collect treasure and solve
puzzles, and communicate with one another. By doing these things
players on adventure MUDs gain points, and once a player has a certain
number of points they gain certain privileges. Once a player has
collected enough points he or she may be elevated to the rank of
Wizard.[14] Wizards do not have the complete degree of control which
is available to the God of the MUD. They cannot alter the MUD
software itself, but they do have the ability to create and control
objects and places within the MUD universe.
Social MUDs, many of which are based on the MUSH or MUCK software, are
not so evidently hierarchical. Early versions of Bartle and
Trubshaw's MUD allowed players to add items and rooms to the game
database, an idea that was incorporated into the TinyMUD program.
This feature is common to all social MUDs. While social MUDs have
Gods as do adventure MUDs, who control the actual software, and
Wizards who have privileged powers, these powers in the game universe
are not unique in kind but only in degree. Players do not have to
fight to gain points and levels before they can build simple objects
and create new areas of the game universe. Novice players on a social
MUD are able to do these things. They do not have access to the
actual computer files of the game program, but they have access to a
library of commands that allow them to create and describe objects and
areas, and make them behave in certain ways in response to input from
other players. The rank of Wizard is not dependant upon gaining
points, and elevation to this rank is at the discretion of the Gods.
Players of these MUDs are, as were the original players of TinyMUD,
encouraged to interact with and extend the virtual environment rather
than compete within it.
In this thesis I have chosen to concentrate on four MUDs representing
four different environments and the two different styles of MUD,
although I shall refer briefly to other systems. These four MUDs are
known as LambdaMOO, FurryMUCK, Revenge of the End of the Line and
JennyMUSH.[15] The first is a social-style MUD, set in a rambling
mansion. The second, also a social MUD, involves players in a world
in which each individual adopts the persona of an anthropomorphised
animal. Revenge of the End of the Line (or EOTL as its players refer
to it) is an adventure-style MUD, and JennyMUSH is a social MUD used
as a virtual support centre by survivors of sexual assault. I have
chosen to concentrate on these MUDs because each lends itself to a
discussion of virtual reality from a different perspective.
LambdaMOO, which of the three most nearly attempts to recreate reality
inside virtuality--the core of the LambdaMOO mansion is a virtual
recreation of the God's actual home--provides an insight into changed
communicative and cultural practices. EOTL, with its competitive and
hierarchical structures, shows the evolution of power and social
control in cyberspatial environments, as does a painful episode on
JennyMUSH. FurryMUCK, with its emphasis on anthropomorphic characters
lends itself to an exploration of the fate of the human body and human
identity inside virtual realities.
---FOOTNOTES TO BACKGROUND---
[1] The story presented in this chapter is based, unless otherwise
noted, on information contained in Tracey L. Laquey, _The_User's_
_Directory_of_Computer_Networks_ (Massachusetts: Digital Press,
1990), Steven Levy, _Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution_
(New York: Dell, 1984), and Timothy Trainor and Diane Krasnewich,
_Computers!_ (New York: Mitchell, 1989), as well as on anecdotes
related to me by some of the 'hackers' in the Computer Science
Department and Electrical Engineering Faculty at Melbourne
University. This history is by no means perfect--many of my
sources, and the memories of the people who lived through these
times, contradict each other. In writing this section I have
tried to reconcile these differences and produce a narrative that
accounts as far as possible for the differences amongst my
sources.
[2] The Tech Model Railroad Club featured heavily in Levy,
particularly in Chapter One.
[3] The invention of Spacewar is detailed in Chapter Three of Levy.
[4] This history of computer networking and the Internet is based on:
Philip Leverton and Ross Millward, _Technical_note_82:_Using_
_the_UNIX_ _Mail_System_ (Melbourne: Melbourne University
Computing Services, 1989); a USENET article on the history of
UNIX written by Pierre Lewis (Newsgroup: comp.unix.questions,
Subject: A very brief look at Unix history, From: "Pierre (P.)
Lewis"
Strange History of the Internet," an article by Bruce Sterling
published in the _!mindgun_ 'zine produced by the Society for
Digital Redistribution (originally published in the February 1993
issue of _The_Magazine_of_Fantasy_and_Science_Fiction_); and
information in the works by Laquey and Levy detailed above.
[5] This paragraph is based on information contained in Sterling.
[6] Information on the early development of USENET has been taken
from articles by Gene Spafford and Brian Reid which are regularly
posted to the USENET group news.answers.
[7] My sources for this history include first-hand accounts related
to me in electronic mail by Richard Bartle, Alan Klietz, Alan
Cox, Jim Aspnes and Jim Finnis, information included in Levy
(especially Chapters Three and Seven), user documentation
included with the AberMUD, TinyMUD and LPMUD programs, and
postings made to the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.mud in response
to a query from Amy Bruckman.
[8] Levy, 141.
[9] See Levy, 138-144 for more details on the invention of Adventure.
[10] This anecdote has been taken from a USENET article with the
following headers: From: alberti@mudhoney.micro.umn.edu
(Albatross); Newsgroups: rec.games.mud; Subject: Re: history: VMS
Monster, Sceptre of Goth; Date: 23 Mar 92 22:01:55 GMT.
[11] The operating system under which DUNGEN ran only allowed
filenames to be a maximum of six letters long, thus the
particular spelling of the name.
[12] Some would insist that MUD has come to stand for Multi
Undergraduate Destroyer, in recognition of the number of students
who may have failed their classes due to too much time spent
MUDding.
[13] PMCMOO is an off-shoot of the electronic journal _Postmodern_
_Culture_.
[14] The titles given to those who run and administrate the MUD vary
from system to system. Since they are by far the most commonly
used of all titles, I have chosen to use the term 'God' to refer
to the person running the MUD program, and 'Wizard' to refer to
those players who have been given administrative powers by the
God.
[15] These MUDs may be connected to from any computer on the Internet
by using the 'telnet' command or program. The Internet address
for LambdaMOO is lambda.parc.xerox.com (or 192.216.54.2) and the
port number is 8888. The address for FurryMUCK is sncils.snc.edu
(138.74.0.10), port number 8888. Revenge of the End of the Line
can be found at mud.stanford.edu (36.21.0.99), port 2010.
JennyMUSH's administrator has asked me to withhold information on
how to connect to that MUD.
-----------------------------------------------
CHAPTER ONE: COMMUNICATION AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
-----------------------------------------------
For words to have a shared meaning they must be given a context.
Stripped of the historical, environmental and social contexts in which
they have evolved and in which they are used, words have little
meaning. It is context that creates meaning and allows us to act.
The information on which we decide which aspects of our systems of
social conduct are appropriate to our circumstances lie in cultural
contexts rather than in the shape and sound of words alone. In
interacting with other people, we rely on non-verbal information to
delineate a context for our own contributions. "Being cultured,"
says Greg Dening, "we are experts in our semiotics... we read sign
and symbol [and] codify a thousand words in a gesture".[1] We do
not need to be told that we are at a wedding, and should be quiet
during the ceremony, in order to enact the code of etiquette that our
culture reserves for such an occasion. Words alone do not express or
define the full extent of our cultural and interpersonal play. The
greater part of our interaction is expressed through signs and
symbols--in tone and nuance, in styles of dress and handwriting, in
postures and facial expressions, in appeals to rules and traditions.
The words themselves tell only half the story--it is their
presentation that completes the picture.
Human communication is never merely a matter of words, much less so is
human culture. This is something that we all take for granted--yet
the virtual environments that are the subject of this study are a
product of words, of pure text. Because of this, these virtual places
subvert many of our assumptions about the practice of interactive
communication. MUD players are unable to rely on conventions of
gesture and nuances of tone to make sense of one another.
Nevertheless, despite the absence of these familiar channels of
interpersonal meaning, players do not fail to make sense of each
other. On the contrary, MUD environments are extremely culturally
rich, and communication between MUD players is often highly
emotionally charged. Although they cannot see, hear or touch one
another, MUD players have developed ways to convey shades of
expression that would usually be transmitted through these senses.
Their means of expression are severely limited by the technology on
which MUDs are based, but instead of allowing that to restrict the
content of their communication they have devised methods of
incorporating socio-emotional context cues into pure text. They use
text, seemingly such a restrictive medium, to make up for what they
lack in physical presence. On MUDs, social presence is divorced from
physical presence, a phenomenon that refutes many of the assumptions
that have in the past been made about the ideal richness of face-to-
face interaction. On MUDs, text replaces gesture, and even becomes
gestural itself.
MUDs show none of the four distinctive features Kiesler, Siegel and
McGuire have described computer-mediated communication as having: an
absence of regulating feedback, dramaturgical weakness, few social
status cues and social anonymity.[2] Despite being textually based,
MUDs are sites for social interaction and cultural meaning. The
virtual worlds created with MUD software are dramaturgically and
socially rich, and MUD players have been able to devise means of
communicating social context cues through the textual medium. The
subject of this first chapter is the methods which MUD systems and MUD
players use to provide themselves with a social context and a social
presence.
---MAKING SENSE OF THE WORLD---
Each MUD system begins as a blank space. It is nothing more than a
set of commands and possibilities. A MUD program is, in essence, a
set of tools that can be used to create a socio-cultural environment.
It is this that sets MUDs apart from other textually based computer-
mediated communication tools. The latter merely provide an interface
that separates what one person types from that of another, and so
allows a form of written conversation. MUDs, by contrast, allow the
depiction of a physical environment which can be laden with cultural
and communicative meaning. They allow imagination and creativity to
furnish the void of cyberspace with socially significant indicators.
It is this that makes a MUD system a form of virtual reality. The
first step in the use of a MUD program is the creation of a MUD world
and the peopling of it. Those setting up the program must act as
their titles suggest, as Gods and Wizards. They must create the
universe--they must, to invoke a MUD command, '@create light.'
The basic MUD program, whether MUSH or LPMUD or any other variety,
consists of a number of tools and commands to be used to create a
database of textually described 'objects', as they are called. The
objects created are symbolically linked--in both the technical and the
cultural sense--to create the textual illusion of a world. Database
entries representing spaces are linked together such that one can be
accessed from the other by using a command such as 'out' or
'north'. Entries representing things such as chairs or swords or
spaceships are placed within these virtual spaces, and given
properties that allow them to be manipulated by players. Lastly,
entries representing the players themselves are set free to roam and
interact with these spaces and things, and often to create more of
them.
Together, these three types of objects--places, things and people--
make up the context that the MUD community operates within. As
Kiesler, Siegel, and McGuire have suggested, the chief problem faced
by electronic interlocutors is the "dramaturgical weakness of
electronic media".[3] To compensate for this lack in the medium,
players must become actors and must provide their own scenery.
Imagination must take the place of physical reality, and must be
manifested in forms accessible to players on the system. Each object
in the MUD universe--each person, each place, each thing--can be given
a description by its creator. This description can be as simple or as
complex as the creator wishes, and can be viewed by every other player
by use of the 'look' command. When a player connects to a MUD
through the computer network, he or she is immediately provided with a
textual manifestation of the MUD's virtual environment. On
LambdaMOO, the player will seem to enter the coat closet in the
sprawling house which is at the core of the LambdaMOO world:
The Coat Closet
The closet is a dark, cramped space. It
appears to be very crowded in here; you keep
bumping into what feels like coats, boots, and
other people (apparently sleeping). One useful
thing that you've discovered in your bumbling
about is a metal doorknob set at waist level into
what might be a door.
Don't forget to take a look at the
newspaper. Type 'news' to see it.
Type '@tutorial' for an introduction to
basic MOOing. Please read and understand 'help
manners' before leaving The Coat Closet.
This coat closet is a remarkable place. It may be small and cramped,
but it provides an initial point of reference in the LambdaMOO world
and it furnishes the newcomer with a host of information about the
cultural nature of the world he or she has entered. Most if not all
MUDs are provided with such an anteroom. It is often a cramped, dark
place, and rarely an open space containing a great many objects to
distract or disorient the newcomer. Closets, cracks under bandstands,
teleportation rooms and hotel hallways--to suggest just a few of the
anterooms on a few of the MUDs I have visited--might not seem
especially inviting places in the actual world, but on textually
represented virtual worlds they provide a space in which players may
become accustomed to the virtual environment. These spaces are
sparsely furnished; they do not overload the newcomer with
information. At the same time they provide the reassurance of
others' virtual presence, most often in the form of sleeping bodies,
and they allow the player to take a virtual breath before stepping out
into the main area of the virtual landscape. Most importantly, many
MUD anterooms contain pointers to helpful information and rules.
LambdaMOO novices are directed to a newspaper, which will tell them
about recent events on the MUD, a tutorial, which will tell them how
to interact with the virtual universe on a technical level, and some
advice on etiquette, which will tell them how they should interact
socially on LambdaMOO.
Once ready, LambdaMOO newcomers may decide to open the closet door and
venture into the greater part of the virtual world. They will then
find themselves in the living room:
The Living Room
It is very bright, open, and airy here, with
large plate-glass windows looking southward over
the pool to the gardens beyond. On the north
wall, there is a rough stonework fireplace. The
east and west walls are almost completely covered
with large, well-stocked bookcases. An exit in
the northwest corner leads to the kitchen and, in
a more northerly direction, to the entrance hall.
The door into the coat closet is at the north end
of the east wall, and at the south end is a
sliding glass door leading out onto a wooden
deck. There are two sets of couches, one
clustered around the fireplace and one with a
view out the windows.
You see Cockatoo, README for New MOOers, a
fireplace, a newspaper, Welcome Poster, LambdaMOO
Takes A New Direction, The Daily Whale, a map of
LambdaHouse, The Carpet, The Birthday Machine,
lag meter, and Helpful Person Finder here.
Guinevere, jane, MadHatter, Fred, Obvious,
Alex, jean-luc, tureshta, Bullet_the_Blue,
Daneel, KingSolomon, lena, Laurel, petrify,
Ginger, and Groo are here.[4]
The importance of anterooms on MUDs becomes clearer in the light of
the quantity of information which entrance into more dynamic areas
elicits. The LambdaMOO living room is a social and virtually physical
nexus. From this point players of the system may enter an ever
increasing number of virtual places. The main body of the living
room's description details the places that can be visited from that
room. Having come this far, most novice players are provided with a
strong sense of physical context, which provides a sense of the
conceptual limitations and possibilities of the virtual world.
Physical context is a dimension of social context; place and time are
as much loaded with cultural meaning as are dress and gesture.
LambdaMOO provides the place, and makes it non-threatening and
comfortable. With fireplaces and couches, books, sunlight, fresh air
and pool-side views, the LambdaMOO house is definitely a desirable
residence. It is a place to relax and chat, and that is exactly what
people do in it.
Along with virtually physical centrality, the living room provides
social centrality. It is the main meeting place for LambdaMOO
inhabitants. It is quite likely the first port of call for newcomers
seeking to find a social niche in the virtual setting. From
LambdaMOO's beginning, the living room was presented in such a way as
to offer a sense of social orientation to newcomers. Fixtures in the
room included a simple map of the main areas of the ever-growing
LambdaHouse, a welcome poster and a device enabling the newcomer to
get in touch with players designated as 'Helpful People' willing to
answer questions and provide aid to the confused. As LambdaMOO has
evolved, its denizens have added to this list of fixtures. The more
popular additions have included a device for registering one's
birthdate and finding out the birthdates of other players, as well as
the LambdaMOO newspapers, which are commonly filled with social notes,
gossip, announcements and opinions. All of these objects, and the
functions they perform, create LambdaMOO as a space held together by
interpersonal sociality. Birthdays are remembered and commemorated.
Help is easy to find, and clearly advertised. All newcomers are
offered a welcome, and the day-to-day social lives of LambdaMOO
denizens are reported and commented upon.
I have been unable to find a MUD that does not provide the player with
both an anteroom and a central social nexus point, each room
containing information about the physical and social context of the
MUD. The nature of that context differs widely between MUDs. Some,
such as LambdaMOO, give an impression of warmth and friendliness.
Others might be competitive and dangerous, or might offer and
adventure and challenge. The information transmitted differs, but not
the method of transmission. MUDs create their own context out of
words. The cues normally associated with sight and sound and touch
are provided through description. The information with which
newcomers are met allows them imaginatively to place themselves within
the virtual world, and encourages them to treat these textual cues as
if they were real. This information provides a common basis for
interaction between players.
---MAKING SENSE OF EACH OTHER---
The MUD system provides players with a stage, but it does not provide
them with a script. Players choose their own actions within the
context created by the MUD universe. They are not technically
dictated to by the MUD, but are instead given tools which enable them
to act and speak virtually. Interaction on social-style MUDs such as
LambdaMOO is carried out through the use of five commands known as
'say', 'pose', 'whisper', 'page' and 'page-pose'.[5] Each
of these commands allows communicative information to be channelled in
different ways. The 'say', 'pose' and 'whisper' commands are
used between players in the same virtual space. If a player in the
living room, who might be called Fred, types 'say Hi there!' then
all the players in the living room will see that:
Fred says, "Hi there!"
If Fred then types, 'pose grins amiably' then all those in the room
will see:
Fred grins amiably.
The pose command can also be used to mix actions and utterances
together.[6] If Fred were to type, 'pose hugs Ginger warmly and
says, "It's great to see you again!" ' those in the living room,
including a character named Ginger, would see:
Fred hugs Ginger warmly and says, "It's great to
see you again!"
If, however, Fred wished to communicate only with Ginger, he might
choose to use the whisper command. Typing 'whisper Hi there! to
Ginger' will cause Ginger, and only Ginger, to receive the following:
Fred whispers, "Hi there!" to you.
Even if Ginger were not in the same virtual room as Fred, he could
still communicate with her. The page and page-pose commands allow the
same function as do say and pose but allow messages or virtual actions
to be sent to players in other virtual rooms. The results of these
commands appear this way:
Fred pages, "Hi there!" to you.
and
In a page-pose to you, Fred grins amiably.
Described baldly, this suite of commands seems simplistic. They are,
however, the tools with which social presence is formed on MUDs and
through which social interaction is made possible. They may be
simple, but they are immensely flexible. Players can say, whisper or
page whatever they choose to, and may pose or page-pose any action
they wish to take. There is no technical limit to what can be
expressed, although as I shall describe later, conventions have arisen
on MUDs which delimit the acceptability of various kinds and subjects
of communication.
By contrast, players of adventure style MUDs, while having access to
commands such as whisper and page, are able to emote only in tightly
controlled circumstances. The actions taken by players on adventure
MUDs form part of a never-ending narrative, a story in which enemies
are killed, and treasure and power are won. Actions are taken not
only within a social context but within the context of the MUD's
narrative. To allow players to pose such lines as 'Ginger wields a
sword of Ultimate Destruction,' or, 'Fred gives you 1000 gold
coins,' would destroy the integrity of that narrative. It is only in
special places in the MUD world, commonly known as 'emote rooms',
that players of adventure systems are able to use emote commands;
elsewhere they are given access to a suite of commands that enable
specific actions. Thus, for instance, on Revenge of the End of the
Line, if Fred were to type 'french Ginger', Ginger would see:
Fred gives you a deep and passionate kiss...
It seems to take forever...
Adventure MUD systems commonly provide players with several hundreds
of these commands, typically divided into verb and adverb categories.
By combining words from each category players are able to express
actions and feelings, an exercise that demands skill and memory.
Though less versatile than the free poses allowed players of social
MUDs, verb and adverb commands are heavily used. Thomas Gerstner, who
is associated with an adventure-style MUD named 'Nemesis', recently
circulated the results of a tally showing how many times each command
was used. Over a period of 250 days, and with an average of twenty
players connected at all times, players on Nemesis invoked a
'feeling' command every thirty seconds. The most popular commands
were:
Verbs:
smile 89089 bow 50138 shake 46312
greet 46152 grin 46046 nod 42385
laugh 34063 wave 30875 giggle 20145
sigh 19222 hug 19220 wait 13550
kiss 12212 shrug 10849 kick 9504
poke 9307 chuckle 7401 french 6773
Adverbs:
happily 5057 demonically 3763 evilly 3662
sadly 2027 smilingly 1864 deeply 1458
passionately 1143 knowingly 1119 insanely 1096
erotically 950 inanely 926 warmly 905
loudly 891 friendly 834 lovingly 797[7]
As can be seen, the vast majority of the virtual actions taken are
those which might be expected to invoke and sustain social meaning
between players. The average Nemesis player smiles at his or her
fellows eighteen times a day, and hugs them four times a day. These
commands steer players toward the creation of social contexts and the
formation of social networks. The actions which players may take, and
the emotions they may express, are delimited by the commands available
to them; yet at the same time these commands suggest to players the
emotional and social possibilities open to them.
It is tempting to draw parallels between MUDs and novels or plays.
The results of the pose, say and feeling commands cause interaction
between players to resemble these literary forms superficially, and
the social dimension of MUDs can be viewed as a multi-authored
interactive text. However, despite this possibility, MUD sessions do
not truly resemble scripts or books. The language is simply not the
same. It is more dynamic and less carefully constructed. Interaction
on a MUD is, after all, interactive, synchronous and ephemeral.
Although sessions may be recorded using computer programs designed for
the purpose, MUD interaction is not designed for an audience
uninvolved in it. This interaction is not enacted to be read as an
artefact, but to be experienced subjectively. It is not a text but a
context. Virtual interaction loses emotional and social meaning when
transposed to a computer file and re-read. The pauses, breaks,
disjunctions, speed and timing of virtual conversations are lost in
such transposition, and such factors are a crucial signifier of
meaning and context on MUDs.
Language on MUDs is not merely a hybrid between written and spoken
language, though it contains elements of both. The language used by
MUD players contains of its own conventions and textual gestures. It
rarely allows any tense but the present, with all actions and feelings
crammed into that one highly charged tense. The present tense allows
presence and dynamism. Each moment on a MUD is a matter of existent
experience, not recollection. It is immediate, and in it have evolved
grammatical forms that stress this immediacy. The most common of
these forms is known as 'verbverbing'. This practice is widespread,
and is used on all MUDs in which it is possible to do so.[8] It
simply involves the double repetition of actions:
Fred hughugs Ginger.
Ginger nodnods to Laurence.
Laurence gringrins at Vivien.
In this instance, the linguistic practices found on MUD metaphorically
mimic social practices. The tense repetitive action is analogous to
the twitching of muscle tissue. In actuality, one does not merely
grin or hug or nod in one single fluid motion. Each action is a
compound of many contractions and relaxations of muscles, and
movements of limbs. 'Nodnod' is a textual form that comes far
closer to the actual act of nodding than does the simple word 'nod'.
It is an immediate form of the participle 'nodding'. It is a
continuing verb, a representation of an action which overlaps more
than one point in time.
MUD language does not employ the same degrees of respect for textual
conventions as do other forms of written language. MUD players have
at their command a keyboard that allows them to employ a finite set of
characters--the alphabet, numbers, punctuation signs, and symbols such
as % and &. Written language ascribes various rules to the use of
these characters, and assigns each character a certain place and
meaning. Ampersands, percentage signs and exclamation marks all have
their assigned tasks in written texts. Capitalised and lower case
letters are called into action in various well-known circumstances.
Few written texts break with these conventions. Most writers begin
sentences with capital letters, end questions with question marks and
use percentage and hash signs only when referring to numbers. MUD
players, in common with users of other computer-mediated communication
systems, do not hold with these conventions. For them, the standard
symbols and signs available on a computer keyboard are tools to be
called into uses far removed from those known to traditional
grammarians. Commonly known as 'smileys' or 'emoticons', MUD
players employ alphanumeric characters and punctuation symbols to
create strings of highly emotively charged keyboard art:[9]
:-) or :) a smiling face
;-) or ;) a winking, smiling face
:-( or :( unhappy face, or 'unsmiley'
:-(*) someone about to throw up
8-) someone wearing glasses
:-P someone sticking out their tongue
>:-O someone screaming in fright, their
hair standing on end
:-& someone whose lips are sealed
*!#*!^*&:-) a schizophrenic!
'Smileys', or 'emoticons' are pictographs made up of keyboard
symbols. They are at once extremely simple and highly complex. They
provide a form of shorthand for the depiction of physical condition.
In a few keystrokes, MUD players can provide their fellows with a far
more graphic and dynamic--though perhaps not as finely shaded--
depiction of their feelings and actions than a textual description
could have furnished. Emoticons are legion on MUDs. Although the
most commonly used is the plain smiling face--used to denote pleasure
or amusement, or to soften a sarcastic comment--MUD players
continually develop their own emoticons, adapting the symbols
available on the standard keyboard to create minute and essentially
ephemeral pieces of textual art to represent their own virtual actions
and responses. This method of presenting textual characters as
representations of physical action can be confusing to the
uninitiated. Interpreting them demands not only familiarity but skill
and imagination. Many emoticons are easy to interpret with a little
practice. Others are more obscure, but at the same time all the more
evocative and affective once their obscurity has been explained. The
'schizophrenic' smiley, while seeming a jumbled mess to the
uninitiated, offers both humour and meaning to those in the know.
On MUDs non-verbal cues are not apparent. Words are all that are
available to players, and they must compress the richness of meaning
that we rely on to supplement and make a context for words into words
themselves. Language on MUDs serves not only as a vehicle for
communication but as the context for that communication. There are no
external referents in the game world--nothing to be seen or heard or
touched. All there is are words, which serve both to define and
represent the simulated environment. Language use on MUDs is used and
developed so that words can become their own referents and form their
own context without immediate external support. MUD culture is one
which relies on the languages used by the wider community, but is not
restricted to those languages--players on MUD systems have developed
their own ways of using words to express what we normally do not
demand that language express.
"Culture," suggest Van Maanen and Barley, "can be understood as
a set of solutions devised by a group of people to meet specific
problems posed by situations they face in common."[10] In this
sense culture consists of a set of behaviours and rules which give a
shared significance to common experiences and problems. Players of
MUD systems are commonly faced by the problems inherent in the
medium's reduction to pure text, and its annihilation of conventional
models of social interaction based on physical proximity. The
measures which players of MUD systems have devised to meet their
common problems are the markers of their common culture. They have
devised systems of symbolism and textual significance which enable
them to achieve understanding despite the absence of conventional
social context cues. With these tools MUD players are able to read
between the lines of text which make up their virtual world, a skill
that is all the more challenging and all the more crucial in such an
environment. This shared ability allows me to think of the players of
a MUD as sharing a common culture, and this common culture allows MUD
players to engage in activities that serve to bind them together as a
community.
Just as building and describing commands allow players to create a
physical context to act within, commands for communication allow
players to create a social context. The pose and feeling commands in
particular offer players a medium through which to substitute for the
non-verbal cues that we take for granted in everyday life. By using
them players may shrug, laugh, smile demonically, frown in anger, and
offer hugs and kisses. By using each of these commands MUD players
are able to string a web of communication which ties each player to a
social and virtually physical context, a shared web of verbal and
textual significances that are substitutes for, and yet distinct from,
the shared networks of meaning of the wider community. This unique
method of communicating is the set of solutions devised by MUD players
to meet the specific problems that they face, and which bind them into
a common culture.
---DISINHIBITION AND SOCIAL EXPERIENCE---
If all computer-mediated communication systems can be said to have one
single unifying effect upon human behaviour it is that usage tends to
cause the user to become less inhibited. Although they often disagree
on the effects of such lack of inhibition, researchers of human
behaviour on these systems have often noted that players tend to
behave more freely than they would in face-to-face encounters.
Sproull and Kiesler describe computer-mediated behaviour as
"relatively uninhibited and nonconforming."[11] Kiesler, Siegel
and McGuire have observed that "people in computer-mediated groups
were more uninhibited than they were in face-to-face groups."[12]
The forms that this disinhibition takes differ from one researcher's
experience to that of the next. Some have seen an increase in
examples of aggressive and disrespectful behaviour; others have noted
increases in friendliness and intimacy. Behaviour on MUDs conforms to
these observations. Players do seem to be less inhibited by
conventions seen in everyday life. They can be seen to be both more
intimate and more hostile with each other than would be socially
acceptable in everyday life, particularly when considering that
hostility or intimacy may be shown among players who are strangers to
one another.
However, being disinhibited is not the same as being uninhibited. MUD
players experience a lowering of social inhibitions; they do not
experience the annihilation of them. The social environments found on
MUDs are not chaotic, or even anarchic. There is indeed no moment on
a MUD in which players are not enmeshed within a web of social rules
and expectations. Descriptions, communicative commands and
specialised language and textual forms enable the social
understandings which link people together and allow the evolution and
transmission of social norms. Such norms have arisen on MUDs, and as
I will show in Chapter Two, so have social structures and methods of
social control. However, these webs of meaning and control are not as
immediately apparent on MUDs as they might be in actual life.
Substitutes for the contexts and atmospheres that we rely on to
regulate and define our behaviour may have been developed on MUDs, but
it takes time for players to learn to recognise and to adopt these
substitutes. Consequently, in the initial stages of play, the virtual
environment may seem to be a place where etiquette has been replaced
by chaos, and some players do seem to assume that within the confines
of the MUD anything goes. This initial tendency toward uninhibited
behaviour has influenced the conventions that have developed on MUDs.
It has resulted in behaviours which although not chaotic, do differ
from the conventions we live with in actual life, and they may be
described as disinhibited. Out of this have arisen a set of social
behaviours in which it may be acceptable to talk to strangers, but not
one in which the patterns of that talk are not subject to linguistic
and cultural influences.
The nature of the MUD program itself encourages disinhibition. The
behavioural influence of the virtual environment is not simply
permissive; it encourages. Crucial to the fostering of disinhibition
is the fact that MUD players are essentially anonymous. They need not
be known to others by their real, legal names. They may instead
choose to be known by any variety of name or nickname. Many choose to
use conventional first names; many others adopt far more evocative and
inventive pseudonyms. Let's return to the description of the
LambdaMOO living room which was quoted earlier. At the end of the
description, a list of players situated in that room was given:
Guinevere, jane, MadHatter, Fred, Obvious,
Alex, jean-luc, tureshta, Bullet_the_Blue,
Daneel, KingSolomon, lena, Laurel, petrify,
Ginger, and Groo are here.
The information which one player can gain about others on a MUD
consists of the names by which they choose to be known and the ways in
which they choose to describe themselves. All that can be known about
a player is what he or she chooses to disclose, and every item of
information is subject to change.[13]
The immediate effect of this pseudonymity is to provide players with a
feeling of safety. Protected by computer terminals and separated by
distances of often thousands of kilometres, players are aware that the
likelihood of any of their fellows being able to affect their 'real
lives' is minimal. There is little chance of a virtual action being
met with an actual response. No one can be embarrassed or exposed or
laughed at or hurt in their day-to-day lives. There are no sticks or
stones to contend with, and although words may hurt, players can
always resort to the off-switch on their computer. This feeling of
safety holds true for players of many Internet services. The mere
fact of distance offers protection; pseudonymity strengthens this to
make MUDs seem one of the safest possible social environments. This
sense of safety enables MUD players to express greater intimacy toward
each other than might be acceptable in everyday life.
Curtis has described increased intimacy on MUDs as a variety of
'shipboard syndrome,' the result of apparent proximity and the
feeling that interlocutors may never meet in everyday life.[14] Since
they have little opportunity to interfere with each other's everyday
lives the demands of social self-preservation need not inhibit them.
MUDs are a world unto themselves, and virtual ships that pass in the
virtual night feel little need to anchor themselves in emotional
responsibility--at least initially. Moreover, the MUD community
depends on a richness of communication and the creation of social
context. The system itself encourages MUD players to become intimate-
-or at least to play at intimacy. MUD systems, like any other, abhor
a vacuum, and a vacuum on a MUD is seen in a lack of textual
exchanges. The MUD universe functions only while players are willing
to elicit text from the program and from each other, and are willing
to volunteer their own contributions. Communication is necessary to
the existence of the MUD and successful MUDs are likely to see a great
deal of communication between players, which can then form a basis for
familiarity and intimacy. Players on MUDs are likely to be disposed
to feel that intimacy with fellow players is a harmless activity, and
so be willing to take advantage of those aspects of MUDs that
encourage intimacy.
The tendency toward increased intimacy which can be seen on MUDs
facilitates the formation of strong personal attachments. Hiltz and
Turoff have noted that some participants in computer-mediated
communication systems "come to feel that their very best and closest
friends are members of their electronic group, whom they seldom or
never see."[15] That this can become so depends on the degree to
which players are willing to suspend the usual rules of social self-
preservation, and open up to each other. By assuming that the dangers
associated with intimacy--the possibility of hurt and embarrassment--
can be avoided on MUDs, players can allow themselves to become very
close to one another. The safety of MUD friendships increases their
worth, and players can, ironically, become extremely dependant upon
such relationships. The lack of factors inhibiting intimacy, and the
presence of factors encouraging it, can induce deep feelings of
attachment in players toward their virtual friends:
I don't care how much people say they are, muds
are not just games, they are *real*!!!
My mud friends are my best friends, their the
people who like me most in the entire world.
Maybe the only people who do...
They are my family, they are not just some dumb
game.....[16]
Some of these virtual friendships go beyond the platonic. MUD
romances are a well established institution, held together by a number
of tools and rituals. MUD lovers use the commands with which the MUD
system provides them to transform the virtual stage into a set
designed to express and uphold their feelings for one another. On
social MUDs, the most common action taken by such partners is to set
up virtual house together. They quite literally create a home, using
the MUD program to arrange textual information in a way that simulates
a physical structure which they can then share and invite others to
share. Tokens are often exchanged, virtual representations of flowers
and rings being attached to a player's virtual manifestation through
the manipulation of the textual description of the character. More
technically gifted players may create objects, which other players can
interact with, that textually mimic the behaviour of pets and
children. These relationships may even be virtually consummated
through 'tinysex', a form of co-written interactive erotica.[17]
Such relationships can be taken quite seriously by those who engage in
them. The prevalence of the virtual wedding attests both to the
extent to which players attempt to recreate the trappings of actual
romances in their virtual interactions, and to the ways in which the
entire community of players on a MUD serve to act as witness for such
attachments. MUD weddings are simple in conception. The virtual
bride and groom are usually married by another player who virtually
reads, and actually types, the wedding ceremony. Textual descriptions
of rings, or other tokens, are exchanged along with the vows. The
wedding is usually attended by a number of fellow players, whose
participation in the event strengthens its imaginative reality in the
shared minds of the MUD community. The forthcoming nuptials are often
publicised in the communications media, such as newspapers, which are
internal to the MUD. Some MUD systems, such as the Revenge of the End
of the Line, have added technical support for their players'
emotional attachments:
For those loving couples who wish to discover the
joys of matrimony, the command to get married is
"marry
command. We don't believe in shotgun weddings or
polygamy here (tho same-gender marriages are fine
with us).
To get a list of all the lucky couples who got
married on EotL, simply type "mlist"; or, if you
prefer to view only a certain range within the
list, type "mlist
If you wish to find out the marital status of a
particular player, use "mquery
For married persons who have lost their rings (in
combat or any other way), they can get a new ring
with the "replace" command.
These relationships should not be thought of as emotionally
impoverished. It may be only virtual actions that are being played
out, but real emotions can be involved. In some cases the MUD romance
may develop into a real life relationship, and actual marriages have
been formed out of those on MUDs:
I met Mark, who I'm now married to, on a MUD.
When I first met him I was living on the West
coast [of the United States] and he was on the
East Coast. I was really new to MUDs, really
clueless, and he gave me a lot of help. He was
teaching me how to build stuff, and he let me
start building off of this castle he'd built. We
spent a lot of time chatting and we got closer
and closer. It was really good--I could tell him
anything and he was really supportive. We ended
up building this castle together and everyone on
the MUD treated us like a couple. I could tell
that he was interested in me, and at first I was
reluctant to get involved but he was so nice and
he said that he really loved me and in the end we
had this MUD marriage. It was so beautiful--i ]
burst into tears in real life half way through
it! After a few months I had the chance to visit
the East coast, and we met while I was there. He
was different from what I'd expected, mostly in
the way he looked, but we really got along well,
and I decided that I really did love him. He
ended up getting a transfer to near where I lived
and we got married last year.[18]
Whether or not an individual romance is carried over into everyday
life, it is important to appreciate that many MUD lovers do not feel
that their relationships are shallow or inconsequential. They can be
very important to those involved in them, and much effort can be
expended in creating an environment that reflects the feelings of the
players. The castle built by the two players described above acted as
a virtually physical affirmation of their emotions. Far from being
unsatisfactory for "'more interpersonally involving communication
tasks, such as getting to know someone", as Hiemstra describes some
researchers of computer-mediated communication as having characterised
the medium, MUD systems are the stage for strong emotional bonds, both
romantic and platonic.[19]
Romances and deep friendships display MUD relationships at their most
idyllic, but the lowering of inhibition seen on MUDs has another side.
The disinhibiting effects of relative anonymity and physical safety in
the virtual environment can encourage the enactment of aggressive and
abusive behaviours, and, as I will describe in the following chapter,
it is at this point that overt forms of social control which have
developed on MUDs come into play. The seeming safety of MUDs can lead
some players to use them as a forum for the expression of hostility.
MUD systems can "reduce self-consciousness and promote intimacy"
but they can also lead players to feel free to express anger and
hatred.[20] This can take the form of 'flaming', a phenomenon of
computer-mediated communication which has been characterised as the
gratuitous and uninhibited expression of "remarks containing
swearing, insults, name calling, and hostile comments."[21] The
anonymity of the player behind the pseudonymous character makes the
possibility of everyday punishments appear to be limited. The safety
of the medium causes the sanction of physical violence to appear
irrelevant to virtual actions, although, as I shall discuss further
on, social sanctions are present and often in a textual form that apes
physical violence. Nevertheless, the safety of anonymous expression
of hostilities and obscenities that would otherwise incur social
sanctions encourages some people to use MUDs as a forum for airing
their resentment of individuals or groups in a blatantly uninhibited
manner.
In some cases harassment of individual players occurs. A harassed
individual may face repeated messages from the harasser, and be the
object of derogatory descriptions written into objects created purely
for that purpose--the virtually physical context can be made to
reflect an individual's feelings of hostility as easily as those of
intimacy and affection. These electronic monuments to hate can be as
upsetting and hurtful to players as the more positive relationships
can be sources of support and happiness. Although insults relayed
over MUDs may be brushed off just as they may be in actual life, MUDs
also provide unique opportunities for personal attacks.
The most striking example of virtual violence that I have come across
took place on JennyMUSH. JennyMUSH is a virtual help centre for
people who have experienced sexual assault or abuse. Users of this
MUSH share a strong bond in their common trauma, and for many of them
the MUSH provides their only source of community support. At its
happiest, JennyMUSH offers a tremendous example of how MUD programs
can be used as valuable social tools. The system was designed with
this aim in mind. The chief administrator, or God, of the MUSH is a
psychology student whose field of interest is the treatment of
survivors of assault and abuse, and the university that she attends
fully supports the JennyMUSH project. This official support ensures
some degree of security for users of the system, who can be sure that
the MUSH will remain in stable existence.
Nevertheless, official support cannot ensure safety from the less
positive aspects of the virtual environment. A single user of
JennyMUSH was able to subvert the delicate social balance of the
system by using both technical and social means to enact anonymously
what amounted to virtual rape. Two weeks after being assigned a
character, a user of the system used the MUD's commands to transform
him or herself into a virtual manifestation of every other user's
fears. This user changed 'her' initial virtual gender to male,
'his' virtual name to 'Daddy', and then used the special 'shout'
command to send messages to every other user connected to the MUD.[22]
He described virtual assaults in graphic and violent terms. At the
time at which this began, none of the MUD's administrators, or
Wizards, were connected to the system, a fact that may well have been
taken into account by the user. For almost half an hour, the user
continued to send obscene messages to others. During that time, some
of his victims logged out of the system, taking the simplest course to
nullify the attack. Those who remained transported their virtual
personas to the same locale as that of their attacker. Many pleaded
with him to stop, many threatened him, but they were powerless to
prevent his attacks.
At the end of that half hour, one of the Wizards connected to the
system. He found twelve users connected to the system, all
congregated in one place. On transporting himself to that place, he
found eleven of those users being obscenely taunted by the twelfth.
Quickly realising what was going on, the Wizard took a kind of
vengeance upon the erring player that is only possible in virtual
reality. He took control of the player's virtual manifestation, took
away from him the ability to communicate, changed his name to
'Vermin' and changed his description to the following:
This is the lowest scum, the most pathetic dismal
object which a human being can become.
What had preceded had been painful and ugly--what ensued has been
described to me as "virtual carnage". The eleven users who had
been victimised by this now impotent one turned upon him and took
dreadful virtual revenge. They described all the most violent
punishments they would like to enact on this and all other attackers,
emoting--in both senses of the word--all the hatred and rage which
JennyMUSH had been established to help people deal with.
Since this incident, if such a mild word can be used to describe it,
many things have changed on JennyMUSH. The system has become far more
security conscious. The 'shout' command, which enabled 'Daddy' to
send messages to all players connected to the system, is no longer
available to users. The information displayed to all users on
connecting to the system now includes directions on how to avoid
unwanted messages by preventing the MUSH system from relaying messages
from a particular user, a facility known as 'gagging'. New users
must now be vouched for by at least two established users before they
will be given a character, and all users must provide the
administrator of the MUSH with a valid electronic mail address as well
as their actual legal name.
What happened on JennyMUSH could happen on any MUD system, and
probably has happened on many.[23] The particular purpose for which
JennyMUSH was constructed may have meant that the incident was all the
more traumatic for its users, but the same degree of hurt resulting
from virtual actions could be brought about on any system.
JennyMUSH's experience starkly demonstrates the degree to which users
can feel as though they are free to act on feelings and to act in ways
which mainstream society hopes to suppress. The cruelty and
callousness shown by this abusive user were expressed in a unique form
in this virtual environment--he was able to project onto both the
virtual environment and the virtual manifestations of other players a
kind of violence that may have been all the more distressing for its
lack of physicality, and attendant impossibility of fighting back. He
was able to shape reality into the forms he wished, and transform it
into a reflection of his own cruel intentions.[24]
The kinds of action taken by the other users, and by the Wizards and
God of JennyMUSH, use this same ability to reshape reality, this time
into forms that create and reinforce social rules and structures. The
final lesson to be learnt from this episode, one which will be pursued
in the next chapter, was described by JennyMUSH's administrator as
this:
We spent so much time trying to make JennyMUSH a
place where people could feel free to speak out--
we provided anonymity and very few restrictions.
Sadly, we didn't foresee the negative aspects
such encouragement could have. In the end we
discovered that we could not base our little
virtual society on "freedom to"--we had to balance
it with "freedom from" and that meant the
formation and enforcement of rules and a strict
hierarchy of privileges.[25]
---FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER ONE---
[1] Greg Dening, _The_Bounty:_An_Ethnographic_History_ (Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press, 1988) 102.
[2] Sara Kiesler, Jane Siegel, and Timothy W. Mcguire, "Social
psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication,"
_American_ _Psychologist_ Vol. 39 No. 10 (October 1984): 1125.
[3] Kiesler et al, 1125.
[4] This list of player names was generated by asking a group of
people who happened to be logged on to LambdaMOO on 5th November
1993 to volunteer some names which they had used on a MUD.
[5] Some systems offer further commands on top of those I have
listed, and the results of those which I have described may
differ from system to system. I have chosen to describe the five
most common commands in their most common formats.
[6] The pose command, also known as the emote or act command, seem to
have been invented independently by the players and developers of
several different MUD programs. SHADE, an early variation on
Bartle and Trubshaw's MUD, was probably the first game to
include
this command. Jim Finnis wrote a pose command for AberMUD in
1987, and Jim Aspnes implemented for TinyMUD a variety of pose
that his players had thought up in 1989. That several groups of
MUD players and developers each invented