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Mudding - Social Phenomena in Text Based Virtual Realities
Author(s): Pavel Curtis
Tags: Nov, 1992
Abstract: A MUD (Multi-User Dungeon or, sometimes, Multi-User Dimension) is a network-accessible, multi-participant, user-extensible virtual reality whose user interface is entirely textual. Participants (usually called players) have the appearance of being situated in an artificially-constructed place that also contains those other players who are connected at the same time. Players can communicate easily with each other in real time. This virtual gathering place has many of the social attributes of other places, and many of the usual social mechanisms operate there. Certain attributes of this virtual place, however, tend to have significant effects on social phenomena, leading to new mechanisms and modes of behavior not usually seen `IRL' (in real life). In this paper, I relate my experiences and observations from having created and maintained a MUD for over a year.
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TEXTUALITY IN CYBERSPACE - MUDS AND WRITTEN EXPERIENCE
Author(s): Jeffrey R Young
Tags: May, 1994
Abstract: Philosophers and postmodernist critics discuss the way humans communicate, engineers and computer systems designers create ever- integrable networking capabilities and work to improve human- computer interfaces, but at the crossroads, people are playing games. While the philosophers and engineers sleep, the MUDers are at their computers, hour after hour, playing in the cyberspace. In Multiple-User Dungeons/Dimensions (MUDs), text-based virtual realities accessible via Internet, thousands of people share fantasy space, or "live" electronically. They walk and talk, build and destroy, hug and have sex while sitting at isolated computer terminals scattered throughout the world.
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