Ethnography of a Virtual Society
Ethnography of a Virtual Society
OR
How a gangling, wiry half-elf found a way to fit in.
By John Masterson, University of Montana
Fall 1994
`
Besides this world we know of, with its taxes and wars and
droughts and famines, there are some four hundred other worlds,
all with their inherent problems, but none so grave that they
cannot simply be reprogrammed. All worlds in which humans reside
give rise to culture, to society, to those human artifacts which
are an inescapable part of humanity. This fact is no less true
for any one of the virtual worlds called MUDs, or Multi-User
Dimensions.
What, exactly, is a MUD? One could call a MUD a computer
game, which leaves an entire culture bereft of humanity and
richness. One could call a MUD a text-based virtual reality,
which isn't really descriptive enough. One could call a MUD:
A multi-user environment that supports a spatial metaphor
upon which an entire virtual world can be built. In which,
at least simplistic expressions of communication are
possible and constrained to some extent by location as
dictated by the spatial metaphor. This communication, no
matter how minimal, creates a sense of community (or
communities). (Meinfelder 1995)
This definition is certainly descriptive and accurate, but
still somehow lacking. To fully understand the MUD, I would
assert, one must be immersed in it. Experiential knowledge is
really the only way to go with this phenomenon. However, many
people's reluctance (and even abhorrence) of computers in general
and computer-mediated communication in particular, I'll endeavor
to enlighten you on what it is to be in the MUD, without you
having to get MUDdy.
I first heard about MUDs in September 1993, when a friend
told me elaborate stories about his experiences several years
earlier, when he was in college. I was intrigued, and decided to
seek these MUD-things out. Without much difficulty, I found a
MUD-list on the Internet. When I told my friend that I had
discovered a MUD-list, he shuddered with fear or temptation or
something! It seems that the MUDding he did in college occupied
as many as seventy hours a week, and that he very nearly had to
drop out of school as a result. I soon understood the
fascination, as the next day I logged on to a MUD called Ancient
Anguish for the first time. But the question remains, what is a
MUD?
As Meinfelder's (1995) definition points out, a MUD is a
multi-user affair. What this means is that individuals all over
the globe can connect to a particular MUD via their modems and
the Internet. Once connected, they may communicate in real time,
as fast as they can type, unhindered by time zones, long distance
phone rates (depending on the Internet access they have), and
space itself. MUDs have become a virtual gathering place for
people all over the world.
Meinfelder also points out that a MUD supports a spatial
metaphor which in some way constrains the communication that the
various users may indulge in. This spatial metaphor defines
"rooms" within the MUD which are connected either directly or in
chains that users will often map in order to quickly get from one
"place" to another. A extensively developed MUD can have more
than ten thousand rooms! The way that communication is
constrained by this phenomenon is only understandable when you
have some idea of how communication takes place on MUDs.
While the specific syntax varies depending on the
programming language upon which an individual MUD is built, the
modes of verbal communication can generally be divided into
whisper, say, tell, and shout. Whisper and say are constrained
by the spatial metaphor, so to speak. That is, you may only
whisper or say something to a character (that is, a persona
created by another user) who is in the same room as are you. If
you "say", everyone in the room can "hear" (i.e., they read the
message) that you have typed. If you "whisper", the message only
goes to one other person, but anyone else in the room sees you
whispering. Shout and tell, on the other hand, are not so
constrained. Everyone on the MUD hears what you shout (unless
they have set themselves to ignore shouts by "wearing earmuffs").
"Tell" sends a message to a single other user, regardless of
their location on the MUD.
What you may be asking at this point is why? Why have a
multitude of bright young programmers and computer-illiterates
alike, most of them college students, spent thousands (millions?)
of hours programming and using these multitudinous virtual
worlds? (Indeed, I have heard it speculated that fully one half
of all Internet access time is spent by people MUDding!) Clearly,
their individual motivations are inaccessible, but suffice it to
say that MUDs are fun; many if not most of them (MUDs) are
explicit in their status as games. Each MUD has a theme or
milieu which guides its programmers' creative urges. There are
MUDs based in 18th century London, King Arthur's Court, a
cyberpunk future, and on various popular books, games, TV shows,
and movies. These fantasy lands are the backdrop against which
thousands of players kill dragons, fly spaceships, seduce other
players, or discuss their trigonometry homework.
Now you may be asking, in what sense are these mere games a
suitable subject for qualitative inquiry? First of all, it is my
belief (and most MUDders would concur) that they are not "mere"
games. While various MUDs have a greater or lesser degree of
fantastical happenings, the social interaction with other
"players" is quite real. All you have to do is hear about the
romances and even marriages that begin on a MUD to be convinced
that this is a speech community of real human beings like any
other.
But it is not like any other. Indeed, a MUD is "not only a
new sociolinguistic environment, it is a new kind of
sociolinguistic environment," (Carlstrom, 1992; my emphasis). It
is new in the sense that it is entirely text-based. As such, it
is an area begging to be studied by the communication discipline.
Surprisingly, it has been nearly completely neglected. There may
be only two communication projects that deal which such
phenomena, Carlstrom's (1992) sociolinguistic study, and
Cherney's (1994) paper on language and gender on one particular
MUD. Owen (1994) worked with identity constructions in online
conversations, but he was examining a different phenomenon,
America Online (AOL). AOL is different because while there are
rooms, and people speak with one another within those rooms,
certain features of MUDs make them significantly richer (the
"emote" and "feeling" commands, which will be discussed). While
the communication literature on CMC has expanded exponentially in
the last decade, it seems to concentrate solely on conferencing
systems, email, bulletin boards, and the like (Walther et al,
1994, provide an excellent meta-analysis).
A considerable amount of papers and projects concerning MUDs
have been produced within other disciplines. For instance, Reid
(1994) examines a MUD as a cultural construct, rather than a
technical one, and addresses issues such as power, social
cohesion, and sexuality. Serpentelli (1992?) examines
conversational structure and personality correlates in her
psychological study of MUD behavior. Likewise, NagaSiva (1992)
treats the MUD as a psychological model, but draws on Eastern
philosophy, and discusses MUD experiences as mystical
experiences. Young (1994) embraces the textuality of MUD
experience as postmodern hyperreality, a rich new hybrid of
spoken and written communication. Numerous articles have been
produced within the Computer Science discipline, many of which
are of a non-technical nature, most notably Bartle (1990), whose
experience as the co-creator of the first MUD makes him uniquely
qualified as a commentator, Curtis (1992), another noted
innovator in the field, and Bruckman (1993), whose extensive work
on socio-psychological phenomena in MUDs at MIT has earned her
deserved respect.
Method:
Most of my knowledge about MUDs comes from my personal
experiences on AA over the past two years. For the purpose of
this study, I engaged in numerous informal conversations with
other characters as my primary character, Kaldor. In addition,
when time warranted, I would explain my interests and conduct
interviews which were recorded with the consent of the
interviewee. Occasionally, people would tell me that they didn't
mind speaking with me as long as I would leave their name (their
character's name; the player's pseudonym) out of this paper, and
their wishes have been accorded with. These recorded interviews
(recorded as text, of course) were subsequently studied for
commonalities as well as variations of theme, tone, and context.
Qualitative Inquiry:
When endeavoring to understand a culture, especially one
which is unfamiliar, the qualitative mode of inquiry can be
especially useful. Nearly all of the communication research
based on CMC consists of quantitative tabulations of subjects
answering questionnaires after being thrust into one sort of
computer conferencing system or another. MUDs simply do not lend
themselves to this sort of description. In addition, the fact
that all MUD players are identified on the MUD only by a
pseudonym of their choosing confounds reliable quantitative study
of MUD culture (I'll say more about this pseudonymity later).
Each MUD has its own culture, partially produced by the hardware
that supports it, but more importantly, brought about by the
interactions of the participants themselves. To be sure, a
reporter on culture should proceed from a descriptive framework
to assure that s/he is covering the spectrum of phenomena before
him or her. Therefore, in this paper, I would like to describe
the culture of one MUD through the use of Hymes'(1974) "speaking"
mnemonic.
Hymes' system has been chosen for a variety of reasons, not
the least of which is the fact that I am somewhat familiar with
it, having utilized it in a previous study. Also, it has been
said that Hymes' framework is one that lends itself easily to a
variety of cultural inquiries; since this is a new kind of
culture, I thought it was a natural choice. I wanted to test
whether Hymes really could be used anywhere. The framework's
time-tested respect was the final reason for choosing it.
The Culture:
The MUD that I've chosen to discuss in this paper is called
Ancient Anguish (AA hereafter). It is a medieval swords-and-
sorcery type adventure MUD in which quite a bit of dragon slaying
and exploring the unknown takes place. I've chosen it for a
variety of reasons. First of all, it is huge. One of the
administrators of AA told me that there are in the neighborhood
of five thousand rooms to explore. Many of these rooms are
merely wilderness between encounter areas, but still, the sheer
scope of the AA universe keeps it 5500+ players happy. In
addition, AA is relatively old as MUDs go. In its forty month
history, a rich and diverse culture has been developed and passed
down through the "generations", as players discover AA, enjoy it
for months or years, and move on. The extent to which this
culture has developed made AA a clear choice for ethnographic
examination.
As an adventure-style MUD players (of which there may be as
many as one hundred online at any given time) players do spend a
fair bit of their time running around killing programmed monsters
(and occasionally eachother), collecting treasures, and solving
puzzles. But that is, by no means, all they do, and that is what
makes AA such an engaging environment. To begin with, though, I
will discuss the methods I used to collect my observations, the
means by which MUD access is gained, and the happenings of those
first interactions.
Getting Started:
Anyone with a computer and a modem theoretically has access
to MUDs. They are free and public for the most part, and the
long arms of the Internet assure that access is to be gained from
anywhere in the world. Rosenberg (1992) lists the countries that
the players on his favorite MUD, WolfMOO, hail from: Canada,
Ireland, England, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland,
Denmark, Russia, Iraq, Finland, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singapore, New Zealand, Israel, Australia, Sweden, Brazil, and
the United States! Most commonly, a program called telnet is
used, which connects individuals' computers to other computers.
Once you have connected to your first MUD, you are prompted to
answer a few questions which will determine to some degree how
you will you be perceived by the others present. This stage is
commonly referred to as character creation.
When you log into AA, the first question you are asked is
what your name will be. This being a swords-and-sorcery sort of
affair, players rarely choose names such as Bob or Gloria; people
generally try to stay within the genre, and the administrators
can actually banish some names that they deem inappropriate
("Krustyundies" is a case in point on AA). Names needn't be
gender specific (such as Bytre or Windryder), but in all of my
observations, I have only heard of one case in which someone
chose an obviously female name for their male character (Sonia).
Choosing a name can be quite important in terms of how much
socializing you wish to evoke. [This is especially true on
"talkers", MUDs which don't involve the dragon-slaying and
treasure gathering, and are merely places to socialize]. A
particularly interesting name can inspire strangers to initiate
conversation. One user says,
Well, sometimes I would be meeting someone I already know,
and we talk about whats new, or what interests us.
Sometimes, I would get to know new people....I usually look
at the list of names, pick an original name that sounds
cool, and try to get a conversation going.
He goes on to say that he usually tries to pick a "feminine"
name, which brings up the next decision you must make in
character creation, gender.
AA provides you with a choice of two genders for your
character (male or female). Once you choose, you may never go
back (unlike some "talkers", in which you may self-select gender
at will, and up to six options are available!). The majority of
MUD players are male; anywhere from 70% to 95% has been estimated
(Curtis, 1992; Bruckman, 1994). There are, however, plenty of
female characters. Gender-swapping is probably common on AA, but
it is really quite impossible to confirm. In my extensive
experience, I have only known of one character who was openly
(that is, the other characters on the MUD knew) cross-gendered.
This was the character Eleanor, and I found out that "she" was a
male "in real life" while I was talking with her about nothing in
particular (this happened more than a year ago). In the middle
of conversation, she suddenly said, "Look, don't fall in love
with me, ok, because I am a guy in real life!". This was
something of a shock to me. First of all, I hadn't considered
the possibility of cross-gendered play at the time. Secondly,
the fact that "she" mentioned "falling in love" was
flabbergasting to me! Falling in love on a computer game?
Little did I know that it happens commonly.
Once you have chosen your gender, it remains for you to
choose your character's race. In the AA universe, the list of
possible races includes elves, dwarves, and orcs, as well as
plain old humans. The race you choose has certain effects on
game mechanics, i.e., your maximum ability scores. These ability
scores affect your proficiency at climbing cliffs, slaying
dragons, and casting spells. As your character becomes more
experienced, these scores go up, making you more "powerful" in
your tanglings with the malicious beasts that AA has to offer.
That decision made, you would then see the following on your
computer screen:
You stand in the common room of the Ancient Inn of
Tantallon. There are a number of chairs and tables
scattered around the room, and there are two booths where
people can go for private conversation. There is a large
desk at the north end of the room, over which hangs an
ornate clock. A doorway leads south into the world of
Ancient Anguish and the adventure it has to offer.
Obvious directions are:
north, south.
It is at this point that you have entered the world of Ancient
Anguish.
Making sense of the world:
You have created your character. You are standing in the
"Ancient Inn of Tantallon". Now what? To make sense of your
surroundings, AA provides you with a 'look' command. For
instance, in the Inn, you might type 'look at chair', since a
chair appears in the description of the room. That command would
return a message, something like: "The heavy oak chair is
artfully designed, and looks comfortable". You might then "sit
in chair", which would return the message: "You pull up a chair."
The extent to which you can interact with your environment
depends entirely on the care with which the room has been
programmed, or coded.
The point of this interactivity is to give the player a
sense that they really are somewhere, not just sitting in front
of the computer screen. The fact that dedicated (fanatic) MUD
players might spend as many 120 hours a week in these "other
places" attests to the dynamism of that interactivity.
Suppose, though, that while you are standing there looking
at the chair, and boggling over your disembodied state (am I in
my office? Am I in the Inn?), a message flashes on your screen:
Kaldor enters.
Kaldor says: Hi! Howya doin?
Making sense of other players:
I remember when I was a newcomer to AA, more than a year
ago, and the most intriguing thing to me was that dozens of other
people from all over the world were visiting the same virtual
space as was I. As soon as I learned how to "speak" (that is,
use the "say" command), I walked around asking everyone where
they were from in real life. For the most part, people would
smile (which I'll describe below) and tell me, and ask where I
was from. This was a great thrill for a while, and it would not
have been possible had AA not implemented a variety of modes of
communication between players.
Besides "say", "whisper", "tell", and "shout", which I
described at the beginning of this paper, AA provides for
nonverbal communication as well. That is, nonverbal behavior and
even personal appearance are depicted textually. Clearly, Hymes'
Instrumentalities are drastically different in such text-based
virtual reality. This radical departure from "real life"
communication is really the central concept in my attempt to use
Hymes' descriptive framework in this study.
For instance, the whole idea of unintentional nonverbal
behaviors is problematic on AA, because the conventions (the
programming) of nonverbal behavior are provided as commands that
the player may or may not choose to enact. Such commands as
"smile", "bow", "hug", and "smirk" provide invaluable nonverbal
cues that serve to enrich the communications between players.
When someone types 'smile', everyone in the same room sees:
'[yourname] smiles.' On another MUD, a running tally of how
often the various commands were used was compiled over a period
of 250 days, with an average of twenty people on at any given
time. AA is a larger MUD, but the proportions are indicative of
the Hymesian "key" common to text-based virtual realities: The
five most commonly enacted "feeling" commands (out of
approximately 150 total) were smile, bow, shake (hands), greet,
and grin. The least used were kisshand, mourn, excuse, count,
and despair (Reid 1994). The administrators of the MUD
calculated that a "feeling" command was enacted an average of
every thirty seconds. It can be seen, then, that the "key" of
most MUD communication is friendly, polite, and light-hearted.
In addition to these atmospheric "feeling" commands, there
also exists the 'emote' command. Rheingold (1993) refers to
emoting as a "useful kind of disembodied body language." This
allows a player to attach any string of words after their name,
whether it be action or attitude or attribute. For example:
>emote enjoys chocolate ice cream and racquetball.
would produce the following message for everyone in the room:
>John enjoys chocolate ice cream and racquetball.
Between the "feelings" and the emote command, an infinity of
nonverbal behaviors can be represented on AA. The difference is
that it is all intentional, or self-selected. With the exception
of poor typing skills and grammar, every annoying and/or
unattractive involuntary nonverbal behavior can be eliminated on
AA.
But it goes further than that. In the realms that are MUDs,
one's actual physical appearance is self-selected. While people
"in real life" have little choice about their physical attributes
(i.e., we are a certain height, a certain build, a certain skin
tone), characters on AA have all sorts of choices. There is a
room in which it is possible to (for a number of gold coins,
which are collected from slain monsters) "buy a description".
Most of the players I talked to bought their descriptions fairly
early in their AA career. When asked why, the most common answer
was that the description gives a dose of reality to their
character--they become "fleshed out", so to speak. On AA, there
is a limited range of physical attributes one has to choose from.
However, there are millions of possible combinations. A couple
of examples are provided below:
Taylor is a female elf and is in good shape.
Taylor is petite and curvaceous, with lily-white skin, and
emerald eyes.
Taylor has a scar on her right arm.
She is soaking wet. Taylor has wavy, dark red hair reaching
to the middle of her back. Taylor is wearing a wedding ring
on one of her fingers. The wedding ring emits a soft glow.
[The scar means that her character has been killed by a monster
at some time. The "soaking wet" means that the MUD-weather must
be rainy! She will dry out in a few minutes. The wedding ring,
of course, means that she has a MUD-husband, who is currently on
the game (the ring is glowing).]
Dagoretth is a male human and is in good shape.
Dagoretth is tall and muscular, with tanned skin, blue eyes,
and short, straight black hair.
Dagoretth is wearing a wedding ring on one of his fingers.
[Descriptions similar to Dagoretth's are common. It seems like
the natural course that players would want their male characters
to be "tall and muscular". However, not everyone takes that
course, as you can see below.]
Kaldor is a male half-elf and is in good shape.
Kaldor is gangling and wiry, with coppery skin, icy blue
eyes, and extremely short, bristly silver hair.
Kaldor has a scar on his left knee, his right hand, his
forehead, and his right cheek.
I asked quite a number of people what they thought of
characters who didn't buy a description (when someone would type
'look at kaldor', all they would get back would be "Kaldor is a
male half-elf and is in good shape"). The most common response
was that it "shouldn't matter", but nearly everyone agreed that
having a description was preferable. Interestingly, Taylor's
description was bought for her by her MUD-husband, which I'll
explain below. She chose the attributes, but he paid the gold
pieces. Clearly, the husband wanted something more in his MUD-
wife than a mere "Taylor is a female elf and is in good shape."
It should be noted that on many other MUDs, personal
descriptions are not restricted on any way. Some people will
choose to have a description paragraphs long, with either great
visual detail included (text only, of course), or perhaps the
loves and fears, desires and motivations of the person at the
keyboard. Owen (1994) refers to this sort of description on
America Online as a "profile", in which people might choose to
include their hobbies, professions, or e-mail address. Personal
information is much more likely to be given on the "talker"
variety of MUD, as players of adventure style MUDs (such as AA)
want to portray their character, not themselves necessarily. I
did, however, talk to a few AA characters who tried to create a
description for themselves that did not vary too much from their
"real life" attributes. This brings up an interesting question:
How Real is the Virtual?
Nearly every character that I talked to agreed that the
killing of dragons and so forth is clearly fantasy (i.e., a
game), but that the interactions with other players was in some
sense "real". As a "real" community, there are deviants and
conformists, rule-breakers and rule-makers. To deal with this
diversity, sets of laws, both formal and informal, have been
produced in AA. Hymes might call these laws "norms", but the
textual nature of the environment raises some questions.
For instance, I don't think that Hymes would include
criminal tax laws in his "norms" category. "Norms", as I
understand the term, refers to those rules of appropriate
behavior that make interaction with other members of a community
flow smoothly; those commonly understood rules which everyone
know, but rarely, if ever speak about. On AA, there is a system
of explicit laws, accessible through the use of the "help aalaw"
command, but these laws are surely less formal than tax laws. A
few examples are given below:
1. This Law applies to all players and interactively
controlled characters....
2. Actions of illegal or immoral intention are not protected
by the Law.
11. Profanities in language, acting, or character names are
not allowed. Harassing other players is not allowed.
Excessive shouts are not allowed.
12. Any attempt at ruining the game for others is not
allowed.
There are thirty-three laws total, most of which delineate
the proper duties of the various levels of the power hierarchy on
AA (which I'll describe briefly below). The ones cited above
should illustrate, however, the sort of rules that have been
instituted that cover the behavior of the players. This set of
thirty-three rules was written by a single person, whereupon they
were handed to the Ancient Anguish Senate, who revised and
amended them, and turned them over to the Senate President, who
added his additional revisions. The entire list is, at the time
of this writing, undergoing additional scrutiny and possible
rewriting by the Senate.
It is surely clear by now that the AA hierarchy is clearly
defined and firmly established. Each "mortal" player is ranked
in terms of the amount of "experience points" that s/he has
obtained through defeating the various programmed monsters that
are to be found. Once a player has reached a certain level of
experience, and has solved the numerous puzzles, or "quests",
s/he may choose to become an "immortal" Wizard. The Wizards are
responsible for the continuing creation, governing, and
maintenance of the Ancient Anguish world that the players
experience. Wizards are also ranked: in order, the ranks are
Apprentice, Wizard, Creator, Senior Wizard, Senator, and Arch
Wizard. All of the Wizard categories involve a greater or lesser
degree of access to the actual programming that makes AA run.
Without the Immortals, specifically that branch of immortals
responsible for Justice (there are currently four individuals on
this committee), AA might be a very different and chaotic place,
There are no commands available to players that will reveal
another player's real life identity. The fact that each player
uses a pseudonym brings about some well-documented effects
(Curtis,(1992), Reid, (1994), Kiesler, et. al., (1984), Kiesler,
et. al., (1985)). The most common name for these effects is
disinhibition.
Anonymity:
Curtis (1992) suggests that anonymity produces a "shipboard
syndrome", in which players will often assume that they will
never meet any of the other players in real life, and that being
the case, the social risks are reduced and so inhibitions can be
lowered. This lowering of inhibitions can take on a variety of
forms, all of which I have observed on AA.
For instance, as Kiesler et. al (1984) point out with regard
to CMC in general, people can be more likely to produce insults,
name calling, and hostile comments. This holds true on AA
especially in cases where one player has stolen something from
another player. The victim will often shout (so all 50-100
players see the message) some sort of insult at the offender. Of
course, Law (defined as the Justice committee previously
mentioned) monitors such shouts, and can remove the shout command
from a player who shouts obscenities, or who shouts too
frequently.
Another phenomenon that I have observed on AA is that people
are much more likely to chat with a stranger than in real life.
Just being in the same room as another player is sufficient
grounds for starting up a conversation. This adds to my
conviction that, in the words of a private email sent to me by a
fellow MUDder, "People who MUD a great deal are not addicted to
computers; they are addicted to communication! "
Interestingly, the fact that these conversations (with other
anonymous individuals) can spring up so easily also affects the
content of those conversations. Each player's anonymity makes it
that much easier to discuss issues of a very real, and very
personal nature, such as thoughts of suicide or their abusive
spouses. One player told me that she was still waiting for
another player to log back on, after he had told her that he was
considering suicide, and would log back on in a month if he
didn't go through with it (he returned after five weeks).
Another user told me that a young woman had casually let it slip
that her husband struck her from time to time, whereupon he
immediately counselled her to leave him. They developed a very
strong, supportive relationship, exchanging email addresses, and
eventually home addresses. The alleged abuser found out about my
informant's relationship with his wife, and logged on to the MUD
(his first time) to confront him. A heated argument followed,
and the husband ended up forbidding his wife to use the computer
again. Months later, my informant got a letter from the woman,
who announced the dissolution of her marriage.
MUD Romance?
It is surely apparent by this point that intense
relationships can develop on MUDs which the participants often
will think of as being quite real. However, as one informant
told me, "[while] the experiences and emotions are often real,
the tricky part is knowing how serious each party is taking it."
I had one particular male informant who told me in intimate
detail about just how seriously he took his MUD romance. After
several weeks of frequent interaction with a female character, he
decided to have MUD-sex, rapid (one-handed?) typing of sexually
explicit messages to one another--cyber-phone sex. He says,
"I had mud sex and lost my mud virginity. I found mud sex
enjoyable. It was partially exciting, but it had a lot of the
intimacy that rl [real life] sex has at times."
This cyber-sexual MUD relationship lasted for several
months, and the two would arrange late-night rendezvous to ensure
their frequent coupling. Eventually, they got MUD-married, an
event which is generally presided over by a wizard and is
characterized by a fairly large group doing a lot of hugging,
smiling, and laughing. In any event, after being MUD-married for
three months, my informant found out that his MUD-wife was male
in real life. He says,
"[a friend] told me that [my MUD wife] was really a guy in
rl. I was completely shocked. I was so betrayed by his
lying. I never had problems with cross gender players if
they role play, but when they lie about rl it is more of a
cruel trick....I started to distrust mudders after that."
This experience didn't stop this particular informant though. He
went on find another MUD-wife who he eventually met in real life,
and claims to have had "very nice, friendly sex [with her], even
though she looked nothing like I had imagined".
It doesn't stop there though. One administrator of AA told
me that he knew of at least two transcontinental (America-Holland
in both cases) marriages that began in the MUD. These
relationships usually begin with exchanging email addresses, then
phone numbers and addresses, and then finally the first face to
face meeting. These MUD-generated relationships, as in
relationships that started in real life, sometimes prosper and
sometimes fail.
Most of the people with whom I spoke who had met someone
from AA in person made some comment about how the person didn't
look like what they had expected. This is perhaps a
manifestation of what Walther (1994) refers to as the
hyperpersonal, or situations in which so many cues are filtered
out (the narrow bandwidth of CMC vs. face to face interactions),
that individuals fill in the blanks, as it were, with idealized
attributes. If true, it is less surprising that so many of the
people that I talked to were cynical about relationships that
begin on MUDs and spill over into real life.
What does it all mean: Implications and Applications
Harasim (1993) points out some interesting implications of
communication in any text-based medium. It is direct, but
informal, allowing the participants to say exactly what is on
their mind without the gravity of a face to face confrontation.
In addition, every user is free of their physical appearance, and
so persons with disabilities or whatever other physical
attributes that might have kept them from being as outgoing as
they might want to be are empowered; people relate to one another
on AA and other MUDs as "pure mind", with idealized physical
descriptions instituted to color the spatial metaphor upon which
the programming is based.
Indeed, it may not even be a physical attribute which has
kept a person feeling powerless; they may be ten years old...or
eighty-five. Or they may simply be shy. AA and other MUDs
provide a forum for just such people to interact in a context
where they needn't worry about if their hair or fashion sense is
right, or their stutter, or their sweaty palms. Indeed, one AA
administrator told me the following story:
There was one woman I was speaking with about her son. He
was a very shy and withdrawn youth (about 12 years old), but
when he began playing in the mud, he developed a quite
boisterous and outspoken character. Over the course of
about six months, the mother noticed considerable
improvement in his RL [real life] social skills.
Indeed, Bruckman (1992) points out that many people use MUDs as
"identity workshops", or sounding boards for personality
attributes that they may otherwise keep hidden. She makes
reference to an informant she met on a Star Trek based MUD who
played three different characters: One was big chested and
sexually desirable, one was quiet and flat chested, the third was
an emotionless Vulcan. These multiple selves are permeable
entities, created through their relationships perhaps not
independent of one another, but with some degree of
individuality. Which self is the real person? The woman at the
keyboard? The busty wench? The homely girl? The cold
impersonal logician? None of the above, for, as Wilmot (1994)
suggests, "the self is created by the relationships it has, AND
the relationship(s) literally create the self." In these
"identity workshops" called MUDs, multiple personalities are not
cause for alarm, but a vehicle for personal exploration.
Another implication of AA and other MUDs is since the
interactions that occur therein are all textual, digital
information, they can be recorded with great ease. This allows
the administrators of AA to provide a 'harass' command for
players. If a player believes that s/he is being harassed
inappropriately, they just type 'harass', and the next thirty
seconds of the interaction is recorded in a special file which
can be read only by certain wizards, who can take such action is
warranted, ranging from reprimand to demotion to permanent
banishment.
Of course, the recordable nature of text-based realities
also afforded me the chance to both record and transcribe
interviews with a single keystroke. This luxury has also come in
handy at several professional conferences that have taken place
in MUD environments. (The conferences actually had MUD technology
as their subject matter (Bruckman, 1994)).
The future for MUD technology is bright. Enough people have
caught on to its benefits that its use as professional/
educational tool is growing rapidly. These benefits include the
opportunity to bring people together from all over the world in a
technology that supports synchronous or asynchronous
communication, the use of a spatial metaphor to create a context
for interactions, and the access to the speed and ease of data
retrieval inherent in most, if not all, computer systems.
Already, there are MUD environments designed specifically for
astrophysicists, biologists, and ecologists, which provide a
forum for discussion with other scientific professionals all over
the world. A MUD called Diversity University supports a college
campus spatial metaphor, and the administrators are working to
provide a full range of conferences and classes on diverse
subject matters. MediaMOO, Amy Bruckman's creation, is a MUD-
type environment designed with media researchers in mind, with
archives of papers on MUDs and related media issues. A MUD
designed for neurosurgeons is currently being developed.
Finally, Pavel Curtis' Jupiter Project, when complete, will be
the prototype for all the future multi-media MUDs to come, with
graphics, sound, and even full motion video.
Whether Hymes' ethnographic methods will be applicable to
all these virtual communities is a question to be considered.
What is clear is that as the technology that supports them gets
faster and more powerful, the so-called "bandwidth" of
communication will widen, providing more and more communicative
cues. This will in turn make these communities more and more
like real life, as full motion video and sound via modem makes
text simply redundant.
In all honesty, I prefer the textual environment. Walther's
hyperpersonality provides an element of escapism while seeming to
accentuate the essentially social nature of MUD experience, and
to continue to study such experiences is important for a variety
of reasons. The growing technology is impossible to ignore, and
its use in the professional communities mentioned above gives
credence to the possibilities of its non-recreational purposes.
In addition, as more people begin to explore these virtual
worlds, some important implications for virtual reality are
addressed, as people begin to use them as media for personal
therapy, socialization, and relationship building.
My task in the limited scope of this paper has been to
provide the reader with a broad ethnographic overview of the
culture of one MUD, Ancient Anguish, while demonstrating that
many of the central themes addressed are broadly applicable to
the several hundred other virtual worlds available to anyone with
a computer and a modem (a number that is constantly rising).
Though the uninitiated are nearly universally skeptical, I hope
that I have opened your eyes to a culture perhaps no less rich
than the one we call "real life".
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