Abstract
Most studies on social relationships in Multi-User-Dungeons (MUDs) focus on the online development of the relationships or on their trans¬fer from Virtual Reality (VR) to Real Life (RL). The perspective of my study is broader: 50 players of the German MUD Avalon were questioned in an online survey about the relationships they had gained or lost by playing online – and for their own judgement on the effects the MUD had on their social network. Of these 50, 20 participated in qualitative online interviews; their answers allow a better under¬standing of the quantitative data. The main results of the quantitative survey are that most of the players gained new relationships – in¬cluding an amazingly high number of couples – and only one player lost a friend; nevertheless nearly half of the players had neglected their RL relationships for some time. The interviewees judged these effects according to their RL experiences: Highest ratings were re-ported by those who gained closer relationships in VR than they were used to in RL – even though this might mean that they had simply found acquaintances rather than real friends.
Highlights
In a study that was carried out in 2004 on behalf of the games producer Electronic Arts 54% of the Germans asked (n=1355) were of the opinion that computer and video games led to increasing loneliness
As there are several studies about MUDs and social relations, it seems to be reasonable to supplement the state of research by investigating the same field. The results of such an investigation, go far beyond the horizon of relatively rarely frequented MUDs. It was the success of the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) 'World of Warcraft', which is closely connected with MUDs [3], that a game genre achieved worldwide popularity
MMORPGs have a graphic surface, in contrast to MUDs, the playing structures are in principle the same
Summary
In a study that was carried out in 2004 on behalf of the games producer Electronic Arts 54% of the Germans asked (n=1355) were of the opinion that computer and video games led to increasing loneliness (cf. Lorber, 2005, p. 17). Point into another direction: do the virtual communities of the MUDs have real social functions, a large proportion of mudders even succeed in enlarging their networks in the real world through playing. In order to be able to really understand which social bonus or malus is caused by using a MUD (or respectively, if any qualitative change can be seen at all), the players' subjective patterns of interpretation need to be taken into account To answer this question I have carried out multi-method research into the German MUD 'Avalon' (http://avalon.mud.de). With 20 of them – none of whom I had previously been familiar with in VL or RL – I afterwards carried out qualitative online interviews
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