Multi-user Dungeons Research Articles

“Likely to be eaten by a Grue” — the relevance of text games in the modern era

Spurred on by the success of Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo in crowd-sourcing funds for their newest projects, I look to reinvigorate interest in the humble text game. In this essay I argue that the text adventure is still a relevant gaming genre, and one with particularly high potential in several areas. Text games take on a wide variety of forms, and many currently popular social games are characterised by being primarily text-based in their interactions. However, despite the continuing interest in variations on the format, the classical expressions represented by interactive fiction and multiuser dungeons (MUDs) struggle to recruit and sustain player-bases. I argue that while text gaming is not yet a dead genre, it threatens to become so unless significant changes are made to how text games are perceived and developed. I argue that we should not be apologetic when we choose text as our primary medium of interaction. The best future potential comes from the classical expressions of text games evolving in line with modern design sensibilities to fill particular niches not well served by current gaming technologies.

Zoning Laws: Facebook and Google+

Zoning Laws: Facebook and Google+

A conceptual framework for mediated environments

Background: Immersive virtual worlds are one of a range of different platforms that can be grouped under the concept of mediated environments, i.e. environments that create a metaphorical space in which participants can position themselves and be embodied. Synthesising the literatures concerning the various mediated environment technologies provides an opportunity for research regarding these various technologies to inform each other. Purpose: The variety of concepts and terms within the various literatures reviewed are used inconsistently. Various typologies are used, and these may overlap in part and yet contain elements others are missing. The purpose of this paper is to outline a conceptual framework that aims to bring these various typologies together into one overall reference model. This reference model is intended to support other researchers in the field by reifying the field of mediated environments, forming an agenda for negotiation, but also a basic introduction to the various aspects of mediated environments. Sources of evidence: The conceptual framework is primarily based on Activity Theory, with the various categories further subdivided through reference to the wider literature concerning immersive virtual worlds, webconferencing, multi-user dungeons (MUDs) and other text-based communication platforms. In addition to the categories included in Activity Theory, two key elements that typify mediated environments are their provision of a situated experience for the participant and an opportunity for the participants to create and perform an identity. These are not specifically addressed by Activity Theory, but are within the Communities of Practice model. The conceptual framework presented here merges these two models. Conclusions: The conceptual framework provides a useful basis for systematically reviewing the various aspects of mediated environments, and for further debate and development.

Taking Care of Xerox Business—Virtually

So Hiro's not actually here at all. He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse.--Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (Bantam Books, 1992). The vision of a world, like the one described by Neal Stephenson, has spurred the imagination of engineers to create environments from text-based multi-user dungeons (or MUDs) to three-dimensional tools like Google Earth, and immersive spaces like Second Life. The term virtual is often applied broadly to include everything from web-sites like MySpace and NeoPets to the class of games known as MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). While the discussion goes on about how broadly to stretch the definition, the core idea of the Metaverse is 3D graphical environments, which give the users the sensation of being immersed in another world. What's a Virtual World Anyway? The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse.--Snow Crash. The common thread in the different definitions of worlds is the ability to connect and communicate in an environment that has a sense of space into which users are immersed. You know that you're using a world when rather than simply using an application, you start thinking of yourself as being inside it. The confusion around what worlds are is also caused by the rise of other types of social networking applications as well as the highly interactive and visual nature of Web 2.0 sites like Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. 3D environments are most effective at giving users the sense of immersion that worlds provide. Not only is the environment rendered in realistic 3D graphics, but every user is represented by a 3D character, an avatar, with which they interact with the world and other users. In the past year, Xerox's Innovation Group has started to investigate how the technology of 3D worlds can impact the way people do business. These types of worlds offer the following benefits: * A pliable 3D environment.--Being immersed in a 3D world opens up new possibilities for visualization and interaction. Users can literally draw in the air to illustrate what they are talking about, and tools can be created for organizing both information and processes in ways that are not possible in a physical environment. * An immersive experience.--Not only can users simply explore the environment, but, for many, being in a natural-looking space that is navigated in the same way as the real world, is much more comfortable than being faced with abstractions like lists, windows and folders that are commonly found in other types of applications. * A high-bandwidth communication medium.--While communicating in a world via text-chat or integrated voice capabilities may be no different than using instant messaging or a VOIP client like Skype, the fact that the communication occurs while sharing the same experience can add new layers to the conversation. Users can make their avatars perform gestures and facial expressions, thereby adding a non-verbal component to the conversation. The location of avatars adds additional information, allowing the use of spatial references in the conversation. * The formation of communities.--By giving users locations where they can congregate to discuss topics of interest, worlds provide avenues for easily meeting new people. Events, meetings and seminars can be used as regularly scheduled activities to grow and strengthen a community, but unplanned encounters by people visiting the same space at the same time are just as important to form connections. Communities are valuable because they take on a life of their own, providing support for newcomers as well as giving a space for old-timers to share-experiences and learn from one another. …

(Dis-)integrative Effects of MUD-Usage as Seen by the Players

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.

Social identification and interpersonal attraction in MUDs

In social psychology, two forms of attachment to groups are distinguished: interpersonal attraction and social identification. A web experiment was conducted to examine whether these two forms of attachment can also be differentiated in virtual communities, more precisely, MUDs (multi-user-dungeons). Both forms of attachment occurred. As expected, the concepts were functionally independent from each other. Whereas interpersonal attraction became stronger with increased duration of group membership and was fostered by physical life contacts, social identification was independent from these factors. Instead, social identification was related to more cognitive indicators of self-categorization. In contrast to interpersonal attraction, social identification was influenced by situational context and predicted group behavior such as ingroup bias.

Documented Norms and Conventions on the Internet

TheInternet plays an important role as a means for world wide social contact. The establishment and maintenance of social and group relationships within electronic worlds require social norms and behavioral conventions as in the real world. This article investigates some of the available electronic media: e-mail, mailing lists, newsgroups, chat rooms, and multiuser dungeons or multiuser domains (MUDs). Peculiarities of the media are analyzed through studying the documented behavioral norms and social conventions. We look at desired behavior, disruptive behavior, and sanction mechanisms. A conclusion that may be drawn is that within these virtual environments, explicitly documented norms and conventions play an underlying role in how individuals behave in addition to what type of behavior they expect from others.

The Internet Gender Gap Among College Students: Forgotten But Not Gone?

The Internet has been a male-dominated technology since its beginnings in the late 1960s. A number of studies have reported that the gap between the numbers of men and women online has narrowed in recent years. However, broad definitions of usage have often masked important differences in how much the technology is used in specific ways, as well as qualitative differences in men's and women's experiences in using the Internet. One area in which such differences might be particularly important is in higher education, where Internet activities are increasingly a central feature of the curriculum in a variety of departments. We investigated the Internet gender gap among college students by comparing the usage patterns and attitudes of three cohorts of students in 1997, 1998, and 1999. In addition, we examined longitudinal changes from 1997 to 1998 in a subsample of our participants. The cohort comparisons revealed gender differences in five Internet activities (E-mail, World Wide Web [WWW], Usenet, Multiuser dungeons [MUDs], and chat groups) with no significant lessening of these differences over time. Attitudes toward the technology also differed between men andwomenandthese differences also didnotchange over time. The longitudinal data showed similar patterns. In general, our investigation suggests that differences continue to exist between college men and women in how they experience Internet technology and assessments that the Internet will soon be gender neutral are perhaps premature.

Conversation and community: Chat in a virtual world. Lynn Cherny. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 1999. Pp. 369.

In the early 1990s, Lynn Cherny spent much of her time in the MUD – not mired in wet earth, but actively exploring “Multi-User Dungeons.” These “fictional universes with a focus on role-playing,” as they are defined in the Introduction, enable groups of Internet-connected individuals to assemble in cyberspace, communicating by way of sequentially typed text. Later, as a doctoral student in linguistics at Stanford, Cherny decided to study ethnographically – that is, from the perspective of one methodically and dispassionately observing a different race – the expressive practices of those habitually using this strange new modality.

DEE: an architecture for distributed virtual environment gaming

This paper presents a distributed virtual environment architecture targeted specifically at network games. It outlines the requirements for supporting a game genre known as graphical multi-user dungeons or dimensions, and shows how these requirements can be met by a novel approach to the distribution of the game environment model. An implementation of the architecture is covered, together with the initial conclusions drawn from the implementation process.

HyperMUD

Currently, we are starting to work in a project which is called "Multimedia Supported Communities". Within this project, the interaction between the use of new technologies and the development of social relations are to be studied. The first goal of this project is to find out which forms of virtual communities exist or can be found in literature. After that we try to fin d criteria for characterizing different types of such communities. One criterion could be the ability to create and manipulate a common "external memory" and the quality of this memory. Keil-Slawik explained the roll of artifacts as external memory in creative development processes, especially in software design [cf. Keil-Slawik (1992)]. The external memory reflects the level of development of the virtual community. Based on the artifacts used at any time it is possible to improve them and to measure the improvement with respect to the original, still present artifacts. Thus, there are permanent cycles of learning and developing. Now, our approach is to characterize multimedia supported communities according to the quality of the ability to build and modify a shared external memory. For example, there are classic chat systems such as IRC (Internet Relay Chat) where only texts supplied by the operator (e.g. help texts or recordings of certain discussions) may be stored and accessed by other users. An example for a better quality of creating a shared external memory for a community is given in MUDs (Multi User Dungeons and dragons or Multi User Domains).

Law's mapping of cyberspace: The shape of new social space

The proliferation of communication and information technologies is creating new human spaces, virtual places. Like all places, virtual ones are composed of a variety of discourses, law being central to that domain. Different legal conceptualizations, regulations, actors, and practices are components of virtual spaces along with computers and communication lines. MUDs and MOOS (MUDs: Multi User Dungeons; MOOs: Object Oriented MUDs) are new social settings in cyberspace, and are subject to the constitutive forces of such legal paradigms as property, social control, rights, and due process. The shape these spaces take are the direct result of the conflation of differing ideologies and practices surrounding these paradigms. Social spaces are the products of particular ideologies and practices combined in a dynamic relationship that represent ascendant political, legal, and social power.