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[1] Larry Masinter, Erik Ostrom, "Collaborative Information Retrieval: Gopher from MOO," unpublished report(?), ?date?, 1993.
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/MOO/papers/MOOGopher.html
This paper discusses a project by Larry Masinter, and Erik Ostrom. This project is an attempt to build a tool for the MOO environment that is both easy to use, and easy for groups of people to use. They do this in an attempt to begin building 'the electronic library of tomorrow'. Thier theory is that a library is more than a collection of information, and a way to access it, but also is a social environment. They believe that this environment is an inportant part of the informational retrieval process. Collegues can show each other things of interest, or work together to find new things. They can also discuss things as they find them.
One of the aspects of the MOO environment that they found most important is it's interactive nature. Electronic communication is possible through such media as e-mail, and newsgroups, however such communication are not immediate, and doesn't allow many of the conversational conventions that we are used to, and doesn't allow one user to (for example) watch another user perform an action, to learn how to do it.
This paper gives real examples of MOO interaction, and discusses the MOO, as a social environment. They explain the natural nature of objects in the moo, and the communal nature of thier use. The paper then discusses different forms that MOO based gopher clients have taken during different exploratory stages in development. It is important to note that the actual gopher implementation is the same for all of these clients, and only the MOO representation changed.
The first stage of evolution were Gopher rooms. These were rooms whose description changed depending on what item was currently selected in the client. Anybody in the room could make selections, and all would see the results of anyone's selections immediatly. This had some disadvantages, the room wasn't portable, so you couldn't take it to someone to show them what you found, and it was somewhat non-intuitive/disorienting. Real rooms don't change around you continuously. Also only one person, or group could use such a room at a time.
One addition, to try and make room information more convenient was the Gopher note. A gopher note is like a piece of paper copied from the contents of a Gopher room. It can be carried, passed around, and read just like a piece of paper, but since the note refers to the original gopher server for the text, it will update whenever the source information is updated. This note had a stong advantage in that it was 'concrete' just a piece of paper, but it had the disadvantage that it couldn't be changed without using a Gopher room.
Because traditional gopher clients allow users to make 'bookmarks' or short cuts to specific pieces of information, the idea of a Gopher list was conceived. The gopher list is just a list of such bookmarks that can be copied from, or to, a gopher room. This allows individual users to maintain personal bookmarks in the publically available Gopher room.
They then expain the most recent implementation of thier Gopher client, known as a Gopher Slate. This client takes the form of a piece of paper, or portable computer whose screen shows whatever gopher item is currently pointed to by the client. This is convenient because people can carry these clients with them in the moo, and many different people can easily have different clients doing different things. These clients can also be shown to other people to share specific information, or can be 'used' by two or more people at a time. It therefore takes on the advantages of most of the previous tools, because this slate can be used as a note, has a personalized list, and can be used by multiple users.
[2] Michael S. Rosenberg, "Virtual Reality: Reflections of Life, Dreams, and Technology. An ethnography of a Computer Society," unpublished report, March 16, 1992.
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/MOO/papers/ethnography.txt
This paper is the result of an ethnographic study performed by Michael S. Rosenberg on the society that has developed on WolfMOO. This paper is heavily littered with real examples of names, descriptions, and conversations from this MOO. It focuses on the different types of people that frequent the MOO, and the different types of behaviour exhibited there.
This paper conludes that the majority of people playing muds are male colledge students from the United States, but quickly points out that the total mix of players is extremely diverse, with people of different ages, and most any background from all over the world.
The concept of character creation, and description is then covered in detail. The important point here is that people have complete freedom over how they describe themselves, and over how they are percieved, mixed with almost complete anonymity. Handicaps, race, and even gender can be ignored, or even changed. This can free people from the stereotypes associated with physical appearance, and can even allow people to see what it would be like to be a member of 'the other side' of what ever social barriers they wish to cross.
Characters are broken into several types: programmers, socialites, and tinysexers. These divisions refer the the primary activities people persue on the MOO. For the MOO being studied, socialites were considered the primary population. Tinysexers were cast in a very negative light. Programmers, however, were considered to be the mainstay of the MOO, being the only ones who can extend, and improve the virtual world. Wizards, in particular, are considered a social focus, partly because of thier extensive experience with all aspects of the MOO, and partly because of thier extra powers within this realm.
Like other societies, WolfMOO has it's own set of rules, and acceptable behavior. Unlike many societies, these rules are spelled out fairly clearly by a set of help documents that are easily available to any new user. These rules are maintained, both by general desire, and by active enforcement by the wizards.
Socializing, and coversations are shaped in ways determined by the social nature of the environment. It is common for large groups to meet, and complete strangers will often talk at length. The machanics of speaking tend to make conversations, especially amoung large groups, somewhat chaotic. A player must type an entire statement, before any other players get to see it. This lag comes from the delays of typing. Other players will often speak during this lag. Especially with large groups, this tends to lead to multiple discussions simultaneously. Very confusing for those not accustomed to it.
People on MOO's tend to be logged on in somewhat regular hours. This means that people tend to know other people who login during the same hours. It's interesting that while physical distance isn't a barrier, timezones are.
The general point of this paper is to discuss the social nature of a moo, and it's various aspects. What is shown by the very nature of the paper is the fact that such a minimal electronic support is sufficient to support a full society. This society is definatly shaped by it's medium, but people are fully capable of adapting to this medium. The society formed is an extension of normal society, not some entirely new thing, and it's something that normal people with little or no computer existance are capable of using, and benifiting from with only a small learning curve.
[3] A. Bruckman, "Identity Workshop: Emergent Social and Psychological Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Reality," unpublished report, April 5, 1992.
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/MOO/papers/identity-workshop.ps
This paper was written by Amy Bruckman. This paper was originally designed to be an exploration into issues related to cyberspace, and self. After preliminary work, it developed into a paper about cyberspace as embodied in modern muds. These muds are in a very real sense a cyberspace environment, because they are shared multi-user virtual realities. The paper is based on quick surveys of many muds, mixed with a consistent reading of rec.games.mud, and finally, a lengthy career on TrekMUSE.
This paper dicusses the self-images of people who play muds, and the differences in these images in both virtual and real-life. The exisitance of 'choice of projected image', and anonimity are both seen as making it much easier to interact socially via muds. There also appear to be mixed values from different people about how real these relationships are, and how seriously to take them. The consensus amoung serious players seems to be that virtual relationships can be just as real as physical ones, but that physical ones are better, all other things being equal. This is shown in part by the phraseology. Physical relationships are 'real life' relationships, while virtual ones are virtual, ie fake.
Many, but not all, of the people that are attracted to these 'safe' social environments, seem to be people that are uncomfortable with normal relationships. Strong parrallels are drawn to the hacker culture, where people tend to relate to objects instead of people because they are uncomfortable with complex relationships, and where mastery of a skill is seen as a basis of self-worth.
At the same time that many people will invest excessive time in muds, and virtual relationships, many of the same people feel guilty about this, and feel that time spent on-line is 'wasted'. This is an undercurrent, and is countered with (sometimes TOO strong) arguements that virtual relationships are just as valid as real ones. Many people feel defensive about time spent on mud's and will work very hard to jusitfy thier rights to play them.
Many people engage in serious virtual relationships with other people, and some of these people engage in what is called MudSex. Much like real life, there are many different approaches to MudSex, both casual for the pleasure of the moment, and longer term important relationships that are significant to the people involved. It should be noted that some people have taken virtual relationships, and converted them into real relationships at this level of commitment.
Exploration is also made into the phenonmena of gender swapping, and the varied treatment that players get based on thier characters gender. Examples are given where players of both sexes have used gender swapping to learn things about life as a member of the other sex, and about people who have used it to take advantage of other people.
The prevailing theme seems to be that many people can invest enourmous amounts of time in virtual worlds. The benifits from this are mixed. Many people find the activity of mud playing to be of low value, but because the social realities are real, only different, we must refrain from judging them quickly or in a dismissive mannor.
[4] P. Curtis, "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities," in the Proceedings of the 1992 Conference on the Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing, Berkley, May 1992. Also available as Xerox PARC technical report CSL-92-4.
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/MOO/papers/DIAC92.ps
This paper is wrttien by Pavel Curtis to relate his experiences after having maintained LambdaMOO for over a year. When Curtis discusses the nature of muds, he principally speaks about that nature of muds such as LambdaMOO, that are not adventure oriented. While most of his commentary definatly aplies to all muds, it is oriented specicially towards non-combat/adventure systems.
Curtis gives a very clear discription of what a mud is, and uses the following three points to distinguish it from a text-based Adventure-style computer game. A MUD is not goal-oriented; it has no beginning or end, no 'score', and no notion of 'winning' or 'success'. In short, even though users of MUDs are commonly called players, a MUD isn't really a game at all. A MUD is extensible from within; a user can add new objects to the database such as rooms, exits, 'things', and notes. Certain MUDs, including the one I run, even support an embedded programming language in which a user can describe whole new kinds of behavior for the objects they create. A MUD generally has more than one user connected at a time. All of the connected users are browsing and manipulating the same database and can encounter the new objects created by others. The multiple users on a MUD can communicate with each other in real time.
Players use 'characters' to represent themselves inside a mud. These characters are actually objects inside the mud, and are not much different from a chair, or chalkboard except that a player can use them to issue commands. When a player creates a character, they choose a name (one word only), gender (male, female, plural, or neutral, etc) , and a description. The combination of these attributes, are what other players use to identify a character. All of these choices can be changed at a latter time. The fact that player choose these characteristics, especially gender can cause interesting effects socially. Many people apparently have great difficulty dealing with people unless they feel that they know thier real gender, and have reported feeling 'mad' or 'used' when they discover that someone has presented themselves with an incorrect gender. This last is especially relevant when strong but virtual (perhaps sexually explicit) relationships are developed.
Curtis explains his opinion that while future advances will make the idea of a more traditional virtual reality mud technically feasable, he believes that principally text based muds will continue to remain popular for quite some time. In part VR equipment will remain comparatively expensive, and non-portable in comparison to text based systems for the coneivable future, and in part because text is more flexable. A text description of a character that reads "A chromed man whose surface relects distorted images of all around him." is many orders of magnatude easier to implement and change than a real-time graphical image of the same, especially for non-technical people. This simplicity allows for much larger realms of creativity, and changability.
[5] P. Curtis and D. Nichols. "MUDs Grow Up: Social Virtual Reality in the Real World," unpublished report, May 5, 1993.
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/MOO/papers/MUDsGrowUp.ps
This paper outlines the current Xerox PARC projects "Astro-VR", and "Jupiter". Both of these projects will probably involve the extension of a standard MUD server known as "LambdaMOO" also developed at Xerox PARC to handle media other than text, and allow a more effective working environment than traditional muds. This is perhaps the only publically available paper concerning the adaption of muds for working environments.
The Astro-VR system is designed to help astronomers from around the world meet conveniently, give short presentations, and otherwise work together. For many astronomers, this will be the only means of direct communication other than traditional email. Originally this system should provide the following services:
real-time multi-user communication, self-contained electronic mail and bulletin board system, shared, user-supplied links to online astronomical images, an editor/viewer for short presentations of text and images, and collaborative access to standard programs used by astronomers.
It is the opinion of the developers that no further services, such as digitized speach, will be usable with the current bandwidth provided by the current global internet. It is hoped and expected that this will change in time.
Some of these services require a little more explaination. The self-containted bulliten board system is designed to allow a system similar in nature to usenet, but accessable only actual experts in the field. This is to reduce the 'noise' level generally on usenet because of the postings from new-comers, and hobbyiests.
The idea of image links is designed to be similar to gopher. The images are indexed, and viewable through the server in a number of ways, but are actually stored on the machine of the person making the images available.
Small meetings are a regular practice in most of the scientific community, and members of these meetings often give small presentations. The presentation facitily allows presentions of information along with relevant pictures to small groups. Any discussion that takes place is recorded. The talks can easily be archived for later replay, possibly including the original discussion. Further discussion can also be saved to the archive.
Collaborative access to standard programs may be the most original, and ambitious goal. The intended metophor is that of crowding around a single workstation, and having different people use the keyboard, and mouse. Of course, everyone 'crowding around' will actually be in thier own offices around the world. It is important to note that access to standard tools such as mongo, and mathematica is being provided, not a series of new tools.
The Jupiter system is an attempt to push the mud environment far past the boundries of simple text. It is intended to support sound, a graphical command interface, and even video. The system is very limited by the bandwidth required, and is planned only for use between the offices, and homes of PARC researchers, who are attached to the local network which provides a non-standard multi-cast capability. The system is designed so that clients can be used from most systems that provide a graphical display, digitized audio, and optional video input.
The window based interface allows mud programs to communicate with clients at a very-high level. This both saves communication bandwidth, and allows the mud itself to ignore all details of the local windowing system. It is intended that some windowed commands are for individual input (using a map to point to where to move), but that services for multiple people are also provided, like multi-user picture editing.
The currently available video only allows for half-size grayscale images at about 5 frames per second. More useful for providing a sense of other users activities, and attending lectures, than for use as the traditional idea of a video phone.
The intentions of the Jupiter systems are to allow casual meetings and communication between users, so that the benifits of the social environment of an office can be maintained with distance. It is hoped that the system will fits within the bandwidth provided by ISDN so that workers can work from home, effectively. The researchers even intend to outfit real rooms from thier laboratory building with audio/video equipment, so that they can interact with people in these rooms through the Jupiter system.
Erik Ostrom is at Gustavus Adolphus College. He may be reached at eostrom@nic.gac.edu. msr@casbah.acns.nwu.edu
Amy Bruckman of the MIT Media Laboratory. asb@media-lab.media.mit.edu, Mara@TrekMUSE,
jaime@lots-o-places.
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