Introduction:
These are all valid questions about a social phenomenon that, while contained within cyberspace, provokes the development of social phenomena such as the formation of groups, and the interaction of distinct groups of people.
Answers to the above questions may be found at some of the following sites, but to introduce the reader to the social phenominon termed a Multi User Dimension (MUD), a MUD Object Oriented (MOO), I have included an explanation of the significance of each site.
Resource #1:
Northern Lights MUD Homepage
http://www.ludd.luth.se/mud/aber/northern_lights.html
by Vitastjern
This is the homepage of the Northern Lights MUD. The homepage was created by the systems administrator of the MUD itself, which adds to the quality of the presentation, because the administrator has an investment in the homepage. The reason why this site was created is to advertise and clarify the Northern Lights MUD, one of many Aber-type MUDs.
This site begins by displaying an overview of what will be discussed within the homepage. First, it provides users who are not familiar with MUDs a rough course on how to play the game. The topics contained herein include the goal of the game, how to familiarize oneself with the environment, and what becomes of a character when faced with death. This information is all rather general, which I found helpful, because I was searching for definitions of how to get started in any MUD, not just this one. There is also more specific information, such as a map of the Northern Lights game world, and the history of Northern Lights. When the reader is beginning to get familiar with MUDs in general, the author moves on to a topic of different scope, significance, the building of one's own areas, and the creation of puzzles that other users can try to solve. A link to a zone creation manual is provided.
I found this site not only to be informative, but also easy to read and understand. My understanding is that many people online do not participate in MUDs because they are simply too confusing to them. This site alleviates the difficulty of understanding the commands, goals, and overall reasons why they should try MUDding. Also, the link to the Northern Lights MUD is easy to access without any special client software, so the reader can try the game within minutes of reading the explanations. The MUD provided is also full of people who are very helpful to newcomers, which also provides for an easier path to enjoying the MUD. I consider this link to be the most important feature of this resource.
Resource#2:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/remy/documents/cncmast.html
by Rémy Evard of Northwestern University
This html document is an essay on the experience of a social group using a MUD to correspond rather than relying solely on e-mail or telephones. First, the author expounds society's view of MUDs, by stating that they are 1) used for entertainment purposes, and 2) that they are often run by students who do not have permission to clutter a school's system with their MUD. Thus, the internet society frequently looks down on the MUD as a waste of computer and net resources.
However, as the author continues, he states that MUDs can be used for a myriad of other purposes. For example, the mud can be used as a correspondance medium between corporate personell. The advantages of using MUDs as opposed to e-mail is that the boundaries of MUDs are more defined. Whereas anyone can send e-mail to an e-mail address, only those people who have been allowed onto the MUD can communicate with the users therein.
I found this document to contain a good explanation of what the possibilities of MUDs are. The author writes in cogent prose, and is thus easily understood. Also, the verity of the information is acceptable, because Mr. Evard is a staff scientist at an accredited university, Northwestern. On this html document, he has a link to his homepage, which adds to the believability of his experiment.
Resource #3:
http://www.mudconnect.com/
by Andrew Cowan
This site is the most general information site on MUDs that I could find. Instead of focusing on any one element, the author decided to include as much information about the subject as he could. The Mud Connector (as this site is called) provides an extensive list of links to various MUDs, leaving nothing to be desired. This site has a brief introduction to what a MUD is and how it is played, the aforementioned links, a player's directory where one can find another user by handle, and, most importantly, a search engine to MUDs on the internet.
Although this site focuses more on the entertainment aspect of MUDs, I found it to be a valuable resource in finding MUDs according to their individual styles and qualities. I cannot think of a better way to do this than the author has implemented. The currency of the list is sometimes not as good as it could be, but that is less because of the author and more because of the individual MUDs which do not inform him that they are moving or down. I judged the quality of this site primarily on its completeness, rather than its impact on societal values.
Resource #4:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/I-M/is/studwork/groupe/home.html
Authored by a group of students at MSc Electronic Information Management programme at the University of Sheffield
This site is called MUDdom, as it is a valuable guide to MUDs as well as providing some interesting points on the future of MUDs. By the time I came across this site, I was already knowledgeable about the various peculiarities of playing MUD games, and familiar with the different MUD lingo, so I was looking for something else. I wanted something that brought a new element to MUDs.
The reason why this site is worthy to be included herein is its information on 1) the social aspect of MUDs, and 2) the future of MUDs as a form of communication. On the main page is a row of icons, and the last two icons are "Social" and "Future". Within the "Social" icon, the focus is on the MUD as an extension of real life. The main points of this section are that MUDs, just like societies, tend to move toward a structured development of power, where power is in the hands of a select few. Usually those few are experienced games, who are adept at handling the problems that arise in the virtual society on the MUD. This site also discusses the social problems that MUDs cause in some people. Some people find the real world to be harder to deal with than their "virtual" world, "virtual" meaning something beyond real. The aspect of this site I find most interesting, however is its discussion of the future of MUDs. This website has one of the most interesting discourses on the development of a MUD society in cyberspace, including MUDs for companies, MUDs for advertisers, and MUDs for scientists.
The verity of this site is perhaps questionable, because the identities of the authors are difficult to establish, but the overall ease with which the material is read aids the reader in accepting what is being said. I judge this a good site because it goes beyond the other sites in developing how the future looks for MUDs.
Resource #5:
http://snyside.sunnyside.com/dox/soc.html
by Matt Ball
When it comes to the discussion of the sociology of MUDs and other forms of communication on the internet, I have yet to find a better site than the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) website. Their sociology subsite provides the educated reader with a variety of dissertations on the social aspects of being online, written by students and PhD's at accredited universities.
If there is one site that is authoritative concerning the society on the web, it is the CPSR website, because, although it does not have very many essays, the essays that are contained within are written by capable professionals in this area, and are written in such detail that it is impossible not to come across something of interest. The reason why I mentioned that this site is for the educated reader is that the essays are not written in simple language. The difficulty in understanding the writing must increase with the complexity of the author's thought, so these writings are not for the easily bored. This said, I pronounce this the best resource I have found on the MUD participant (or anyone else, for that matter) to inundate himself with cogent thoughts on the social value of the internet.
Hiltz, Starr, and Elaine Kerr. Computer-Mediated Communication System. New York: Academic Press, Inc. 1982.
This work provides a cogent study and explanation of various phenomena which occur in human correspondance via computer network. First, it defines the methodology (how the data were acquired0 and an overview of computer communication networks in general. The second section of the book deals with the system design of various computer networks. Networks vary extensively in simple functions, such as the priority of data functions. Chapters one and two, though, are only to build a base for the material in the rest of the book. Chapter three measures acceptance and usage of the computer communication system. The authors then present the main body of their work, which involves the impacts that computer-mediated communications have on both individuals and groups. I found one of the lists of results particularly interesting:
Behavioral impacts on groups:
After pronouncing the list (the real list in the book is almost twice as long), the authors explain each effect in depth. So much material is presented supporting the arguments presented in the list, that there is no question whether there is a research basis for these theorems. This work is by far the best that I've found in dealing with observations how individuals and groups change when presented with a means of computer communication.
The validity of this work is never really in question. First of all, it is published by a respected publishing company, Academic Press (subsidiary of HBJ), was reviewed by at least an editor, if not countless other reviews (such as peer reviews). Also, Hiltz was a department of sociology faculty member at Upsala College, and Kerr was a New Jersey Institute of Technology faculty member in computerized conferencing and communications. On the whole, this is a very informative, if old, book which provides an analysis of social experiments still valid in today's cyberspace.
Doheny-Farina, Stephen. The Wired Neighborhood. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
In this work, Stephen Doheny-Farina primarily discusses the developments from local to global communities, and how the internet is aiding this transition. The main focus of his argument is, first, that because their communities lack public space (places and times where the community gets together as a whole, people are turning from those local communities to multi-user communities on the internet. Mr. Doheny-Farina then presents the example when he decided to try one of these online meeting places, MediaMOO (purple-crayon.media.mit.edu), a place where professionals interested in the intersection of media and cyberspace could share information within their online community. This experience was, for him, educational, but he repeatedly writes that public places within that MOO did not last. Needless to say, MediaMOO is not currently running, because of the lack of interest, which is explained by the author in this book.
The main feature of this work that attracted me to it is its up-to-date information relative to online computer communications (which is essentially what the MU* family is). Mr. Stephen Doheny-Farina writes with an educated tone and presents his views so they are worthwhile, but also easy to understand.
Bartle, Richard. "Interactive Multi-User Computer Games." Essex: MUSE Ltd. British Telecom, 1990.
In this essay, Dr. Richard Bartle covers MUDs in the most complete way I have seen to date. Everything from the kinds of MUDs available, to the various aspects of every kind of mud, is explained herein. This essay is the perfect source for anyone who would like to learn about MUDs, or any aspect thereof would benefit greatly from this reading. After he has defined what, exactly, constitutes a MUD, he moves on and provides numerous suggestions how the MUDs could be made better. This paper is, though, written in English that is a bit hard to comprehend at times, but the lack of coherence is made up by its completeness. The verity of this paper is not really in question, except for the fact that it was published in 1990, or six years ago. The author is a PhD, and writes so that the reader believes what he is saying.
Curtis, Pavel. "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." S098 Reader (1987).
This article by Mr. Pavel Curtis is one that is a good reader for those who are new to MUDding (newbies), as well as more refined thoughts for those who are interested in studying relationships of people on MUDs. Mr. Curtis, of course, is the designer and creator of the LambdaMOO, an Object-Oriented MUD in northern California. Although he is not an educated sociologist, a fact which he openly admits to, he provides an enlightening discussion of his experiences with the LamdaMOO. Some of his observations include, but are not limited to: MUD conversations in small groups, observations about the MUD community as a whole, and some of the possible future uses for MUDs. For example, he writes that he is currently working on a MUD system for astronomers who will be able, using this system, to not only exchange information, but also give live lectures online with automatic slides (that are sent along with the text) so that the exchange of information becomes much more virtual and involved.
The verity of this report is appreciable. Besides, of course, being in the class reader for S098, this paper is written by the creator and main administrator of one of the most popular MU*'s to date, with the number of users exceeding 700 per week. He writes in lucid, friendly prose, which alleviates understanding what he means.
Vallee, Jacques. Computer Message Systems. New York: Data Communications, 1984.
Although the age of this book (12 years) would infer that the information found therein is outdated, I believe that such is not the case. While the first section of the book discusses various computers with 'huge' memory storage (as much as 5-10 mb!), the second chapter, titled "The Message Environment: The Organization, It's Managment, It's Culture, moves into a discussion of organization structures, which I found informative. The crux of this chapter names four organization structures (the star, the wheel, the matrix, and the hierarchy), and explains these structures in light of interaction and participation patterns. For example, the star is the structure where all communication is from a central authority to a number of nodes which have no real reason to communicate among themselves. An example of this kind of organization is a sales division (with the sales manager at the center). The author then describes how these techniques of organization manage themselves. This relates to MUDs because essentially MUDs operate on similar organization structures, and while today, most MUDs are recreational, I will suggest that the future value of MUDs will lie in the professional direction.
The believability of the work presented is not really in question. Mr. Jacques Vallee holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, and joined Stanford University as manager of information systems in 1969. He served as principal investigator on ARPA and NSF projects developing multi-user message systems. Although some might not see the relevance between this and MUDs, I find this a good explanation of what organizational structures do to a workforce (or for that matter just a crowd of people online).
Final Analysis:
The MUD, although having existed ever since the creation of chat via modem (in one form or another), is still today a very popular form of entertainment and socializing. Ranging in theme anywhere from the most ancient worlds to futuristic science fiction, and even including those where the players are all little furry creatures, these forms of entertainment have become deeply woven into the fabric of cyberspace. Emphasis on studying virtual communities on-line continues to increase as the scientific world receives the validity of these communications between people on the net, because it comes to reason that through any mode of communication, people build relationships with each other. The issue at hand on this page is, essentially: "Is real-time computer mediated communication (in this case the MUD) capable of creating, in a sense, a virtual community?"
Many respected social scientists have expressed their reservations about bestowing upon the virtual world the honorable term "community". They argue, with a degree of weight, one of two points. First they would suggest that because computer mediated communication is so one-dimensional (only experiencing an environment or an individual through text based commands,) the people in the MUDs would have little or no sense of communal values. Second, they would say that few relationships through the internet actually develop because they are not multiplex relationships. Thus, in cyberspace, people are more likely to develop their relationship around one thing they have in common, whereas in a community, there are many multiplex relationships between neighbors, for example, or just the spatial proximity which eases communication and cooperating between those two individuals.
Although many have expressed their views on this subject as was explained in the previous paragraph, I continue to assert that the basis for many on-line relationships is broad enough to term community. In the class reader, professor Wellman states, "CSSNs contain both specialized and multiplex relationships" (Wellman, et. al. 221). He moves on to say that while the structure of each individual mode of computer mediated communication appeals to the specific (like usenet newsgroups, for example,) the broader connection with the poster through his e-mail address is where the strong ties have a possibility to extend into so much more than the unidimentional text chat. If we may use the MUD example; while the hard-core adventurers like the sights and interaction in the MUD itself, more often people are trying to get in touch with other people via this method of communication. Wellman then pronounces a fad which has been developing in the last couple of years on the net: internet romance. He states, "Certainly many accounts report great involvement in on-line relationships...even though [the people involved] never met in person." Numerous times, an internet user (such as a MUD player) has decided to visit his/her strong internet acquaintance. This evidence clarifies my belief in the natural development of computer mediated communication.
The influence that I think MUDs and other virtual worlds on the internet will have is most likely in the area of business or science. Already there are plans for an Astronomer MUD (just for astronomers who want to correspond with their colleagues.) Various companies are also implementing their local versions of MUDs on their LANs (local area networks.) Although there are a couple of problems with this, such as the fact that disagreements take longer to settle online than in person, I think that these types of specific worlds are the future in worldwide communications.