Jill
Serpentelli
Haverford
College
Differences in communicative structure was studied on three electronic communication systems, two interactive (LambdaMOO and Internet-Relay Chat) and one non-interactive (VaxNotes, an electronic bulletin board), in two different subsettings (on each system, a topic focused on computing and a more general topic) by coding transcripts of conversations according to type of utterance. Significant results were found that the LambdaMOO setting had more greeting statements, statements indicating interaction with system code, statements relating to computing, and a trend toward more affectionate statements. Notes, however, contained the most biographical information statements, more statements coded "other", and a trend toward more humorous statements. The experimenters concluded that this study provides some basic data that can delineate the differences between different systems of electronic communication, and that can be generalized to speculate on some personality correlates of people who use these systems. However, the researchers also concluded that much more work needs to be done on both communicative and personality aspects of electronic communication.
Computers
from their advent have led to the creation of a subculture set apart by the
passion for a certain form of computer activity or interaction. This subculture has existed since the
arrival of computing into today, from the earliest people involved in the most
technological aspects of creating and programming the first computers, to those
who devote careers and hobbies to programming, to those who rely on electronic
mail for conducting business and maintaining friendships, even to those who
devote time and effort in mastering computer games. Any serious computer-based interest affects the way a person thinks
about and interacts with both the machine and the world at
large. With the
emergence of increasingly complex ways in which to interact both with and
through the computer, computer-based social groups and interaction are becoming
a rich medium in which to study the various personality correlates of those who
choose to take part in such groups.
One of the
first such groups formed almost simultaneously with the integration of the
computer into our language and society.
From the beginning of computers to the present, the "hacker"
has been the subject of many an
anecdote in many writings.
Hackers then and now are people who, though often defying the
stereotypes that have been afforded to them, "like nothing better than to
fiddle with computers." (Amy
Goldschlager, personal communication) The hacker develops a certain way of
living and thinking which allows him to devote much of his time to programming
and ever improving his prowess at computing.
Despite the many descriptions of the hacker
"type," there has been little actual research studying the phenomenon
of this culture or the psychological makeup of its members. However, the anecdotal literature is rich
with description. Jennings (1990) in
her writings notes a description of the college hacker coined by Joseph
Weizenbaum, which summarizes well the "hacker persona":
"Bright young men of disheveled appearance,
often with sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles, their
arms tensed and waiting to fire...When not so transfixed, they often sit at
tables strewn with computer printouts over which they pore like possessed
students of a cabalistic text. They work until they drop, twenty, thirty hours
at a time. Their food, if they arrange
it, is brought to them: coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near the computer. But only for a few hours - then back to the
console or the printouts. Their rumpled
clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify
that they are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they
move. They exist, at least when so
engaged, only through and for the computers.
These are computer bums, compulsive programmers. They are an international phenomenon (p. 74)."
To complement this intense, solitary image of the hacker,
Jennings (1990) in her writings also describes the travails of the hacker
culture:
"The college hacker rises like a vampire when
the sun goes down in order to invade the computer room during off-hours,
between 10:00 P.M. and 5:00 A.M, when computer time is cheaper and the computer
works faster because fewer people are using it. His alertness peaks during a cusp of the night when most people
are deeply asleep. The electronic
alchemy makes time fall away...both his diet and his sleeping patterns go to
hell. So does his body. He's sucked into a multihour computer
confrontation that hackers call sportdeath, as he pushes his body to the limits
in his mind duel with the machine (p. 71)."
The world of the hacker involves a near-obsessional relationship
with the world of computer programming, which lends a unique lifestyle and
identity to those who pursue these interests.
Jennings describes a world characterized by
solitude, discipline, and control, attributes which are most
often ingrained, to a greater or lesser extent, in the personalities of those
who affiliate themselves with the hacker culture.
Turkle
(1984), in her writings about the expression of personality attributes through
computers, describes more of the personality aspects that form and are formed
by an association with this kind of computer culture. Issues of separation and
exclusiveness figure prominently in her analysis, especially in her
descriptions of conversations with students involved in the hacker culture of
MIT. She describes the two different
life pathways these students can take:
"One path leads to what many MIT students call
the 'real world.'...Those who take the second path flaunt their rejection of
'normal' society by declaring, 'We are the ugly men. You can keep your hypocrisy, your superficial values, your empty
sense of achievement. We have something
better and purer.' (p.198)"
The hacker culture seems in some senses to comprise
"the elite of the outcast," a group of people who accept their
dissimilarity with much of their social group and reclaim it as a badge of
honor. Turkle suggests that the roots
of
this elitism not only rests in the computer culture itself,
but in the backgrounds of those who are drawn to the computer culture. She cites the experience of another MIT
student:
"Most of these young men grew up as loners. Many of them describe a sense, as long as
they can remember, of a difference between themselves and other people. Finally, they feel that they belong. Alex is very clear about this: "I always
knew I was weird. I mean I didn't know
why I was weird, but you could see from how other kids treated me that I must
have had a big sign on me saying: 'Weird One - Fold, Bend, Spindle, and
Mutilate this One.' (pp. 212-213)"
The hacker culture, thus, was and is in many ways defined as
a group set apart from "them"; both set apart from a group that can
not understand their single-minded focus on computers and pushed into that
single-minded focus by being "different" from their peers even before
the advent of their interest in computers.
Turkle
suggests that the hacker personality is formed partially by the needs for
control, safety, and perfection which are very prevalent for many young people,
especially for the young men who make up much of the hacker population. She explains the obsessional nature of
hacking in these terms:
People are not "addicted" to test piloting
or race-car driving or computer programming.
They are addicted to playing with the issue of control. And playing with it means constantly walking
that narrow line between having it and losing it. (Turkle, 210)
Despite this narrow boundary within the hacker culture of
having control and being out of control, maintenance of that boundary can
provide the hacker with a purity of control not found in other cultures. The computer, despite its inscrutability and
often frustrating linguistic and logical constructions, can be mastered and
understood, unlike social interaction which is a maze of often unpredictable
reactions. This aspect of computing, as
well as the atmosphere of the hacker culture itself, can make computing a safe
haven for the introvert and the perfectionist.
Turkle elaborates:
It (the hacker culture) is a culture of people who
leave each other a great deal of psychological space. It is a culture of people who have grown up thinking of
themselves as different, apart, and who have a commitment to what one hacker
described as "an ethic of total toleration for anything that in the real
world would be considered strange."
Dress, personal appearance, personal hygiene, when you sleep and when
you wake, what you eat, where you live, whom you frequent - there are no
rules. But there is company. (Turkle, 213)
Thus, control, safety, and acceptance become intrinsic
elements of the hacker culture, influencing both the type of members the
culture attracts as well as the way it shapes its members once assimilated into
the culture.
The
movement of the computer culture from the very elite realm of computer
scientists and the hacker community to the more public, easily accessible
realm, made possible by the greater availability of personal
computers and the general progression toward a more
computerized society, made even more apparent the divisions between people who
became assimilated into the computer culture and those who stood outside
it. The increased visibility of
computing in society also increased the non-visibility of those who seemed to
be absent from this new phenomenon. One
of the most apparent and widely-researched differences in computer use was the
gender split in computer interest.
Males have had, and still have, a greater interest in computers and use
them more. This is a phenomenon that
started in the hacker community, according to Turkle:
There are few women hackers. This is a male world. Though hackers would deny that theirs is a
macho culture, the preoccupation with winning and of subjecting oneself to
increasingly violent tests makes their world peculiarly male in spirit, unfriendly
to women (Turkle, 210).
This view of the computer culture as technological,
competitive, and generally unfriendly to women who have been largely viewed as
more oriented towards the humanities and cooperation rather than competition,
as well as this view's
actual effect on women, has been borne out in empirical
study as well as anecdotal literature.
Many
studies have shown that women do tend to avoid the areas of computing which are
the most technologically and programming oriented. Temple and Lips (1989) found that although women in their sample
used computers as much as the men, they took less formal computer science
courses and did not as often choose to major in the computer sciences. The researchers note that "the
difference between women and men in this sample is not that women are avoiding
computers more than men are; rather, it is that women, more than men, are
avoiding the formal pursuit of specialized training and careers in computer
science." (pp. 222-223) This study
further suggests that this difference does not constitute a lack of interest on
the part of women, but rather a male-dominated atmosphere in computer science
that puts women at a disadvantage when trying to enter the field. The researchers assert that according to
their findings, women are not disinterested but are, rather, "scared off
by uncertainty about their own abilities - and uncertainty that is apparently
reinforced by, among other things, the attitudes of their male peers (p. 223).
These attitudes appear to create a vicious circle for women,
in which the computer culture started out male-dominated due to the greater
percentage of men in science and technology in general, and remains
male-dominated through
negative attitudes toward women even though women's own
conception of their interests and abilities now more allows them to pursue an
interest in science and math related fields.
Though
studies constantly reiterate the finding that boys and men are more confident
and involved with computing in general, it has also been consistently found
that these differences lie somewhere else than lack of innate ability on the
part of girls and women. Arndt,
Clevinger, and Meiskey (1985) found no correlation between gender and scores on
a questionnaire measuring attitudes toward computers. Rather, one of the crucial factors affecting attitude toward
computers was amount of prior computer experience. In the same way, Levin and
Gordon's (1989) study showed a much
greater effect of prior computer experience on positive attitudes than of
gender. These researchers also found
that boys have much more extracurricular exposure to computers, and show more
positive attitudes toward computers as an important part of their lives and
future, two findings that mirror the general overall greater effect of prior
experience on attitudes toward computer use.
Studies
such as these seem to indicate several factors that contribute to women's
lesser involvement with computers and the computer culture. First, the programming aspect of computers
put women at an early disadvantage, for women are discouraged from
participating in math/science related activities in general. The idea that computer programming is a
"language", a field in which women are thought to be proficient,
seems to be downplayed in favor of
emphasizing computers as a "science", a male
domain. Second, the competitive and
solitary nature of a programmer's dedication to the computer world -
exemplified in the hacker culture but true to some extent of many
computer-related activities, majors, and careers - is at odds with the reality
of many women's experiences in relating to the world in a more connected,
cooperation-oriented fashion, as has been theorized by feminist writers such as
Gilligan (1982). It appears that this
initial exclusion of women from the computer culture perpetuates itself by
discouraging them from joining the field and tailoring it more to women's ideas
and interests. Thus, the products of
the computer field most often remain those which would appeal to male users (violent
video games are a good example, as noted later), the culture remains one of
competition, and each aspect feeds into one another to further discourage women
from crossing this gender gap.
However,
other research indicates that this gap can be narrowed somewhat in order to
allow women more access to computers.
Though the computer culture may be discouraging women entry, some
studies indicate that the
stereotype of women as less capable are less ingrained than
might be expected. A 1988 study done by Siann, Durndell, Macleod, and Glissov
at the University of Edinburgh compares the reactions of subjects to stories
about one of two computer scientists, "Kevin" or "Karen",
and rate the scientist on a series of personality attributes. The researchers found that contrary to their
hypothesis that a female computer scientist would be stereotyped negatively,
subjects rated her just as positively and even more positively on many
attributes. As the researchers note,
their results suggest that negative stereotypes of women are not the largest
contributing factor to the gender gap in computer science. This suggests that the gender gap is more
often caused by the way computers are experienced and used by men and women
than by outright prejudice on the part of the computer culture against women's
participation in the field. The
implication is that if computers are made more accessible to women's
experience, if the computer culture became less solitary and more affiliative,
women would find easier access to computing in general.
One of the
first widespread computer phenomena, which led to a culture of sorts, was the
release and popularity of video games, both in arcades and in the home. Unlike the mostly underground and highly
technological hacking culture, the culture inspired by this phenomenon prompted
more attention, media and otherwise, and more research on the psychological
effects of these miniature virtual realities.
Studies seemed to reveal the same sorts of
profiles that were revealed in other aspects of computer
use, along such lines as gender, introversion, and nonconformity. McClure and Mears, in a 1984 study, found
that the main subculture of videogaming was made up of people they described as
young, male, bright, and competitive, much like the group that seemed to be
attracted to computers at large (McClure & Mears, 1984). Melancon and Thompson, in addition, found
that arcade-based samples of both genders, though they had sex-role preferences
that were not as clearly defined as the control population, tended toward more
masculine and less feminine sex-role preferences. These researchers also noted that cognitive variables are of
limited use in researching computer game play, and that personality variables
should be considered when researching such phenomena (Melancon & Thompson,
1985). This focus was considered in
McClure and Mears' 1986 research, in which they researched videogames and their
effects on psychopathology. Despite the
many media warnings of the negative effects of video games on young people,
these researchers found no significant correlation between a high rate of play
and conduct disorders or neurotic pathology.
The researchers concluded that "video game playing is chiefly for
casual enjoyment and not a reflection of anti-social trends, thrill-seeking, or
neurotic manifestations." (McClure
& Mears, 1986)
Another
widespread, communicative aspect of computing began to develop soon after the
video game culture became entrenched.
The use of electronic mail systems and electronic bulletin boards became
a major phenomenon across the country, especially in academic settings. The advent of the Internet, a system linking
the individual computer systems of colleges, businesses, and government
organizations across the country and world, expanded the use of electronic
mail, allowing people to send messages and ideas far beyond the realm of those
connected to one specific computer system. Much
research on the effects of electronic mail and computer conferencing on social
interaction has been undertaken by Kiesler (1984) and her colleagues, focusing
on academic settings but also
generalizing to office and other non-academic based computer
communication. Her findings, especially
in academic settings, have fully supported the notion that computer
communication changes, often radically, the way people think and interact. In one 1984 study, she and her colleagues
define the groups of college students who heavily use computer interaction as
an "alien culture" sharing several common traits. Since computers are used for so many
different uses, note the researchers, this culture attracts people with a wide
variety of interests and fields.
Further, people who use electronic communication are afforded relatively
direct access to the computer with personal computer accounts for mail and
other communicative activities.
Finally, the culture tends to be made up mainly of students who are as a
group young, smart, have few responsibilities other than academia and thus have
a flexible time schedule, and have the stamina to stay up late into the
night. Kiesler et al stress the
importance of looking at computing as a culture as well as a tool, implying
that the nature of computing attracts a group of people with certain common
attributes and goals.
Other
researchers have studied and noticed this social aspect of electronic
communication among its users.
Hellerstein, in her 1985 study of a group of users utilizing a bulletin
board at the University of Massachusets, notes that the users do form a
subculture of sorts, in which users greet each other verbally by username, can
be found on the computer system all
hours of the day and night, and never tire of debating issues with one
another. She further notes that such a
bulletin board, as well as electronic mail, can become a springboard for
off-line relationships, both friendly and romantic. Though these relationships
are in themselves fairly normal to college experience, Hellerstein observes,
the members of this subculture are separated from the college mainstream by
their common experience with the
computer. She notes that this
culture can be pervasive in its members' lives to an extreme sense, to the
point where members shirk real-world responsibility in exchange for spending
time on the computer system.
In
analyzing the group of subjects Hellerstein termed "heavy users",
those who used mail and the bulletin board several times a week, she found that
heavy users use mail much more purely for social purposes, to initiate and
continue off-line friendships, and spend less time in phone
or face-to-face communication. Heavy
users also overall reported feeling too dependent on the system, yet preferred
to use it as a means of meeting others, and considered
the membership in the computer-based subculture a positive
and freely-chosen aspect of their involvement with electronic
communication. However, Hellerstein
also noted a common theme in her interviews with the heavy user
group. Some subjects
argued that electronic communication, because of its attractiveness, ease, and
unique capabilities, makes its users very prone to addiction, or to being
controlled by the medium instead of controlling it.
Several
common themes emerge from her findings. First, the computer is not, especially for this subculture, purely
an anti-social medium. Rather, it
becomes a new medium, and for many a better medium, of achieving new social
relationships. Second, it appears that
computer users see themselves as being part of something set apart, something
unique and special. However, they also
acknowledge that this involvement can be overly seductive in its appeal, and
thus become problematic when it becomes intrusive on real-world concerns.
Hellerstein
concludes that "the idea that the computer mediates and facilitates an
individual's social life leads to many interesting questions...are the rules
for communicating over a computer different from those of face-to-face
communication or telephone-mediated communication? When people communicate over a computer is some quality missing,
or does the computer actually add something to the communication process?"
(p. 196). Other researchers have
attempted to answer this question by studying the nature of electronic communication,
as well as the nature of the type of communication the environment
affords. Mihalo (1985) observes that
one of the most salient aspects of electronic communication, bulletin boards in
his study, is the relative anonymity of those communicating with one another:
"In a
face-to-face environment with a stranger, various social conditions inhibit
communication. Such characteristics as
class, race, sex, age and dress can have a dramatic impact on the length and
quality of a face-to-face interaction between strangers. In a computerized bulletin board on the
other hand, these barriers are absent.
Consequently, one must interact solely on the basis of what is written. Without these barriers for interaction,
there is a potential for developing more intimate relationships (p. 201)."
Mihalo argues that computer-based relationships, though they
might seem limited by distance, time, and anonymity, can be very stable
relationships due to the equalizing effect of the computer-based medium. In this viewpoint, the
computer is not the anti-social or competitive medium of the
hacker culture, but rather a medium that can add a new dimension to human
relationships. Mihalo asserts:
"One cannot predict that such relationships will emerge as frequent
complements to other kinds of interactions, such as those in face-to-face
encounters, but if they do, they will temper the bleak image, painted by
futurists, of a completely impersonal society brought about by the computer (p.
205)."
Thus, the computer can be seen as less of a danger to human
interaction than as a compliment to this interaction.
With this
idea in mind, the most obvious question is how, concretely, will computer-based
communication affect communication?
There has been little empirical study of this area, but a 1984 study by
Kiesler et al provides some striking insights.
In their study of electronic communication by both bulletin board-like
and more interactive means versus face-to-face communication, the researchers
found that the computer-mediated groups took longer to reach consensus on
issues, participated more equally in conversations, and were less inhibited in
behaviors like swearing and hostility toward one another. These findings occurred both with adult and
non-student users and with undergraduate student users. Thus, it appears that this type of
less-inhibited activity is not just a function of the relatively young
population that most often uses electronic communication means.
In addition
to more established mediums of computer communication such as electronic mail
and electronic bulletin board, one of the newer forms of computer-based
interaction is the advent of MUD systems.
A MUD, according to a set of 1991 articles distributed through e-mail by
Jennifer Smith, stands for Multiple User Dimension, Multiple User Dungeon, or
Multiple User Dialogue. MUDs, originally created by Lars Penski (Smith, 1991),
are text-based virtual realities in which a created character can interact with
its environment and other players in such a way that it can have conversations,
handle and create objects and places, engage in combat, or any number of other
options. These systems are run on
servers throughout the country and world.
Users employ the use of Telnet, a system that links Internet sites so
that one site can "call" another and log into a system long distance,
to call these MUD systems. New players
are usually allowed to log on as a guest character to explore the system, and
later are allowed to create their own characters and character
descriptions. The Smith articles
describe the MUD process after the player
connects to the system:
"Each user takes control of a computerized
persona/avatar/ incarnation/character.
You can walk around, chat with other characters, explore dangerous
monster-infested areas, solve puzzles, and even create your very own rooms,
descriptions, and items." (Smith, 1991)
The extent
to which the user can employ these items and the way in which s/he can use them
is greatly determined by the type of MUD system that s/he explores. Smith further explains that TinyMUDs tend to
be social MUDs, on which players mainly meet to talk, joke, and have
discussions (Smith, 1991). However, the article goes on to note that LPMUDs
(after Lars Penski the creator of LPMUD), AberMUDs, and DikuMUDs (both named
after universities in Sweden where they were created are usually more oriented
to the role-playing genre (Smith, 1991) .
This is because TinyMUD and derivitaves of this programming code is much
more suited to room-building and description, while LPMUDs, AberMUDs, and
DikuMUDs are programmed such that the system can accommodate the
combat and character statistics needed to moderate an
role-playing atmosphere. These MUDs are very much like computerized
Dungeons-and-Dragons or similar type games, in which a character engages in
combat, finds possessions, and gains
points in order to advance in the game's experiential hierarchy (Smith, 1991).
No matter
what kind of MUD system is being used, a user will have to engage in some
social interaction. Despite the
fantasy-based nature of the environment itself, the social interactions that
take place within it can be
strikingly realistic.
As Smith states, "The jury is still out on whether MUDding is
"just a game" or "an extension of real life with gamelike
qualities", but either way, treat it with care...certainly the
hack-'n-slash stuff is only a game, but the social aspects may well be less so
(Smith)." The author's own personal
experiences with MUD systems have confirmed this analysis. Social interaction on MOO seems far from
taking on a fantasy-like quality; though the environment may be somewhat
fantastical, the conversations and actions that take place are surprisingly
sincere. Players build friendships,
debate issues, and even have romances within the context of these virtual
realities, giving many of the more socially-based MUDs the feeling of an actual
community of people interacting in much the same way a real-life
group would interact.
The
atmosphere of MUDs, especially LPMuds but also to some extent more
socially-oriented MUDs, provides an interesting analogy to an older but no less
complex phenomenon of role-playing games (RPG's), such as the most famous
example, Dungeons and Dragons.
Role-playing games are social, rule-based "adventures" in
which players create characters with certain powers and attributes, which in
turn explore a fantasy realm created by the dungeon (or
game) master within the sphere of the game's rules. Though role-playing games are fantasy-based,
like MUDs they can take very realistic social and psychological
attributes. Very little actual study
has been done on this particular topic, but the anecdotal literature is
revealing.
In his
essay on "Rational Coordination in the Dungeon," Terry Toles-Patkin
(1986) begins by explaining why any game necessarily takes on more
"real-world" connotations:
"Games serve as extensions of social man,
clarifying cultural forms that have become so familiar that their meaning is
lost or obscured as we conduct the routine activities of every day life. Play is unique in that it stands apart from
ordinary life by virtue of its being "not serious" (i.e,
noninstrumental in nature) but at the same time absorbing the player utterly
and intensely. No material interest or
profit accompanies play, which proceeds within its own boundaries of time and
space according to rules fixed in advance.
Play is a fragile activity; at any time reality may rudely reassert its
rights either from outside the game context (through some interruption) or from
within (by means of an offense against the rules or a collapse of the play
spirit) (p. 1)".
Thus, Toles-Patkin suggests that any type of game is
culturally, and one could infer psychologically, revealing, because it
engrosses the player fully in a very intense environment of social rules. Thus, games become both an atmosphere of
freedom from the details of everyday life and an opportunity to look at aspects
of oneself and culture in a purer and more secure context than everyday life.
This aspect
of play is especially salient in an RPG context, according to
Toles-Patkin. He notes the progression
in gaming from a very rule-based approach to the game to a more nuanced
approach:
"New campaigns composed of inexperienced players
tend to mechanically kill monsters in what has been referred to as the
"hack and slash" school of D&D playing, but when they become
experienced in the basics of the game, communications among the players and the
dungeon master take on new importance (p. 7)."
This progression is the crucial aspect of D&D that leads
to its ability to be a domain in which players can express and reconcile a
variety of perspectives, both social and psychological. Toles-Patkin points out that the way in
which the games structure themselves, both in rules and plots, can be socially
revealing, while the dialogue and actions that take place within those
structures can be psychologically revealing:
“...process and content serve very different
functions: process symbolizes social structure while content symbolizes
psychological functioning (p. 8)."
Thus, Toles-Patkin implies that though the social structure
of games like D&D are on the surface "fantastical", the actual
process mirrors social realities that can draw out psychological facets of the
players involved.
In another
anecdotal article, John Eric Holmes (1980) supports and expands this notion of
role-playing games as psychologically revealing:
"The Dungeon Master's world is sort of a giant
Rorschach test...Almost always, the personalities of the characters turn out to
be combinations of people's idealized alter egos and their less-than-ideal
impulses (p. 84)"
The many anecdotes related by Holmes in his essay focus on
his players' enactment of these "less than ideal impulses, and his
interpretations of such role-playing.
He notes the amount of violence that is most often present in D&D
campaigns, an aspect that has often brought criticism of RPGs, and argues that
RPGs are more likely to be an acceptable outlet for aggressive influences
rather, as critics have claimed, encouragement for real life aggression:
"The
level of violence in this make-believe world runs high. There is hardly a game in which the players
do not indulge in murder, arson, torture, rape, or highway robbery... I don't
think this imaginary violence is any more likely to warp the minds of the
participants than is the endless stream of violence in TV, movies, or
literature. Quite possibly it provides
a healthy outlet for those people who are imaginative and inclined to enjoy the
game. In order for the game to provide vicarious release for unacceptable
behavior, the entire group of players must go along with the convention that
game roles are independent of the actual players. One teenager, who rarely complains, objected with untoward
violence when his centaur character was robbed and abused by a character of his
stepbrother's. "It's the
magic-user who did that to you," protested the other lad, "I didn't
do it, he did. He's a thoroughly
despicable person!" (p.
92)."
Holmes presents an interesting dichotomy here between the
realistic and fantastical elements of role-playing games. After first suggesting that the games can
become poignantly realistic in terms of social structure and the extent to
which players use their characters to express aspects of their personalities
and desires, to the extent that the games become violent and gross violation of
real-world social norms, the fantasy-based aspect becomes a protective sphere
that allows safe airing and working out of such impulses.
This aspect of role-playing, that
of using it as a medium to work out and better understand aspects of one's
personality, seems to correlate in Holmes' view with the fact that the most dedicated
of RPGs tend to at least begin their role-playing from their mid-teens to early
adulthood, when they are defining for themselves the salient aspects of their
personalities. Holmes notes that in his
experience, their characters tend to be, for the most part, "role
models" for some type of behavior they would like to be exhibiting but do
not in the real-world realm:
"My
earlier game companions consisted largely of teenage players, and these young
people, caught in the awkward adjustment to the adult world, produced game
characters who were suave, cool, deadly, and superbly adjusted to their world -
samurai, elven magicians, and clever hobbits.
For these characters, there were few problems that could not be quickly
solved by blowing somebody up with a fireball spell or slashing them to pieces
with a shining katana (p. 87)."
From this and the many other anecdotes on RPG's that have
been cited, it becomes obvious that something else besides sheer acting and
rule-following occurs in the context of these games. In the often-confused realm of growing from childhood to
adulthood, young people can find in RPGs an escape from the stress of everyday
complexities which can not be so easily eradicated with a magic spell, and,
more subtly, can also find an outlet for conflicts and questions about
identity, self-control, goal achievement, relationships, intimacy, and many
other aspects of personal growth. It
can be inferred that similar needs are met by a computer-simulated role-playing
environment such as a MUD, since the MUDs involve the same type of character
development and abilities for self-control as the non-computerized role-playing
environment.
Despite the
capacity of role-playing environments to provide a sphere for a particularly
revealing form of self-expression and growth, not all people, even those who
could greatly benefit from such a medium, are interested in such
environments. It appears that the
fantasy realm attracts a certain group of people; how these people are similar
is a yet unanswered question. However, the way in which people react to and use
such mediums should be highly contingent on their reaction to and use of
imagination and fantasy in general. Thus, understanding the personality correlates
of fantasy use could provide some insights into the type of person who tends to
be interested in fantasy-based alternate realities, computer-based or not.
Rhue and
Lynn (1987) cite a 1981 study by Wilson and Barber of personality types they
term "fantasy addicts" or "fantasy-prone personalities".
They found several types of childhood experiences that correlated with
fantasy-proneness; among them were encouragement to
fantasize from adults, early creative situations such as piano or dramatics
classes, and experiences of loneliness, isolation, and need to escape some kind
of aversive stimulus. A
somewhat disturbing attribute that is related to the last
attribute is Wilson and Barber's finding that, at least in the context of their
study, children who had suffered some form of abuse, mostly physical or
emotional, were more likely
to be fantasy-prone adults.
This finding further raises the question of the role of fantasy as a
coping mechanism.
In a study
of college students, Rhue and Lynn (1987) found that subjects, for them a group
of young adult college students, who tested high on several tests related
theoretically to fantasy-proneness also tended to report
childhood experiences of greater loneliness, a marked
enjoyment of imaginary games, and a good amount of time spent playing
alone. Fantasy-prone subjects also
produced MMPI profiles that were suggestive of highly unusual early
experiences, as well as experiences of conflict and
alienation. Several subjects in the
fantasy-prone group reported that they had been physically abused as
children. This inconclusive finding
suggests not that all fantasy-prone individuals have been abused, but that
abuse or negative childhood experiences can contribute to an individual's
tendency toward fantasy proneness.
Thus, Rhue and Lynn's findings agree with the earlier Wilson and Barber
conclusions that there seem to be developmental experiences that correlate with
fantasy-proneness in adults.
Given this
finding, the criticisms that are often leveled at role-playing games - that
they can be an unhealthy escape mechanism, that they can cause their players to
become too emotionally invested in the game/characters, thus putting them at
risk for emotional instability – could seem to be somewhat justified, since it seems
that many of the people who would be naturally attracted to such fantasy realms
may have suffered adverse experiences in the past which did affect or still
affect their emotional health. However,
Rhue and Lynn suggest an alternate viewpoint.
They suggest that fantasy may be an adaptive function for many people,
an escape mechanism that is used so that the real world will not become
unmanageable, a medium used to ultimately function more effectively in the real
world by preserving their emotional health.
They conclude that fantasy-prones may be unusually strong people rather
than weak people who use fantasy as a "crutch", as critics have
suggested:
"Fantasy-prone
college students may represent a particularly well-adapted group of individuals
who manifest a deep and extensive history of fantasy involvements (p.
135)."
Thus, despite the potential for fantasy to become a
pathological escape mechanism, results such as those of Rhue and Lynn suggest
that it can just as easily be a medium through which one can expand or improve
an already rich reality.
Along with
these studies suggesting that a certain type of background affects the extent
to which people use fantasy mediums, another study suggests there is another
crucial factor affecting whether a person is likely to explore
fantasy realms.
Maddi, Hoover, and Kobasa (1983) found that in a group of subjects high
on the scale of customary activation, or arousal level, their level of external
or internal orientation affected how they used this energy. Those subjects with
an external orientation, when placed in a waiting room scattered with various
interesting objects, would tend to touch and examine more objects than subjects
judged to have a more internal orientation.
The experimenters concluded that both types of people both were showing
an imaginatively-directed type of behavior, but that those with an external
orientation have more of a motivation toward curiosity, and those with an
internal orientation, toward creativity.
This finding is especially interesting when related to a MUD or
role-playing game type of environment, in
which both aspects, both an internalization of a fantasy
realm and actually exploring objects and places in this realm, are equally
salient.
Fantasy-proneness
and creativity appear to also be important aspects affecting how people
interact with mediums of computer communication, given the other-worldly nature
that such mediums can take on. However,
the extent to which interactive computer mediums can simulate another reality
in a role-playing/fantasy capacity is very dependent on the medium used. Bulletin boards are already limited in their
capacity to create an environment by the
fact that users do not communicate on these systems in real
time. However, even in real-time
mediums of computer-based communication, the apparent potential of such systems
to generate a "virtual reality" varies greatly. Unlike MUDs, not all
interactive communication systems provide a detailed "environment"
for description and exploration. An
example of such a system is Internet-Relay Chat, or IRC.
IRC is a
network of conversational channels that can be accessed by connecting, through
the Internet, to one of many networked servers across the country and world. The internal structure of IRC bears some
resemblance to a
MUD system; players log in under pseudonyms (though the
/whois command makes it possible for players to easily find out other players
actual email addresses, unlike MUDs which are more anonymous), and
conversations take place on channels that somewhat resemble MUD rooms. However, unlike MUDs, neither characters nor
channels can have descriptions, and there are no interactive objects. The setting is much more like being in a
conferenced phone call than actually being in a room-like environment. IRC also has many more players at one time
than almost any MUD system; hundreds of players could be logged in altogether
at a busy time of the evening; 25 to 40 could occupy a busy channel.
A user of
IRC, once having logged on and joined one of the busier, less structured
channels such as "#hottub", is most likely to find him or herself in
a sea of chaotic statements. A busy
channel may have as many as 25 people all
talking to one another, subjecting the observer to many
conversational threads all converging with one another. Conversation on the busier channels is
almost impossible beyond a superficial level; it would be impossible to
initiate or keep track of a serious conversation with so many people
talking. The effect is as if a crowd of
20 to 30 stood in a room and tried to all have a conversation with one another,
instead of breaking off into smaller groups as would most likely happen
normally in a crowd of this size (Appendix A). Another more realistic
comparison is the phenomenon of listening to a channel on a CB radio, which is
made up of many different people all trying to talk to one another at once (Amy
Goldschlager, personal communication).
On the more
structured channels, such as those discussing religion, computing, or a number
of other topics, tend to have less people; perhaps four to ten a channel. Thus, conversation on these channels tends
to be more focused and coherent.
IRC could,
in many ways, be seen as a forerunner to MUD-type systems, since it does share
the similar characteristics of character names, rooms, and real-time
communication. However, its capacities
to create an imaginative
"virtual" environment is severely limited by its simple structure. It provides little more than a text-based
conference call between various users; its function is only communicative
unlike MUDs which can also become an outlet for character description, room
building, role-playing, and active interaction with the system itself by way of
exploring rooms and manipulating objects.
Quite
recently, a new type of MUD has been implemented which allows an even greater
potential for interaction between the user and the environment, and for greater
development of virtual characters. This
new system has been dubbed MOO, or MUD-Object-Oriented. It is similar in format and function to TinyMUDs,
but allows a greater range of user activity in building, actually creating
interactive objects, and custom-tailoring characters. The first and largest MOO system, until recently the only
fully-functioning public MOO, is the LambdaMOO system, supported by Xerox PARC
and run from Palo Alto, California.
The authors
spoke with the creator and "archwizard" of LambdaMOO, Pavel Curtis,
known as "Haakon" on LambdaMOO.
In a discussion with Curtis which took place on the MOO system, he
described the history of this new type of MUD system. Since MUDs in general and MOO especially are such new mediums,
his insights into the history of LambdaMOO as well as its social interactions
were invaluable in better understanding the medium.
Curtis told
us that the MOO project was started in early 1990 by Stephen F. White, now
known as ghond on the MOO. Curtis
explained that ghond wanted to make this MUD "object oriented, a type of
programming that allows a user to program objects in such a way that one object
can be the child of a generic "parent" object, sharing most or all of
the characteristics of that parent. (Curtis, personal communication).
Curtis
noted that ghond began testing the new MOO, set up on a server at Berkely and
dubbed AlphaMOO, in April of 1990.
Curtis became active in the project at this point, as well as several
other present "wizards" on
LambdaMOO. He took over the project from ghond (who, according to
Curtis, was suffering from "temporary burnout") in September of
1990. Curtis explained to us that
AlphaMOO was the first MOO and did have some public access, but was not widely
used due to little advertisement and little documentation (Curtis, personal
communication).
Curtis went
on to explain how the transition occurred from AlphaMOO to LambdaMOO. After fixing bugs in the system, rewriting
some of the code, adding more programming capability, and writing
documentation, he had created what he
termed "a truly separate entity" from the original AlphaMOO. He dubbed this new system LambdaMOO, after
one of his names on the system and, according to Curtis, "because it's a
key word in some of the other non-mud research that I do." The new system was announced as open for
public access on UseNet (a world-wide bulletin board system) in February of
1991 (Curtis, personal communication).
Curtis
noted that the original response to the announcement was "lukewarm",
but that the number of players increased slowly but steadily. According to him,
growth over the past few months (the conversation took place in November of
1991) had been much more rapid, with more than 25 people logged into MOO at
almost any one time (Curtis, personal communication). The experimenters have seen this trend continue into May 1992,
bringing a constant
stream of new characters, and a list of players that
sometimes numbers as much as 40. The
MOO community, according to Curtis, seems to be made up mainly of undergraduate
students using the MOO as a social and creative outlet (Curtis, personal
communication).
When
questioned by the authors about Xerox's part in supporting the MOO server,
Curtis explained their role:
Xerox pays
me to do more-or-less basic research.
They are not looking for products out of what I do. They trust me to find interesting areas of
research that might perhaps open up new opportunities either for them or for
the CS community at large...Xerox has no commercial interest in LambdaMOO
whatsoever (Curtis, personal communication).
However, Curtis' own paper concerning social interaction on
LambdaMOO indicates that the MOO and similar systems may indeed have other
possibilities for use:
The MUD
model is also being extended in new ways for new audiences. For example, I am currently involved in
adapting the LambdaMOO server for use as an international teleconferencing and
image database system for astronomers.
Our plans include allowing scientists to give online presentation to
their colleagues around the world, complete with 'slides' and illustrations
automatically displayed on the participants' workstations...I expect such
specialized virtual realities to be commonplace, an accepted part of at least
the academic community (Curtis, 16, unpublished paper).
Virtual reality provides a new outlet for communication in a
business and educational realm, providing even more opportunities for nuances
and interaction than bulletin boards and e-mail.
Upon
connecting to LambdaMOO, a user usually finds him or herself in "The Coat
Closet", a room that serves as home base for any character who has not yet
built his or her own home. From here,
the character (by typing "out") can "walk" out into The
Living Room, one of the major centers on MOO for group conversation. By typing direction commands (north, south)
the player can "walk" around the house and explore the many rooms and
underground passageways that are connected to it. In addition, if a player wants to reach a room that is faraway
from where s/he is "standing", or if s/he wants to reach a room which
is not linked to the main structure of the house, the player can
"teleport" by using a @move me command.
The effect
of these many different rooms presents a mental image of the house itself,
sprawling in size with its many underground tunnels and attic hideaways, but
all interconnected in a realistic fashion.
However, the player is also presented with the image of many other rooms
and areas that form "castles in the sky" in the MOO realm, areas that
can only be reached by fantastic means such as "teleporting".
A player in
a large group conversation on LambdaMOO will find several noticeable
differences between the atmosphere of MOO rooms and that of IRC channels. First, conversations take place in actual
"rooms", whose
descriptions often affect a player's mental image of the
atmosphere: the Living Room's description consists of a cosy room with many
chairs and an open fireplace; another room, the "Makeshift Cafe",
another room for large social
gatherings, has in its description many outdoor tables at
which players can "sit"; yet another room, Hacker's Heaven, presents
the image of a busy computer workshop filled with computers, printouts, and
miscellaneous hardware. These
different descriptions affect the player's image about what
types of conversation and behavior is appropriate to these settings (Appendix
B).
Second,
players can create their characters in a much more detailed fashion than on a
medium like IRC (Appendix C). Besides
just being able to write a "character description" outlining what a
character looks like, what
he/she/it is wearing, and any other information that the
player might like to provide, players can also embellish their characters in a
variety of other ways. Characters can
be programmed to have a variety of different persona, "morphing"
between different names, genders, species, and descriptions. Characters can
also have elaborate "entrance" and "exit" messages to
announce when they have teleported into a room; these can range to arriving in
a puff of smoke, dropping in from the ceiling screaming AAAAIIIGH!, flying in
on a magic carpet, or any variation on such ideas.
In
addition, conversation itself can be richer on MOO than on an IRC-like
medium. Besides just being able to type
sentences and have them appear on the screen, characters can choose to us the
"say" command, which places "(character name) says," in
front of what a player types (BethAnne says, "hi there!") or the
"emote" command to place one's name before an action, emotional
gesture, or thought (Sylvan smiles).
These aspects add more nuances to MOO conversation since characters can
express thoughts and emotions in greater detail. Characters can also talk to other characters in a room privately
with the "whisper" command, or talk to characters in another room with
the "page" command.
In a
typical large-group conversation, a user of MOO is bound to find less chaos
than in such a conversation in IRC, partially because the average amount of
people in a large-group conversation on MOO tends to be five to ten
people. Thus,
conversational threads become less fragmented and easier to follow. At the same time, a user may have to keep
track of many conversations at once in such a setting, since two different
threads might be in progress in the room itself, while s/he might be whispering
or paging with yet another person in a private conversation. Thus, though MOO conversation is more
coherent in terms of focus, it still often forces the user to learn how to
divide attention effectively between a few conversations at the same time, a
skill not often practiced in real-life conversation.
The focus
of conversation varies from room to room, though computers and MUDding are
always popular topics, especially in "Hacker's Heaven" which is a
room intended for such discussion. In
addition, characters often interact with MOO objects in the middle of
conversations (sitting on a chair, petting a MOO dog, and so on). Humor is also popular, due to the great
potential of the MOO environment for physical and slapstick humor, such as
"bonking" people with various objects, as well as verbal humor such
as punning and general surreal statements (Appendix D). Finally, the extent to which people can
manipulate their own characters becomes more apparent in conversation; people
are constantly displaying their entrance and exit messages as they enter and
leave a room; players often comment on these messages, on other players'
descriptions, or on what other players might be "carrying" (Appendix
E). Thus,
on MOO there is a much greater sense of an actual
conversation being had by people that a user can "see", in the
boundaries of an actual room and the objects in that room with which the user
can interact. Perhaps because of this,
there is a good amount of discussion about the MOO itself, its different rooms,
its atmosphere, and its characters (Appendix E).
The many
and detailed social interactions that occur on the MOO provide rich
opportunities to further consider and study past findings on a variety of
topics mentioned earlier, such as fantasy, control, role-playing, gender
issues, and the unique psychological makeup of those who use
computer communication in general. The
LambdaMOO population is in itself revealing. According to Curtis, over 90% of
the population are students at colleges and universities, and mostly
undergraduates. From what he has seen,
he believes that no more than half of the population is involved somehow in the
computing field. Rather, he asserts
that the increasing availability of the Internet to more students at many
colleges is bringing a much more diverse population to MOO. He also theorizes that the MOO population is
most often above the norm in both educational background and economic
status. Finally, he claims that the MOO
community seems to be almost 95 percent male (Curtis, 6, unpublished paper).
Several
facets of this analysis present relevant topics for an analysis of the
MOO. First, it is apparent that the
participants in LambdaMOO are people who have affiliated themselves with the
culture of computer communication to some extent, though not necessarily
through a life commitment to the computing field but rather through personal
interests. The LambdaMOO population
thus provides a rich environment for further study of the personality correlates
of computing, studying exactly what makes people of different interests and
disciplines similar enough that they are all attracted to this particular form
of communication.
The gender
discrepancy that Curtis notes is also revealing in that, even with such a
socially-oriented medium as LambdaMOO, the MOO still shows the same kind of
gender bias as other social mediums as bulletin boards. However, the author in her personal
experience has not found this skew to be as salient, and wonders if the
communicative aspect of a medium like MOO might contribute to a breaking down
of the gender gap by attracting more women.
Confirming the existence or nonexistence of such a gender skew, and
finding reasons for its presence or absence is a topic for which MOO presents
yet another environment for further study.
Curtis also
notes that many players seem to play the opposite gender on LambdaMOO, most
often males playing females:
As I've
said before, it appears that the vast majority of players are male and the vast
majority of them choose to present themselves as such. Some males, however, taking advantages of
the relative rarity of females in MUDs, present themselves as female and thus
stand out to some degree. Some use this
distinction just for the fun of deceiving others, some of these going so far as
to try to entice male-presenting characters into sexually-explicit discussion
and interactions. Other males present themselves as female more out of
curiosity than as simply an attempt at deception; to some degree, they are
interested in seeing 'how the other half lives,' what it feels like to be
perceived as female in a community.
From what I can tell, they can be quite successful at this (Curtis,
7, unpublished paper).
Curtis' speculations on the reasons for gender-switching on
LambdaMOO are all intriguing and merit further study. In addition, this author, through conversations and personal
experience on the MOO, has found several other concerns related to
gender-switching on MOO. In a
conversation with another MOO-using student, it was suggested by this student
that people on MOO often gender-switch because they are dealing with issues of
sexuality, perhaps questioning their own sexuality, and find that switching to
the opposite gender in virtual reality is a "safe" way of flirting
with people who are (ostensibly) the same gender as them in real life (Alis
Marks, personal communication). The
author has had one such conversation on LambdaMOO which supported this theory.
In addition, the author's thesis partner has suggested that gender-switching
can serve another social function, that of learning to communicate better with
the opposite gender. A male who is shy
about approaching women, or vice-versa (though this author would speculate that
it is more the former, judging by her personal experience of LambdaMOO), might
feel more comfortable doing so in the guise of being "one of them"
(Amy Goldschlager, personal communication).
Curtis'
remarks on female MOO characters raise more questions about the effects of
gender roles on MOO interactions:
Female-presenting
characters report a number of problems.
Many of them have told me that they are frequently subject both to
harassment and to special treatment.
One reported seeing two newcomers arrive at the same time, one male-presenting
and one female-presenting. The other
players in the room struck up conversations with the putative female and
offered to show her around but completely ignored the putative male, who was
left to his own devices (Curtis, 7, unpublished paper).
This apparent phenomenon of "virtual chivalry" has
been confirmed in the author's own experience as a female character in
LambdaMOO; players, especially male players, tend to be very helpful to female
characters, attempting to gain their friendship and often helping them
extensively with learning the mechanics of the MOO. The author has discovered too the reality of Curtis' reference to
harassment; she has found that male characters tend to flirt aggressively and sometimes
to the point where it ceases to be enjoyable and resembles sexual
harassment. The medium seems to free
players to engage in this behavior with more freedom than they would most
likely do so in real life, often presenting problems for the female characters
who are left with the burden of dealing with the unwanted attention which,
though virtual, can still be disturbing.
Curtis notes that these problems often dissuade characters from
presenting themselves as female, which in itself can lead to problems:
Because of
these problems, many players who are female in real life choose to present
themselves otherwise, choosing either male, neuter, or gender-neutral
pronouns. As one might expect, the
neuter and gender-neutral presenters are still subject to demands that they
divulge their gender. Some players apparently find it difficult to interact
with those whose true gender has been called into question; since this
phenomenon is rarely manifest in real life, they have grown dependent on
'knowing where they stand', on knowing what gender roles are
'appropriate'. Some players (and not
only males) also feel that it is dishonest to present oneself as being a
different gender than in real life; they report feeling 'mad' and 'used' when
they discover the deception (Curtis, 7, unpublished paper).
These concerns about gender roles on LambdaMOO create some
interesting paradoxes that warrant study.
One the one hand, LambdaMOO provides a rich opportunity to question and
experiment with gender roles, both because its structure provides the
opportunity to do so, and because it seems to the author through her own
personal experience that the MOO community is made up of many people who tend
to be liberal as well as "quirky" in the sense that they often do not
accept more "mainstream" societal standards, including those of
gender roles. Thus, LambdaMOO is an
ideal situation in which to question the effects that gender roles have on the
way a person presents him/herself as well as the
way people react to her/him. However, the tendency noted by Curtis of characters' unease with
neutral gender roles, the negative reactions that characters who present
themselves as other than their real-life sex can provoke, and the often more
stereotypical treatment of female-presenting characters by treating them as
more needy of help and sometimes as objects of exploitation, reveals that MOO
can also be an environment for playing out or trying to maintain more
traditional dichotomies of gender. This
suggests as well that even within this non-mainstream computer subculture, members
often have trouble shedding more traditional assumptions about gender. The extent to which this correlates with the
ostensibly male-biased population of MUDs is a question for further study, as
well as the more general question of how widely the members of such a subgroup
like MUDders tend to actively or subconsciously contradict such conceptions.
The extent
to which players descriptions in general, outside of just gender, are a
function of role-playing or are just mirrors of real life is another
fascinating aspect of LambdaMOO. Curtis
notes some of these aspects of characters' descriptions:
A large
proportion of player descriptions contain a degree of wish fulfillment; I
cannot count the number of 'mysterious but unmistakably powerful' figures I
have seen wandering LambdaMOO. Many
players, it seems, are taking advantage of the MUD to emulate various
attractive characters from fiction. Given the detail and content of so many
player descriptions, one might expect to find a significant amount of
role-playing, players who adopt a coherent character with features distinct
from their real-life personalities.
Such is rarely the case, however.
Most players appear to tire of such an effort quickly and simply
interact with the others more-or-less straightforwardly, at least to the degree
one does in normal discourse. One
factor might be that the roles chosen by players are usually taken from a
particular creative work and are not particularly viable as characters outside
of the context of that work; in short; the roles don't make sense in the
context of the MUD (Curtis, 8, unpublished paper).
Given the literature cited earlier on role-playing/fantasy
games, and the extent to which players use their RPG characters to express aspects,
hidden or not, of themselves, the extent to which players role-play on
LambdaMOO or any other MUD system is essential to study in an attempt to
understand this social medium. The
author would hypothesize that mediums like LPMuds would encourage more
role-playing than a medium like LambdaMOO, because the former is closer to a
more typical RPG format. However,
role-playing does occur to a greater or lesser extent in more social MUDs like
LambdaMOO, even if just to the extent that the player has total anonymity and
the opportunity to shape his/her appearance and personality to his/her
liking. Thus, the same issues that
surround RPGs and fantasy in general surround the nature of communication in a
realm such as LambdaMOO. The ways in
which a fantasy-based, fabricated character can be used to express very real
aspects of a person's psychological makeup, as well as becoming an exemplar of
future goals, again become salient issues in such a virtual reality.
As the
author found in her personal experience with LambdaMOO, virtual characters can
also differ from real-life characters with no conscious effort on the part of
the player, simply because the MOO's emphasis on almost purely
linguistic communication forces a type of communication
different from the many non-verbal nuances apparent in real-life
conversation. Thus, the MOO environment
can often force more bluntness in conversation, forcing a player to
communicate less shyly, or with less sarcasm, or without the
verbal defenses that s/he might use in real life. This creates the interesting paradox that the MOO can both force
greater communicative honesty (if the player does indeed
want to be honest) while still creating a virtual
personality that might differ from a player's real life presentation, simply
due to the radically different nature of the two communicative media.
Issues of
communication on LambdaMOO lead to issues of the MOO's potential to create
intimacy between characters. Despite
the "virtual" nature of MUDs, the "reality" element cannot
be ignored in any social
communications. As noted earlier, MUDding can be seen as less of a game
and more of an extension of real life, since, though people play "characters,"
there are still two real people communicating on either side of their
respective computer screens. This often
leads to the formation of very complex social and emotional webs among MOO
players. Friendship and romance do
occur, as well a level of emotional and often physical intimacy bounded only by
its confinement to a linguistic level.
Though these communications are in one sense limited by their linguistic
nature, they can also encourage intimacy by encouraging people to speak
specifically and honestly. Intimacy in
a virtual realm is a subject that has been studied little, but seems to be a
crucial aspect in understanding both electronic communication and fantasy
role-playing in an electronic realm, for it incorporates the same issues of
control, introversion, isolation, gender-roles, and other issues very relevant
to understanding both mediums. However, the exact ways in which these issues
are expressed are still unclear; though many are apparent on an intuitive
level, this is an area that warrants
further study in order to better understand its dynamics.
The
author(s) have found a medium like LambdaMOO to be an ideal environment to
study the structure of conversation on an interactive electronic medium, and
its possible implications in determining the personality correlates shared by
users of such systems. We would
hypothesize that the programming aspects of LambdaMOO incorporate and attract
those types of people who share some of that the personality correlates of the
most general "computer culture" that build up around programming and
computer science fields. Secondly, the
role-playing and fantasy aspects attract those who, as well as having some
level of comfort with computing, also share some of the personality correlates
of people who are attracted to fantasy realms in general as both a means of
enjoyment and of expressing more serious psychological issues. Finally, MUDs add a new and more nuanced
dimension to the area of computer-based communication, affording us a new realm
in which social interaction will take on unique and psychologically revealing
forms.
We would
like to discover what, if any, traits are shared in common by people who use
media like MUDs. However, we also
believe that these characteristics cannot be determined without understanding
exactly how these
media are structured, and how different electronic media
might produce different types of discussion.
In analyzing the different ways in which different electronic
environments affect communication, we can then speculate on exactly what types
of people might be attracted to each of these systems, or to systems like them
in general. We hypothesize that the
issues raised in both the anecdotal literature and the research we have cited
on computing and the computer culture in general, computing and gender,
computer communication, role-playing, and fantasy will figure strongly in this
analysis by providing a basis for such extrapolations.
To get at least a sense of the types of people that tend to be drawn to an interactive electronic communicative medium, we picked the most complex of these media for a pilot study. What follows is a description of this