WORKSHOP:
"SERIOUS" USES OF MUDS?
DIAC '94
Amy Bruckman (organizer)
MIT Media Lab. 20 Ames St., MIT E15-315a, Cambridge, MA 02139.
E-mail: asb@media.mit.edu
Jon Callas
World Benders, Inc. PO Box 7415, Nashua, NH 03060.
E-mail: jon@worldbenders.com
Pavel Curtis
Xerox PARC. 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304.
E-mail: pavel@PARC.xerox.com
Remy Evard
Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115.
E-mail: remy@ccs.neu.edu
David Van Buren
MS 100-22, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125
E-mail: dave@ipac.caltech.edu
Mitchel Resnick (moderator)
MIT Media Lab. 20 Ames St., MIT E15-312, Cambridge, MA 02139.
E-mail: mres@media.mit.edu
"SERIOUS" USES OF MUDS?
Are MUDs useful for "serious" purposes? Or are they "just games"? Are people
exploring the "serious" uses of MUDs pioneering the future of cyberspace, or
are they having fun and calling it work? Is there a serious side to the
future of cyberspace? Does cyberspace challenge us to redefine the boundaries
between work and play, fantasy and reality?
The term "MUD" stands for "Multi User Dungeon." The origins of MUD technology
are firmly in the world of games. In the late 1970s, two independent groups
of people decided that text-based adventure games would be more fun if
multiple participants could connect over the new Arpanet. Alan Klietz
developed "Sceptre of Goth," and Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle developed
"MUD1." People from all over the world could join adventuring parties
together, slaying monsters and finding treasure.
In 1989, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University named James Aspnes
decided to see what would happen if the monsters and magic swords were
removed. Since Aspnes simplified existing systems by removing many dungeons
and dragons features, he called his new system "TinyMUD." Authors of the MUD
servers LPMUD and MUSH included programming languages so that users could
extend the world, creating new objects and places.
MUDs have proved to be tremendously popular. As of December 1993, there were
424 publicly announced MUDs based on 23 different kinds of software on the
Internet.
MUD social interaction has a number of interesting qualities.
For example, MUDs:
* Bring together people with common interests from a wide geographic area
* Support both synchronous and asynchronous communication
* Promote casual collaboration
* Use spatial metaphors to create a context for interaction
In the 1990s, a number of research projects have begun to explore the
potential "serious" uses of MUDs. Represented at this workshop are the
founders of five such projects: David Van Buren's AstroVR is designed to be a
professional community for astrophysicists. Amy Bruckman's MediaMOO is
designed to be a professional community for media researchers. Remy Evard's
"InfoPark" is a MUD used to coordinate complex activities among members of a
work group, the system administration team at Northeastern University. Jon
Callas' "Meeting Space" software by his company World Benders is a commercially
available product designed to be used for business communications. Pavel
Curtis' "Jupiter" system is multimedia MUD software currently used to improve
communication among researchers at Xerox PARC.
Are these experiments working? Are people getting "real work" done? This
raises the question, what is "real work" anyway? In this workshop we will try
to view these experiments critically. Other questions to address include:
* Are "serious" MUDs useful?
* Are "serious" MUDs an efficient use of a person's time?
* Should there be a clear boundary between work and play, or a fluid
mixing?
* How will the addition of audio and/or graphics change the "serious"
uses of MUDs?
* Is there an appropriate role for fantasy and humor in a "serious" system?
* Will the "serious" use of MUDs or MUD-like systems become prevalent in the
future?
THE WORKSHOP
We will begin by devoting ten minutes time to each of these projects. The
founder of a project will introduce the project, highlighting its successes
and failures, and raising issues that have emerged.
In the next thirty minutes, the moderator will lead a general discussion,
inviting anyone present to ask questions of specific individuals or the group.
Members of each community will be invited to attend the workshop, and will be
encouraged to comment on their personal experiences.
In the final ten minutes, the moderator will sum up what he feels to be the
important issues that have emerged from this workshop.
WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
AMY BRUCKMAN, MIT MEDIA LAB
Amy Bruckman is a doctoral candidate at the Media Lab at MIT, where she
founded MediaMOO, a text-based virtual reality environment or "MUD" designed
to be a professional community for media researchers. MediaMOO began the
process of becoming a representative democracy in September of 1993. Amy
received her master's degree from the Media Lab's Interactive Cinema Group in
1991. For her dissertation, she is creating a MUD for kids called MOOSE
Crossing. MOOSE Crossing is designed to provide an authentic context for kids
to learn reading, writing, and programming.
JON CALLAS, WORLD BENDERS INC.
Jon Callas is a founder of World Benders, Inc. and the lead architect of their
product, Meeting Space. Meeting Space uses multimedia extensions to MUD-based
technologies for collaborative and concurrent work. His interest in MUDs
stretches back to MUD1, and he wrote a MUD gaming system in 1982. He started
a role-playing MUD in 1990, and has been working on Meeting Space actively
since 1992.
PAVEL CURTIS, XEROX PARC
Pavel Curtis has been a member of the research community at the Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center since 1983, during which time he has worked on
programming environments and on other projects mostly related to the design
and implementation of programming languages. His current work centers on the
Social Virtual Reality project, investigating the implementation,
applications, and implications of systems that allow multiple simultaneous
users to communicate and interact in pseudo-physical surroundings. He is the
founder and chief administrator of LambdaMOO, one of the most popular
recreational social virtual realities on the Internet.
REMY EVARD, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
Remy Evard is the leader of the Experimental Systems Group of the College of
Computer Science at Northeastern University. He has been at Northeastern for a
busy year, during which he changed nearly everything about the network. He
received his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Oregon in 1992,
and graduated from Andrews University with a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer
Science in 1990. He may be reached as "remy@ccs.neu.edu", or as "r'm" on any
of several MUDs.
MITCHEL RESNICK, MIT MEDIA LAB
Mitchel Resnick is an assistant professor at the MIT Media Laboratory. His
research focuses on the development of computational tools that help people
(particularly children) learn new things in new ways. He is co-developer of
LEGO/Logo (a computer-controlled construction kit) and developer of StarLogo
(the first massively parallel programming language intended for nonexpert
programmers). He is currently exploring (with Amy Bruckman) how virtual
communities might change the ways children learn, play, and think about
themselves.
DAVID VAN BUREN, CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, AND JET PROPULSION LAB
David Van Buren is a staff scientist at the Infrared Processing and
Analysis Center at Caltech where his duties are primarily to develop
on-line tools for planning and conducting astronomical observations
from space. He is currently also working on AstroVR, a MUD-based
service that provides access to many astronomical databases in a
collaborative environment. He received his Ph.D. in Astronomy from
the University of California at Berkeley in 1983, has authored a
number of research papers and is the leader of a small research group
on astrophysical hydrodynamics.
REFERENCES
Bruckman, Amy and Mitchel Resnick (1993). "Virtual Professional Community:
Results from the MediaMOO Project." Presented at the Third International
Conference on Cyberspace in Austin, Texas on May 15th, 1993. Available via
anonymous ftp from media.mit.edu in
pub/asb/papers/MediaMOO-3cyberconf.{ps.Z,rtf.Z,txt}
Curtis, Pavel and David Nichols (1993). "MUDs Grow Up: Social Virtual Reality
in the Real World." Presented at the Third International Conference on
Cyberspace in Austin, Texas on May 15th, 1993. Available via anonymous ftp
from parcftp.xerox.com in pub/MOO/papers/MUDsGrowUp. {ps,txt}
Curtis, Pavel (1992). "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual
Realities." Proceedings of DIAC '92. Available via anonymous ftp from
parcftp.xerox.com, pub/MOO/papers/DIAC92.{ps, txt}.
Evard, Remy. "Collaborative Networked Communication: MUDs as Systems Tools."
Proceedings of LISA VII, Monterey, CA, 1993. Available on World Wide Web as
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/USER/remy/documents/cncmast.html, or via anonymous
ftp to ftp.ccs.neu.edu:/pub/people/remy/Mud/cncmast.ps.gz
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