From: evard@plover.mcs.anl.gov (Remy Evard) Subject: Re: More on MUDs (Was Re: VR Worlds better than Reality) Date: 5 Aug 91 18:12:51 Organization: Argonne National Labs Howard Rheingold asks: > Can you tell us about LPmud in a way that is consistent with living in > a kind of VR world? And something about the scope of LPmud as a > subculture? Do you think this world will be enthralled with VR > frontends, or is the text format essential to the illusion? A bit of background on this answer - I just finished reading your book "Virtual Reality" a few days ago (assuming there is only one "Howard Rheingold" at the WELL...). It's a very interesting book. Thanks for writing it. (No more critique... :) During some of the time that I read it, I was at Siggraph, and had the unique (for me) experience of meeting the people that I had been reading about... I know you mentioned MUDs in your book so I assume the question was to get some reaction, and perhaps some personal views. Many people on the net will be able to answer better than I, but I thought I'd point out that "teledildonics" is a basic concept in most MUDs, one that was probably thought of within minutes after creating the very first one. Many MUDs or variants of them allow two or more players to have sex. The funny thing about the sex thing is that although the MUD session may be say that a macho viking is going at it with a blonde, vivacious wench from Valhalla, 99% of the time, it's actually two male, teenaged computeroids glued to their monitors... In this sense, MUDs will only work when VR allows you to define your own appearance. This will probably be a normal feature with VR interfaces. Yes, it's a definite subculture. It's the intersection of many other subcultures, mainly gamers and bulletin board freaks. Programmers get into it too, but typically only for the world-building possibilities. These people usually do it for a while, and either get bored, and move on to more interesting things, or write newer, better MUDs. Of course, I'm generalizing, and will probably get flamed by the non-general cases. One other point - and I'm sure it's flammable too - as Johan said, to really get something out of a MUD, you have to spend at least 8 to 10 hours in it. All of the good MUDders that I know spend much much more than that. There's no doubt in my mind that people will end up being *at least* as dedicated to virtual worlds, potentially spending most of their time hooked up. Hell, I know people who spend most of their waking time reading and posting news... The point is that people will get addicted to VR, but people get hooked on things anyway. At least VR is interactive and potentially thought provoking, unlike, say, television... MUDs will be much more interesting when VR becomes publicly available, but as Johan pointed out, VR world builders could learn a lot from MUDders. -r'm Re'my Evard Overworked Grad Student, CS Dept, U of Oregon remy@cs.uoregon.edu Support Staff , MCS Division, Argonne National Labs evard@mcs.anl.gov <------------ Disturbing Environmental Thought of the Day -------------> At the present rate of deforestation, the last tree in the United States will be cut down in 50 years.