Social Dimensions of Habitat's Citizenry

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   Social Dimensions of Habitat's
                    Citizenry

                    F. Randall Farmer
                   Electric Communities

 

I was the Oracle, or system administrator for a cyberspace known as
Lucasfilm's Habitat during it's shakedown period and paying-pilot test
from June 1986 to May 1988. Here are a few observations about the
unique social dimensions of online communities. Most of these ideas
were composed while I reigned over a small Habitat town named
Populopolis, with a population of 500 citizens. The Oracles of the
currently operating Habitats: Club Caribe in the United States and
Fujitsu Habitat in Japan, have contributed much to later refinement of
these thoughts.[1]

What is Habitat?

Habitat is "a multi-participant online virtual environment," a
cyberspace. Each participant ("player") uses a home computer as an
intelligent, interactive client, communicating via modem and telephone
over a commercial packet-switching data network to a centralized,
mainframe host system. The client software provides the user
interface, generating a real-time animated display of what is going on
and translating input from the player into messages to the host. The
host maintains the system's world model, enforcing the rules and
keeping each player's client informed about the constantly changing
state of the universe. The various players connect to the host
simultaneously and appear to all be inhabiting the same imaginary
world. Thus the host enables the players to interact not only with the
world but with each other.

The world is built entirely with objects[2]. There are over 200 object
classes, the most notable are Avatars, Ghosts and Regions. Players may
either be represented by an animated graphic figure called an Avatar
or by a static Ghost icon. Avatars can move around, manipulate
objects, talk to each other, send messages to each other via "ESP" and
mail, and make graphic gestures. Ghosts, an observer-only mode, do not
interact with the environment except to transform into Avatars.
Regions hold the players and other objects for one screen of the
world.

The Social Commitment Dimension

The entire point of any thriving community is people. Habitat is an
interactive environment where people define the parameters of their
experience. Thus it is important to understand how people behave in
these cyberspaces. In Habitat I observed five distinct patterns of
usage and social commitment:

     The Passives 
     The Actives 
     The Motivators 
     The Caretakers 
     The Geek Gods 

The Passives

The Passive group must be lead by the hand to participate. They want
effortless entertainment, like a person watching cable-TV with a
remote control. They constantly flit from place to place, staying in
any single spot for only a moment.

Easily 75% of the players fall into this category, but they only
account for perhaps 20% of the connect time. They tend to "cross over"
into Habitat only to read their mail, collect their daily tokens, and
read the weekly newspaper (and if given the chance to do any of these
activities offline, they'll take it). They show up for events
intermittently and only when the mood strikes. Even when they do spend
more than two minutes in at a time, they tend to hang around as Ghosts
and eavesdrop on others' conversations, rather than participating in
the activities themselves. Many special events and activities had to
target these "on for just a few minutes" people, and encourage their
active participation.

The Actives

The Active group is the next largest, and make up the bulk of the
paying customer hours. The active players typically participate in two
to five hours of activities per week each. They tend to put Habitat
first in their online agenda. Immediately upon entering they contact
the other players online to find out the hot activity of the day. They
always have a copy of the latest paper (and gripe if it comes out
late).

The Active's biggest problem is overspending. They really like
Habitat, and lose track of the time they spend in it. This would
sometimes lead to Actives cancelling their accounts when a huge bill
arrived in the mail, a loss for all involved. The watch word for these
people is "be thrifty."

During Fujitsu Habitat's first year of operations the system was only
available from 1:00 PM to 11:00 PM local time. The Actives in Japan
developed the habit of logging in every day at 9:00, give or take a
minute. This way they maximized their social activity (since they knew
everyone else was doing the same thing) but minimized their connection
costs (since the system shut down at 11:00). Fujitsu Habitat usually
reached peak load by 9:15. Over half these players would still be
online at closing, when the host was yanked out from under them. Even
now, after two years of 24 hour host operations, this peak persists.

The Motivators

The real heros of Habitat are the Motivators. They understand that
Habitat is what the players make of it. They throw parties, start
institutions, open businesses, run for office, start moral debates,
become outlaws, and win contests. Motivators are worth their weight in
gold. One motivator for every 50 Passives and Actives is a wonderful
ratio. Online community builders should nurture these people.

In Club Caribe, there is an official title bestowed on several of
those that the operators have recognized as Motivators: "The Guardian
Angels." Each receives a male or female angel head, the honor of
having the initials "GA" attached to their user name, plus access to a
private clubhouse that only they can enter. In return they dedicate
themselves to furthering the enjoyment of all participants. When
Motivators are ready to make their online community "a paying job"
they can become Caretakers.

The Caretakers

Caretakers may already be employees of the host organization, but the
best Caretakers are "mature" Motivators. They help the new players,
mediate interpersonal conflicts, record bugs, suggest improvements,
run their own contests, officiate at functions, and in general keep
things running smoothly. There are far fewer Caretakers than
Motivators. In Populopolis, there were only three of them.

Again, Club Caribe has an official title for these people: "Club
Caribe Guides" or "CCGs." In Club Caribe they wear (ugly) American
Indian heads and often receive free online time for their
participation. They are on strict schedules and can actually be fired.
Caretakers wield a significant amount of political power in
cyberspaces because the other players quickly figure out who actually
"runs" the system. They often develop followers and fans, or enemies
and detractors. In this way, Caretakers often introduce real world
politics and egos into cyberspace, and it can dramatically affect the
community.

The Geek Gods

The original Habitat operator was known as The Oracle. Having the
operator's job is like being a Greek god of ancient mythology. The
Oracle grants wishes and introduces new objects and rules into the
world. With one bold stroke of the keyboard, the operator can change
the physics of the universe, create or eliminate bank accounts, entire
city blocks, even the family business. This power carries a heavy
burden of responsibility, since any externally imposed change to the
cyberspace world can have subtle (and not so subtle) side effects.
Think about this: would you be mad at "God" if one day suddenly
electricity didn't work anymore? Something like this happened in
Habitat. We had Magic Wand objects, and an Oracle-in-training made
dozens of them available, for a stiff price: five days' income. This
was a problem because the wands never failed, and never ran out of
charges. I had always intended to set the magic charges, so one night,
during host maintenance, I quietly gave each wand a random number of
remaining charges. The next day, when the wands started to discharge
fully, the players became furious! Some of them threatened to leave
Habitat forever. Simple bug "fixes" can sometimes be interpreted as
removing a much loved "feature." Often you can't tell in advance what
will happen. Players should be an integral part of cyberspace rule and
object changes.[3]

Geek Gods need to be knowledgeable about fantasy role playing,
telecommunications networks, political science and economics, among
other things. They must understand both the need for self-consistency
in a fictional world and the methods used to achieve it. They need to
understand something about the real world, since that is where the
players come from. They need to know the players themselves, since
they are the ones who will make or break the system. Most importantly,
they must know when not to wield their power. 

Variations on the theme

The developers of Fujitsu Habitat decided to have their Geek Gods
operate behind the scenes and not interact directly with the players.
All online support personnel operate at the Caretaker level of
commitment and power. This separation of powers is more politically
stable and allows the programmers the luxury of remaining a
comfortable distance from the daily social problems.

The path of Ascension

      Passive -> Active -> Motivator -> Caretaker -> Geek God

Encourage everyone to move one role to the right, and the result will
be a living, self-sustaining and thriving community where new members
can always feel encouraged to become vital citizens.

 
The Dimension of Being and Nothingness

To consider fully the social dimensions of a cyberspace citizen we
need to consider how virtual being compares with a person's existence
in the real world.

                                        Connectivity 
                                Online                 Offline 

  Level of       Active     (I) Avatar, Account      (II) Agent, 
  Participation             Account or Handle        Script of 
                                                     Robot
                 Passive    (III) Observer,          (IV) Dead, 
                            Ghost or Lurker          Inactive or 
                                                     Sleeping 


This chart shows two dimensions: Level of Participation and
Connectivity. The four quadrants are labeled with the commonly known
names of these states on various online systems.

Quadrant I on most systems represents the "user account," "handle," or
"Avatar." This is the most familiar state of being for a person when
in a cyberspace. You are logged in, doing things in the universe, even
if only sending mail or copying files. You are interacting with the
system, and others in the system can interact with you.

Quadrant IV is the next most familiar state: logged out. Most
cyberspaces understand this state as "inactive," "dead," "in the
Void," or "sleeping." Simply put, nothing happens to or for you while
you are not present.

These two quadrants map nicely onto the human experience as
awake/conscious and asleep/unconscious. Most cyberspace implementors
handle these cases adequately in their implementations. However,
cyberspace systems designers often overlook the other two quadrants. 

Quadrant II describes robots and agents. These are entities that act
on your behalf when you are away. The MUDs and MOOs[4] are leading the
experimentation in this area of cyberspace consciousness. Of course,
this raises some questions about responsibility for actions. What
happens when a robot, acting in your name, does some cyberspace
property damage? Or steals? Or worse yet, "harms" someone? Also
covered by this quadrant is the concept of "autocollusion," creating
extra, fictional personae for the sole purpose of collecting their
resources and handing them over to your primary persona.

Quadrant III describes what is by far the most overlooked state of a
cyberspace inhabitant's makeup, the "ghost," or "lurker" state of
existence. In this state you are an observer only, hiding just out of
sight, and would prefer that others not bother you or even know that
you are watching. In Habitat you could enter the Ghost state
instantaneously: your body would disappear from the screen, to be
replaced by a single small icon in the corner of the screen
representing you and any other people who were also watching as
Ghosts. These people can usually be found hanging around in any large,
public access cyberspace.

Online personae and real world personality

Cyberspaces, because they are anonymous, present people with a unique
opportunity for people to present themselves in any matter they
desire. Shy people can experiment with being bold or they can present
themselves as a member of the opposite sex. How often are these
alternate personalities accepted or rejected? How often are people
'just being themselves' in these online worlds? Why do people do it?
These questions personally intrigue me and require further study, but
I've collected some interesting data:

In December of 1990, I met face to face with a group of fifty Fujitsu
Habitat citizens about their Avatars. During one part of the
discussion I asked:

1) Do you think of your Avatar as a separate being, or is it a
representation of you?

Half said they thought of their Avatar as a separate being. The others
said it was their 'self'.

2) Do you act like your usual self when you are in Habitat, or in ways
different from real life?

Again the results were fifty-fifty. This was no surprise to me, as I
thought I had simply rephrased and inverted the first question. Then I
realized that several that had selected 'self' for the first question
had not selected 'self' for the second question! The actual
distribution was as follows:

                          My Avatar is a representation of.. 
                          myself    another being 
 In Habitat I act...    
 like myself               26%        24% 
 unlike myself             25%        25% 


Only a minority (26%) prefers to project themselves fully into the
online universe. Clearly, cyberspace citizens feel empowered by the
technology to experiment with social interactions They feel safe
enough to try on a different skin. Given that the current players are
mostly affluent, male, and computer savvy, will these statistics
remain meaningful when people with other interests arrive?

Other Social Dimensions

Other social dimensions of cyberspace citizenry that should be
considered include sense of place[5], point of view[6], government,
economics, politics, religion, crime, punishment, inclusion,
ostracism, and spontaneous social organization[7]. These are the
issues that Habitat's citizenry care about.

To end, it seems that "people are people," even in cyberspace. But
these online communities, with the individualism and anonymity they
provide, produce a unique culture, combining fictional constructs and
personalities with people and their real world expectations. 

[1] I am indebted to Oracles Layza, Tsuo and Z'd from Fujitsu Habitat,
along with GGCs JZer0, Becky, GaryM, and GA Thistle from Club Caribe
for their observations of, and/or participation in these communities. 

[2] A detailed review of Habitat design goals, successes, and failures
appears in The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat by Morningstar and
Farmer, published in Cyberspace: First Steps, MIT Press 1991, Michael
Benedikt, ed. 

[3] More stories about operational subtleties appear in "The Lessons
of Lucasfilm's Habitat." op cit

[4] MUD stands for "Multi-User Dimension." MOO is
"MUD-Object-Oriented." They are text-only, player extensible
cyberspaces. Dozens are available world-wide via the Internet. I
suggest LambdaMOO, run as a research project in secure programming
languages by Pavel Curtis at Xerox PARC. Telnet to
lambda.parc.xerox.com, port 8888.

[5] No Sense of Place, The Impact of Electronic Media on Social
Behavior, by Joshua Meyrowitz, Oxford Universiaty Press 1986.
Recommended reading.

[6] Detailed in "Cyberspace Colonies", by Farmer & Morningstar,
presented at the Second International Conference on Cyberspace.

[7] Stories about these are in "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat."
op cit

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...