[MUD-Dev] intellectual history

[T.L. Taylor]

I've been trying to clarify for myself some links and connections
within the VE dev community as it relates to the current state of
MMOGs and who are developing them. If one of the significant threads
MMOG development draws on is MUDs (here I'd include everything from
personal biographies of the designers to underlying genres and
structures), how does the thread that emerges from more general
social graphical worlds fit in?

What, if at all, are the influences of the following kinds of things
on the state of MMOG development:

  Habitat (and the lessons article for example), WorldsAway, etc.

  ActiveWorlds, Palace, Onlive, Oz, and the range of others we could
  all cite VRML & things like the universal avatar standards
  initiative

  Vinge and Stephenson

  etc

Just to clarify, I am not necessarily talking about explicit
connections (though those are important to trace), but also the
informal influences (what people talk about, design around, aspire
to, are informed by, etc etc). What are the kinds of intellectual
histories we may not always hear about? I don't want to set this
question up in too loaded a way. Some of you strongly connected to
the above thread are tied to the above list and I think many of us
would probably trace significant contributions from this social
graphical world history on MMOGs (even if that sometimes goes
understated in the game scene). I am interested in how much people
identify active links between what sometimes seems to be two dev
communities. Have there been, for example, significant workshops,
conferences, gatherings, projects, articles, etc in which the people
working on avatar worlds from the 1990s were in a lot of dialogue
with the people who've been involved in producing the big commercial
MMOGs?

I remember, for example, being at the Earth to Avatars conference in
1996 or so and the ways issues around graphical worlds were being
discussed. I also have a general sense of what some of the people
from that community (dev wise) have worked on over the years.  But
what, if at all, are the connections over to MMOG development? I
should clarify too - I'm not so much talking here about MMOG broadly
defined. I think the links between the social worlds thread is
fairly clear in regards to spaces like There.com (if you start
looking about people involved on the project for example). But what
about things like UO, EQ, DAoC, CoH, SWG, WoW, etc.?

Any replies, on or off-list, would be most appreciated. I'd be
especially interested in hearing how people trace their own
biographies on these things. I'm just trying to work out in my own
head how I'd tell the story of VE (including MMOG) development and
figure this is as good a place as any to kick the question around
at.

Thanks! :)

	TL
--
___________________________________

T.L. Taylor, Assistant Professor
Center for Computer Games Research
Dept. of Digital Aesthetics and Communication
IT University of Copenhagen
Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark
+45 7218 5035 (tele) / +45 7218 5001 (fax)
tltaylor at itu.dk / http://www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/
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