[MUD-Dev] The Root of the Tree (was NEWS: Why Virtual Worlds ...)

[Koster, Raph]

David Kennerly [mailto:kennerly at finegamedesign.com] wrote:

> Raph Koster wrote:

>> To me, the term "computer mediated community" has a very literal
>> meaning and requires only "communication." Everything else you
>> describe is emergent given the communications medium--we've seen
>> most all of that list show up in IRC, for example.

> I think that community includes trade, whereas communication (by
> itself) does not.  But perhaps I'm injecting too much of my own
> opinions into the common meaning of "community."

Based on the dictionary definitions, I suspect most would agree with
me that you are bringing more to it than the bare necessities,
certainly. I think #1 (as regards locality) and #2 (as regards
shared interests) are the most likely touchstone for us as regards
muds.

  com*mu*ni*ty    ( P )
  n. pl. com*mu*ni*ties

  1.
    a. A group of people living in the same locality and under
    the same government.
    b. The district or locality in which such a group lives.


  2.
    a. A group of people having common interests: the scientific
    community; the international business community.
    b. A group viewed as forming a distinct segment of society: the
    gay community; the community of color.

  3.
    a. Similarity or identity: a community of interests.
    b. Sharing, participation, and fellowship.

  4. Society as a whole; the public.

  5. Ecology.
    a. A group of plants and animals living and interacting with one
    another in a specific region under relatively similar
    environmental conditions.
    b. The region occupied by a group of interacting organisms.

  [Middle English communite, citizenry, from Old French, from Latin
  communitas, fellowship, from communis, common. See common.]

  Source: The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English
  Language, Fourth Edition
  Copyright (c) 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
  Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

>> - a representation of space (the key factor that distinguishes
>> text muds from other hypertextual systems)

> One could order the systems along an axis: a text MUD has more
> representation of space than hypertext does, but a graphical MUD
> (usually) has a more consistent representation of space than a
> text MUD does.  I'm not sure that a text MUD sufficiently
> represents physical space, unless you mean that any undirected
> graph suffices.

No, muds have the peculiarity of being an undirected graph wherein a
spatial metaphor is employed. I grant you that there is no technical
reason why the spatial metaphor is present, in the more robust
systems, but nonetheless, it is present and common to virtually all
mud systems.

Even in more flexible codebases than the Diku family, when exits are
given arbitrary labels, they are almost always coded for users in
terms of spatiality. "Inside the TV" to use a famous LambdaMOO
example, is still recognizably a location.

[snip many good comments on the differences between spaces in text
muds and graphical environments]

> I agree that there should be an organized and navigable place, and
> that space suffices.  But I'm not certain that space is necessary
> for a text MUD.

It is not technically necessary, and yet I would argue that were you
to connect to a text mud that did not employ a spatial metaphor (eg,
the "rooms" were not "places"), you would most likely mistake it for
a gopher server or perhaps browsing under lynx. In other words, the
spatial metaphor is intrinsic to our understanding of what a mud IS
even if the technical capabilities of the code do not enforce the
restriction.

> At least for text, the space is not necessarily analogous to
> physical space. The text MUD is isomorphic to an undirected graph
> whose vertices may possess varying degrees of connectivity.  These
> edges may result in an inconsistent spatial arrangement.  A
> discrete representation of space, as a graph, would likely have a
> consistent arrangement of edges between its vertices, such as in a
> system of coordinates.

I don't make any claims about this space being in any way
Euclidean. The edges between vertices are by convention
bidirectional, but many muds have been made with directed
graphs. Many muds do not fit nicely onto graph paper because there
are no assumptions made about scale.  Nonetheless, the spatial
metaphor is employed.

It is worth pointing out that the most popular family of codebases,
the Diku tree, does in fact enforce the spatial metaphor in its exit
conventions.

It is also worth pointing out that spatiality is an assumed
convention in most of our core terminology:

  - area
  - zone
  - room
  - exit
  - drop
  - get

-Raph
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