This article mentions an interesting insight about MUD addiction:
that it is truly a different sort of thing from a video game addiction.
MUD addiction is really an addiction to human social contact,
even though it appears to cause someone to withdraw from society.
This makes it a particularly unusual and fascinating condition.
Of particular note is that the author calls attention to the
human need for a sense of mastery. MUDding is a context
in which people can achieve and find comfort in mastery,
just as i have personally experienced (and rely on) comfort
from the mastery of playing the piano or programming a computer.
The author is right to pay special notice to the unique power
of drama in a MUD. Unlike really any other CMC medium,
a MUD establishes and maintains the convention that description
equals existence, and words equal behaviour. The boundary into
"reality" at the MUD level is extremely thin; level-crossing
is easy (i'm reminded of Magritte's famous painting of the pipe).
The boundary between feelings about the real world and
feelings about fictional characters is even thinner.
The experience of having one's character die in a MUD might be
the closest thing to death that a real person could experience,
in terms of the psychological effect.
WEAKNESSES
At one point the chapter draws a contrast between the "addict"
and the "virtuoso", in describing the "eighty-hour-a-week MUDder".
I don't feel that this conflict is really supported by the rest
of what the author is saying. If the form of addiction is truly
generated by appealing to the desire for mastery, then every
addict is in some sense a virtuoso; it makes more sense to me
to step back and ask in a larger societal context whether such
behaviour is healthy, appropriate, etc. rather than only looking
at how skilled a person is in the MUD.
When discussing impersonation and gender play, the author
describes them only as problems -- perhaps contemptible
deceptions. I think it would have been worth discussing
the point of view that a constructed personality can have its
own value, as well -- and, in the limit, as much value as a
real one (cf. the Turing test). One could imagine MUD-like
environments eventually becoming more and more real until
the fictional characters living in them were indistinguishable
from real people, and then it is interesting to ask: even if
multiple such characters are operated by a single real person,
are they necessarily less existent as personalities?
Perhaps the personality one exhibits in "real life" would
be just one of the many personalities one chooses to exhibit.
Despite many of the predictions mentioned in the paper,
it would seem that MUDs and their multimedia-augmented
counterparts have not risen to general popularity and
acceptance today. It would be instructive to try to figure
out why. I don't have a very good answer, as i know what
it once felt like to be absorbed in a MUD, and understood
how compelling that was. Perhaps it has something to do
with the way MUDs require so much attention: instant
messaging requires only a little attention,
permits easy multitasking, and is extremely popular;
MUDs require most of all of one's attention.
zesty
ca)