Sunday, October 31, 2004

I Couldn’t Pick up the Damn Coffin or Get out of the Damn Closet!

First of all, the other environments that we have studied thus far have not had the synchronous presence of other individuals in virtual space. This week working with MUDs & MOOs has been an incredible experience because it was so different. Most of the interaction we have experienced for this course has been asynchronous. Nevertheless, we have still engaged each other and strangers in our dialog. Having strangers respond to my posts has been very surprising.

However, having people respond to me the minute I entered a virtual room was shocking! To start, I’ll talk about my experience in LambdaMOO. When I signed in there were 83 people in the game. As you know, you start out in a closet filled with people. I was stunned that I was engaging with others as I was trying to fumble my way out of the closet. I found this interaction to be very uncomfortable. While the people that I met were kind and tried to help me understand what to do, I was doing so much wrong that they had to constantly coach me. When I told them that I was new to this, they said that they could tell. It all seemed so incredibly surreal, and I felt so vulnerable. Then I remembered Bartle’s paper on social interaction in MUDs and wondered what category I would be labeled as. I all of a sudden envisioned that those who were speaking to me in the closet could be “killers” who knew that I was at best a “socialite” and vulnerable to attack. I worked harder to get out of the closet, while those who watched kept telling me that I couldn’t complete the actions that I was trying to perform. In addition, I kept putting emote signs before every comment, which was irritating to others. This is an example of how the use of speech modalities are important and need to be adhered to for the novice MUDder/MOOer. I had to laugh, this was a hilarious experience. I logged out and tried again a couple of hours later. This time I remembered the directions better and immediately left the closet and was able to go from room to room. While there were others in the rooms, I tried to focus on what I was trying to do rather than socialize with others. I have to say that I was not able to create any artifacts. I tried everything that I could think of, but was not successful. I found it frustrating that I could not see what I was typing and did not have a log of things I have tried before. Anyway, I will try it again later, but for now, I did not create artificacts, but did watch an exchange between “assman” and “cookatu” regarding an ancient suit of armor. They ignored me and were having a debate on racism. I am not sure if the artifact brought on their interaction, but they were well engaged with what they were doing.

My experience with Zork was different from LamdaMOO because I was free to investigate the terrain and figure out the game without the presence of any other players. Also, I had a guide sheet to help me figure out my objectives from room to room. I still got lost and wasn’t able to always complete the task that was scripted, like pick up the coffin. But, I still had fun trying to figure things out. It was interesting again, that the rules for speech modalities are important and that your success will be limited unless you comply. I had to laugh because I continued to try to pick up the solid-gold coffin until the program told me that it was obvious that I was not having success, and that unless I knew something that it didn’t, I should discontinue with my methods. It was very funny and I felt like I was interacting with an actual person. Maybe I was, I did not see that presence of any others in Zork but myself.

In summary, I loved this experience and found myself laughing at Bartle’s article regarding the categories of characters in MUDs and MOOs (killer, explorer, socialite and achiever) and realized that these categories exist in real life and that each has a synergistic relationship. It would be nice if we had a moderator in real life that kept the balance of societal interactions at optimum. Hmmmm

1 Comments:

Blogger CHIA Howie (Xie Aowei) 谢 傲 威 said...

>It would be nice if we had a moderator in real life that >kept the balance of societal interactions at optimum.

yes, that would be nice. How about 'judge judy'? :)

[Marion commented]...I'm the last one alive, and I know that my whole team is riding along with me, watching my every move, and chatting to each other about my techniques, my heart races and there is a lot of tension...

in my slightly younger days, i was a CS addict. i would play after work, or even during lunch break. Many times i felt the tension mentioned by marion above. Its so true that bots (no matter how smart they become) pose a different challenge compared to human players. playing with people i never met before, we worked great as a team - sacrificing ourselves in a rush tactic so our team can win. Giving up ourselves for the greater good of the team. obviously i ain't a 'camper'.

interesting comments...

cheers,
BH

4:57 PM  

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