The Effect of the MUD and the MOO

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/Up until this class I had never heard about MUD's and MOO's. Interestingly enough (for me at least) this semester has been full of instances where information from one class seems to bleed over (for lack of a better term) into my other classes. We were just discussing paratextuality in my 375 Colonial Encounters class. Such is the way of a good liberal arts education I suppose, but this past week has been different in that I have begun to see terms from this class pervading my "paratextual" life, if you will (my life outside of school). In some spare time this past week I sat down to read a bit of my favorite magazine http://www.computerpoweruser.com/ and noticed that they had a follow up article from their "When Real & Virtual Economies Collide" article about the blurring of the lines between the virtual economy of Second Life and that of the real world. This follow up was actually an interview with Cory Ondrejka, the CTO of Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life. The opening question posed by CPU is whether or not Second Life had its roots in MUD's and MUSH's, to which Cory replies that "none of the founders of Linden Lab were active players in those games" (102, CPU), and goes on to talk about how Second Life developed, etc.

What really interested me about this article was that the reality of the development of discourses surrounding the game space are reminiscent of all ideas surrounding the development of any other tangible artifact. What I mean by this is that when something such as Second Life comes to fruition, it does so partially as a result of the pioneers that came before it. This is not to take away from the ingenuity of the creators of a game like second life, but rather calls into question the idea of historical paratextuality and how far back we can dig to discover the "roots" of that particular area of study. In this case, the influence of the MUD's and MOO's was there, it just wasn't obvious. The idea behind Second Life is pretty well known to those of us in the class, but the basic premise is that you can build a virtual life for youself, complete with a job and your own style of clothing. There are even people who design their own houses and develop their own properties. Within the gamespace of Second Life, the sky is really the limit.

Having some limited experience with the MOO, I can see how a game like Second Life would have borrowed very much so from the "building" structure of the MOO-type gamespace. Coming to this realization makes me wonder how many other aspects of my life are effected by this same concept; how much of our lives are built upon the now-forgotten past, and really, how much does the impact that this past has on our present really matter? I think that in some ways it must be the stance of the Ludologists that the history doesn't matter at all, that it is purely outside of the game itself and therefore doesn't really matter at all. I, however, believe that this aspect of the game, its history, etc. really does matter, that it is worth studying and understanding in order to better immerse ones self deeper into the game and experience it in a whole new way. One more analogy before signing off: anyone can go and see Rome, but it is really the history of the place that gives it most of its meaning. If one views the sights of Rome with an understanding of the history that lies behind each one (ala The Marble Faun), then I would argue that they are experiencing the sights on an unprecedented level of understanding and immersion. The goes hand in hand with the history behind games. A deeper immersion in the game itself is what many (if not all) gamers are looking for, and I believe that understanding the history of the game is one of the best ways to get that much deeper into it.