W On Newsstands Now
Issue 1.03 | Jul/Aug 1993

Page 1 of 8
previous | start | next
Printing? Use this version

The Dragon Ate My Homework

They are online virtual worlds built from words. They are so popular that educators are alarmed. MUDs are the latest rage on college campuses all around the world. Australia has even banned them.

By Kevin Kelly and Howard Rheingold

David spends twelve hours a day as Lotsu, a swashbuckling explorer in a subterranean world of dungeons and elves. He should be in class, but he has succumbed to the latest fad sweeping college campuses: total immersion in multi-user fantasy games.

Multi-user fantasy games are electronic adventures run on a large network, usually fueled by university computers. Players commonly spend four or five hours a day logged onto fantasy worlds based on Star Trek, The Hobbit, or Ann McCaffrey's popular novels about dragon riders and wizards. Students like David use school computers or their own personal machines to log onto the great international computer highway in the sky known as the Internet. Colleges freely issue Internet accounts to any student wanting to do research; by logging on from a dorm in Boston, a student can "drive" to any participating computer in the world, link up free and stay connected for as long as he or she wants.

So what can you do with such virtual travel, besides download papers on genetic algorithms? Well, if 100 other students were to show up in the same virtual "place," you could have a party, devise pranks, do some role-playing, scheme, even build a better world. All at the same time. The only thing you'd need is a place to meet.


MUD is very much like the classic game Zork, as well as any of the hundreds of text-based adventure video games that have flourished on personal computers. The computer screen displays a message such as: "You are in a cold, damp dungeon lit by a flickering torch. There is a skull on the stone floor. One hallway leads to the north, the other south. There is a grate on the grimy floor." Your job is to explore the room and its objects and discover treasures hidden in the labyrinth of other rooms connected to it. You'll probably need to find a small collection of treasures and clues along the way to win the mother-lode booty, a search that may involve breaking a spell, becoming a wizard, slaying a dragon, or escaping from a dungeon.

You explore by typing something like: "Look skull." The computer replies: "The skull says, 'Beware of the rat.' " You type: "Look grate," and the computer replies: "This way lies Death." You type: "Go north," and you exit through the tunnel, on your way into the unknown of the next room.

Since the original MUD was created, about 200 similar games have cropped up around the world, according to Amy Bruckman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher who studies the sociological aspects of MUDs (see Amy Bruckman: A Study in MUDs, below). There may be as many as 200 undocumented MUDs flourishing as well, Bruckman said.

MUD's many improved offspring (known generically as MUDs, Muses, TinyMUDs, and MOOs, depending on the programming language used or the type of game played) are very similar to adventure games on PCs, but more powerful. First, the newer MUDs allow as many as 100 other players to roam the dungeon with you. They could be playing alongside you as jolly partners, or against you as wicked adversaries, or even above you as capricious gods creating miracles and spells. Second, you and the other players can add or modify rooms, as well as invent new and magical objects. You say to yourself, "What this place needs is a tower where a bearded elf can enslave the unwary." So you make one, just by typing in its description. In short, the players invent the world as they live in it. The game is to create a cooler world than you had yesterday.

Social interaction in MUDs happens in a variety of real-time "chat" modes, not the kind of bulletin-board-style communication you find on BBSes or the WELL. MUDs are very much about who is in the same place at the same time, and how they interact. It's more of a hangout than a publication, more like a game board than a bulletin board.

MUDers use "poses" as well as words to convey meaning and action, giving MUDs an odd but definitely useful kind of disembodied body language. Posing (also known as "emoting") can be used in polite, informal conversation or in more structured discourse.



Page 2 >>

Wired Product Reviews



Wired Blogs



Wired Newsletter


XML Wired Top Stories Feed

Get Wired

Wired Blogs

Beyond the Beyond
by Bruce Sterling

Wired 40


Browse Issue Archive

Browse by cover