In Sherry Turkle’s “Who Am We” she explores the world of MUDs or Multi-User Dungeons. It started out in the 1970s with the beginning of “Dungeons and Dragons”. Turkle says it started out as a virtual space which later became a place for many people to connect online. She talks about this new world online and says,
“In the MUDs, virtual characters converse with each other, exchange gestures, express emotions, win and lose virtual money, and rise and fall in social status. A virtual character can also die. Some die of “natural” causes (a player decides to close them down), or they can have their virtual lives snuffed out. This is all achieved through writing, and this in a culture that had apparently fallen asleep in the audiovisual arms of television. Yet this new writing is a kind of hybrid: speech momentarily frozen into artifact, but curiously ephemeral artifact. In this new writing, unless it is printed out on paper, a screenful of flickers soon replaces the previous screen”
In today’s world with all of the technology, MUDs come in many forms. Many people have heard of Halo, Fable, and Final Fantasy. In these games, users can connect online to challenge each other to fights and depending on the game it goes to a specific time period. Fable sets itself up to be in the Medieval period, and Halo is sort of futuristic.
I have played Final Fantasy XI online before and I was able to creat my own character. I loved it because I was able to become a brave mythical creature that slayed ugly beasts and as I did, I gained strength and levels. In order to play the game, users have to know how to “talk” on the game which is usually done by putting a / (back slash) and then a word. For example, if I wanted to wave to one of my friends, I would type /wave and then my person would wave. It requires a lot of patience to learn all the language and tricks, but it is a fun game.
Turkle talks about different users in her blog, and she talks about a guy who says,
“Doug is a Midwestern college junior. He plays four characters distributed across three different MUDs. One is a seductive woman. One is a macho, cowboy type whose self-description stresses that he is a “Marlboros rolled in the T-shirt sleeve kind of guy.” The third is a rabbit of unspecified gender who wanders its MUD introducing people to each other, a character he calls Carrot. Doug says, “Carrot is so low key that people let it be around while they are having private conversations. So I think of Carrot as my passive, voyeuristic character.” Doug’s fourth character is one that he plays only on a MUD in which all the characters are furry animals. “I’d rather not even talk about that character because my anonymity there is very important to me,” Doug says. “Let’s just say that on FurryMUDs I feel like a sexual tourist.” Doug talks about playing his characters in windows and says that using windows has made it possible for him to “turn pieces of my mind on and off.”
I liked being able to portray myself as a small mythical creature who was strong and could hold her own in the game.
So, I guess my question for anyone out there is… If you could create a character online, to play in a game, what would you want to portray yourself as through the character? Would it be just like you or would you use a different persona completely opposite of you?
If I could make another one, I would make a fairy like creature who looks innocent but is very strong and very intimidating. I would make her seductive but fierce. This is of course, nothing like me but I think it would be fun.
~Meg
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