True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier (23 page)

The urge to breach the boundary between the infrastructure level and the percipient level is not confined to the players. The system operators are also subject to this temptation, though their motivation is expediency in accomplishing their legitimate purposes rather than the gaining of illegitimate advantage. However, to the degree to which it is possible, we vigorously endorse the following principle:

Work within the system.

Wherever possible, things that can be done within the framework of the percipient level should be. The result will be smoother operation and greater harmony among the user community. This admonition applies to both the technical and the sociological aspects of the system.

For example, with the players in control, the Habitat world would have grown much larger and more diverse than it did had we ourselves not been a technical bottleneck. All new region generation and feature implementation had to go through us, since there was no means for players to create new parts of the world on their own. Region creation was an esoteric technical specialty, requiring a plethora of obscure tools and a good working knowledge of the treacherous minefield of limitations imposed by the Commodore 64. It also required a lot of behind-the-scenes activity that would probably spoil the illusion for many. One of the goals of a next generation Habitat-like system ought to be to permit far greater creative involvement by the participants without requiring them to ascend to full-fledged guruhood to do so.

A further example of working within the system, this time in a social sense, is illustrated by the following experience. One of the more popular events in Habitat took place late in the test, the brainchild of one of the more active players, who had recently become a QuantumLink employee. It was called the “Dungeon of Death.”

For weeks, ads appeared in Habitat's newspaper,
The Rant,
announcing that that Duo of Dread, DEATH and THE SHADOW, were challenging all comers to enter their lair. Soon, on the outskirts of town, the entrance to a dungeon appeared. Out front was a sign reading, “Danger! Enter at your own risk!” Two system operators were logged in as DEATH and THE SHADOW, armed with specially concocted guns that could kill in one shot, rather than the usual twelve. These two characters roamed the dungeon blasting away at anyone they encountered. They were also equipped with special magic wands that cured any damage done to them by other Avatars, so that they wouldn't themselves be killed. To make things worse, the place was littered with dead ends, pathological connections between regions, and various other nasty and usually fatal features. It was clear that any explorer had better be prepared to “die” several times before mastering the dungeon. The rewards were pretty good: 1,000 Tokens minimum and access to a special Vendroid that sold magic teleportation wands. Furthermore, given clear notice, players took the precaution of emptying their pockets before entering, so that the actual cost of getting “killed” was minimal.

One evening, one of us was given the chance to play the role of DEATH. When we logged in, we found him in one of the dead ends with four other Avatars who were trapped there. We started shooting, as did they. However, the last operator to run DEATH had not bothered to use his special wand to heal any accumulated damage, so the character of DEATH was suddenly and unexpectedly “killed” in the encounter. As we mentioned earlier, when an Avatar is killed, any object in his hands is dropped on the ground. In this case, said object was the special kill-in-one-shot gun, which was immediately picked up by one of the regular players, who then made off with it. This gun was not something that regular players were supposed to have. What should we do?

It turned out that this was not the first time this had happened. During the previous night's mayhem the special gun was similarly absconded with. In this case, the person playing DEATH was one of the regular system operators, who, used to operating the regular Q-Link service, simply ordered the player to give the gun back. The player considered that he had obtained the weapon as part of the normal course of the game and balked at this, whereupon the operator threatened to cancel the player's account and kick him off the system if he did not comply. The player gave the gun back, but was quite upset about the whole affair, as were many of his friends and associates on the system. Their world model had been painfully violated.

When it happened to us, we played the whole incident within the role of DEATH. We sent a message to the Avatar who had the gun, threatening to come and kill her if she didn't give it back. She replied that all she had to do was stay in town and DEATH couldn't touch her (which was true, if we stayed within the system). Okay, we figured, she's smart. We negotiated a deal whereby DEATH would ransom the gun for 10,000 Tokens. An elaborate arrangement was made to meet in the center of town to make the exchange, with a neutral third Avatar acting as an intermediary to insure that neither party cheated. Of course, word got around and by the time of the exchange there were numerous spectators. We played the role of DEATH to the hilt, with lots of hokey melodramatic shtick. The event was a sensation. It was written up in the newspaper the next morning and was the talk of the town for days. The Avatar involved was left with a wonderful story about having cheated DEATH, we got the gun back, and everybody went away happy.

These two very different responses to an ordinary operational problem illustrate our point. Operating within the participants' world model produced a very satisfactory result. On the other hand, what seemed like the expedient course, which involved violating this model, provoked upset and dismay. Working within the system was clearly the preferred course in this case.

Current Status

As of this writing, the North American incarnation of Lucasfilm's Habitat, QuantumLink's “Club Caribe,” has been operating for almost two years. It uses our original Commodore 64 frontend and a somewhat stripped-down version of our original Stratus backend software. Club Caribe now sustains a population of some fifteen thousand participants.

A technically more advanced version, called Fujitsu Habitat, has recently started pilot operations in Japan, available on NIFtyServe. The initial frontend for this version is the new Fujitsu FM Towns personal computer, though ports to several other popular Japanese machines are anticipated. This version of the system benefits from the additional computational power and graphics capabilities of a newer platform, as well as the Towns' built-in CD-ROM for object imagery and sounds. However, the virtuality of the system is essentially unchanged and Fujitsu has not made significant alterations to the user interface or to any of the underlying concepts.

Conclusions

We feel that the defining characteristic of cyberspace is the shared virtual environment, not the display technology used to transport users into that environment. Such a cyberspace is feasible today, if you can live without head-mounted displays and other expensive graphics hardware. Habitat serves as an existence proof of this contention.

It seems clear to us that an object-oriented world model is a key ingredient in any cyberspace implementation. We feel we have gained some insight into the data representation and communications needs of such a system. While we think that it may be premature to start establishing detailed technical standards for these things, it is time to begin the discussions that will lead to such standards in the future.

Finally, we have come to believe that the most significant challenge for cyberspace developers is to come to grips with the problems of world creation and management. While we have only made the first inroads into solving these problems, a few things have become clear. The most important of these is that managing a cyberspace world is not like managing the world inside a single-user application or even a conventional online service. Instead, it is more like governing an actual nation. Cyberspace architects will benefit from study of the principles of sociology and economics as much as from the principles of computer science. We advocate an agoric, evolutionary approach to world building rather than a centralized, socialistic one.

We would like to conclude with a final admonition, one that we hope will not be seen as overly contentious:

Get real.

In a discussion of cyberspace on Usenet, one worker in the field dismissed Club Caribe (Habitat's current incarnation) as uninteresting, with a comment to the effect that most of the activity consisted of inane and trivial conversation. Indeed, the observation was largely correct. However, we hope some of the anecdotes recounted above will give some indication that more is going on than those inane and trivial conversations might indicate. Further, to dismiss the system on this basis is to dismiss the users themselves. They are paying money for this service. For them it is neither inane nor trivial. To insist otherwise presumes that one knows better than they what they should be doing. Such presumption is another manifestation of the omniscient central planner who dictates all that happens, a role that this entire article is trying to deflect you from seeking. In a real system that is going to be used by real people, it is a mistake to assume that the users will all undertake the sorts of noble and sublime activities that you created the system to enable. Most of them will not. Cyberspace may indeed change humanity, but only if it begins with humanity as it really is.

We would like to acknowledge the contributions of some of the many people who helped make Habitat possible. At Lucasfilm, Aric Wilmunder wrote much of the Commodore 64 frontend software; Ron Gilbert, Charlie Kelner, and Noah Falstein also provided invaluable programming and design support; Gary Winnick and Ken Macklin were responsible for all the artwork; Chris Grigg did the sounds; Steve Arnold provided oustanding management support; and George Lucas gave us the freedom to undertake a project that for all he knew was both impossible and insane. At Quantum, Janet Hunter wrote the guts of the backend; Ken Huntsman and Mike Ficco provided valuable assistance with communications protocols.

Kazuo Fukuda and his crew at Fujitsu have carried our vision of Habitat to Japan and made it their own. Phil Salin, our boss at AMiX, let us steal the time to write this paper and even paid for us to attend the First Conference on Cyberspace, even though its immediate relevance to his business may have seemed a bit obscure at the time. We'd also like to thank Michael Benedikt, Don Fussell, and their cohorts for organizing the Conference and thereby prompting us to start putting our thoughts and experiences in writing. Finally, Dean Tribble, Mark S. Miller, and K. Eric Drexler all provided us with invaluable insight as we look forward to where this may lead.

Social Dimensions of Habitat's Citizenry

F. Randall Farmer

I was the Oracle, or system administrator, for Habitat during its shakedown period and paying-pilot test from June 1986 to May 1988. Here are a few observations about the unique social dimensions of online communities. Most of these ideas were composed while I reigned over a small Habitat town named Populopolis, with a population of five hundred citizens. The Oracles of the currently operating Habitats—Club Caribe in the United States, and Fujitsu Habitat in Japan—have contributed much to later refinement of these thoughts.

The Social Commitment Dimension

In Habitat, I observed five distinct patterns of usage and social commitment:

• The Passives

• The Actives

• The Motivators

• The Caretakers

• The Geek Gods

The Passives

The Passive group must be led by the hand to participate. They want effortless entertainment, like a person watching cable TV with a remote control. They constantly flit from place to place, staying in any single spot for only a moment.

Easily seventy-five percent of the players fall into this category, but they account for only perhaps twenty percent of the connect time. They tend to “cross over” into Habitat only to read their mail, collect their daily Tokens, and read the weekly newspaper (and if given the chance to do any of these activities offline, they'll take it). They show up for events intermittently and only when the mood strikes. Even when they do spend more than two minutes in at a time, they tend to hang around as Ghosts and eavesdrop on others' conversations, rather than participating in the activities themselves. Many special events and activities had to target these “on for just a few minutes” people, and encourage their active participation.

The Actives

The Active group is the next largest, and make up the bulk of the paying customer hours. The active players typically participate in two to five hours of activities per week each. They tend to put Habitat first in their online agenda. Immediately upon entering they contact the other players online to find out the hot activity of the day. They always have a copy of the latest paper (and gripe if it comes out late).

The Actives' biggest problem is overspending. They really like Habitat, and lose track of the time they spend in it. This would sometimes lead to Actives canceling their accounts when a huge bill arrived in the mail, a loss for all involved. The watchword for these people is “be thrifty.”

During Fujitsu Habitat's first year of operations the system was only available from 1:00
P.M
. to 11:00
P.M
. local time. The Actives in Japan developed the habit of logging in every day at 9:00, give or take a minute. This way they maximized their social activity (since they knew everyone else was doing the same thing) but minimized their connection costs (since the system shut down at 11:00). Fujitsu Habitat usually reached peak load by 9:15. Over half these players would still be online at closing, when the host was yanked out from under them. Even now, after two years of twenty-four-hour host operations, this peak persists.

The Motivators

The real heroes of Habitat are the Motivators. They understand that Habitat is what the players make of it. They throw parties, start institutions, open businesses, run for office, start moral debates, become outlaws, and win contests. Motivators are worth their weight in gold. One motivator for every fifty Passives and Actives is a wonderful ratio. Online community builders should nurture these people.