>Are there any papers, reports that document the practice of using several
>MUDs (MOOs etc) or several characters on the same MUD simultaneously?
I don't know of any papers that are specifically about this, or even
mention it. Perhaps it's close to Sherry Turkle's ideas about people
operating in 'multiple windows'. We multi-task like this when using
computers in general: perhaps word processing two documents at the same
time, or switching between two applications, but I think it's even more
important when the environment that you're operating in isn't only
controlled by you, and can change without your intervention.
>How easy do people find it to switch their attention between characters?
In my experience, it's surprisingly easy. And this can even work when that
characters that you're switching between are completely different.
One thing which may help (and not scale to higher-bandwidth communication)
is that when you switch to another window, you have a record of the
previous conversation/activity within it, which can be quickly scanned,
bringing you back up to speed relatively quickly. I imagine that, with
audio communication, people might find the high-speed switching between
windows much harder (at least if they were engaging in conversation in
both).
>Is this a widespread practice? Are there any other reasons why people might
>use MUDs in this way that I haven't mentioned?
This is very widespread, particularly among the more experienced MOOers, so
long as they have a client that enables them to do so (and the know-how of
how to get the client to do it).
Apart from reasons of keeping up to date, and lag, I'll try just to list
the reasons I can think of:
- Wanting to be 'seen to be around': especially as a wiz, if you're not
connected to a MOO or MUD, you're not involved in it, and people can and
will hold that against you. Of course, they also hold against you being
idle for hours on end, but if you're always aware on a particular MOO, then
you can screen your pages and answer those cries for help that you feel
like. This is also related to another reason: increasing you're feeling of
popularity. Connecting to fifteen MOOs and getting 'hello' pages in each
one is much more life-affirming than connecting to only one. And, since
lots of 'hard MOOers' MOO connect to several MOOs (and probably the same
ones), you get a feeling of community when you multi-MOO and see lots of
the same names around.
- As Anna Cicognani said, taking on different roles: these are both roles
that you play and ones that are given to you by status. So, for example, I
might be connected as both a wiz and a normal player to the same MOO, which
enables me to interact with people on different levels, and separate the
different activities that are involved.
- Anonymity: some people connect to the same MOO as, say, a guest, or a
secret character, so that they can spy on someone they know as their 'real
self'. Particularly useful if you're a wiz and you want to gather people's
real impressions of the MOO you're running, and what the wizen are like ;)
- Wanting to interact with people in different ways: for example, I might
be connected to two MOOs, talking to a group of people in one, and having a
private conversation with someone in the second. The person in the second
might even be part of the group of people I'm talking to in the first:
although you have private paging within MOOs, this disrupts the flow of the
conversation, and it can also be embarassing if you 'mispage' and say
something private outloud when you didn't mean to. Being able to go off to
a separate MOO to talk to them enables you to be secure (unless you type in
the wrong window, which also happens ;). It also somehow separates the
activity: the two conversations are going on in different 'windows', and
it's easier (in my experience) to jump between them (including taking on
the, maybe different, role that you're playing in the different
conversations) when they aren't occuring in the same MOO.
- Engaging in different activities: with the more unsophisticated MOO
clients, you can't program using a local editor, and have to use the in-MOO
line editor instead. If you're using that editor, then you can't have a
conversation, so sometimes it's useful to say to someone 'I'm programming
here at the moment, but shall we go to such-and-such MOO and talk there?'.
- When engaging in cross-world activity: obviously, if you need to be
doing something in two MOOs in order to do something, you have to
multi-MOO. An example is non-automated porting of objects, where you have
to dump the code for an object in one MOO and then program it in the
second. There is also the situation where something isn't working on a
MOO, and you want to check a program, or some configuration options on
another to compare them, which might help you to debug. In other words,
you use the second MOO as a kind of test environment, before engaging in
(possibly high-cost) activity in the first.
That's all that come to mind for the minute. Hope it's of use.
Jeni
Jeni Tennison
Artificial Intelligence Research Group
Department of Psychology
University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham
NG7 2RD
UK
tel: +44 (0) 115 9515151 x8352
fax: +44 (0) 115 951 5361
url: http://www.psyc.nott.ac.uk/aigr/people/jft.html
moo: Jeni@{MOOtiny, MediaMOO, JHM, WWW5 discussion forum}