True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier (24 page)

In Club Caribe, there is an official title bestowed on several of those that the operators have recognized as Motivators: “The Guardian Angels.” Each receives a male or female angel head, the honor of having the initials “GA” attached to their user name, plus access to a private clubhouse that only they can enter. In return they dedicate themselves to furthering the enjoyment of all participants. When Motivators are ready to make their online community “a paying job,” they can become Caretakers.

The Caretakers

Caretakers may already be employees of the host organization, but the best Caretakers are “mature” Motivators. They help the new players, mediate interpersonal conflicts, record bugs, suggest improvements, run their own contests, officiate at functions, and in general keep things running smoothly. There are far fewer Caretakers than Motivators. In Populopolis, there were only three of them.

Again, Club Caribe has an official title for these people: “Club Caribe Guides” or “CCGs.” In Club Caribe they wear (ugly) American Indian heads and often receive free online time for their participation. They are on strict schedules and can actually be fired. Caretakers wield a significant amount of political power in cyberspace because the other players quickly figure out who actually “runs” the system. They often develop followers and fans, or enemies and detractors. In this way, Caretakers often introduce real-world politics and egos into cyberspace, and it can dramatically affect the community.

The Geek Gods

The original Habitat operator was known as the Oracle. Having the operator's job is like being a Greek god of ancient mythology. The Oracle grants wishes and introduces new objects and rules into the world. With one bold stroke of the keyboard, the operator can change the physics of the universe, create or eliminate bank accounts, entire city blocks, even the family business. This power carries a heavy burden of responsibility, since any externally imposed change to the cyberspace world can have subtle (and not so subtle) side effects. Think about this: Would you be mad at “God” if one day suddenly electricity didn't work anymore? Something like this happened in Habitat. We had Magic Wand objects, and an Oracle-in-training made dozens of them available, for a stiff price: five days' income. This was a problem because the wands never failed, and never ran out of charges. I had always intended to limit the magic charges, so one night, during host maintenance, I quietly gave each wand a random number of remaining charges. The next day, when the wands started to discharge fully, the players became furious! Some of them threatened to leave Habitat forever. Simple bug “fixes” can sometimes be interpreted as removing a much-loved “feature.” Often you can't tell in advance what will happen. Players should be an integral part of cyberspace rule and object changes.

Geek Gods need to be knowledgeable about fantasy role-playing, telecommunications networks, political science, and economics, among other things. They must understand both the need for self-consistency in a fictional world and the methods used to achieve it. They need to understand something about the real world, since that is where the players come from. They need to know the players themselves, since they are the ones who will make or break the system. Most important, they must know when not to wield their power.

Variations on the Theme

The developers of Fujitsu Habitat decided to have their Geek Gods operate behind the scenes and not interact directly with the players. All online support personnel operate at the Caretaker level of commitment and power. This separation of powers is more politically stable and allows the programmers the luxury of remaining a comfortable distance from the daily social problems.

The Path of Ascension

Passive→Active→Motivator→Caretaker→Geek God

Encourage everyone to move one role to the right, and the result will be a living, self-sustaining and thriving community where new members can always feel encouraged to become vital citizens.

The Dimension of Being and Nothingness

To consider fully the social dimensions of a cyberspace citizen we need to consider how a virtual being compares with a person's existence in the real world.

This chart shows two dimensions: Level of Participation and Connectivity. The four quadrants are labeled with the commonly known names of these states on various online systems.

Quadrant I on most systems represents the “user account,” “handle,” or “Avatar.” This is the most familiar state of being for a person when in a cyberspace. You are logged in, doing things in the universe, even if only sending mail or copying files. You are interacting with the system, and others in the system can interact with you.

Quadrant IV is the next most familiar state: logged out. Most cyberspaces understand this state as “inactive,” “dead,” “in the Void,” or “sleeping.” Simply put, nothing happens to or for you while you are not present.

These two quadrants map nicely onto the human experience as awake/conscious and asleep/unconscious. Most cyberspace implementors handle these cases adequately in their implementations. However, cyberspace systems designers often overlook the other two quadrants.

Quadrant II describes robots and agents. These are entities that act on your behalf when you are away. The MUDs and MOOs are leading the experimentation in this area of cyberspace consciousness. Of course, this raises some questions about responsibility for actions. What happens when a robot, acting in your name, does some cyberspace property damage? Or steals? Or worse yet, “harms” someone? Also covered by this quadrant is the concept of “autocollusion,” creating extra, fictional personae for the sole purpose of collecting their resources and handing them over to your primary persona.

Quadrant III describes what is by far the most overlooked state of a cyberspace inhabitant's makeup, the “ghost,” or “lurker,” state of existence. In this state you are an observer only, hiding just out of sight, and would prefer that others not bother you or even know that you are watching. In Habitat you could enter the Ghost state instantaneously: your body would disappear from the screen, to be replaced by a single small icon in the corner of the screen representing you and any other people who were also watching as Ghosts. These people can usually be found hanging around in any large, public-access cyberspace.

Online Personae and Real-World Personality

Cyberspaces, because they are anonymous, present people with a unique opportunity to present themselves in any matter they desire. Shy people can experiment with being bold or they can present themselves as a member of the opposite sex. How often are these alternate personalities accepted or rejected? How often are people “just being themselves” in these online worlds? Why do people do it? These questions personally intrigue me and require further study, but I've collected some interesting data:

In December of 1990, I met face-to-face with a group of fifty Fujitsu Habitat citizens about their Avatars. During one part of the discussion I asked:

1) Do you think of your Avatar as a separate being, or is it a representation of you?

Half said they thought of their Avatar as a separate being. The others said it was their “self.”

2) Do you act like your usual self when you are in Habitat, or in ways different from real life?

Again the results were fifty-fifty. This was no surprise to me, as I thought I had simply rephrased and inverted the first question. Then I realized that several that had selected “self” for the first question had not selected “self” for the second question! The actual distribution was as follows:

Only a minority (26%) prefers to project themselves fully into the online universe. Clearly, cyberspace citizens feel empowered by the technology to experiment with social interactions they feel safe enough to try on a different skin. Given that the current players are mostly affluent, male, and computer-savvy, will these statistics remain meaningful when people with other interests arrive?

Other Social Dimensions

Other social dimensions of cyberspace citizenry that should be considered include sense of place, point of view, government, economics, politics, religion, crime, punishment, inclusion, ostracism, and spontaneous social organization. These are the issues that Habitat's citizenry care about.

Habitat Anecdotes

F. Randall Farmer

Real Money

The Habitat Beta Test was a paying pilot-test. The testers would be paying $0.08 per minute to play, and in this way we could see if Habitat was financially feasible. There were exceptions; about twenty-five percent of the testers would be QLink staff, who either had free accounts or were given a certain number of free hours. This distinction caused some difficulty in deciding if any Habitat activity was a success (see the Scheduled Events). We wanted to see if Habitat was “fun enough” for paying customers.

Consider the following message, posted by a concerned user (edited for brevity):

As of today I am quitting Habitat. It costs too much. I have been a Q-Link subscriber for 2 years. The first year I used only 2 plus hours. ($10) The next year I used only 5. ($25) But in the last month, while I was playing Habitat I spent $270!!! I can't afford that. You need to make it cheaper.

$270 = 57 hours, or over 100 times his previous peak usage!

We must have made it “too much fun”!

Another user said: “I didn't realize that I was going to want to play 50 hours/month!”

Habitat (for some) was addictive. Because of this, there was a call for “bulk discounts” and various other schemes were proposed by the users. None of them were implementable, and all of them would have resulted in significant losses.

Yet another spent over $1,000 in one month in Habitat. At around $300 and $600 dollars, he was mailed a message suggesting he “check out his usage in the billing section.” If we could get twenty more of this type of “rich” user, we would be profitable!

The Order of the Holy Walnut

One of the outstanding proponents of the anti-violence-in-Habitat view was also the first Habitat minister. A Greek Orthodox minister opened the first church in Habitat. His canons forbid his disciples to carry weapons, steal, or participate in violence of any kind. It was unfortunate that I had to eventually put a lock on the church's front door because every time he decorated (with flowers), someone would steal and pawn them while he was not logged in.

Wedded Bliss?

Three Habitat weddings took place in that church. These were not human-human weddings, but Avatar-Avatar. Their turfs (user-owned areas) were joined so that they could cohabit. There were some technical problems with this that were resolved in later versions. Only one account could enter a turf if the owner was not home. We hadn't properly handled cohabitation.

The first Habitat divorce occurred two weeks after the third wedding. I guess Habitat is a bit too close to the real world for my taste! The first habitat lawyers handled the divorce, including public postings all about town.

Entertaining the Neighbors

The Party was one of my favorite activities. I liked to throw them at new Avatars' houses. I would use ESP to contact a known “Passive” Avatar, and ask him where he lived. If he told me, I would send ESP to “Actives” and “Motivators” that were online to teleport to the address. Great fun.

A close cousin to parties was the sleep-over. The users invented this on their own. Often private discussions would take place in a turf. It was considered a minor social honor to be invited to sleep over. This meant to log out while still in another's turf. This was an honor because you would be able to log in later even if the host was not on. This would leave the host's belongings open to plunder.

Secret Identities

In the original proposal, all Avatars would be able to have unique names (separate from their log-in names) and they could say they were anybody they wanted. Like a big costume party, no one would know who was who. I lost the battle for unique names, as QuantumLink wanted an “identify” function for terms of service enforcement reasons. It seemed the anonymity I wanted was lost. But I suggested a counterproposal. A tit-for-tat rule. If you “peeked” at someone else's secret identity, you would be unmasked to that Avatar, and no one else. Some very interesting dynamics developed. Some people were offended if they were ID'ed right away. And others never bothered using the function as long as you said “HI! I'm WINGO.” When you arrived I remember one time that I convinced someone that I was another person by sending ESP as “myself” to the person in the same region.