The language of Virtual Worlds

The language of Virtual Worlds

E-mails, chatgroups and the Web have all in common the fact of being electronic interactions about real things in the real world. In a virtual world interaction the subject-matter is totally imaginary, communication takes place with reference to the character and events of a virtual world.

In the past, the most generic designation for virtual worlds was MUDs. Mud stood for Multi-Users- Dungeon with reference to the role-play fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons. At present another designation is more common, MMORPG (Massive(ly) Multiplayer Online Role- Playing Game, which includes the MUDs. Role-play games are played by groups of people. The Game Master defines the environment in which the players will move, the obstacles and their powers.

Each player chooses a character and selects its attributes (race, clothing, weapons, gender). Games can last for years. The MUD game is quite similar to the roleplaying games (RPG). At present MUD is glossed as Multi-User- Dimension to get away from the monster and combat association.

At present Virtual Worlds are very different in subject-matter and some of them have nothing to do with fantasy. There are MUDs games were there are winners and losers but many of them foster collaborative role-playing activities. You can create a MUD for social chat, but here you create your own world and adopt characters which fit into this world.

Within the educational domain, some people constructed MUDs in order to engage in a discussion of academic research or college teaching practice. Whether the purpose of MUDs, they are all interactive databases which create vivid environments in which users interact.

The first MUD was devised in 1979-80 and since then variants developed. LPMUDs, based on the LPC programming language, attract programmers interested in making changes to the virtual environment (new features and commands). DikuMUDs, (so called from the computer science department of Copenhagen University) are written in C programming language. They allow sophisticated adventures.

TinyMUDs, so called because the program used was smaller than the previous ones, are talker MUDs, aimed at providing a social environment where chat is the main activity. Each genre of MUD has evolved subgenres. Acronyms for new MUDs are continuously created. MOOs stands for MUD Object Orientated referring to the programming objects that can be created and manipulated within the virtual world.

The majority of players are male and they are usually quite young, most of all students. Not all MUDs are games so it is difficult to find a word for their users, players is widespread, but users is preferred by the ones who do not want to be associated with the gaming connotation. The character created is an on-screen persona, with its own name and description. A single player may have more than one character.

In graphical systems characters are called avatars. The player may have also a presence on the screen, it is important to allow people keep on interacting out-of-character even when they stop role-playing. Characters can be anything at all. Older players may maintain their character names across different MUDs.

There are kind of moderators, system administrators. They have got different names (wizards, gods, programmers) but they are just experienced players usually with programming ability. In time the character will gain experience, the experience allows the character to get more power.

Wizards may adopt a disciplinary role against players who do not conform to the rules of the MUD. Crystal believes that in virtual words there are more opportunities for bad behaviour. There have been many examples of sexual harrassment.

Bad behaviour, offending other players or violating the game rules, is punished. Players can be newted, temporarily prevented from playing or toaded, excluded from the game. A gag command is also available. It allows other players to make invisible the messages written by one particular player.

There are MUD groups with thousands of registered characters and it is possible to play with hundreds of players. In virtual words it is possible to find the same linguistic complications already encountered in other situations, most of all chatgroups. Lag is a problem in virtual worlds, and some people are worried about group size.

Some sites restricted the introduction of new characters but it could be dangerous because such an attitude could reduce their long-term prospect of survival. Chat is always present in virtual worlds but they are not a variety of synchronous chatgroups. The reality existing there is a function of the online participants, without the chatters the chatgroup doesn t exist.

On the contrary, the reality of virtual worlds exists even without their players. Take away the typists and the virtual world that they have created remains, allowing new characters to play and interact at any time, as long as the server is operational.

What is a MUD world? It is a database of connected functional spaces, rooms, described according to the theme of the MUD (planet, castle, ordinary house). The rooms are described within the database so when you log-in, you can read the description of where you are going to appear.

You moved around and made actions by text commands which could be general or specific. Actually, at present, it is more common to move around in the virtual world just by clicking on a particular place on the screen and the textual part is limited to interaction between players. In the past, as you moved, a description of the place in which you were, appeared on the screen.

When you entered a room, a textual message told you what objects were there and who. Crystal reproduces an examples of instructions: >go to control centre You walk to the north ladder. You climb the ladder and enter the outer office. You cross the office and enter the control room. You see: A box of tapes A tape recorder A bunch of bananas Doc is here Prof is here

Doc and Prof are other players and a message appeared on their screen saying that a new player arrived. You could speak or hear what they were saying. It was also possible a whisper or mutter command which allowed just one player to interact. An appropriate command allowed other players to see the description of your character.

The completely textual virtual worlds survived among some users who play role plays by email. A game master creates a world and send a description of the places and circumstances to the players. The players create characters and interact each other by mailing their actions, attitudes and purposes to the game master.

Typical commands are @who, to find out other players logged in, @where, look, to have a description of something in detail, get, to take something, go and teleport, to move the character. These commands are still available in some role games, but at present it is more common to have completely graphic virtual worlds where you can do the same things only by clicking on a specific object.

Although some MUDs are quite identical in their purpose to synchronic chatgroups, the fact that they are set in an imaginary world is enough to motivate differences in language. Crystal considers only those features that make virtual worlds different from chatgroups. The medium provides a range of discourse options.

There are 2 chief modes of communication: 1) Saying 2) Emoting In the first one the typist writes the commands to speak with the other characters. Example: > say hello (X says hello is what the other s players will see on their screens) X says, good day (it is a possible answer of one player)

The emoting allows a player to express a character s actions, feeling, reactions. Usually they are statements in the 3 rd person. Example: > Emote salutes (X salute is what the other s players will see on their screens). But on the typist s screen the software changes the message in you salute.

It is possible to use this command to express whatever you want. All social contexts are represented (hug, guess, kill). This language presents similarities with other language varieties which contain ongoing descriptions (recipes).

The feedback function is also important. It is traditionally conveyed (X agrees, nods) or by idiosyncratic word-formation (John acks, Pete actuallies). The narrative style of emotes gives a literary flavour to the colloquial tone of the interaction. Usually there are some favourite expressions or words used by some MUDs players (identity markers).

Emotes provide the non-linguistic context for the direct speech, but they add complications to the task of maintaining discourse coherence. It is possible to have several conversations at once and multiple threading is normal, that s why sometimes players must make clear to whom they are speaking.

Some MUDs developed discourse stratagems to alleviate turn-taking problems (moderator controlled queue, reminders about the topic). Players themselves devise co-operative conventions, for example it is possible to break down long messages into shorter sentences in order to make them more comprehensible. Example: Langman finds the situation bizarre. Langman has never seen anything like it. Langman believes Doc should apologize.

As it is possible that other players insert a message while we are still writing, some conventions have been developed to signal to others that a longer message is forthcoming, such as introducing a remark with well. Very common is the losing: 2 players respond to something in the same way, but one player s response arrives before the other has finished writing. The second player does not finish his message, ending with loses.

There are linguistic forms and constructions used also in chatgroups and other Internet situations, such as contracted forms (gonna, wanna, dunno), abbreviations and sound effects. But in MUDs there some differences. The constant switching between saying and emoting produces the most distinctive linguistic feature of MUD style, person shift.

There is a constant switching between 1 st and 2 nd person of saying (Langman says I m sorry ) and the 3 rd person of emoting (Langman looks ashamed of himself). The influence of standard English is always present, even if players try to depart from it. Again in virtual worlds is not a matter of anything goes.

If you want to be accepted you should be linguistically co-operative. The impression is of a mixture of styles. The style of a group depends greatly on the number of participants trying to speak at once (they will use fewer words in a sentence to make faster the reading and writing process).

There is also variation in the economy of expressions. Some groups evolve a very short pattern of interaction while others prefer a much more discursive set of direct-speech utterances. Looseness of construction is common (switching from 1 st to 3 rd person).

Concerns over economy are quite common function words are omitted (prepositions, auxiliary verbs). Crystal thinks this is not only due to the need of being fast in typing, omissions are features of a particular dialect, as illustrated from the structure of emotes that quite often use complex expressions.

There is widespread appreciation for anything which does speed up typing but there is a great deal of variation between usage conventions. Variability in usage between MUDs partly reflects synchronic dialect differences among different groups. Each group has got his jargon. Language change is a frequent topic in some MUDs dialogues (linguistic history of the group, origins of its jargon).