Volume 1, Number 1
Point MOOt
<1> Allan Alford, an undergraduate English major at the University of Texas at Austin, is 26 (in 1994) and started MUDding in 1992. He worked under University of Texas Professor Allucquere Rosanne Stone for two years, and designed Point MOOt, the ACT Lab TinyMOO which went online in January 1994. Alford says that in setting up the MOO, which was laid out topologically as a city map would lay out streets in horizontal and vertical fashion, he was interested in reality modeling and in a "sense of social responsibility in cyberspace" (Interview 4/18/94). People who logged on to Point MOOt were encouraged to think of themselves as "citizens" of a virtual community, rather than characters or players. Marcos Novak's conception of cyberspace contrasts in interesting ways with Alford's objectives in developing Point MOOt.
<2> Alford also says that Stone wanted the MOO to be a research site for sociological and other studies (Interview 4/18/94). A helpfile on Point MOOt explains:
Point MOOt, Texas is a virtual West Texas town...it is disimilar from standard MOOs in many ways. With Point MOOt, we are attempting to model a realistic community well enough so that patterns of comparison can be made between human behavior in real society, and human behavior in virtual societies. Point MOOt is a RESEARCH SITE. General trends of behavior will be assessed in statistical form. Specific character actions and interactions may also be cited in later academic assessments of this MOO. (Point MOOt, April 1994; all citations from Point MOOt are from visits in April and May, 1994)
The online helpfile indicates that no character names will be associated with any actions cited from the MOO. Another helpfile says that factors such as transportation, the economy and crime will be examined, and that aside from the reality modeling theme, Point MOOt combines themes from conspiracy theory and cult religion.
<3> To create a "realistic" society within this virtual environment,
types of movement available in standard MOOs were disallowed, including
"teleporting, paging, remote emoting, and other MOO verbs which violate the
standard laws of physics" (online helpfile: MOO-veterans). While "paging" is
allowed in typical MOOs, the equivalent action in Point MOOt was carried out
through a cellular telephone. If your name is Susie and someone named Hiroko
wanted to get in touch with you from a different textually-described space in
Point MOOt, you received the message on your screen:
Your cellular phone rings. You answer, and Hiroko says, "Hey Susie!"
<4> The critical point that Alford stressed in the objectives of Point MOOt was that citizens should take an active role in shaping their collective environment. Being socially responsible entailed actively participating on a programming and building level within Point MOOt. When I asked Alford if he saw Point MOOt as being more "real" than other MOOs, he said, "superficially, yes, the theme and economic structure if nothing else [make it this way]--the social responsibility--if you play and don't contribute, then you won't get any rewards" (Interview 4/18/94). The economic system structured the possibilities for building and contributing; each new player would get a MOO credit, which was equal to the ability to create one object (and MOO credits were also referred to as MOOlah) (online helpfile: economy). Then, "If you want to build any kind of structure...you have to get a City Builder's Permit" (online helpfile: building). The city officials (what the wizards were known as on Point MOOt) could make innovations in the society and economy. At one point, for example, they were open to the possibility of implementing a system of generic food which citizens would have been required to have to survive (Alford, Interview 4/18/94). Alford and potentially others (it was unclear to what extent other people were collaborating with Alford to fuel these changes) were considering issuing periodic messages to citizens which would indicate they were getting increasingly hungry--and if they didn't eventually manage to obtain food, they would pass out and get disconnected.
<4> Such an innovation would seem highly original in jarring the online player who would have found it necessary to abide by the dictates of a Real Life need that would have manifested itself only textually within MOOspace. The fact that the citizen might have been disconnected, in a Brechtian move, would have provided incentive to adhere to the rules of the virtual society of Point MOOt.
<5> So what did Point MOOt look like as an online environment? When
you would first logged on, you would see the opening screen:
"Welcome To
Point MOOt, Texas!
Point MOOt is a virtual Texas town, housed in a Sun
SparcClassic in the proud and mighty ACTlab (Advanced Communications Technology)
at the College of Communication, University of Texas, Austin" (Point MOOt,
4/17/94).
<6> Then you would arrive at the Old Farm Road Intersection. Unlike
Benedikt's avoidance of description which determines a player's emotional state
or forces them to take particular actions, a number of descriptions on Point MOOt
would commonly use this technique. The first description the new player would
find at the Old Farm Road Intersection, said:
You've been walking down Texas State Farm-To-Market Road #667 for so long, that the hot Texas sun has gotten to your brain...You can't even remember why you started walking down this endless stretch of asphault...All you've got in the world is a faded pair of blue jeans, and a loose cotton shirt. As you reach up to wipe the West Texas dust from your forehead, a huge 18-wheeler suddenly comes roaring by! You jump off the shoulder of the road, and dive into the ditch. Rolling over and over, you begin choking on the dust stirred up by the truck. You come to a stop when your head hits a small wooden sign. Squinting up into the harsh Texas sun, you can just make out what it says:
WELCOME! To Point MOOt, Texas!" (Point MOOt, April 1994)
<7> Alford and the citizens who built on Point MOOt used imaginative
literary descriptions written in an informal prose style and pervaded by a tone
that was sometimes poetic, and often tongue-in-cheek. While much of the building
on AcademICK comes across as literary in its prose, some of the building on Point
MOOt had a stronger dramatic or theatrical literary quality. I had the sense
that I was "in it for the ride" on Point MOOt, that the environment and how it
would interact with me were less predictable, and that I would be jarred out of
my position as a reader/visitor/participant who was allowed to appreciate the
aesthetics of the descriptions from a safe distance. At Central Drive 1 in Point
MOOt, the Citizen read:
There isn't really any road, more like a gravel path.
...and the gravel is soaked in motor oil
from the numerous cars that sit on
jackstands throughout the park.
...and the soil below the gravel seems to
have sprouted some sort of alien plant
that thrives on oil and despair.
...and the plants are clawing hungrily at
your ankles.
But other than that the road is completely normal. (Point MOOt, 4/17/94)
<8> Another description that located the citizen in the environment
awaited those who visited OSpace's Bi-level Trailer Home. Instead of developing
an objective narrator which put pressure on the inanimate objects in the
landscape to take on a life of their own to indicate movement (more in the
Benedikt style), the writer of this description used a second-person narration
that left the impression (however conventionalized) that the thoughts originated
in the visiting citizen's mind, even as the visiting citizen could have been the
writer her/him/itself. The description read:
You walk towards OSpace's Bi-level Trailer Home. The path is very well-kept. OSpace's trailer looks like most trailers. It is white with a thick, dingey red stripe down the side. It has stickers on the side that signify where OSpace has taken this thing. You see stickers from almost every state. You also see stickers from England France, Jamaica, Albania, and Timbuktu. You wonder how he drove there. But you just shrug and move on. (Point MOOt, 4/17/94)
<9> Point MOOt signified on a potentially real West Texas town, though it was ultimately based on a series of representations that invoked a stereotype of a Texas town. So was this a model of a West Texas town? Or would such analysis violate the creative spirit (and the point?) of a site that announced to every citizen: Point MOOt? I noted, for instance, how the new citizen was given an apartment in a public housing project and told: "What?!?!? You don't LIKE the projects? Hmmm. Maybe you should get a job" (helpfile: new). Does this structure of incentive and narrow conception of how to leave the projects imply that everyone living in Real Life projects in West Texas towns lacks jobs? The textual environment was constructed to channel the behavior of participants in ways that fellow citizen/builders found consistent with their subjective images of a West Texas town.
<10> But the town of Point MOOt, in its virtual incarnation, necessarily allowed options unknown in either Real Life or stereotyped West Texas towns. The builders of Point MOOt faced new dilemmas. Since a virtual environment provides options for interaction that Real Life lacks, should Point MOOt builders who aimed for realism have been expected to downplay these virtual possibilities as they did in disallowing teleporting? I asked Alford why there were bots on Point MOOt if he wanted it to be realistic (bots are short for robots--they are actually programs that log on to a MUD and emulate a character's actions, complete with responses to players). 50% of the population of Point MOOt was actually bots. He explained that in cyberspace there was "no difference between characters and bots," and then clarified the claim for the realism of Point MOOt, acknowledging that a "text-based reality can't model reality" (Interview 4/18/94). So I asked him, "Why try?" Said Alford, "Because every time we get closer or fail, it helps raise questions about the medium itself and reality" (Interview 4/18/94).