Step into the Metaverse

Chapter 4Be Where You Want to Be

Virtual Worlds

In 1970, at the University of Essex, Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle (professor, author, and game researcher) created the world's first multiuser dungeon (MUD). A MUD is a multiplayer, real-time virtual world, but instead of being graphics-based, it is text-based. Players read the descriptions of the virtual rooms, characters, or objects and perform actions by typing commands in a natural language.¹⁰⁴ In 1980, the game became the internet's first multiplayer online role-playing game, when the University of Essex connected to the ARPANET.¹⁰⁵ MUD was created, of course, for fun and relaxation, but there was more to it, according to its co-creator Richard Bartle. They attempted “to bring fairness to a virtual world that [they] perceived wasn't there in the real world,”¹⁰⁶ and they created MUD as a political statement to offer people a virtual world “where people could go and shed what was holding them back”; or in other words, they created MUD because “the real world sucked.”¹⁰⁷ Of course, this is a familiar theme in most science-fiction books and movies. For example, the virtual world The Oasis in Ready Player One was also an escape for people because the real world ended up becoming a dystopian place. Virtual worlds do indeed offer people an opportunity to get away from reality for a moment. Depending on how we shape the real world, the future iterations of these virtual worlds can become a full-time escape from the real world ...