The words that took us there : ethnography in a virtual reality

Summary

Anthropologist Frank Schaap spent two years participating in text-based virtual realities, an entirely virtual community, the so called MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). Participants project themselves into this MUD in the form of a "character" and by taking on this character's role they perform in what one might call an "interactive novel." Part of this performance is convincingly presenting your character as male or female. After this playing around he set on exploring the social and cultural conventions the participants used as the basis for their characters.