The Message of the Medium

Storytelling in Cyberspace

There's a tale being told around the world. A tale of madness and mischief. A tale wrought with peril and paranoia; ruled over by sinister, shadowy evil. It is also a tale of illumination and rebellion; a tale of wisdom and wonder that spreads across infinity and reaches to the depths of our soul. Most of all though, it is a tale about ourselves; and it is being told all around the world right now... at the speed of light.

With the arrival of the information age and the fulfilment of Marshal McLuhan's prophesy of the Global Village, society is now in the process of redefining itself, both as individuals and as a collective consciousness. Amid this furious identity crisis occurring in cyberspace, there is the unique phenomenon of the Multi User Shared Hallucination (MUSH) or Multi User Dungeon (MUD). Virtual playgrounds amid the anarchy of the Net, such vehicles may actually prove to be the key to creating our future by connecting with us our past.

Conceived of an imaginary world given form by programmers and given life by hundreds of on-line users, who take on a variety of alternate identities and interface with one another fluently without inhibition. It is the stuff of dreams. Role-playing forms the most crucial aspect of a MUSH, in the sense that the roles played by the users form the architecture of belief of the virtual world. This "consensual hallucination" is held by all users and sometimes continued off-line where users continue to play their characters in much the same way that actors play with one another in improvisational theatre.

Ultimately it becomes clear that as a communications medium, the MUSH is a tool for empowerment. Like cyberspace itself, it dissolves the boundaries of identity and allows for the free expression of the self when interacting with others. Role-playing is a fundamental part of being human. When Walt Whitman said, "we contain multitudes," he was addressing the human desire to be someone completely different. To view life through the experiences of another character can offer us insight into our own lives. It also offer choices we might normally not have. As said by William Spencer-Hale regarding the medium on Role Playing Games (RPG), "The players start to see through the characters eyes, to feel as their characters feel... they step aside from their normal lives and truly become the characters whom they play." Often, role playing can offer a great sense of accomplishment. Success within the context of a game world may make up for a lack of success in the real world. To obtain such success the game environment must be modified by the player. In so doing a certain degree of power is exercised. By gaining power through the game, an individual; can maintain a sense of self while facing alienation in everyday life.

As with many games, of great importance when gaming on a MUSH is that the environment allow for freedom of action. Players must feel that their decisions and actions make a difference. This "key to autonomy" inherent in virtual worlds offers users a sense of control or mastery (as termed by Howard Rheingold in his book The Virtual Community) that very often is missing in lives. The seductive quality of escapism offered by a MUSH is what regularly lures players on-line for significant periods of time. Eighty hours a week in not uncommon.

However, to simply view MUSH's as escapism from the mundane is not taking into account the most important aspect of role playing: the ability to tell a story. Storytelling is so rewarding for role-players because it has the power to lift the atmosphere of the game to an artform; it transcends conventional gaming boundaries and involves players in an act of magic. Weaving imaginative tales allows players to experience passionate depth of emotions that may not be otherwise accessible to them. The role-players become actors on a stage; they must leave their other identities behind, behaving and speaking only as their alternate persona. The character becomes more than merely a representation it becomes a work of art. This aspect of roleplaying is something that Mark Rein-Hagen, principle creator of White Wolf Game Studio's Vampire, Werewolf, Mage and Wraith RPG's is quite familiar with. As he puts it, player characters are "a fragile expression of our poetic sensibility".

The dichotomy between the real and the virtual ensures that the character remains in the story and allows the player to step away from the character's problems but wiser for them. When storytelling achieves this sense of representation, it returns to the Greek sensibility of drama using mimesis and catharsis. Role-playing, especially multi-user on-line forums, provides a fundamental means for imitating life, confronting it and through emotional release, insight. With this in mind, it is understandable why players become searchers, adventurers on the odyssey of the human condition.

In telling stories we are able to partake in a spiritual exercise of taking the imagined and making it plausible. Is this not the very basis of what virtual reality means to the human psyche? We tell great stories to ask questions and bring us back to our humanity. As Rein-Hagen says, "It is entertaining because it is revealing and exhilarating because it is true." One of the reasons for this primal power is the reworking and re-telling of myths and legend. We gain wisdom by passing ideas on to others and sharing experiences. By reflecting upon our culture, our family and ourselves, we bring the myths closer to us. In a very real sense, storytelling allows us to take a place beside our ancestors, tapping into an ancient and mysterious force: our own creativity.

However, storytelling on a MUSH (indeed in any RPG) differs from many other types of stories, as it is an environment where all characters are equally important and truly dependant on one another's actions to determine the course of the story. This is more so in a gaming environment considering that play sessions are not scripted. But the MUSH is truly distinguishable as a virtual reality because its roleplaying make the act of creativity both immediate and accessible. Unlike other media, roleplaying has no degree of distinction between storyteller and audience. Traditional drama has always precluded the presence of the story originator during the audiences' act of experiencing their creation. But the immediacy of storytelling is such that creator and audience are one and the same. Similarly, in a MUSH, the virtual world is set by one distinctive group of programmers, but this act of creation is not made whole until it is given life by the presence and participation of the players. In a sense, the players become a single creative collective which manifests itself in the collective world of the MUSH.

This collective world is precisely what Marshal McLuhan meant by the Global Village. An electric environment where people learn from each other's experiences, triumphs as well as the failures. Storytelling, as an ancient oral tradition forms the fundamental basis of families, tribes, villages and entire communities. Thus in an information age mediated by the network of cyberspace, we see a virtual extension of the same communities that huddled in caves, listening to tales spun around a fire. Cultural identities are inherently formed out of the oral tradition of storytelling. This [aural] oral quality of electric process binds virtual communities together and creates re-tribalization, especially on a MUSH.

Although, many still regard an on-line MUSH simply as a game, its value as a tool for the liberation of the global culture cannot be ignored. The global self becomes a direct reflection of pop-cultural values while at the same time retaining the ability to reflect upon and gain wisdom from them. Rheingold states, "People use depersonalized modes of communication to get very personal with each other". In taking on the character of others we are offered an opportunity to release a vast store of hidden potential. Perhaps the Art of Storytelling -- the oldest of media -- will bind us with the Net -- the newest of media -- and guide our culture back to the full circle of its roots.