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A multi-user dungeon, also known as a multi-user dimension or multi-user domain, is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based or storyboarded. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, and non-player characters, and perform actions in the virtual world that are typically also described. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language, as well as using a character typically called an avatar.
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References
- ↑ Ito, Mizuko (1997). "Virtually Embodied: The Reality of Fantasy in a Multi-User Dungeon". In Porter, David (ed.). Internet Culture (pbk. ed.). Routledge. pp. 94–95. ISBN 0-415-91684-4.
Different MUDs institutionalize marriage in different ways, but in the LPMUDs that I study, predictable norms of monogamous heterosexuality are playfully reproduced. One can generally find a chapel, a priest, and heterosexual newlyweds, provided with familiar props such as rings, wedding dresses, and bouquets. Couples might subsequently pool bank accounts, or talk on a special private channel enabled by their wedding rings. They sometimes even adopt other players as their children.
- ↑ "Data Stream". Next Generation . No. 28. Imagine Media. April 1997. p. 24.
- ↑ Katherine Glover (28 April 2007). "Why can't gay dwarves get married in Middle-earth?". Salon.com .
- ↑ "Gay Marriage Flap Around New Lord of the Rings MMO". GamePolitics.com.
- ↑ Flynn De Marco. "LOTR Online Just Says No To Same Sex Marriage". Kotaku. Archived from the original on 2007-12-16.
- ↑ "We Wants The Gay Hobbitses! And We Wants It Now!". FAD Media, Inc. Archived from the original on 2011-10-10. Retrieved 2011-07-19.
- ↑ Ian Bogost. "No marriage, gay or otherwise, in Middle Earth".
- ↑ Clive Thompson. "The Game of Wife". Slate.com.
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