This document discusses authorship and collaboration in multiplayer online text-based games (MUDs). It notes that MUDs have no single author and evolve continuously through contributions from many developers and players over long periods of time. Determining authorial intent is difficult as control and direction change hands frequently. The code infrastructure is built and maintained by many, influencing but not dictating the narrative elements added by others. Players also influence the game's direction through feedback and invested time. Thus MUDs frustrate traditional notions of a fixed work with a single author.

1. Authorship and
Autership
John Townsend, University of Sydney
Michael Heron, Canterbury Christ Church University

2. Introduction
 The construction of literature in any form has several
components that influence construction.
 Some of these are based on format.
 Some of these are thematic
 Some are stylistic.
 Today I want to talk about the collaborative
construction of real time multiplayer text games.
 The issues are not unique to these kind of games, but
most neatly encapsulated within them.

3. Text Games
 For the purposes of this talk, I will define text games as
those works of electronic literature that are:
 Primarily driven by textual output
 Primary driven by textual input
 Ergodic, requiring some degree of effortful navigation.
 Cybertextual, with output algorithmically dependent on
input.

4. Examples of Text Games
 Early text adventures, such as those of Level 9 and
Infocom.
 http://pot.home.xs4all.nl/infocom/
 Mafia Wars
 https://www.mafiawars.zynga.com/fbconnect?
 Fallen London
 http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/
 Urban Dead
 http://www.urbandead.com/

5. MUD Output

6. MUDs
 The heyday of the Multiuser Dungeon (MUD) was in
the early 90s.
 Before the graphical MMOs that eventually killed then off.
 There remains however an active community of
developers and players.
 Die-hards (like me)
 Indie developers looking for low-cost game platforms
 Text aficionados
 Those for whom graphical games are inappropriate

7. Characteristics of a MUD
 MUDs differ from ‘conventional’ text-games in a number of
ways.
 Expectation of persistence
 Many MUDs around now have been in constant operation for 20
years.
 Expectation of discontinuity
 Very few MUDs around now have the same developer team
they did at their inception.
 An expectation of novelty.
 A persistent game must continually introduce new content to
keep players interested.
 24 hour availability
 ‘Production’ MUDs are available at all times of the day, which
creates issues of co-ordination as well as the emergence of
multiple social cohorts.

8. Characteristics of a MUD
 Similarly, there are certain aspects that derive from
being persistent multiplayer.
 Players have a sense of ownership over the work.
 They have, in many cases, invested more time than many
developers into exploring and interpreting the content.
 MUDs are in many senses a ‘social text’
 Formed from attaining the necessary ‘critical mass’ to persist.
 MUDs are as much community as they are ‘interactive
works’.
 And a community can cohere against changes that it sees to
be corrosive to the status quo.

9. Characteristics of a MUD
 Save for a handful of rare cases, MUDs are free to
play.
 This has consequences too when it comes to recruitment
and promotion of developers.
 The longevity of a MUD all but guarantees a high
attrition rate.
 Developers and players
 The need for constant expansion requires an active,
ongoing developer presence.
 MUDs are never ‘finished’ as long as people are playing.

10. Collaboration
 Muds therefore tend to have many ‘creators’
 Many at a time
 In overlapping periods
 Without financial remuneration
 This impacts heavily on concepts of ‘authorship’,
‘ownership’ and the ability to direct a game’s creative
direction.
 This makes it difficult to build ‘authorial intention’ into the
analysis of a work.

11. Issues of Intention
 It is all but impossible in such environments to
ascertain ‘authorship’, which in itself is broken up into
multiple spheres.
 Code ownership
 Literary expression
 Artistic direction
 Each of these carries with it a different expectation of
what constitutes ‘authorship’ as well as the common
conventions of collaboration.
 As well as the extent to which ‘authorship’ can be
exercised within the game.

12. Collaboration and Code
 MUDs are code artifacts as well as (ideally) literary
works.
 The culture of ‘code ownership’ in most healthy
dynamics stresses ‘expertise’ over permission.
 Although this in turn is usually tiered by how ‘critical’ the
code is.
 Good projects try to aim for a high ‘bus factor’.
 However, the code infrastructure exists largely
independently of the narrative structure of a game.

13. Collaboration and Code
 The code in properly engineered games of this nature
serves as the library upon which the game itself is built.
 The same code should allow for radically different games
with radically different themes.
 However, this is rarely a design goal that is attained
completely.
 And so the mechanics of the game will serve to restrict
and direct the creativity of individuals working within it.

14. Collaboration and Code
 Code is malleable, and so limitations may not persist over
the long term.
 And this can create inconsistencies in terms of code and artistic
directions.
 The decisions made by game developers long gone are not
binding on those who still remain.
 Too much freedom to relax limitations can result in these
inconsistencies developing into harmful ‘turf wars’
 MUDs then, due to their long-term persistence, introduce the
complexity of curation into an already complicated
ecosystem.

15. Collaboration and Code
 Commercial MMOs have many of the features of text-based
MUDs, but most usually have one key differentiator:
 A paid staff of developers.
 MUD developers receive their reward in intrinsic benefits.
 Like contributors to open source software.
 This requires again a freeing up of creative opportunities for
developers.
 They’re not likely to be willing to implement a design spec
without having the freedom to alter it.

16. Collaboration and Players
 Players too, by virtue of their time invested, often
demand a certain amount of control over the direction
of the game.
 Pay heed to the ‘tribal elders’ in a community.
 The long term success of a MUD is driven by a healthy
and growing playerbase.
 The community plays an incredibly strong role in this.
 Additionally, players are likely better placed to analyse
the game than developers.
 Having interpreted it as its ‘game form’ for longer.

17. MUDs
 It is possible to refer to an edition of a book, a platform of a
game, or a print of a movie as a ‘definitive work’
 The dynamic evolution of a MUD though frustrates any
attempt to properly cite it as a fixed representation.
 It is difficult to point to the ‘author’ of a MUD.
 Because such a thing may not exist in any real form.
 It is difficult to point to a fixed representation or ‘edition’ of a
MUD.
 It likely changes on a daily basis, and as a result of playing
experience and styles.

18. Conclusion
 Ascertaining authorship is important in many types of
critical analysis.
 Author intention
 Foucault’s impact of interpretation
 A MUD is rarely driven by a single auteur, at least not
for its entirely lifetime.
 Auteur theory thus provides a framework for
approaching these works, but within tight limits.