A concerted effort is made on the part of roleplayers to historicize the environment they engage in, and establish a timeline of events that define the activities of the town. In the case of the Wild West MUD Maddock, their website lists a series of “historical events” in the town that are archived roleplaying logs. Additionally, they have a page of town news and current events. These establish the historical narrative that user interactions are based-upon. Both Tombstone and Sigil started town newspapers (the Tombstone Epitaph, and the Sigil Tribune) to achieve similar objectives. With that said, my interviews of participants in these communities indicate that there is practically no knowledge of other Wild West roleplaying communities. The historicizing of events within these virtual worlds is foundational to the growth of these communities, and a feature of historical roleplaying.

Accurately and consistently presenting one’s character is extremely important in these communities. The Maddock website includes a “Who’s Who” of notable “citizens” where you can learn more about members of this “varied population.” The Tombstone website encourages users to join one of three character groups -  Outlaws, Natives, and the Army (as if, historically, those were the only three groups that you could be a member of). Sigil would give new citizens, upon arrival, a roleplaying guide to help situation their character within a larger historical framework. What’s interesting is how idealized, homogenous, and “Hollywood” many of the descriptions and representations are. This is a portion of the Sigil Roleplaying Guide that describes the town and frames the interactions of users within the simulation:

You are in the Wild West arriving in a frontier town the setting is the period of 1860-1890. History of this period will assist you. Arizona was not yet a state but a territory of the United States. It was taken firstly in a war with Mexico and then the rest of the land purchased. Thus an old Adobe style church remains. The US Civil war has just taken place and the Union has won. If you are arriving in Sigil you have just lived through this historic moment. Mining is an important industry in this area of Arizona at this stage in time Gold was becoming harder to obtain and Silver becomes the principle product. Copper later takes over later in the period. The Railroad Industry is expanding West towards the pacific causing some parts to boom where the railroad passes through.

I hope to investigate other historical roleplaying simulations in the future (not limited to the Wild West) to see if they follow similar patterns of behavior.

The 4 dimensions mud reads very much like a history lesson — its text is descriptive out of necessity. In this Wild West mud, users are encouraged to roleplay – and even fight one another. Here is the description when you first enter the Old West mud:

By now “civilization” and science have changed the world considerably. There were horses and carts during the medieval era too of course, but now there are trains driven by steam engines. Robin Hood and his merry men used the longbow, which was a formidable weapon, but the ranged weapons in the Old West are much more powerful firearms, like Winchesters, revolvers and shotguns. And during no time period, before or after, has the horse had such an important role in everyday life as here.

Maddock is a fictional town in the Montana Territory set in the 1870′s. Similarly to Sigil, there has been an attempt to historicize the roleplaying within this virtual world. Their website serves as an incredible resource, documenting the (fictional) history of Maddock, events, and profiles of roleplayers, including Isolde Balcombe.

When teleporting to the sim, I was given a free visitor’s outfit that’s meant to historicize my character with appropriate clothing. This is a common practice in historical roleplaying sims – however there’s a social stigma associated with this clothing, it instantly identifies you as a newbie. (In a similar vein – in Sigil one of the first things I had to do was purchase a virtual horse. It was a status symbol that, once I had one, allowed me to speak to others more freely.) With tacky pants and paw print tattoos on my chest I explored.

My initial impression of La Tribu (from what I could gather with my limited comprehension of French) was that it has very rigid gender roles. My guide frequently described the activities of virtual natives in terms of gender – men do this, women do that. A first hand account from a citizen historian confirms my reactions by writing:

We are standing on top of a small hill, where a little cascade of waterfalls runs into a few, deep blue pools. This place is for women only. “Men are only allowed up here if the women invite them.” Women are not oppressed in this small French speaking tribe I’ve been invited to visit. They each have their own teepees, with which they are free to do whatever they wish. The teepees are loosely arranged in the vicinity of the common campfire, around which household chores are performed.

I have to brush up on my French, but I hope to explore this further in the near future

The Whites. We don’t like them. But we arn’t savages and out of control either. Whites are good for trade and weapons so we have to keep a balance to get guns and supplies. One thing though is we believe in a life for a life and this could be an issue is someone from the tribe gets themselves killed in town. Any Armed Whites coming into our lands is fair game and most likely won’t survive an encounter unless they choose to leave naked and humble. White woman often were playthings for single braves and found their womanhood a bit battered from the encounter but rarely were they killed. Children often were adopted if their parents were dead and made full members of the tribe so no mistreatment of our adopted children. All soldiors entering our lands are killed outright unless there is a treaty made. They travel in groups so once again for safty sakes don’t ever travil alone. Alone and armed is a fast way to die. Don’t expect the white men to talk first if you’re armed. Don’t go into town armed, an armed Indian is fair game in town. Going unarmed means you’re there to trade in peace.

Note: Any grammatical or spelling errors haven’t been changed from the original documents.

I’ve been witnessing the disneyfication of historical roleplaying in Second Life. Since the closing of the first Wild West roleplaying sim, Sigil, a number of new RP sims have been created to take its place. It’s difficult to keep track of these sims – they briefly appear and then, just like Sigil, completely vanish. Their significance is not in the number of simulations that have followed, but the manner which they conduct business. Many of these new environments resemble historical amusement parks or shopping malls more than they do roleplaying environments. A good example of this is Sand Ranch, where the streets are lined with small shops selling “authentic” avatar clothing, as well as stylized clothing that can make you look like a Country singer. The historical accuracy of these environments isn’t necessarily intended nor desired – their goal is to create a profit.

My criticism of disneyfication directly relates to my studies of the Oregon Trail computer game, Second Life historical roleplaying, and the potential use of virtual worlds for educational purposes. I should clarify that not all roleplaying simulations have been simplified into historical amusement parks. What has occurred is a shift in ownership – several successful historical roleplaying sims persist with group ownership. New simulations take advantage of the popularity of these environments and market their products to that community of users. The disneyfication that occurs in these newer roleplaying sims is largely due to an imbalance of ownership. When one person, or only a select few control how ideas are represented within a sim, they are naturally limited.

One of the exciting things about Sigil and other historical roleplaying sims is how collaborate these environments become. For example, Sigil itself had virtual town hall meetings, where virtual citizens would gather together with the mayor to discuss pressing issues. There were a list of roles that citizens could take up, and each person collaborated to affect the sim’s narrative structure. How the West, and history itself was represented within the sim depended on these individual users. The disneyfication that occurs in many newer Wild West sims can be attributed to this lack of community and collaboration. Traditional computer simulations, the Oregon Trail included, were limited by the presentation of ideas. Since all actions are hardcoded into the software, only a few select “experts” could present the West’s narrative, while Second Life as a social space has no such limitations.

The power of Second Life and any type of new social media is that it allows user interaction and the creation of relationships between individuals and environments. When learning history, those elements are critical to the retention of knowledge. Must there be disneyfication of historical roleplaying in Second Life? I would argue no – not more than there is any other process of learning. There is abstraction to some extent – we can only learn so much and most of us will not become experts. But there is the potential for Second Life, as a collaborative and social learning environment, to allow students to reach beyond the limited knowledge presented by experts, and learn through their peers in ways that mean more to them individually – a process of internalization that is the intention of learning.

I’m not sure if the title is fitting, however I may be the first Second Life historian. In the very least, The Sigil Archive seems to be the first of its kind – attempting to preserve the history of an entire Second Life sim. A search on Technorati for “Second Life historian” came up with nothing, and a Google search only returned one vague result. Historians, why aren’t you doing research on Second Life? In today’s Web 2.0 world, if is doing anything remotely interesting on Second Life it usually appears in a blog somewhere, but I hope that I’m wrong and others are out there. History informs our identity and culture, which makes the preservation and understanding of history a crucial part of life. The history of Second Life simulations is no different. The importance of this became evident when I was recently in the Wild West sim called Tombstone. Tombstone is one of several Wild West simulations that appeared following the demise of Sigil, and the basic narrative structure (time period, location, etc) is incredibly close to Sigil. I had a discussion with a citizen, where I asked if he had ever been to Sigil – he responded no. To my surprise and delight, he explained how he is starting a virtual newspaper in this Wild West simulation – without realizing that there had been the Sigil Tribune at one point. Without having history to root our experiences, everything we do seems new.

Many Second Life amateur historians exist, in fact it’s increasingly popular. Individuals will maintain a blog for their avatar, where they account their journeys into the vast corners of the metaverse – often cataloging what they witnessed along-side images to document the experience. Historians must focus contextualize the accounts of individuals, as well as preserve documentation of these environments and individuals involved. SLHistory is a wiki that offers a space for community knowledge building regarding the history of Second Life, but at this point lacks any comprehensive research and documentation of simulations. In my research of Sigil, I began by traveling through the simulation documenting images of buildings and people, and recording their names. After the sim went offline, I contacted several former citizens including the mayor, who have provided me with a great deal of information including primary documents regarding the sim’s creation. These documents instantly became invisible to the virtual world when the sim became inactive – but many copies were stored in the inventory of users. As digital historians we must take active steps to preserve these documents.

Let me close by saying that there are individuals studying the history of virtual worlds (broadly speaking). Bruce Damer is compiling a virtual worlds timeline, cataloging the origins and evolution of social virtual worlds. Timothy Burke has a great blog posting regarding virtual world methodology and the lack of textual sources that influenced me a great deal. If we agree that virtual worlds are becoming increasingly important within society including education, then the need to archive and record the history of these emerging new media environments becomes clear.

It will be interesting to follow the future of Sigil – during its existence it changed hands due to the high costs of running the sim, and eventually folded for that reason. I’ve seen other historical sims follow the same path. I’ll be disappointed if its replaced with a virtual casino or something along the same vein. While it remains for sale, Dreamland has changed to the “Sigil Mall & Sex Garden.” Perhaps Anshe herself will develop something if she’s unable to sell it.

http://sigil.davelester.org

While Sigil was the first Western role-playing simulation within Second Life, its existence was predated by the Machinima movie “Silver Bells and Golden Spurs.” Many of the costumes worn by users within the film appear in many of the photos I have from Sigil, naturally expanding my critique of Sigil to the origins of these items. Directed by Eric Call and Linden Lab, “Silver Bells and Golden Spurs” (SBGS) first premiered at South by Southwest in 2006.

Machinima films are movies made in virtual worlds using real-time 3D engines unlike professional 3D software. In the case of SBGS, the entire set of the Western town was created specifically for the filming and Second Life users became actors as the video was recorded. The Second Life Herald reported that actors used a pre-arranged sequence of animations, making it distinctively not role-playing.

Without further delay, here is Silver Bells and Golden Spurs: