One of the Wild West Roleplaying simulations I’ve studied, Tombstone, now has a web presence. It’s interesting to step back and compare their online community to several others I’ve discussed in previous entries. One of the most surprising things to me is how ambivalent members of these roleplaying communities are of other communities. Yet, they all develop in similar ways. What does this say about online roleplaying? How do members of these communities view the American West? Why is history represented similarly in all of these roleplaying sims? Why is history misrepresented in similar ways as well?
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 Oregon Trail computer game’s gender bias is narratively implicit, but visually explicit. Users control a character that is never textually referred to as a specific gender, however its visual representation is indisputably that of a male figure. In the game, the wagon leader makes the decisions along the journey and is presented as male, apart from the rest of the company. With his hand on the yoke of the oxen, it’s clear that the male is both leading the oxen and holding the gun. When hunting, the pixilated character the user controls can only be discerned as having a male appearance. While the user is able to choose the name of the character for him or herself, the visual representations of the game’s protagonist remain male.
Women only appear to have subservient roles and are pictured wearing pink dresses and bonnets; usually beside the children. They are absent from hunting, and infrequently appear throughout the game. By focusing on male-oriented jobs within the game, the role of females is erased (Bigelow 86). Along the journey, the user playing the game can choose to “ask for advice”, where another character in the game offers advice on how to get to Oregon safely, or shares his or her fears of the journey. The only time female characters are featured is to offer advice, for example, Aunt Rebecca Sims tells you:
I hear terrible stories about wagon parties running out of food before Oregon – the whole party starving to death. We must check our supplies often; we might not get there as soon as we think. Always plan for the worst, I say.
While she offers helpful advice along the trail, such concerns are consistently voiced only by female characters. The recurrence of female characters in this role portrays them as powerless and unable to contribute toward the journey. Conversely, men are portrayed as workers and decision makers on the trail. However, in 1848 and in preindustrial America when the game’s narrative takes place, there was no developed ideology of a “woman’s place.” Women often contributed to a family’s income and did physical labor on the farm (Faragher and Stansell 152). This role is wholly absent from the characterization of women in the game.
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Japanese firm NTT has unveiled a system that makes three-dimensional images solid enough to grasp. The system combines a 3D display with a “haptic glove,†with no special glasses required. They’ve suggested two interesting uses for the device:
- business people could shake hands from across the globe
- allow museum visitors to feel precious exhibits that are normally out of reach
Is this the future of virtual museums? Backtracking to a previous post on museums in Second Life, a lively debate currently taking place is between imitation and innovation – how can virtual worlds help students learn beyond what already occurs in the classroom? What are practical uses of simulated environments? Devices like this may be the answer to those questions by creating physical interfaces to navigate virtual representations of objects. Normally when you visit a museum there’s a barrier between visitors and artifacts; this device could remove that, and allow museums to be entirely represented in simulated environments. Imagine being able to hold an ancient sword, or object that would normally be encased in glass. It would change the entire experience of museums.
Building physical interfaces for experiencing history may sound familiar – it fits right in with Bill Turkel’s idea of creating history appliances. The article stated that NTT is currently working with the British Museum in London to create a touchable exhibit; the future isn’t that far off.
Several years ago McGill University created a simulation designed to teach students about the history of a Quebec. The simulation is free to download on their site. (Windows only.. sorry Mac users! [myself included]) One of the largest problems with the educational use of computers simulations is a lack of augmentative instruction. Beyond the content of the game, students need ideas to be reinforced, or at least prefaced with contextualizing information. The McGill simulation’s site contains a terrific library of lesson plans, activity sheets, and information pages that should be a model for other educational sims. Here is a description of the project:
“A Journey to the Past: A Quebec Village in the 1890s†is a 3D world which recreates a Quebec village of the 1890s, complete with characters of that time with whom elementary school students can interact. You can use this 3D world to teach students about life in Canada (and specifically in Quebec) at the end of the nineteenth century, and encourage students to compare life in that place and time with their contemporary lives in order to understand better the changes that have taken place.
Kevin Kee, Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing of Brock University helped develop this simulation while working at McGill, and is currently working on a historical simulation in Second Life. I’ll definitely be posting about this in the future
Virtual Powwow was a living museum in Second Life, proposed as a final project in Bernie Dodge’s graduate-level Exploratory Learning through Simulation and Games class. By recreating a powwow, the simulation visualized an environment hosted by Native Americans where students could experience Native American culture and dance.
Although not exactly roleplaying, Virtual Powwow and living museums in Second Life offer a starting point for future discussions of the educational uses of historical roleplaying in virtual worlds. It may also bring together the seemingly disparate topics of this blog, including Wild West and Native American roleplaying in Second Life, visualizing history, and educational roleplaying games. The powwow itself can be contextualized within two pertinent discussions: the shifting of knowledge from experts to amateurs, and innovation vs imitation.
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As previously mentioned, Native American roleplaying in Second Life is a very popular. In order to understand the Sigil Tribe, I’m exploring active Native American RP sims. Last night I visited La Tribu for the first time, a French-speaking Native American roleplaying sim. (Some background: I don’t speak French, so the entire time I was toggling Altavista Babelfish translating what was being said and responding. Thankfully I’ve found an in-world translation HUD that should make this much easier.) Although my French was embarrassing and my computer froze, deleting the chat logs I hoped to archive, I found a level of sophistication in the sim that’s alluring.
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
An enthusiast recently created The Oregon Trail Shrine, archiving images and downloadable copies of both the Oregon Trail and Oregon Trail Deluxe computer games. Similar to the oral histories I collected with my Oregon Trail Survey, the site shares game reviews and stories submitted by fans. This review struck me:
After playing this game it made [me] want to learn even more about the Oregon Trail and all about the pioneers who walked and did their best to survive. To know that they survived sickness and weather and Indians was amazing to me
The reviewer was amazed that pioneers survived amid the threat of Native Americans, however that threat wasn’t present in the game. Yes, in the game thieves sometimes attacked your wagon train – but they weren’t Native Americans. Moreover, Native Americans offered food in the game – a far cry from any threat the reviewer perceived. The reviewer’s subtle reference parallels many of the inaccurate and more explicit responses I received from my survey. When asked to describe Native Americans in the game, survey respondents occasionally wrote, “they attack you”, “bad”, or “savages.” These descriptions indicated a disconnect between the history represented within the game, and the knowledge retained by the game’s users. Individuals unintentionally saw the past through racist stereotypes, engendered by other forms of media and culture.
The reoccurrence of these inaccuracies and stereotypes is intriguing. Are they due to the inherent limitations of computer simulations? Are stereotypes foundational to how we see the past? Are there other examples of history and the past becoming abstracted in the minds of individuals – being replaced by stereotypes? Is this a phenomenon that could be studied further? Am I unduly extrapolating upon a perceived pattern and is this all just a waste of time? I already have preliminary answers to several of these questions – but I would appreciate feedback from my readers regarding ways to approach this.
In her 2005 presidential address to the American Studies Association, Karen Halttunen delivered a speech that would be published in American Quarterly the following year, entitled “Groundwork: American Studies in Place.” She discussed the “disneyfication” of American place-making; the replacement of reality with an idealized vision that engenders racism and sexism. What occurs in disneyfication is the substitution of place with an idea – one that is idealized, homogenous, and limiting. Disneyfication is problematic in that it only presents a simplified version of reality. The name obviously comes from Disney, whose presentation of ideas to children has traditionally been an idealized, optimistic representation of the world that doesnt engage the realities of the world. This amounts to the filtration or censorship of ideas – ideas that fall outside a utopian vision of reality are eliminated.
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.
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In 2004 – two years before Sigil or any other Western role playing simulations appeared in Second Life there was a game being developed and aptly called “Wild West Sim.” To my knowledge this was a failed attempt, but it sounds incredibly ambitious including the ability to support tens-of-thousands of players. Online there are a few interviews with the development team that reveal how bad this was going to be.. which is likely why it never got out of beta.
“WWS is not meant to be 100% accurate to actual history, but rather 100% accurate to the romanticized version of the era, which is fairly close, but makes for better game play. Of course, prostitution was a very integral and accepted part of society in those days, so it will be included in WWS,” commented Anastasia.
The notion that a romanticized version of the era is even remotely close to the reality of the West is ludicrous. The best way to illustrate this is by seeing the only screen capture I’ve found of the game.
I can only imagine what Patricia Limerick or Richard White would say. To WWS’ credit, the game did include many ethnic groups, however they only seem to have been included to intentionally create conflict.
There may be an alternate version with modified elements that will be available for younger players, and possibly even geared for educational purposes in the classroom. ([It would be] a sort of multiplayer “Oregon Trail” where students could interact with other students around the world.)
Great. They wanted to teach a romanticized version of the West to children, and expose them to prostitution when they’re in the 4th grade. It doesn’t surprise me this never took off.
