The topic of MUDs is an important one because of the interest people have in playing MUDs and the social ties formed amidst the process of interaction through an extended length of time. Literature Review MUDs and MUD interactions have been studied by a number of researchers. The original system consisted of a database of textual descriptions of a fantastic world of the swords and sorcery genre. Through reading these descriptions players could journey through the virtual world. Elizabeth Reid defined a MUD program as a set of tools that can be used to create a sociocultural environment.
Players create a character and develop attributes for the character.
The description the player gives becomes the character's self-presentation. Objects, such as houses, castles, or gifts, can also be created. Turkle refers to MUDs as a new blurred genre of collaborative writing. Turkle wrote articles about how people may create a new identity for themselves on MUDs and distribute identities to a number of characters. Another area of focus for Turkle was the concept of people using MUDs to act out and work out their real life, or RL, problems.