Role-playing Addiction -- I have full article if wanted djf

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: 29 Mar 94 12:59:07 EST
From: "Mich Kabay [NCSA]" <75300.3232 () CompuServe COM>
Subject: Role-playing Addiction


Washington Post Staff Writer John Schwartz has published a moving and
insightful article entitled, "Game Boy."  It explores the life and death of
an eighteen year old man addicted to cyberspace role-playing.  I have asked
Mr Schwartz for permission to post the original article in its entirety.  For
the time being, here's a brief summary.


<<begin summary>>


Nathaniel Davenport was an unassertive, socially-isolated teenager who did
poorly in high school but had excellent S.A.T. scores.  He entered the
University of California at Santa Cruz autumn 92 and quickly became active in
AmberMUSH, a M.U.D. (multi-user dimension) loosely based on the _Amber_
stories of Roger Zelazny.  AmberMUSH "features a series of mirrors that you
walk through into different elaborate fictional situations: One is the ruins
of a city; another a rowdy Western town; a third, the smoky darkness of the
"World's End Bar," a cross-dimensional speakeasy. Wherever you go, other
players are there, gathered from around the world to engage in a collective
fantasy; you converse with whoever is in the `room' you are in at the time,
something like a pickup game in basketball."


Nathaniel became a M.U.D. addict.  He was asked to leave his university
because he had missed all of his classes while living in AmberMUSH.  Back in
Virginia, he continued his addiction through student terminals at George
Mason University, where he would spend entire days interacting with other
role players from around the world.


Nathaniel's persona in AmberMUSH was Sabbath, a beautiful seductress devoid
of empathy for the characters she manipulated.  For example, she spent months
seducing another character, only to goad him to his death in a battle with a
more powerful character.


After bitter arguments with his family, Nathaniel agreed to get a job.  He
began working at a computer company from 5 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.  He incorporated
his new job into his frenetic role-playing life by skimping on sleep.  A week
after starting work, he apparently fell asleep at the wheel of his mother's
car and smashed head-on into a truck.  He died instantly.


When Nathaniel's father sent out requests for correspondence on the Internet,
addressing the AmberMUSH users his son had spent so much of his life with, he
was astonished at the volume and quality of the responses.


Over time, Tom Davenport came to believe that Nathaniel's interactions were
not futile game-playing or pornographic flirting.  "[I]n his quest to better
himself, Nathaniel had also turned to the tool he was most comfortable with:
He was using his character to explore social interactions, to learn to be
funny, charming, direct. `He was using the net,' says Davenport, `to work out
his life.'"


"Contacted via e-mail, AmberMUSH administrator Mark Grundy said the death of
Nathaniel Davenport has made him think hard about players' responsibility to
one another in the on-line society. `The future for human relationships in
the Communication Age seems particularly uncertain,' Grundy wrote. `For me,
the lesson that Tom has taught is that the answers can come, if you look for
them with the right heart.'"


<<end summary>>


This young man, isolated from a local community, unhappy in his own skin,
found happiness as a different person in a different world.  The pity is that
he lost touch with his own body's needs.


Like a rat on an endorphin high, poor Nathaniel died from addiction to his
own form of satisfaction.  Should we shrug and dismiss his death?  "It's his
problem--he was free to act as he chose."  Surely, but could anyone in his
cyberspace community have helped avoid this sad end, crushed uselessly at the
age of 18?  I wonder if cyberspace role-players will reach out to accept and
support the tangible person behind the electronic persona?  Would it have
helped if someone had asked how Nathaniel was doing instead of focusing only
on Sabbath?


As human beings interact electronically, we will be forced to integrate
morality and reason into cyberspace.  Cyberspace must not remain a moral
vacuum; common sense must grow to encompass all the ways we now have to touch
other people's lives and alter our own.


Michel E. Kabay, Ph.D., Director of Education, National Computer Security Assn