This dissertation investigates the experiences of participants in a text-based virtual reality known as a Multi-User Domain, or MUD. Through in-depth electronic interviews, staff members and players of Aurealan Realms MUD were queried regarding the impact of their participation in the MUD on their perceived sense of self, community, and culture.
Second, the interviews were subjected to a qualitative thematic analysis through which the nature of the participant's phenomenological lived experience is explored with a specific eye toward any significant over or interconnection between each participant's virtual and material experiences.
An extended analysis of the experiences of respondents, combined with supporting material from other academic investigators, provides a map with which to chart the synchronous and synonymous relationship between a participant's perceived sense of material identity, community, and culture, and her perceived sense of virtual identity, community, and culture. An original theoretical instrument, the Cyber-Synchronicity model, is used to further explicate the interconnectedness of participant's overall lived experience while engaged in play on Aurealan Realms.
In sum, the research and analysis of respondent interviews demonstrates that there is significant synchronous and synonymous interconnection between a MUD participant's material and virtual lived experience. Further, the Cyber-Synchronicity model is demonstrated as appropriate to graphically represent the nature of the material-virtual interconnection, as well as providing labels for the different aspects of the overall experience, represented as disparate yet connected and interrelated categories.