In a move away from a strict gaming theme, in 1989 a Carnegie Mellon student by the name of James Aspens built a somewhat different kind of server which he named TinyMUD. TinyMUD was a space in which the prime activity was not slaying dragons, but world building and socializing with other people (Bruckman 1999; Keegan 1997). Keegan argues that “TinyMUD revolutionized mudding, replacing combat and competition with socialization and world building. Made such a giant leap away from (then) conventional that some didn’t even consider it a ‘game.’”5Beyond breaking the oriented-formula of MUDs, it also served as an important precursor to MOO, yet another “flavor” of text-based world. page 39.

The quote above contained a historical fact/claim that I didn't know before reading this article. This quote is surprising to me because I never really knew the evolution of video games. From 2010 until now, the differences and changes that have happened are mind-blowing. TinyMUD combined a virtual world, text-based, interactive fiction, online chat, etc to video games. I found this claim surprising because I didn't know about MUD's or TinyMUD's before reading this article. I always thought video games were created and played through a different server/development.

"Communication in the game is also a central feature of how social life is sup-ported and in addition to public communication methods (speaking out-loud so those around you can hear, or speaking on a zone-based chat channel),players are also able to send private messages (“tells”) to one another across-zones." page 39.

I thought this claim was interesting because it revealed an important factor of video games that many people take for granted. As a person that does not identify as a gamer, I've noticed that many studies and people believe that video games hinder social development, social skills, and socialization. What many people don't realize is that video games have a component that benefits communication and social life of gamers. Gamers are able to communicate live with their opponents on the game, there are chat rooms to talk, speaking to specific channels, etc. As games have become more robust over time, I think a key improvement was the communication aspect of games. This claim is important to the history of video games because it shows that socialization and social skills aren't hindered from video games as there is a communication aspect of it.