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The
adventure oriented Multi-User Dungeon Tubmud is in
this article examined in the light of various
theories on play and games, in order to define a
methodology suitable to capture the specific
game-like aspects of the MUD. By subjecting Tubmud
to two models that were originally developed to
analyse elements of traditional games, a complex of
overlapping games is disclosed in the MUD,
suggesting that the MUD is too diverse a phenomenon
to be conceptualised as one kind of game. Instead
it could be approached as a game environment
comprising several different kinds of games. For
the sake of analytical clarity, we may choose to
examine each of these separately. Nevertheless, in
actual play more than one of them will in fact
often occur to be performed
simultaneously.
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