Hello,
The first ever Masters Thesis about BatMUD (as far as I know) was
recently approved (with the best grades) from University of Jyväskylä,
the Department of History and Ethnology. The new Master of Arts asked
me to post about this, so here goes. (She's a mudders girlfriend, a
nonmudder herself).
The subject was "Virtuaalinen lahja - Lahjanvaihto BatMUD
virtuaaliyhteisössä", meaning roughly "Virtual gift - Trading gifts
in BatMUD virtual community". The thesis was done by interviewing
some BatMUD players/wizards, including myself, and doing analysis
based on that. It's all in Finnish unfortunately, but for those
interested, the whole thesis is available online at:
http://thesis.jyu.fi/07/URN_NBN_fi_jyu-2007234.pdf
-Era of idling