# Social Dimensions LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- One of the earliest systems to use a primarily graphical interface was Habitat, which appeared in the mid-1980s. Although not strictly speaking a virtual world (it was essentially a graphical chat room), it nevertheless did have close similarities and is regarded as an important milestone in the development of graphical virtual worlds. The system administrator [^30] of Habitat between 1986 and 1988 (during what would nowadays be called its beta-test phase) was F. Randall Farmer. In 1992, he wrote a paper describing some of his observations about the social dimensions of online communities [^31]. Randy noticed that players behave in one of five different ways: - Passives. People who want to be entertained without effort on their part. Habitat was only one of their online activities. 75% of players by number, but only 20% by connect time. - Actives. Players for whom Habitat was their main online activity. They got involved as soon as they logged in, and used up most of the total connect time. - Motivators. People who make life interesting for the other players by organizing events, setting up institutions, opening debates. A good ratio is one motivator for every 50 passives and actives. - Caretakers. Mature motivators, who may be employees of the developer. They helped newbies, mediated conflicts, noted bugs, and did other things that would today fall into the province of customer service. - Geek Gods [^32]. The designers and implementers who ensure that the virtual world works, and who make changes when it doesn’t. The categories here are quite vague, and two of them concern groups of people not normally considered to be proper “players” anyway. However, it’s not so much the categorizations that are important as the fact that Randy noticed there was a pattern involved—what he called the Path of Ascension. Players started off as passives, then became actives, then motivators, then caretakers, then finally geek gods. People should be encouraged to move along the path in order to develop a vibrant, thriving community. It may seem today that all this is fairly obvious. Of course you should try to get people more involved in the community! Did people really ever think differently? Yes they did. Back then, players were frequently lumped together as an amorphous mass, especially by the big online services. There was a recognition that there were useful “mother hen” people who would do all your organizing for you happily and without pay, but no one gave any thought to where these individuals might come from—they were just there. Randy pointed out how they got there, and how to get them there. Unfortunately (for them), this had little influence on the big online services. The way they saw it, there were fewer people at each step of the path, so transition meant a loss of players. If 75% of the players were using 20% of the bandwidth, then any movement would reduce the overall number of players while increasing the bandwidth. Even with players being charged by the hour, this was too big a price to pay, so they kept the status quo. As a result, the community became sterile and unattractive to newbies. The Path of Ascension concerns the development of players as they grow in maturity. As such, at least in its first three steps it ought to be related to the main sequence of the player types model; we’ll see how, exactly, a little later. A further refinement to the idea of progression came with the notion of “Circles.” [^30]: The Habitat term was Oracle. [^31]: F. Randall Farmer, Social Dimensions of Habitat’s Citizenry. Carl Eugene Loeffler & Tim Anderson (eds.), The Virtual Reality Casebook. New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992. [^32]: It’s a self-deprecating pun on Greek Gods.