The vocabulary required to read the primary sources without misunderstanding them. These definitions are historical facts, not design choices — they are recorded here so that when a source says "Region" we know exactly what it meant in 1986.
Definitions here describe the original Lucasfilm system unless a term is marked otherwise.
Habitat: The Lucasfilm/Quantum Link graphical virtual world, pilot-tested on the Commodore 64 from 1986 to May 1988. Unqualified "Habitat" always means this system. Avoid: using it as a family name for the whole lineage.
Club Caribe: The commercially released Q-Link successor, 1989–February 1994. Same engine, weapons and sci-fi content stripped out at Q-Link's insistence. Morningstar's term for the result was "Club Metaphor."
Fujitsu Habitat: Fujitsu's rebuilt Japanese version on NIFTY-Serve, launched February 1990. A re-implementation, not a port. Fujitsu bought the IP outright in 1993.
WorldsAway: Fujitsu's modernised desktop successor, launched on CompuServe September 1995; the first world was Dreamscape. Later returned to Japan as Habitat II (1996).
NeoHabitat: The modern open-source reconstruction, from source code released by the MADE in 2016. Original C64 clients speak to a re-implementation of the server on the Elko platform. Avoid: calling it an emulator; the server logic was ported, not emulated.
Avatar: The animated figure representing a human player. Habitat's coinage in its modern sense. Heads were detachable and carryable.
Turf: An Avatar's private, customisable home region.
Region: One screen-sized unit of world, server-authoritative, with a hard cap on the objects it holds. Movement between regions is an explicit transition, not continuous space. The pilot world had roughly 20,000 of them.
Ghost: An intangible state in which an Avatar can observe and move but not interact or be acted upon. Load-bearing: it made victimhood in the wilderness voluntary, which is the stated reason weapons were never banned.
Token: The fiat currency. Avatars were hatched with 2,000 and drew a 100-Token daily stipend on login — a universal basic income, not an earned wage.
Vendroid: A vending machine that creates goods from nothing in exchange for Tokens. The economy's source.
Pawn Machine: Buys unwanted objects for Tokens. The economy's sink. Vendroid and Pawn Machine prices varying by location is what made the Doll/Crystal Ball arbitrage possible.
Bureaucrat-in-a-box: An in-world object that opens a channel to the operators. The petition mechanism — notable as an admission that the simulation could not resolve everything itself.
Oracle: An in-world voice through which operators spoke to inhabitants in-fiction, rather than breaking frame with an out-of-band announcement.
Geek Gods: The operators, in the sociology papers' own terminology. Held powers no Avatar could hold: rewriting object behaviour, adjusting balances, editing the database directly.
Farmer's population model, used throughout the sources. Listed in ascending order of engagement; the stated operational goal was to move each user "one role to the right."
Passive: Roughly half the population, a small fraction of connect time. Consumes the world as entertainment.
Active: The core paying base. Long sessions, heavy socialising, most of the revenue.
Motivator: Roughly one user in fifty. Starts businesses, throws parties, runs for office, commits crimes — generates the content other users consume. Habitat's central sociological finding is that this tiny group produces the world.
Caretaker: A matured Motivator who resolves disputes, mentors newcomers and enforces norms without operator intervention. Unpaid, unappointed, and structurally essential.