[MUD-Dev] Types of game

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

coder at ibm.net wrote:

...

>  From Bartle: Puzzle solving, tinkering, systemic exploration, which I'd
>argue is not a sub-set of "Adventure".
>
>  From Bartle:  Socialisers, talkers, and other such like which bear
>little relation to RP (arguability accepted on their definition as
>"games").

I think Bartle missed out on something in his treatment, two I missed
was "practical jokers" / "builders", but I guess he would say those
are combinations of "killers"/"socialisers" and
"achievers"/"explorers".  I don't find the "acting"/"interacting"
separation truly useful either.  I somehow get the feeling that his
"acting" is more like "powerstruggle", but then again, isn't that
interacting with players?  Some psychology researchers would probably
name his "acting" "need for power" and his "interacting" "need for
affiliation", but then again, that wouldn't really fit on the
"explorers". I also believe you can socialize and minimize the
interaction with other players, and just maxmize "getting attention".
He places "achievers" on the other side of the scale both with regards
to "players" and "interacting", still he says "achievers regard other
achievers as competition to be beaten" and "achievers do often
co-operate".

So essentially I think a better classification scheme should be
feasible, preferably some scheme that include "producers" and
"consumers". In general I believe setting concepts up against
eachother is a very bad idea.  I feel more comfortable with assigning
one axis to each term (going from 0 to 1, instead of -1 to +1), unless
they are clearly mutually exclusive (or as discrete as world/player).

Some keywords in a taxonomy could be:

player/world
need for power/need for affiliation
solo/group
cooperation/competition
producing/consuming/watching
explicit goal

I won't argue that Bartle has pointed at 4 major activities, but I
don't like his 2 by 2 grid model, and essentially I guess my main
complaint about his paper is that he is assuming a one-to-one
relationship between activities, actions, intentions and motivation.

I guess I ought to mention that I dislike almost all MUD I've read
(except some of the Habitat ones, but they are essentially presenting
experiences without too much analysis)

>I also suspect that it would be valuable for any system which attempted to
>describe this field to put an axis perpendicular to all the others,
>labelled "personal involvement".  Each segment stretches from "I am my
>character an everything that happens to him happens to me" to "Hey, I have
>a character, look what I can make him do!"

In december 1990 Farmer asked 50 Fuijitsu Habitat users about their
Avatars with the following results:
                      
                        My avatar is a representation of...        
                        myself       another beeing

In Habitat I act...
like myself              26%          24%
unlike myself            25%          25%


He also lists the follwing "patterns of usage and social commitment":
o The passives (likes to watch)
o The actives
o the motivators (starts up activities)
o the caretakers (helps people)
o the Geek Gods  (admin)

(see "Social Dimensions of Habitat's Citizenry" at Electric Communities
website)

*shrug*

Ola.