[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 27th February, 2001, John Buehler wrote:

> I'd assert that personal accomplishments in any world are
> meaningless in any case.  A view borne of my ethics and morals. If
> you want accomplishments to mean something, have them result in
> benefit for others.

I don't wish to get involved in an argument over morals here, but it
seems to me that wanting to help others can be couched in terms of
personal accomplishment. People who help others are doing it for their
own reasons, whether those be moral, religious, genetic or
whatever. If I go out and help people because it gives me a warm fuzzy
glow to do so, I'm still basically doing it for myself. If I hate
helping people but still go out and help them, it'll also be for some
personal reason - maybe to assuage some guilt, or because I've decided
it's the "right thing" to do and don't want to contradict myself by
acting otherwise.

> I submit to you that achievers are doing the same thing.

Well, almost. Killers want to prove themselves worthy, but achievers
want to show how worthy they are. Killers measure themselves against
other people, but achievers measure themselves against absolute
standards. So long as there's some worthwhile measure of success,
achievers would play a game solo - they don't care all that much about
the other players except when they interfere or get in the
way. Although most interference would be within the game, undermining
the rating system would count as interference - quite severe
interference.

I see what you're getting at, though.

> It depends on the structure of the game.  You may be assuming that
> there are effects in place that typically are not.

Yes, that's quite possible!

> In a world predicated on achievement and gain of power, what you're
> talking about hasn't been happening.  That's because worlds based on
> achievement of power stratify.

It don't know if stratification is the cause, although it may be an
effect.

If your game is "about" acquiring power, then the more people who have
power the weaker they each individually are. In the land of the blind,
the one-eyed man is king; having one eye doesn't really give you much
of an edge if everyone else has two, though.

If the game's means of assigning power is such that anyone with time
on their hands can get it, it dilutes the power of those who already
have it. Acquisition of power then becomes more of a right than an
honour.

> Players don't quit even when it's boring because the social element
> of th games is predicated on staying with your social group in that
> stratified structure.  The social element is obviously a big draw to
> a multiplayer game.

It is indeed.

The danger that people who run games like this must face is that
rather than lose players individually, they lose them as a mass. If
one player leaves, they lose all their friends; if an entire guild
leaves, they don't. This has happened before in games like Air
Warrior, and it could happen again once there's enough of a choice of
new places to go.  The trick is to make people who leave your game go
off to play another one of your games rather than someone else's.

> If all players can't, then you're requiring player skill in order to
> achieve.  While I believe that *some* player skill should be
> involved, how much are you assuming?

It depends on the game and what you're doing in it. If you're out
there slaying monsters then you probably need mental skills so you can
keep on top of the situation; if you're making clothes, you need
creative skills so people who see them think they look good and buy
them off you; if you're a merchant you need bartering or business
skills; if you're a detective you need observational skills; if you're
a bard you need social skills. I wouldn't advocate reliance on
physical skills much because lag is too big a factor.

As for how much you need, well the more you have the better. There may
be minimal standards (if you can't use a mouse and you can't see the
screen, your physical skills aren't up to playing) and there may be
maximal ones too (it makes no difference if you're highly observant if
everything observable can be picked up by people 75% as observant as
you). I'd like to see some sliding scale, so if your skills are better
than someone else's then you have an edge, but allow for other player
skills to have an influence too, such as patience or tenacity.

> Personally, I don't want to be overtaxed in my manual dexterity, nor
> my brainpower.

In that case, you should choose a role in the game where that's not
going to be an issue.

> Any anyone standing in the maze trying to decide left or right just
> gets blown past by the returning powergamer.  The guy standing in
> the maze wants to ask a question, but the powergamer is already gone

At least he DID go past you. If he never need visit the place again,
you won't even see him. Not all people who come back ARE powergamers
anyway, and some WILL help you. Even if they rush past, they'll spot
you and come back and ask if you're OK.

Powergamers are a pain, I agree, but there are plenty of people who
aren't powergamers.

> And I submit that there are forms of entertainment in the game world
> (spots in the maze) that are inherently dangerous to stand in and
> could result in your death.

Well the solution would be not to stand there, then.

> Powergaming produces undesireable attitudes.

It does if the game isn't deep enough that players can think of better
ways to do what they have to do. If it's just a chore, yes, it can
make everyone annoyed.

> The development of persona might happen in a more balanced,
> introspective adult, but it's far less likely in children.  Right,
> Tess?  ;)

Teenagers are at a stage where they're trying to get a handle on their
own identities. They're quite likely to try and push the envelope to
see what they can do (although a lot of them do this by acting "evil"
then laer trying to pass it off as role-playing when they find that
it's not actually a very pleasant experience).

> I won't have any high level characters because there aren't any in
> my world (which doesn't exist, by the way).

Well high-skilled, then, or well-kitted, or rich, or whatever else it
has (or would have) for people to measure their relative success. Or
wouldn't it have anything like that? If it didn't, I can see why PD
might not be a concept you'd like to use.

> Next time you die in a game.  Stop playing it for several days.  See
> how small a deal it is.

Trivially small. I have several characters I can use. Even better, I'm
going away at the weekend and won't be playing anyway - I can get
myself killed and everyone will think I'm brave when I'm not.

> Unfortunately, I'd only ask you to do that in a game where you don't
> power up through achievement.

So how do you power up then?

I get the feeling there are some other threads I should have been
reaidng that I haven't...

> It's not supposed to be that big of a deal.  It's a simple time out
> process to remind the player that they were pushing it in a game
> where typically people aren't supposed to.

You could do that with a big red sign filling their client's screen
for 2 minutes.

> We're talking about *such* different games.  Your target
> experience/audience is not mine.

I have a very wide target audience, but in my article I was talking
mainly about the achievers.

> Because the tower of achievement that the player has accumulated was
> just toppled, forcing them to built it up again from scratch.  Which
> is why I argue that taking away achievement from a player is a bad
> idea.

At least you know it was achievement and not simply a measure of how
long you've been playing the game.

> Your personality might be well suited to rising to the challenge,
> embracing those obstacles so that you can overcome them. But you're
> a grown man.  Will children behave the same way?

Depends on the age and personality of the child. I wouldn't
necessarily press for PD in a game for 7-year-olds (unless that was
inherent in the subject matter), but then a 7-year-old isn't going to
play for several years anyway.

> Temporarily it does.  Everyone sees it lying on the ground.  Seems
> pretty dead.  For a number of days.  The only other alternative is
> permanent death.

You can't "temporarily" die. That's not death, it's something else.
"I died for a couple of days, then I got better". No...

> You misunderstand my point.  There is no thousands of gold.  There
> is no Sword of Doom to be had.  The entertainment of the hunt is
> your reward.

So you have nothing to show for it?

I can see where you're coming from, and there may well be a whole slew
of touchy-feeling community idealist types who would play it, but it
takes far too much away from the individual for my liking.


By barring all traditional methods of rating achievement, you either
remove all achievers or the achievers you do get use other means of
achieving, eg. trying to lead parties (where the other players are
components that will help you to satisfy your overall goal). Either
way, I don't see the game (if you can call it a game) having a great
future.  It would eat up content at a phenominal rate.

> At no time were we interested in gain of power or possessions.  It
> was just fun.

Well I suppose so. I just feel it could have been so much MORE fun.

> In a world like that, denial of fun is sufficient reminder of
> particularly lethal situations.

In a game like that, without power or possessions, PD would just be
equivalent to a teleport to wherever you start, because in all other
respects your dead character and the new one are the same. I can see
why, in these circumstances, you prefer a login block.

> I don't think my (mythical) players would care for the destruction
> of their character.  It's not entertaining at all.

No, but the destruction of OTHER people's characters can be. It's just
not a great deal of fun when it's you it happens to.

> Unless there is near-zero value in any given character (e.g. Quake),
> then I assume that players want to hang on to the one that they
> created.

So where is the value in a character in your scheme, then?

> Note that permanent death is also not true death.  The player can
> construct a new character which was identical to the old.

That's easy to stop. Even something as simple as reserving the names
of all dead personae so they can't be used again would stop it.

> But the persona that the player had can be recreated.  And he will
> do it in a powergaming mode.

Or he may decide to play a completely new persona because he now
realises that the old one was becoming no fun to play. Or he may start
again intending to play like his old character but find himself going
in different directions. Or he might do the same things but not
powergame because he wants to enjoy the view on the way.

People don't powergame by default.

Richard

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