[MUD-Dev] Re: Re[2]: "Advanced" use of virtual worlds?

[Travis Casey]

On Saturday 02 February 2002 4:06, rayzam wrote:
> From: "Travis Casey" <efindel at earthlink.net>
>> On Thursday 31 January 2002 12:19, rayzam wrote:

>>> In essence, you cannot roleplay without being one of the classic
>>> 4,

>> Not sure that I agree with this.  What if you roleplay an
>> unambitious bum who doesn't like to talk to people?  You're not
>> socializing, not exploring, not trying to achieve anything, and
>> not trying to compete with or kill anyone.

> But then you're not playing. I hate to bring up chess, after the
> other discussions about it. It sounds like being in a chess-match
> with no time limits for moves, and deciding to never make your
> first move...

I don't agree with your analogy.  What if I make moves, but my goal
is to get a particular pawn to the other side of the board, rather
than to win the game?  One could argue that I'm "not playing chess",
because I'm not trying to achieve the standard goal of chess -- but
one could also argue that I am playing chess, but playing it with a
different goal than the standard one.

In the same way, you can define things such that someone is not
"playing" a mud unless they have a goal that fits one of Bartle's
four types -- but it is possible to "play the game" by the casual
definition of "playing" and not fit into any of those four types.

>> (Note that I'm not saying that I think many people would *want*
>> to roleplay that -- just that it's something that could be
>> roleplayed, and wouldn't fit into any of those four categories.)

> There was an earlier thread on: if you roleplay in the woods and
> noone is around to see, is it roleplaying. I'm not sure how I feel
> on this one either, to be honest.

I definitely think that it is still roleplaying.  As I've said many
times before, I consider roleplaying to be making decisions as your
character would make them, rather than simply using the character as
a playing piece. By that definition, you can roleplay even in a
single-player game.

>> I wasn't talking about goals, I was talking more about means -- a
>> roleplayer makes up a character and plays that character, where a
>> non-roleplayer uses a character as a game piece or an extension
>> of their self.  These are different ways of playing the game,
>> even if the ultimate goal is the same.

> I suppose it's just a matter of semantics. A roleplayer isn't just
> roleplaying in a void, they should still fit in one of the 4
> types. I don't consider that playing different. I consider being a
> socializer versus an explorer, playing differently.

Not intending to put words in your mouth, but that seems to me to be
saying, "I don't consider any differences in play style that can't
be mapped into Bartle's four styles to be real differences".
Personally, I view Bartle's classification as simply classifying
differences along one (or two, depending on how you look at it)
different axes of "how people play".  There are plenty of
differences in play style that don't fit into that model:

 - casual vs. serious play

 - roleplaying vs. non-roleplaying

 - long-term emphasis vs. short-term emphasis

 - single-character play vs. multiple-character play

 - competitive vs. cooperative emphasis

 - develop at start vs. develop in play

... and so on.  Some of these may be correlated with the Bartle
classifications, but none of them are 100% correlated with those.
To say that "only differences that Bartle's four types cover are
actual differences in playing the game" seems far too limiting to
me.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_     Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-' 
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) 
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