[MUD-Dev] 3rd Axis for Bartle's 2 axis theory of MUD players

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 19th October, 2002, Raph Koster wrote:

> For combat-oriented muds, I would have put it as A-> K-> E->
> S. Certainly in the commercial world most people seem to come in
> ready to "play the game" which to them means level up or
> whatever. Then they look for greater challenges in the form of
> player opponents, then start exploring other aspects of the game,
> and finally stick for their friends.

The K-> E-> A-> S "main sequence" was something I noticed very early
from MUD1. People were entering the virtual world with no
preconceptions from other virtual worlds (or, for most of them, from
other computer games).  They appeared in a place they had never been
to before, and their first aim was to thrash around to find out the
limits of what they could do. They routinely objectified other
players, and the first major lesson they learned was that other
players were real people. From this, they matured to exploring their
surroundings more methodically, acquiring knowledge and skills. When
they felt ready, they applied these skills toward achieving their
goals in the game, which for most people meant to better their
character (but for me meant for them to better themselves). Finally,
they settled down with the friends they had forged through
adversity.

There are other sequences that show up in the 3-dimensional model I
present in the book, but I can't see that any of them are equivalent
to A-> K-> E-> S. You might therefore want to take the model
apart. So long as what results is a better model, I'm quite happy
for that to happen: my aim is to further research into virtual
worlds, and I don't really care whether it's me or someone else who
ends up being correct - so long as our understanding of this
phenomenon progresses overall.

Richard



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