[MUD-Dev] NEWS: Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies - No, Really (By R. Bartle)

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

"Richard A. Bartle" <richard at mud.co.uk> writes:
> On 24 November 2004, Martin Keegan wrote:

>> Here I believe Bartle is homing in on something quite peculiar to
>> muds - it's really very hard to substitute any mud for the
>> experience a player had on his first mud, though he declines to
>> share with us his reasons for this point

> The trouble is, there aren't many studies that have looked at
> this. I could either make the point and refer to the one study I
> know that has looked at it, or I could go and do the study
> myself. Then again, I could just make the statement and hope it

I pretty much take it as a tendency too (if not a fact), but! This
subject is much harder to study than it appears for the very simple
reason that you also have to factor in why they chose their first
MUD in the first place and what they did when they played it. Maybe
the first MUD was a perfect fit. Maybe it wasn't an arbitrary
choice. I.e. to say something about causality you need to know how
and why the first encounter with the first MUD the player stayed in
happend. Or indeed if the first MUD really was the first MUD, maybe
what people consider to be their first MUD is the first where they
had a good experience that matched their preferences... Furthermore
you also need to factor in the breadth of experiences the first MUD
offered...

-- 
Ola - http://folk.uio.no/olag/
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