[MUD-Dev] wherefor in-game artists?

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 08 September 2004, Ola Fosheim Grostad wrote:

> I thought you stated in your book that it wasn't meant to be a
> predictive model.

The 4-type model can be used to predict how a virtual world will
react to changes (using the dynamic model), but not how players
themselves will change over time.

The 8-type model doesn't have the dynamic model (well, it has one
but I haven't figured it out yet!), but it does show how players
change over time. It's not perfect - players will sometimes get
stuck, or jump the rails - but it's a start.

> if this was posed in public then the real question asked would be:
> What are you willing to admit that you want from a MUD, to the
> community, when you see what the other players claim that they
> want.

Although respondents did say what they thought they liked, they also
said what they thought other people liked. This debate lasted
several months, and there wasn't a consensus at any point during it.
I agree that if I'd set out to obtain data systematically I would
have done things differently (actually, I wouldn't have started as I
find the process of doing that kind of thing intensely
tedious). However, I didn't set out to write a paper about player
types; that just came when I tried to summarise the debate after it
had run its course.

		Richard
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