[MUD-Dev] DGN: Reasons for play [was: Emergent Behaviors spawned from...]

[Paolo Piselli]

--- Damien Neil <damien.neil at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/29/05, Paolo Piselli <ppiselli at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > --- Damien Neil <damien.neil at gmail.com> wrote:

> For one, because Nick Yee's research inaccurately associates the
> "killer" type with competition.  It's the old confusion of "Bartle
> 'killers' all want to PvP, and everyone who PvPs is a 'killer'".
> Even reading 'killer' as 'griefer', surely it should be obvious
> that equation of "competing" with "griefers" in the passage you
> quote is palming a card.

That quote is from page 8 of a larger article describing Nick's
model.  In Nick's model, greifing behavior falls under "Competition"
because it involves "challenging others, provocation, domination".
Nick argues the validity of this grouping with the correlations
shown on page 10 - where the actual questionnaire questions are
shown.  Since the correlations exist in his data, are you saying
that these questions are flawed, or are you saying that his data is
flawed?

> In addition, the discovery that people interested in competition
> are interested in character advancement is not especially
> interesting--since failure to advance one's character makes it
> difficult or impossible to compete in most games.

It is interesting in this context because it goes against your
assertion that "Achiever and killer behavior is completely
different".  Although the actual activities associated with these
behaviors are different, there is an association.  I think that both
behaviors are manifestations of a motivation to climb a social
ordering.

> Another problem is that the survey questions do not well
> distinguish between the desire to advance and the desire to be
> powerful.  This may seem like a distinction without a
> difference--but consider: If a given player is acquires a
> character with the highest level and best equipment in the game,
> will he continue playing?  A player motivated by advancement will
> dislike reaching the top, since he can has nowhere to climb.  A
> player motivated by power--either because he wants the respect
> that comes with it, or the ability to do things that demand
> it--will, in contrast, be happy.

This is an interesting theory with some sense to it. I look forward
to seeing the associated research.

> I don't really have any interest in spending a lot of time
> defending Bartle's model of player types.  I feel that it's a
> useful tool--imperfect and incomplete, as all tools for describing
> human behavior are, but still workable for many purposes. I
> certainly don't think that Nick Yee's research, interesting though
> it may be, invalidates Bartle's.

To be fair, Bartle's research didn't box people into each of the
four behavioral types, it scored people with respect to each of the
four behavioral types. People have subsequently drawn conceptual
lines based on what a player's maximal score is.  Nick is a little
hard on Bartle's types, but he is attacking the popular perception
of the types as opposed to the way the research scored players.  I
see Nick's research as a refinement as opposed to a whole new deal.

-Paolo

Paolo Piselli
ppiselli at yahoo.com
www.piselli.com
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