[MUD-Dev] DGN: Reasons for play [was: Emergent Behaviorsspawnedfrom...]

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 05 August 2005, Paolo Piselli wrote:

> It is not important wether or not his work presents a full theory
> of player motivation.

It doesn't present ANY theory of motivation.

> Your work and his are laying the groundwork for how we will
> quantify player behavior and player motivation.

Quantification is of little intrinsic use in itself; you have to be
able to fit it into a wider framework. It can identify issues ("too
few female players") and correlations ("more female players in
sims-like games") but it can't turn those correlations into the
causations that allow us to understand how to create better games.

Nick's work has produced a lot of high-quality data, but we need
someone to DO something with it. To be fair, Nick is building some
partial theories bottom-up, finding out why people do things
particular ways and so on, but it's a long way short of knitting
together (if indeed it can be knitted together at a high level
purely by asking grounded questions). At some point, someone is
going to have to look at the data, speculate a larger picture that
the data suggests, then ask Nick to obtain some new stats that the
theory predicts.

> IMO your research is helping us distinguish between "this" and
> "that" so that in the future we may investigate "why".

My research has a very big "why" to it - that whole Hero's Journey
mapping.

> I think this issue can get semantically confusing, because words
> like "achievement" and "greif" can be used to describe both
> motivations and behaviors.

So why choose labels that can be semantically confusing?

Most players know what they mean by "griefers" and they know what
they mean by "griefing", and the two definitely concern the same
thing. If you want to say that actually most "achievers" are
motivated by griefing, you can't then say that this doesn't make
those achievers griefers. You have to think of another term for
"griefing" that isn't already taken.

> Certainly achievement-play and greif-play are different behaviors,
> but it is possible that both are derived from the same motivation.

According to your earlier reading of Nick's stats, it's more
probable than possible.

If you were saying that all griefers are achievers, that would make
more sense (although I'd still disagree with it).  You're not just
saying that, though: you're also saying that all achievers are
griefers. That does not make sense - otherwise achievers wouldn't
use the term "griefer" as they wouldn't see it as griefing.

It's possible that achievers may do things that look to an observer
as a form of griefing. They may even be identified by the victim as
griefing. However, in the achiever's mind they are not griefing, and
the achiever may be shocked to learn that other players think of it
that way. This is because the achiever has a DIFFERENT motivation
from a griefer. Griefers DELIBERATELY cause grief, whereas achievers
don't. That's why this suggestion that achievers and griefers have
the same motivation is flawed.

Now if you were arguing from the victim's point of view, sure, you
might say that an achiever griefed you. That's because you don't
know the achiever's motivation. If you did, you'd still be unhappy
about it but you couldn't rightly call it grief play.  It may be
selfish and unthinking, but it's driven by a need to go up levels,
not by a need to cause you distress.

Tying grief as perceived by the victim to the motivation of the
perpetrator of the grief makes the effect too far removed from the
cause. It's useful to know that many people who are victims of grief
are "griefed" by people who don't realise they're causing that
grief, and people can design better games in the light of that
knowledge. Lumping people who grief for fun with people who achieve
for fun because occasionally the side-effects of actions of the
latter coincide with the effects of intentional actions of the
former is not, however, going to advance our understanding of
either.

> I think we need a better semantic separation of player motivations
> and player behaviors.

Me too. Chek Yang Foo in Australia is doing an interesting PhD on
grief play which may help resolve some of these issues, but he's not
ready to publish yet

  http://www.chekyang.com/phd/phd-invitation-interview.htm .

> Yes, I never understood why Nick claims that you put players into
> separate boxes when your tests give them a score with respect to
> each type.

No, no, no, my work DOES put people into boxes and those tests are
NOT mine! Nick's right.

It's not quite that people are only in one box, though: they will be
mainly in one box, but may still have some activity from the box
they came from and also may be engaging in activity that will lead
to the next box.

> This type of reseach can be used to plan and design gameplay that
> facilitates engagement in associated behaviors.

But without a theory, you're basically just guessing at what the
effects might be.

> For instance, if achievement and cometition are associated, then
> design gameplay where a player can both achieve and compete

But that gives you no indication of what the effects might be on the
other players. It also doesn't tell you why people are achieving, so
it may be that you give them the wrong sort of competition. If
people are competing to win and you give them competitions that they
can't win, they may not be all that happy with the result.

> Or on teh lip side, if greif play is strongly associated with
> escapism and time spent online, then perhaps a design that reduces
> immersion (what!?) and discourages long play sessions (sacrilege!)
> would actually repel players who like to engage in greif play
> (holy grail!!).

Close down the servers, it would have the same overall effect.

>>    - The motivations suggested are implicit in the questions.

> This is a good criticism.  But I do not know how to separate
> questions that treat behaviors and motivations.

Behaviours can be observed without the need for questions.
Questions are to understand how players rationalise their behaviour
to themselves.

> Orthogonality is a big problem.  If player behavior arises from a
> network of motivations that are interrelated, how will we ever
> make cuts at the right level of abstraction?

The data shows clumps, but you don't have to clump your theory at
the same level. The whole immersion thing, for example, doesn't
match any of my player types but my theory explains it as a desire
for increased progression through the types. Thus, even though it's
of a different level of abstraction, it's fine - theories can have
different levels of abstraction too.

>> http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2005/03/daedalus_projec.html

> Wow, I should have read the comments attached to this article back
> in March!  Great posts.

Does it answer your original question as to "Why are we still
arguing Bartle's Types when Nick Yee is doing such wonderful
empirical research?".

Richard
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