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

[Damien Neil]

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

>> Achiever and killer behavior is completely different.

> Why are we still arguing Bartle's Types when Nick Yee is doing
> such wonderful empirical research?  Your statement is contrary to
> the evidence: "Achieving and Competing: While Bartle proposed that
> Achievers and Griefers were separate Types, they are in fact
> fairly correlated with each other. The Advancement and Competition
> subcomponents are correlated at r =3D .41, p < .001."

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.

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.

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.

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.

                             - Damien
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