WHAT KIND OF PLAYER ARE YOU?by HazedI recently received an email from somebody who is doing some research into the different playing styles in multi-player games. Richard van Meurs, from Tilburg university in the Netherlands, wants to find out if previous theories about how players play MUD games are correct or not. He's taking as his starting point an article published some years ago by Richard Bartle, the grand-daddy of MUD designers, who came up with the very first multi-user dungeon game - called, simply, MUD - and who has some rather interesting ideas about MUD players. In order to find out whether Richard Bartle's theory holds true, Richard van Meurs is running a survey which he wants as many MUD players to take part in as possible. I've taken the survey myself and it's quite harmless, and will take about ten minutes of your time. As an added incentive, there's a $14 gift certificate for Amazon on offer for one of the respondents. If you're interested in helping this guy with his research go to http://www.rofv.nl/survey. Here's his blurb:
Meanwhile, if you'd like to know more about Richard Bartle's theory, then you can read it at http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm. I don't agree with everything he has to say but it's an interesting read nonetheless. For those that don't know, the original MUD was a game which encouraged violently anti-social behavior in the form of "player-killers"; in fact, Fed was partly written as a reaction against that game, and deliberately discourages things that can harm other players. So the two games are at the opposite ends of the spectrum! |