The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: May 13, 2007

Official News - page 5


WHAT KIND OF PLAYER ARE YOU?

by Hazed

I 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:

Are you always trying to achieve the highest status on a MUD or would you rather find out everything there is to know about the MUD world? Are you trying to make friends among your fellow players or would you rather slice their throats and make them feel miserable? What do people consider fun and rewarding when they are playing their MUD and in what way do these behaviours relate to their character traits in real life.

This survey is part of my research in Leisure Studies at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. As I am a MUD administrator myself (after playing extensively for several years), I am very much interested in the results. Your contribution to this research is extremely valuable and it will only take about 10 minutes of your time to complete the survey. Of course everything you submit will be handled anonymously and with care and will only be used to draw general conclusions about playing styles for my research.

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!


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