FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
The Four Types of Players
In 1997, MUD developer Richard Bartle wrote a seminal article called "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs" for the first issue of the Journal of Virtual Environments (Bartle, 1997). He proposed that MUD players fall into four categories depending on whether they enjoy either acting on (manipulating, exploiting, or controlling) or interacting with (learning about and communicating with) either the world or the other players (see Figure 21.1). Those who enjoy acting on other players he dubbed Killers, or clubs; those who enjoy interacting with other players he called Socializers, or hearts. Those who enjoy acting on the world he described as Achievers, or diamonds; those who enjoy interacting with the world he referred to as Explorers, or spades.
FIGURE 21.1
Richard Bartle's four types of players
Bartle went on to claim that a healthy MUD community required a certain proportion of each of these types of players and that adjusting the game design to attract or discourage any given type of player would tend to influence the numbers of others as well. In effect, a persistent world is a sort of ecology in which the players' styles of play influence the balance of the population. Bartle drew his data from personal observation rather than rigorous statistical analysis, so his conclusions can certainly be questioned. Nevertheless, his grouping of player types proved to be useful not only in the design of MUDs, but in graphical persistent worlds as well.
