Recap: Richard Bartle Visits Metanomics

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Last Monday, March 10rd, 2008, Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics hosted Richard Bartle, veteran game-maker and author of the first book on the design of MUDs, Designing Virtual Worlds.

This event covered how current worlds embody the tenets of his book and analyzed the extent to which the current state of virtual worlds reflects the hopes Bartle had for this medium when he co-developed the Multi-User Dungeon.

Richard Bartle's classification system rating online multiplayer gamers by the degree to which they are are achievers, explorers, socializers and killers. This framework seems to apply strongly to immersionists, or those who derive value from the experience within the virtual worlds. However, the framework does not seem to apply as strongly to augmentationists, who value virtual worlds because they provide an environment and technology to advance their real-life strategic goals. Perhaps augmentationists are missing because most MMOs are role-playing games. However, I contend that leaving out this segment is a tragic mistake as even the most closed, role-playing virtual worlds contain a segment of augmentationists: the game developers themselves.

Consider Bartle's attitude about his own gaming. As Richard Bartle clearly put it, "I'm not playing to have fun. I'm playing to have designer fun, which isn't the same thing as player fun." He continues:

I just see the design, I don't see what's going on in there. I mean right now I've got my Second Life screen consists of a very, very large text window obliterating everything behind it. So I can see what's being typed on the different channels, but I don't get to see all the pictures because I'm not particularly interested in the pictures. Whereas, if I were playing Second Life [for an] immersive reason, then I would want to see the pictures because that's part of what's projecting me there. But because I understand all this kind of stuff, that's not a factor to me because it's like I see underneath what's going on. The magic's not there. So although I really envy the people for whom the magic is there, my fun comes in making the magic, not in experiencing it.

This begs a question: How different are game developers from other augmentationalists active in virtual worlds? Clearly there is a power differential, but it is worth noting that the driving force behind Bartle's virtual world activity is actually quite similar to that of many participants in the Metanomics series. Perhaps some attend each week to hear Rob's soothing voice, but my impression is that many of us are active in virtual worlds because of its meaning to our real lives.

For example, Rob and I are active in Second Life for explicitly augmentationist purposes. Rob has been offering a directed study course on Business and Ovesight in Second Life since August 2007 and has used the medium to advance his research agenda, in part through the interviews that take place weekly in the Metanomics broadcast. Similarly, I was attracted to Second Life as a medium to conduct economic experiments at astonishingly low cost (at the cost of an ambiguous external validity). There are undoubtedly countless other examples among those who have constructed part- or full-time professional careers around their Second Life activities who escape the predictions of Bartle's model which assumes all players seek immersion in virtual worlds.

The primary policy implication of this reasoning is that virtual world features valued by immersionists are clearly not the same as those desired by augmentationalists. Augmentationalists are driven by their real world ambitions and require an ability to establish property rights over their own player-created content. In closed worlds explicitly designed for immersion (e.g. World of Warcraft), there exists a natural conflict between in-game augmentationalists who would benefit from a more open virtual world and the game developers who recognize that non-immersive activity (such as RMT) can spoil the immersive value of their world. However, in relatively open worlds like Second Life, perhaps it is immersionists who are out of place and ill-served by the developers. The net result is that this inherent conflict seems to provide an opportunity for businesses to serve the needs of these divergent groups.