Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs - part 3 Richard Bartle[1] MUSE Ltd, Colchester, Essex. United Kingdom. 76703.3042@compuserve.com Concluded from Issue 80 DYNAMICS From the discussion in the previous section, it is possible to summarise the interactions between player types as follows: To increase the number of achievers: reduce the number of killers, but not by too much. if killer numbers are high, increase the number of explorers. To decrease the number of achievers: increase the number of killers. if killer numbers are low, reduce the number of explorers. To increase the number of explorers: increase the number of explorers. To decrease the number of explorers: massively increase the number of killers. To increase the number of socialisers: slightly decrease the number of killers. increase the number of socialisers. To decrease the number of socialisers: slightly increase the number of killers. massively increase the number of achievers. massively decrease the number of achievers. decrease the number of socialisers. To increase the number of killers: increase the number of achievers. massively decrease the number of explorers. increase the number of socialisers. To decrease the number of killers decrease the number of achievers. massively increase the number of explorers. decrease the number of socialisers. What are the dynamics of this model? In other words, if players of each type were to trickle into a system, how would it affect the overall make-up of the player population? The following diagram illustrates the flow of influence. Each arrow shows a relationship, from the blunt end to the pointed end. Ends are marked with a plus or minus to show an increase or decrease respectively; the symbols are doubled up to indicate a massive increase or decrease. Example: the line killers + ------------> - achievers means that increasing the number of killers will decrease the number of achievers. + <------------ + - <------------ - killers + ------------> - achievers - + + - - ------------> + ^ ^ | | - + ++ ++ -- | | | | ^ ^ \ / / | | | | | \ \ / / | | | | \ \ X / | | | | \ \/ X | | | | \ / \/ \ | | | | / \ / \ \ | | | | / / \ \ \ | | | | / / \ \ \ | | | | | / \ \ | | | v v v v \ | v - + --++ - - ++ -- - socialisers explorers + - - + + + ^ ^ | | ^ | | | | | | | \ \___/ / \___/ \___/ From this, it can be seen that the numbers of killers and achievers is basically an equilibrium: increasing the number of achievers will increase the number of killers, which will in turn dampen down the increase in the number of achievers and thereby reduce the number of excess killers. The explorer population is almost inert: only huge numbers of killers will reduce it. It should be noted, however, that massively increasing the number of explorers is the *only* way to reduce the number of killers without also reducing the player numbers in other groups. Because increasing the number of explorers in a MUD generally encourages others to join (and non-explorers to experiment with exploration), this gives a positive feedback which will eventually reduce the killer population (although recall the earlier point concerning how few people are, by nature, explorers). The most volatile group of people is that of the socialisers. Not only is it highly sensitive to the number of killers, but it has both positive and negative feedback on itself, which amplifies any changes. An increase in the number of socialisers will lead to yet more socialisers, but it will also increase the number of killers; this, in turn, will reduce the number of socialisers drastically, which will feed back into a yet greater reduction. It is possible for new socialisers to arrive in large enough quantities for a downward spiral in numbers not to be inevitable, but it is unlikely that such a system could remain viable in over a long period of time. This analysis of the dynamics of the relationships between players leads naturally to a consideration of what configurations could be considered stable. There are four: 1) Killers and achievers in equilibrium. If the number of killers gets too high, then the achievers will be driven off, which will cause the number of killers to fall also (through lack of victims). If there aren't enough killers, then achievers feel the MUD isn't a sufficient challenge (there being no way to "lose" in it), and they will gradually leave; new killers could appear, attracted by the glut of potential prey, however this happens so slowly that its impact is less than that of the disaffection among achievers. Socialisers who venture out of whatever safe rooms are available eventually fall prey to killers, and leave the game. Those who stay find that there aren't many interesting (to them) people around with whom to talk, and they too drift off. Explorers potter around, but are not a sufficient presence to affect the number of killers. 2) A MUD dominated by socialisers. Software changes to the MUD are made which prevent (or at least seriously discourage) killers from practising their craft on socialisers; incoming socialisers are encouraged by those already there, and a chain reaction starts. There are still achievers and explorers, but they are swamped by the sheer volume of socialisers. The number of socialisers is limited only by external factors, or the presence of killers masquerading as socialisers. If the population of socialisers drops below a certain critical level, then the chain reaction reverses and almost all the players will leave, however only events outside the MUD would cause that to happen once the critical mass had been reached. 3) A MUD where all groups have a similar influence (although not necessarily similar numbers). By nurturing explorers using software means (ie. giving the game great depth or "mystique", or encouraging non-explorers to dabble for a while by regularly adding new areas and features), the overall population of explorers will gradually rise, and the killer population will be held in check by them. The killers who remain do exert an influence on the number of socialisers, sufficient to stop them from going into fast-breeder mode, but insufficient to initiate an exodus. Achievers are set upon by killers often enough to feel that their achievements in the game have meaning. This is perhaps the most balanced form of MUD, since players can change their position on the interest graph far more freely: achievers can become explorers, explorers can become socialisers, socialisers can become achievers - all without sacrificing stability. However, actually attaining that stability in the first place is very difficult indeed; it requires not only a level of game design beyond what most MUDs can draw on, but time and player management skills that aren't usually available to MUD administrators. Furthermore, the administrators need to recognise that they are aiming for a player mix of this kind in advance, because the chances of its occurring accidentally are slim. 4) A MUD with no players. The killers have killed/frightened off everyone else, and left to find some other MUD in which to ply their trade. Alternatively, a MUD structured expressly for socialisers never managed to acquire a critical mass of them. Other types could conceivably exist, but they are very rare if they do. The dynamics model is, however, imprecise: it takes no account of outside factors which may influence player types or the relationships between then. It is thus possible that some of the more regimented MUDs (eg. role-playing MUDs, educational MUDs, group therapy MUDs) have an external dynamic (eg. fandom interest in a subject, instructions from a teacher/trainer, tolerance of others as a means to advance the self) which adds to their cohesion, and that this could make an otherwise flaky configuration hold together. So other stable MUD forms may, therefore, still be out there. It might be argued that "role-playing" MUDs form a separate category, on a par with "gamelike" and "social" MUDs. However, I personally favour the view that role-playing is merely a strong framework within which the four types of player still operate: some people will role-play to increase their power over the game (achievers); others will do so to explore the wonder of the game world (explorers); others will do so because they enjoy interacting and co-operating within the context that the role-playing environment offers (socialisers); others will do it because it gives them a legitimate excuse to hurt other players (killers). I have not, however, undertaken a study of role-playing MUDs, and it could well be that there is a configuration of player types peculiar to many of them which would be unstable were it not for the order imposed by enforcing role-play. It certainly seems likely that robust role- playing rules could make it easier for a MUD to achieve type 3) stability, whatever. At this point, we return to the social/gamelike MUD debate. Ignoring the fourth (null) case from the above, it is now much easier to see why there is a schism. Left to market forces, a MUD will either gravitate towards type 1) ("gamelike") or type 2) ("social"), depending on its administrators' line on player- killing (more precisely: how much being "killed" annoys socialisers). However, the existence of type 3) MUDs, albeit in smaller numbers because of the difficulty of reaching the steady state, does show that it is possible to have both socialisers and achievers co-existing in significant numbers in the same MUD. It's very easy to label a MUD as either "hack-and-slash" or "slack-and-hash", depending on whether or not player-killing is allowed. However, using player-killing as the only defining factor in any distinction is an over-generalisation, as it groups together type 1) and type 3) MUDs. These two types of MUD should *not* be considered as identical forms: the socialising which occurs in a type 3) MUD simply isn't possible in a type 1), and as a result the sense of community in type 3)s is very strong. It is no accident that type 3) MUDs are the ones preferred commercially, because they can hold onto their players for far longer than the other two forms. A type 1) MUD is only viable commercially if there is a sufficiently large well of potential players to draw upon, because of the much greater churn rate these games have. Type 2)s have a similarly high turnover; indeed, when TinyMUD first arrived on the scene it was almost slash-and-burn, with games lasting around six months on university computers before a combination of management breakdown (brought on by player boredom) and resource hogging would force them to close down - with no other MUDs permitted on the site for perhaps years afterwards. This explains why some MUDs perceived by socialisers to be "gamelike" can actually be warm, friendly places, while others are nasty and vicious: the former are type 3), and the latter are type 1). Players who enter the type 3)s, expecting them to be type 1)s, may be pleasantly surprised (Bruckman, 1993). However, it should be noted that this initial warm behaviour is sometimes the approach used by administrators to ensure a new player's further participation in their particular MUD, and that, once hooked, a player may find that attitudes undergo a subtle change (Epperson, 1995). As mentioned earlier, this paper is not intended to promote any one particular style of MUD. Whether administrators aim for type 1), 2) or 3) is up to them - they're all MUDs, and they address different needs. However, the fact that they *are* all MUDs, and not "MU*s" (or any other abbreviation-of-the-day), really should be emphasised. To summarise: "gamelike" MUDs are the ones in which the killer-achiever equilibrium has been reached, ie. type 1); "social" MUDs are the ones in which the pure-social stability point has been reached, ie. type 2), and this is the basis upon which they differ. There is a type 3) "all round" (my term) MUD, which exhibits both social and gamelike traits, however such MUDs are scarce because the conditions necessary to reach the stable point are difficult or time-consuming to arrange. OVERBALANCING A MUD Earlier, the effect of taking each axis on the interest graph to its extremes was used to give an indication of what would happen if a MUD was pushed so far that it lost its MUDness. It was noted, though, that along the axes was not the only way a MUD could be tilted. What would happen if, in an effort to appeal to certain types of player, a MUD was overcompensated in their favour? Tilting a MUD towards achievers would make it obsessed with gameplay. Players would spend their time looking for tactics to improve their position, and the presence of other players would become unnecessary. The result would be effectively a single- player adventure game (SUD?). Tilting towards explorers would add depth and interest, but remove much of the activity. Spectacle would dominate over action, and again there would be no need for other players. The result of this is basically an online book. Tilting towards socialisers removes all gameplay, and centres on communication. Eventually, all sense of the virtual world is lost, and a chatline or IRC-style CB program results. Tilting towards killers is more difficult, because this type of player is parasitic on the other three types. The emphasis on causing grief has to be sacrificed in favour of the thrill of the chase, and bolstered by the use of quick-thinking and skill to overcome adversity in clever (but violent) ways. In other words, this becomes an arcade ("shoot 'em up") type of game. It's a question of balance: if something is added to a MUD to tilt the graph one way, other mechanisms will need to be in place to counterbalance it (preferably automatically). Otherwise, what results is a SUD, book, chatline or arcade game. It's the *combination* that makes MUDs unique - and special. It *is* legitimate to say that anything which goes too far in any direction is not a MUD; it is *not* legitimate to say that something which doesn't go far enough in any direction is not a MUD. So long as a system is a (text-based) multi-user virtual world, that's enough. SUMMARY To answer the questions posed in the preface: Are MUDs games? Like chess, tennis, D&D? Yes - to achievers. pastimes? Like reading, gardening, cooking? Yes - to explorers. sports? Like huntin', shooting', fishin'? Yes - to killers. entertainments? Like nightclubs, TV, concerts? Yes - to socialisers. This paper is an April 1996 extension of an earlier article, "Who Plays MUAs" (Bartle, 1990a). As a result of this, and of the fact that I am not a trained psychologist, do not expect a conventionally rigorous approach to the subject matter. Permission to redistribute freely for academic purposes is granted provided that no material changes are made to the text. REFERENCES Aspnes, J. (1989). TinyMUD [C] http://ftp.tcp.com/ftp/pub/mud/TinyMUD/tinymud-pc.1.0.tar.gz Bartle, R. A. (1985). MUD2 [MUDDLE] MUSE Ltd, Colchester, Essex, UK. Bartle, R. A. (1990a). Who Plays MUAs? Comms Plus!, October/November 1990 18-19. Bartle, R. A. (1990b). Interactive Multi-Player Computer Games. MUSE Ltd, Colchester, Essex, UK ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/papers/mudreport.txt Bruckman, A. S. (1992). Identity Workshop: Emergent Social and Psychological Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Reality. MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ftp://media.mit.edu/pub/asb/papers/identity-workshop.ps 1 Bruckman, A. S. (1993). Gender Swapping on the Internet Proc. INET-93 ftp://media.mit.edu/pub/asb/papers/gender- swapping.txt Bruckman, A. S. & Resnick, M. (1993). Virtual Professional Community: Results from the MediaMOO Project. MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ftp://media.mit.edu/pub/asb/papers/convergence.txt Bruckman, A. S. (1994a). Workshop: "Serious" Uses of MUDs? Proc. DIAC-94 ftp://media.mit.edu/pub/asb/papers/serious- diac94.txt Bruckman, A. S. (1994b). Approaches to Managing Deviant Behaviour in Virtual Communities. MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ftp://media.mit.edu/pub/asb/deviance-chi94.txt Burka, L. P. (1995). The MUDline. http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/lpb/mudline.html Carton, S. (1995). Internet Virtual Worlds Quick Tour: MUDs, MOOs and MUSHes: Interactive games, Conferences and Forums Ventana Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Caspian-Kaufman, J. (1995). Sid Meier's CivNET: Instruction Manual Microprose, Hunt Valley, Maryland. Cherny, L. (1995a). The Modal Complexity of Speech Events in a Social MUD. Electronic Journal of Communication, Summer 1995. ftp://bhasha.stanford.edu/pub/cherny/ejc.txt Cherny, L. (1995b). The Situated Behaviour of MUD Back Channels. Dept. Linguistics, Stanford University, California. ftp://bhasha.stanford.edu/pub/cherny/aaai.ps Clodius, J. A. (1994). Concepts of Space in a Virtual Community. http://tinylondon.ucsd.edu/~jen/space.html Curtis, P. (1992). Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities. Proc. DIAC-92 ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/papers/DIAC92.txt Curtis, P. & Nichols, D. A. (1993). MUDs Grow Up: Social Virtual Reality in the Real World. Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, California. ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/papers/MUDsGrowUp. txt Dibbell, J. (1993). A Rape in Cyberspace. The Village Voice, December 21, 1993. ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/papers/VillageVoice.txt Emert, H. G. (1993). "X" Marks the Spot. East Stroudsburg University, Pennsylvania. http://www-f.rrz.uni- koeln.de/themen/cmc/text/emert.n01.txt Eddy, A. (1994). Internet After Hours Prima, Rocklin, California. Epperson, H. L. (1995). Patterns of Social Behaviour in Computer-Mediated Communications. Dept. Sociology, Rice University. http://www.eff.org/pub/Net_culture/Misc_net_culture/ web_social_behaviour.paper Evard, R. (1993). Collaborative Networked Communication: MUDs as System Tools. Proc. LISA-93 http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/remy/documents/cncmast.html Fanderclai, T. F. (1995). MUDs in Education: New Environments, New Pedagogies. Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine, 2(1), 8. Farmer, F. R., Morningstar, C. & Crockford, D. (1994). From Habitat to Global Cyberspace. Proc. CompCon-94, IEEE http://www.communities.com/paper/hab2cybr.html Kort, B. (1991). The MUSE as an Educational Medium BBN Labs, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ftp://musenet.bbn.com/pub/micromuse Mauldin, M. L. (1994). Chatterbots, TinyMUDs and the Turing Test: Entering the Loebner Prize Competition. Proc. AAAI-94 http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/mlm/aaai94.html Moock, C. (1996). Virtual Campus at the University of Waterloo. http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~camoock/virtual_classroom.htm Norrish, J. (1995). MU*s. http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~jamie/mud/mud.html Poirier, J. R. (1994). Interactive Multiuser Realities: MUDs, MOOs, MUCKs, and MUSHes. The Internet Unleashed, 1192- 1127. SAMS Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana. Reid, E. (1994). Cultural Formations in Text-Based Virtual Realities. Dept. English, University of Melbourne, Australia. ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/papers/CulturalFormati ons.txt Riner, R. D. & Clodius, J. A. (1995). Simulating Future Histories: The NAU Solar System Simulation and Mars Settlement. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 26(1):95-104. http://tinylondon.ucsd.edu/~jen/solsys.html Rosenberg, M. S. (1992). Virtual Reality: Reflections of Life, Dreams and Technology. An Ethnography of a Computer Society. ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/papers/ethnography.txt Roush, W. (1993). The Virtual STS Centre on MediaMOO: Issues and Challenges as Non-Technical Users Enter Social Virtual Spaces. MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ftp://media.mit.edu/pub/MediaMOO/Papers/STS-Centre Urdang, L. & Manser, M. (1980). The Pan Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms Pan Reference, London, UK. Whitlock, T. D. (1994). F**k Art, Let's Kill!: Towards a Post Modern Community. gopher://actlab.rtf.utexas.edu/00/art_and_tech/rtf_papers/pmc. terrorism Whitlock, T. D. (1994b). Technological Hierarchy in MOO: Reflections on Power in Cyberspace http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~smack/papers/TechHier.txt - o -