Worlds in Play Abstracts

The paper abstract for the Digital Games Research Association's "Worlds in Play" four-day conference in Vancouver have been posted.  Quite a few TN authors will be there and quite a few MMORPG-relevant abstracts are in the over 250 papers listed.  Registration here.

Comments

[Thabor]

1.

One of the first abstracts to catch my attention is Warriors, Narrators, Strategists and Interactors: Quantitative Gamer Archetypes - Avery Alix

Sounds to me very much like the Bartle Types under different names. I would pair Warrior -> Killer, Narrator -> Socializer, Strategist -> Explorer, and Interactor -> Achiever. The last two may not be perfect fits, but given it makes me wonder just how many times we are going to see these sort of categories fall out of game research.

[William Huber]

2.

Actually, Thabor, I don't think any of them fit, because the categories seem to be at a different scale. A Warrior may or may not be a griefer, it's rather a focus on the combat system, whereas the "Killer" is pretty much a PvP category. The Strategist may be much more interested in mechanics, and the Narrator may be completely disinterested in other players, but be more involved with the NPC-driven narratives.

In fact, the Bartle categories seem to complement these categories: Bartle's describe how the relationships between players within a world are motivated by the player's agenda, while these seem to describe the agenda with the game/world/system itself, of which the other players are simply a part. Since I'm going for the game-as-text thing, this contrast is interesting to me.

[Avery Alix]

3.

I just can't help but smile. Thabor is absolutely right in that Bartle's types provide an interesting counter-point to my analysis. William is pretty close to the mark as well.

This project started with a web-survey administered to over a thousand gamers. One of the things that unexpectedly shook out of the data was that 78% of gameplay preferences (or uses & gratifications) could statistically be accounted for with four factors. I simply nicknamed those factors "Warrior, Narrator, Strategest, and Interactor" after looking at the analysis carefully. I will admit that I had never heard of Bartle's types when I performed initial analysis on this body of data!

Needless to say I was pretty excited when I found that another person had performed a pretty well-known evaluation of gamer types before. Dr. Bartle did a fantastic job of providing an insightful way for MUD administrators to balance player populations in their game, yet the framework he provides can only be taken so far. His paper isn't empirical in the strict sense, and focuses (intentionally) upon what is now a small subset of online gamers.

Bartle's types really do not line up with the archetypes I've proposed, and William has already surmised some of the ways in which the fit isn't very good between these two frameworks. The rest I will save for now, but I would love to chat with anyone about this project at any time, so feel free to drop me an email or say "hi" at a conference!