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Richard Bartle releases his classic “Designing Virtual Worlds” book for free
- freediver 5y agoFor those interested, Bartle is the co-creator of the first MUD (multi-user dungeon, online text style adventure). He made a brilliant explanation why is text the best medium to activate the imagination: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zctp972y_Eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zctp972y_Eg
- dwheeler 5y agoHistory is complicated. Scepter of Goth (SoG) preceded MUD commercially as the first commercial multi-player role playing game. But Scepter of Goth disappeared while MUD continued to be around for longer, so SoG is not as well remembered. Bartle's book is great, it's highly recommended. People are still developing interactive fiction ("text based adventures") today.
- freediver 5y agoInteractive fiction is not to be confused with MUDs though. Both are a subset of text based adventures. Typical IF is more of a single-player closed system with linear progression while MUDs are open world, multiplayer (but still text-based) systems.
- dwheeler 5y agoI agree, interactive fiction != MUDs. Thanks. It's a little sad that this has to be explained today :-).
- rjsw 5y agoEssex MUD wasn't commercial.
- brianstorms 5y agoBartle inventing "MUD" is like the has-so-many-PhDs-guy who claims he invented "EMAIL". Bartle was unaware of the PLATO system, which had numerous MUDs up and running and mature by the time his was released online.
- dreyfan 5y agoIf two people invent or discover a similar thing, independently, they’re both inventors.
- dannyobrien 5y agoI see you've written a book on PLATO -- I'd love to know some of the examples of these early MUDs. I believe the deal with the noted jurist who claims to have invented email is that he may have had an earlier version of a text delivering system called email, except that there is very strong disagreement that his version of email has any living descendants. If we assume that he's wrong, then the right inventor of MUDs is the one whose creation has many (more popular) descendants. I played on the original Essex MUD in the early 80s, and it had a lot of distinctive qualities that directly inspired many of the other MUDs, including I believe LambdaMOO. And, unless you have any competing evidence, I think it might be fair to say that Bartle and colleagues predecessors at least coined the term "MUD".
- wodow 5y agoI see DVW discusses PLATO's multi-user games in the section "The Fifth Age", at least Orthanc and Oubliette pre-MUD1 (Essex MUD; 1978), saying "the interaction it allowed between characters was very limited; it was almost there, but not quite". Were there other world games on PLATO in the 1970s? (Same section adds "In late 1979, the first ever fully-functional graphical virtual world was released [on PLATO]: Avatar.")
- tejohnso 5y ago> No matter how far you take graphics, eventually, the farthest you can get is text. Interesting point of view.
- marshalmcwho 5y agoThe cinema overwhelms the senses, text stimulates what is already present in the reader's mind. You can't (yet) broadcast smells or tastes by recording them with a camera but a good writer can make the reader feel things they couldn't feel from watching a screen.
- pitched 5y agoIs there a better more-recent book to start reading or is this still a good place to start?
- hn8788 5y ago"Designing Games" by Tynan Sylvester (creator of Rimworld), and "Game Feel" by Steve Swink, are both more recent books about high-level game design concepts, though they don't specifically focus on world building.
- tagami 5y agoI recommend Raph Koster, "A Theory of Fun"; and Jesse Schell, "The Art of Game Design" (which has a complementary deck of cards called "A Deck of Lenses")
- learc83 5y agoThe best one I’ve read is Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach by Michael Sellers. It’s a good bit more rigorous than other books on game design.
- guerrilla 5y agoIf you like this, you might like the Preserving TV series [1]. I loved it, especially the format of someone familiar with each one guiding you through somewhere. 1. https://preservingworlds.net/ https://preservingworlds.net/
- wolverine876 5y agoHere is Bartle's actual announcement and download link: https://mud.co.uk/dvw/ https://mud.co.uk/dvw/
- ocdtrekkie 5y agoI have a lot of old books from this era that are often obsolete, but I hesitate to part with, knowing there often isn't an eBook alternative available. Hopefully a lot more authors can release their old books in the future.
- DylanBohlender 5y agoRichard Bartle is a luminary in the field of game design. He invented a system for classifying gamers' preferred game actions called the "Bartle taxonomy", which helps game designers understand player motivations better. Think of it like user personas in software development - Killers love competition, Explorers love discovery, Achievers love mastery, and Socializers play games for social reasons. When designing a game for mass appeal it's often important to make sure players of all stripes find reasons to enjoy it, and Bartle's taxonomy is a great framework for analyzing how different types of players will interact with a game. You can take an online version of the Bartle taxonomy questionnaire to get your own results here: http://matthewbarr.co.uk/bartle/ http://matthewbarr.co.uk/bartle/
- User23 5y agoThis brings back memories. I was a huge fan of the old pkmud. It had gameplay that very much anticipated today's battle royales. The various players would get teleported randomly to locations in the DIKU MUD world and then scramble to kill MOBs and collect gear to better murder the other players. Looks like it's still around[1], and for some reason my handle is an illegal name. Fascinating! Sadly, like most MUDs, the player base is nonexistent. Most of my time though was on a deeper SillyMUD derived PK MUD called Forbidden Lands. It was neat because the focus wasn't on murder, it was just an option. So the politics and mores around killing got quite interesting. Edit: Still KASE. [1] http://pkmud.net/ http://pkmud.net/
- ItsMonkk 5y agoNever heard of this before, but it seems like it was a class-based Battle Royale created 25 years ago? Wow, that was way ahead of the times.
- ConfusedDog 5y agoThat's cool to know I'm a EASK (Explorer). It's just like Myers Briggs Personality test. I do lean more to exploring the virtual worlds and building things.
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- kgarten 5y agoThis is what I see when opening the link: https://imgur.com/a/ITXoipP https://imgur.com/a/ITXoipP Come and Design Digital Toilets ... https://imgur.com/a/2rzcgjG https://imgur.com/a/2rzcgjG The book seems interesting. but the advertisement would have just led me to close the tab if it was not on hackernews.
- kageneko 5y agoAh, such memories. MUDs were the first reason I almost flunked out of college. Especially when I started running my own. Gonna read this so much. Especially since I'm building a MUD again, but using Discord and Slack as the clients.
- tagami 5y agoProfessor Bartle is quite approachable. Somewhere in my archive is the original code for his MUD1 that he forwarded to me. Update: I'll have to ask if I can link the zip, but here is the opening text: ;Copyright (C) 1983 by ;Richard Bartle & Roy Trubshaw, ;Essex University, Colchester. CO4 3SQ. ; ; This software is furnished on the understanding that ;it may be used and or copied only with the inclusion of this ;notice. No title or ownership of this software is hereby ;transferred. The information in this software is subject to ;change without notice. No responsibility is assumed for the ;use or reliability of this software. name valley persona mud @txtcbt @txtlev @txthrs *rooms 96
- creamytaco 5y agoIt's on Github and multiple other places.
- rtrubshaw11 5y agoYou're also going to need the Essex BCPL compiler and a DECSystem10 (or an emulation thereof) running TOPS10! Happy days! Roy Trubshaw
- bg4 5y agoCoding a MUD is what switched me from Health Science to Computer Science in 1996. Though, in hindsight, I wish I'd gotten a double major in both subjects.
- mdaniel 5y agoI heard the acronym was "multi undergraduate destroyer" although I'm thankful I dodged that bullet only to get taken out by working too much at my "part time" job :-/
- nevster 5y agoMy first thoughts looking at that website and the 'ads': "Wow, is Second Life still a thing?!" It's been like 16 years since I tried it.
- jbellis 5y agoThis reporter reached out to Richard and got his comments on how well each chapter holds up today: https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2021/08/richard-bartle-designing-virtual-worlds-free-book.html https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2021/08/richard-bartle-designing-v...
- mattowen_uk 5y agoThat's the same link as the Original Post.
- jbellis 5y agowow, clearly I shouldn't have posted before coffee this morning! :)
- seer 5y agoIs his work regarded well and/or studied in the more academic psychology circles? I ask this as the usual line of “introvert - extrovert” never made intuitive sense to me, as it it was missing important details. For example I love talking with people and listening to their stories, and casual acquaintances would insist I’m an extrovert, but I tire quickly at social gatherings and recharge when I’m alone, and the pandemic lockdown was something I actually liked to some degree, which makes me feel like I’m actually a well adjusted introvert or something. So when I first found Bartle’s taxonomy it all “clicked” I instantly knew where I was on the graph (explorer), and could easily place people I know, giving me more predictive clarity for mine and other people’s actions… So was wondering if it is more generally known / accepted in psychology? Maybe it has some flaw that makes it not applicable to non gamers or something?
- kqr 5y agoYour description is pretty much the definition of introvert. People get it confused because extraverts quite naturally get more practise at social situations, so on a group level they're better at them. But at its core, the extravert/introvert scale is about whether social interaction gives you energy or drains it. And of course it's not a dichotomy, it's a scale.
- M277 5y agoSlightly unrelated, but regarding introvert - extrovert -- Quiet, by Susan Cain may be an interesting read. I was in a similar position till I read it and plenty of things just clicked.
- d2clon 5y agoWhy no releasing an ebook version? PDFs are more from the paper printed era.
- DonHopkins 5y agoRichard just posted: >It occurred to me that if people are allowed to reformat the text of Designing Virtual Worlds, then perhaps I ought to provide it in a form more amenable to reformatting than .pdf is. I've therefore uploaded a .docx version to https://mud.co.uk/richard/DesigningVirtualWorlds.docx https://mud.co.uk/richard/DesigningVirtualWorlds.docx , for those readers who want to put it in a form that works on their phone, Kindle or US Letter paper (the .pdf is set up for A4). >The news that I released the book for free seems to have made the first page of Hacker News. There are about 35 comments on it, many of which I'd love to reply to but know how much of my life replying to the resulting counter-comments would take up.
- ntoll 5y agoI read this way back when. It deserves its status as a classic. I highly recommend it.
- mattowen_uk 5y agoI've cleaned up a scan of the original cover: http://www.mattowen.co.uk/files/DesigningVirtualWorldsCover.png http://www.mattowen.co.uk/files/DesigningVirtualWorldsCover.... I did it for myself, so I could put it on the front of the PDF, but I thought I'd share it here also. As far as I am aware, the original book is long out of print, and second hand copies tend to cost quite a lot, if the rights have reverted back to Richard, as he says on his blog, then I'm guessing he's not getting any royalties these days anyway. That being said, I trust everyone here not to reprint the whole thing and sell copies at a profit!