Quick Facts
Biography
Richard Allan Bartle FBCS FRSA (born 10 January 1960) is a British writer, professor and game researcher, best known for being the co-creator of MUD1 (an early MUD) and the author of the seminal Designing Virtual Worlds. He is one of the pioneers of the massively multiplayer online game industry.
Life and career
Bartle received a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Essex, where he created MUD1 with Roy Trubshaw in 1978.
He lectured at Essex until 1987, when he left to work full-time on MUD (known as MUD2 in its present version). Recently he has returned to the university as a part-time professor and principal teaching fellow in the Department of Computing and Electronic Systems, supervising courses on computer game design as part of the department's degree course on computer game development.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
In 2003, he wrote Designing Virtual Worlds, a book about the history, ethics, structure, and technology of massively multiplayer games.
Bartle is also a contributing editor to Terra Nova, a collaborative blog that deals with virtual world issues.
Bartle did research on player personality types in virtual worlds. In Bartle's analysis, players of virtual worlds can be divided into four types: achievers, explorers, socializers and killers. This idea has been adapted into an online test generally referred to as the Bartle Test, which is quite popular, with scores often exchanged on massively multiplayer online games forums and networking sites.
Circa 2003, Bartle was reported as living in a village near Colchester, England, with his wife Gail and their two children Jennifer and Madeleine.
Richard Bartle has compared game players' distaste for permanent death to general distaste for pedophilia.
Bartle is an atheist.
Awards
- International Game Developers Association "First Penguin Award" (now called "The Pioneer Award"), at the 2005 Game Developers Choice Awards, for his part in creating the first MUD.
- Game Developers Choice Online "The Online Game Legend Award", at the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards
Works
Games
- Spellbinder, 1977, a pencil and paper game also known as Waving Hands, first described in Bartle's fanzine Sauce of the Nile
- MUD1, 1978, with Roy Trubshaw
- MUD2, 1980, based on MUD1
- Spunky Princess, 2015, based on wap
Books
- Artificial Intelligence and Computer Games, Paperback, 256 pages, Century Communications, 25 July 1985, ISBN 978-0-7126-0661-5
- Designing Virtual Worlds, Paperback, 768 pages, New Riders Pub., 25 July 2003 ISBN 978-0-13-101816-7
- INsightflames, 1999, Online publication. Also 2 Paperbacks, NotByUs, "IN Sight", 422 pages, July 2007, ISBN 978-0-9556494-0-0 & "IN Flames", 416 pages, August 2007, ISBN 978-0-9556494-1-7
- Lizzie Lott's Sovereign, NotByUs, June 2011, ASIN B0058CX7M8
- "Waving Hands from Duel Purpose". Retrieved 25 September 2016.
- "Spellbinder".