Richard Bartle

Richard Bartle
Richard Bartle, 2011
Born	10 January 1960 (age 52) Ripon, England
Residence	near Colchester, Essex, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	writer, professor, game researcher
Known for	MUD1 Designing Virtual Worlds
Spouse	Gail Bartle
Children	Jennifer Bartle, Madeleine Bartle
Website
http://mud.co.uk/richard/

Richard Allan Bartle (born 10 January 1960 in Ripon, England) is a British writer, professor and game researcher, best known for being the co-creator of MUD1 (the first MUD) and the author of the seminal Designing Virtual Worlds. He is one of the pioneers of the massively multiplayer online game industry.^[1]

Contents 1 Life and career 2 Awards 3 Works 3.1 Games 3.2 Books 4 References 5 External links

Life and career

A screenshot from MUD1, the first MUD

Bartle received a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from the University of Essex, where he created MUD1 with Roy Trubshaw in 1978.^[2]
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.^[3]
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 massively-multiplayer online games. In Bartle's analysis, players of massively multiplayer online games can be divided into four types: achievers, explorers, socializers and killers.^[4] This idea has been adapted into a popular online test generally referred to as the Bartle Test.^[5] The test is very popular and scores are often exchanged on MMORPG forums and networking sites.^[6]
Circa 2003, Bartle was reported as living in a village near Colchester, England, with his wife Gail and their two children Jennifer and Madeleine.^[7]

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^[8]

Works

Games

• Spellbinder, 1977, a pencil and paper game also known as Waving Hands, first described in Bartle's fanzine Sauce of the Nile^[9][10]
• MUD1, 1978, with Roy Trubshaw
• MUD2, 1980, based on MUD1

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
• IN^sight_flames, 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